{"id":14616,"date":"2012-03-15T08:04:23","date_gmt":"2012-03-15T08:04:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=14616"},"modified":"2012-03-15T08:04:23","modified_gmt":"2012-03-15T08:04:23","slug":"the-reality-is-private-business-is-built-on-the-foundations-of-the-state-and-its-time-we-admitted-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2012\/03\/15\/the-reality-is-private-business-is-built-on-the-foundations-of-the-state-and-its-time-we-admitted-it\/","title":{"rendered":"The reality is private business is built on the foundations of the state &#8211; and it&#8217;s time we admitted it"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/politics\/2012\/mar\/15\/ba-willie-walsh-lack-of-growth-plan\" target=\"_blank\">Fascinating comment in the Guardian<\/a> this morning:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Willie Walsh, the\u00a0British Airways\u00a0chief executive, will launch an excoriating attack on the government on Thursday for the absence of a coherent growth plan, accusing ministers of \"warm words and cold action\".<\/p>\n<p>At the British Chambers of Commerce conference in London, he will say this government and the last Labour administration \"produce a growth strategy every week, but none of them up add up to anything\".<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Let's unpack that for a minute. First, he's saying he wants the state to have a growth plan. Now that's an\u00a0interesting\u00a0admission.<\/p>\n<p>Second, he says that it's been a failure of neoliberal\u00a0\u00a0governments\u00a0not to have one. Another\u00a0interesting\u00a0admission.<\/p>\n<p>Third, he's\u00a0implicitly\u00a0saying as a result that without the state taking the lead then the\u00a0private\u00a0sector goes\u00a0nowhere. That's true.<\/p>\n<p>Fourth, in that case he admits the state needs the resources to deliver such a plan. That means paying tax is\u00a0essential. And\u00a0yet\u00a0he argues business taxes must be cut. That's absurd: that makes him\u00a0guilty\u00a0of thinking much worse than any\u00a0government.<\/p>\n<p>Fifth, he\u00a0implicitly\u00a0says that the state has to do the things the market\u00a0never\u00a0can universally to make this work. That includes supplying the private\u00a0sector\u00a0with educated, housed, healthy workers who can afford to take the risk on working for the private sector\u00a0because\u00a0there's an adequate safety net to let them do so. The state's failed in that role for too long too.<\/p>\n<p>What he's really calling <a href=\"http:\/\/www.searchingfinance.com\/products\/soon-to-be-published\/the-courageous-state-rethinking-economics-society-and-the-role-of-government.html\" target=\"_blank\">for is a\u00a0Courageous State<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But he's too frightened to say so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fascinating comment in the Guardian this morning: Willie Walsh, the\u00a0British Airways\u00a0chief executive, will launch an excoriating attack on the government on Thursday for the absence<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2012\/03\/15\/the-reality-is-private-business-is-built-on-the-foundations-of-the-state-and-its-time-we-admitted-it\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[141,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-courageous-state","category-economics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14616\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}