{"id":30826,"date":"2015-10-02T09:14:27","date_gmt":"2015-10-02T08:14:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=30826"},"modified":"2015-10-02T09:14:27","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T08:14:27","slug":"austerity-is-choice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2015\/10\/02\/austerity-is-choice\/","title":{"rendered":"Austerity is choice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From <a href=\"https:\/\/next.ft.com\/content\/d0f0e212-6773-11e5-a57f-21b88f7d973f?ftcamp=crm\/email\/2015101\/nbe\/InTodaysFT\/product\" target=\"_blank\">Martin Wolf in this morning's FT<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Consider, for example, the government\u2019s planned fiscal consolidation. In 2009-10, public spending was 45.7 per cent of gross domestic product; and receipts 35.5 per cent.According to the July Budget, by 2019-20, spending will have been reduced to 36.3 per cent of GDP, while receipts will have risen to 36.7 per cent. Thus virtually all the burden of achieving a fiscal surplus will fall on spending, which will then be far below levels in, say, Germany.<\/p>\n<p>This was a political choice, not an economic necessity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Wolf is right.<\/p>\n<p>But I have to say the way he frames his argument now feels very outdated to me.<\/p>\n<p>More on that later, if I get time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From Martin Wolf in this morning&#8217;s FT: Consider, for example, the government\u2019s planned fiscal consolidation. In 2009-10, public spending was 45.7 per cent of gross<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2015\/10\/02\/austerity-is-choice\/\"><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":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30826","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=30826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30826\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}