The chart below from\u00a0our Healthy Finances report<\/a>\u00a0shows why we\u2019re having [a] row [about NHS funding]. If the government doesn\u2019t announce quite a bit more cash for the NHS, average annual spending growth is on course to be lower this decade than at any other time in the NHS\u2019s history. Real terms per capita spending is set to grow by an average of just 0.4 per cent a year between 2010-11 and 2019-20, down from an average of 5.9 per cent a year in the preceding decade.<\/p>\n As the chart makes clear, that's the lowest spending increase since the 50s. No wonder the NHS is in crisis. And no wonder some of us say that's entirely by choice.<\/p>\n No wonder too that some of us say that this can be solved by choice. I quote an editorial\u00a0from the Guardian yesterday<\/a>:<\/p>\n Before spending more money on the NHS, British politicians should take the advice of the US economist Stephanie Kelton:\u00a0in a UK lecture this week<\/a>, she explained that it was wrong for politicians and the media to argue that the government must balance its books, just like a household. If a household were to continually spend more than its income, it would eventually face insolvency; it is thus claimed that the government is in a similar situation. This is false.<\/p>\n Yet politicians are obsessed with avoiding an increase in the deficit, an impulse so ingrained that Professor Kelton described as it \u201calmost Pavlovian\u201d. An analysis of the UK\u2019s economic position tells us how to fund the NHS: growth is flatlining, real wages are stagnant and there\u2019s little inflation. The UK\u2019s indebted households are sinking deeper into debt. Hardly the time to raise taxes. The\u00a0public sector deficit<\/a>\u00a0ought to be seen as an instrument to support the economy, not a way to break it. To pay for the NHS, which is critical for long-term prosperity, the government should engage in\u00a0Keynesian deficit spending<\/a>: this would help to keep not only the public healthy but the economy too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Stephanie asked me to join her at that lecture to take part in discussion. I was unable to do so. It sounds like I missed something special. Not least because Stephanie's prescription\u00a0is entirely correct: I wrote much the same a year or so ago.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n It's by choice that the NHS is in crisis.<\/p>\n It's by choice that it can be got out of it.<\/p>\n And the right choice is glaringly obvious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Screen-Shot-2018-06-16-at-09.01.04-550x338.png\")
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