{"id":82850,"date":"2025-06-03T06:24:18","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T05:24:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=82850"},"modified":"2025-06-03T06:24:18","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T05:24:18","slug":"panorama-an-exercise-in-economic-misinformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/06\/03\/panorama-an-exercise-in-economic-misinformation\/","title":{"rendered":"Panorama: an exercise in economic misinformation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I watched last night's Panorama, which asked the question '<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/iplayer\/episode\/m002d37n\/panorama-is-britain-broke\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Is Britain Broke?<\/a>'<\/p>\n<p>The argument was:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We're old.<\/li>\n<li>We're unhealthy.<\/li>\n<li>We need more benefits because we have mental health issues.<\/li>\n<li>We're going to be at war.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We can't borrow, because the markets won't permit it.<\/li>\n<li>There is no room to tax the wealthy more (from Paul Johnson, ex the Institute for Fiscal Studies, now an Oxford don).<\/li>\n<li>Interest costs are out of control.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Ordinary people will have to pay more tax.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But they noted:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Real wage rises have not happened despite growth in the UK over the last two decades, constraining the capacity to tax most people more.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>No one joined the dots, which were all over my screen. Those dots were:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If there has been growth but wages have not gone up, someone must have benefited enormously. They have. They are:\n<ul>\n<li>Companies, of all sizes, all of whom underpay tax, given the benefits they get from the state.<\/li>\n<li>Rentiers of all sorts are winning hands down, including quite literally landlords and banks, but others as well, especially when exploiting brands.<\/li>\n<li>Wealth is massively under-taxed, as the <a href=\"https:\/\/taxingwealth.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Taxing Wealth Report 2024 shows.<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Polluters are under-taxed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>The BBC needs to stop using the household analogy and also needs to recognise:\n<ul>\n<li>30% of the UK's national debt is still owned by the government.<\/li>\n<li>In that case, 30% of interest paid is also being paid to the government.<\/li>\n<li>The government can create whatever money it likes if there are resources to be put to use.<\/li>\n<li>It can repeat QE if necessary to deal with shocks.<\/li>\n<li>QE need never be reversed, meaning QT, which has been massively increasing returns to banks whilst impoverishing households, is wholly unnecessary.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What this means then, is that:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The UK's financial architecture, which is designed to meet the needs of the rentier, the banker, the wealthy, and those who exploit, needs to be transformed.<\/li>\n<li>We need to rebuild with a productive economy.<\/li>\n<li>That requires leadership from the state.<\/li>\n<li>Money is no constraint on this happening.<\/li>\n<li>If consumption must be constrained, it is the excess consumption of the wealthy that has to be constrained by far the most.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>None of this was mentioned, of course.<\/p>\n<p>This programme was a total failure. It did not ask the right questions. The BBC produced guidelines on economics broadcasting a while ago. I suspect this programme breached many of them. As a result, it got nowhere near finding any useful answers to the question it posed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I watched last night&#8217;s Panorama, which asked the question &#8216;Is Britain Broke?&#8217; The argument was: We&#8217;re old. We&#8217;re unhealthy. We need more benefits because we<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/06\/03\/panorama-an-exercise-in-economic-misinformation\/\"><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":[204,35,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economic-justice","category-economics","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82850","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=82850"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82858,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82850\/revisions\/82858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}