What do you do, sir?” So asked the celebrated economist, John Maynard Keynes. We hope that Chancellor George Osborne will show similar intellectual flexibility in his autumn financial statement on Tuesday.
The facts are these: growth is flat, Government debt is getting bigger, one million young people in Britain are unemployed, Europe is in chaos. The Chancellor may have right on his side when he says Britain has not had a sovereign debt crisis because of the “hard choices” he made over public spending 18 months ago. But things change. If he sticks to the same policies, Britain will assuredly have a crisis before long, because those very same public spending cuts, in the absence of private-sector investment growth, mean the economy will stall, tax revenues will fall and Government debt increase even further. This is simple arithmetic, and it is happening right now.
Putting out fire the only way to rebuild
'When the facts change, I change my mind.
What do you do, sir?” So asked the celebrated economist, John Maynard Keynes. We hope that Chancellor George Osborne will show similar intellectual flexibility in his autumn financial statement on Tuesday.
The facts are these: growth is flat, Government debt is getting bigger, one million young people in Britain are unemployed, Europe is in chaos. The Chancellor may have right on his side when he says Britain has not had a sovereign debt crisis because of the “hard choices” he made over public spending 18 months ago. But things change. If he sticks to the same policies, Britain will assuredly have a crisis before long, because those very same public spending cuts, in the absence of private-sector investment growth, mean the economy will stall, tax revenues will fall and Government debt increase even further. This is simple arithmetic, and it is happening right now.
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Don't show me this again.