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Tag: Austerity

Robert Skidelsky – Britain’s Benefit Madness

“Work is the ultimate escape from poverty. But the futile sort demanded by the United Kingdom’s income-support scheme puts many of society’s weakest members on a path to nowhere, because it reflects a welfare ideology that fails to distinguish fantasy from reality”

PEF publishes blue print for the post-covid economy on 29th April 2021

“After decades of assault by state-shrinking ideologues, a collision of crises has revealed how only the power of good government can save us. Covid, climate catastrophe and Brexit crashed in on a public realm stripped bare by a decade of extreme austerity. Here all the best writers and thinkers on the good society show recovery is possible, with a radical rethink of all the old errors. Read this, and feel hope that things can change. ”
Polly Toynbee

The UK budget offered no vision for sustainable economic growth

The budget was singularly lacking in ambition when it came to the government’s role in creating a sustainable, inclusive and investment-led recovery.

There was no new green stimulus despite the UK facing a £100bn funding gap to reach its net-zero by 2050 target and despite its hosting of the global COP26 climate change summit this November.

Robert Skidelsky comments on the 2021 budget

“I am highly sceptical about this story of ‘pent-up demand’. A shrinkage in national income by 10% implies a fall, not rise, in national saving. Saving out of income may go up, but income itself is lower. That’s why it’s not like in a war, when you have full employment and rising wages, but less to spend money on. “

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