Great article:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/com...cle4863675.ece
".................................The policy of simply suppressing spending without large-scale structural reform has not had a happy history. After an initial flurry of privatisations, the Conservative Government controlled public spending by holding down its growth without changing the scope of the services that the State was offering. At the same time the financial needs of those services grew faster than the resources they were being given. And so by the mid-1990s it was hard to resist the idea that more spending was required.
Thus in 1997 came what might be termed a “correction”. Labour was elected largely because the public was angry at failing services. The new Government soon began to increase public spending faster than the economy was growing. But such a policy is not, of course, sustainable either. You can't increase public spending faster than overall economic growth for very long before you come unstuck. As we now have.
And so we are due for yet another correction. This time, politicians should be determined that there will be - how would Tony Blair have put it - no more “boom and bust” in public spending. This time wishful thinking about waste and macho talk about spending control won't do. This time we have to fundamentally rethink what the State does and how it does it. "
WHS.
We need some positive destruction. Not just in the UK either. Hope DC reads it.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/com...cle4863675.ece
".................................The policy of simply suppressing spending without large-scale structural reform has not had a happy history. After an initial flurry of privatisations, the Conservative Government controlled public spending by holding down its growth without changing the scope of the services that the State was offering. At the same time the financial needs of those services grew faster than the resources they were being given. And so by the mid-1990s it was hard to resist the idea that more spending was required.
Thus in 1997 came what might be termed a “correction”. Labour was elected largely because the public was angry at failing services. The new Government soon began to increase public spending faster than the economy was growing. But such a policy is not, of course, sustainable either. You can't increase public spending faster than overall economic growth for very long before you come unstuck. As we now have.
And so we are due for yet another correction. This time, politicians should be determined that there will be - how would Tony Blair have put it - no more “boom and bust” in public spending. This time wishful thinking about waste and macho talk about spending control won't do. This time we have to fundamentally rethink what the State does and how it does it. "
WHS.
We need some positive destruction. Not just in the UK either. Hope DC reads it.
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