Mediamacro and responsibility (with economic bribes) – Mainly Macro
The Chancellor gives a huge pre-election bribe to the moderately wealthy over 65s, and describes the fact that everyone who can is trying to get hold of the bribe … as a great success, writes Professor Simon Wren-Lewis.
Chris Dillow describes this as corruption. To their credit, right wing think tanks have also condemned it for what it is. But the Chancellor says this is all part of his economic plan.
I suspect the penny is beginning to drop in mediamacro. This was supposed to be a government where deficit reduction was the overriding priority. It was of such importance that it was worth the risk (which materialised) of delaying the recovery until 2013 to achieve. Hard, sometimes painful choices had to be made to achieve the goal of reducing the deficit. A Chancellor who was prepared to do unpopular things for the greater good. The essence of responsibility.
Unless you were a top rate tax payer, of course. Or, following the Prime Minister’s conference speech last year, a moderately well off taxpayer. And now if you are moderately well off and over 65. Penny dropped?
Read more on Mainly Macro.
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I totally agree that this is an obvious bribe to the over 65s, coming at such a time not to be coincidental. I will be 65 next month. Should I disregard this bribe, as a stand against the corruption it is, or move some of my scant savings, which are currently plummeting in value, into one of these bonds? No brainer! Of course I will, but I still won’t vote for the Tories.
I would like to remind OAPs that Osborne will be sending OAPs, for medicals at who have had a lifetime or indefinite DLA awards, in October some of them will be over 67 years old in.That means that we have had 5 years (2010/2015) of mental torture so far.