Hammond admits the fact about austerity that This Site has been trumpeting since day one
Have a gander at this infoclip, courtesy of Evolve Politics:
The Tory Chancellor @PhilipHammondUK just admitted that his own party's austerity policies are the stupid way to try and cut the national debt, adding that economic investment – such as that proposed by @jeremycorbyn and the @UKLabour Party – is actually the "smart" option. pic.twitter.com/CQ3eRgfNbN
— Evolve Politics (@evolvepolitics) November 8, 2018
That’s exactly what This Site (and other like-minded commentators) has been broadcasting since Vox Political started back in 2011: Austerity as a way of paying off the national debt is a terrible idea.
Rather than restore the nation’s finances to balance, the lack of investment in jobs and growth – and indeed the concentration on reducing investment and the size of the state – is far more likely to shrink the economy, necessitating more cuts in an attempt to achieve the same outcome and throwing the nation into a spiral of ever-increasing debt and ever-diminishing productivity.
That is what we have seen. The national debt has more than doubled under Conservative rule, while productivity has stagnated. The Tories have tried to gloss over this fact by claiming employment has boomed – but this is a trick; companies have laid off full-time employees and replaced them with part-time, short-term contract or zero-hour contract labour that receives far less pay per day and none of the in-work benefits that the full-timers enjoyed. The only economic effect that has increased over the last eight years is poverty.
Matt Zarb-Cousin added: “The chancellor admits austerity is a political choice rather than an economic necessity. He even goes as far as to say cutting spending is not the best way to reduce the national debt. I mean ffs what’s been the point of the last 8 years then”.
I’ve been answering that one since Day One, too: The point of the last eight years has been to cut services for working people, based on a false pretence that the nation cannot afford them. Next comes the removal of workers’ – and human – rights on the pretext that they are harming our ability to earn a decent wage.
In fact, the only thing harming our ability to earn a decent wage is the greed of the nation’s employers, which has fuelled the Conservatives’ zeal to cut taxes for those who are already obscenely rich.
That is the point of the last eight years: More for the “haves” and nothing for the “have-nots”.
It is a stupid way to run an advanced first-world country – especially if you are among the millions upon millions of people who have been penalised by it.
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it’s a half-hearted admission, Mike. At the start of the budget speech he waffled about the ‘sacrifices’ that allow them to spend now, so he hasn’t fully repudiated austerity.
he’s still tried to cover up for the last 8 years and all the suffering and death meted out on the vulnerable, no full recanting of that.
let’s be clear: The spending increases will be lip service like the 2 billion on housing and will do nothing to change the fundamentals.
Hammond should be on his knees weeping for all the unnecessary random suffering and vilification they have meted out.
It was never about cutting the national debt. It was all about tax cuts for the wealthy and keeping working class people “in their place” – the latter is always a Tory aim.
With dictatorships you know you have a good chance of ending up with a tyrant who ultimately destroys everything and everyone around: and it all ends in tears.
With western democracy the chances are equally good that you will end up with some governing morons devoid of any moral conscience who can ‘legitimately’ destroy everything and everyone around them with their imbecilic policies and teflon coated egos and still you can’t get rid of them: before they’ve laid the country waste.
Surely it is not beyond the wit of ‘intelligent’ human beings in the 21st century to cobble together some sort of mechanism for ‘managing a country and its people’ to the benefit of country and people and one that doesn’t traditionally depend on the obscene exploitation of the abled majority and the criminal neglect of the dis-abled and dis-enfranchised minority to cosset a privileged few!