Wednesday 20 October 2010

Sailing into choppy waters



It's the Comprehensive Spending Review today, in which the Tory and Liberal Democrat government institute nakedly reactionary social and economic measures under the guise of dealing with the deficit. The poor, the weak and the hardworking will suffer. The rich and their businesses will not. Organisations like the BBC are being punished for their (relative) independence and for offering an alternative to the world of Fox News, while Murdoch and his friends will be rewarded for their loyalty.

Are massive cuts in welfare, environmental protection, education, housing, transport, the arts etc. justified? Not if you ask Nobel Prizewinner for Economics, Joseph Stiglitz. He, like virtually all expert economists and most government, thinks we should be boosting the economy, not sacking millions of people.

Still, what does he know? Abolishing the state worked brilliantly for Chile under the Pinochet dictatorship (as long as you don't look too closely). Until it didn't.

1 comment:

Benjamin. said...

It has been a wholly depressing week so far; Wayne Rooney supposedly leaving United and now this. Clegg's open letter to his fellow Lib Dems was a smarting one, how beguiling his election campaign was. Quite sickening to think of it now in light of his smug humoured look alongside Cameron on the front bench who was clearly enjoying it: dismissing Milibrand’s comments regarding Clarke’s ‘double dip recession’ rant.

How they expect unemployment levels to drop is beyond me, it’s like stamping on the fingers of a mountaineer as he clings onto the cliff for dear life.