The British people ‘just got a lot poorer’, says IFS thinktank
UK has scored ‘a series of economic own goals’, Institute for Fiscal Studies says after autumn statement
The British people *are* poorer. They became so as a result of decisions in the past few years. Piling on the debt to pay everyone to do and produce nothing has that effect.
It’s not that Brits are about to become poorer as a result of these new decisions. This is just the penny dropping on those old ones.
The British people have deliberately been made poorer by people who mean them harm (our own government).
Apparently it was JKG who coined the word bezzle with reference to the link between the roaring 20s and the Great Depression. It was such an obviously good idea that the State had to nationalize it.
Alan – interesting essay. Yes, we do seem to be in the bezzle management business. Juicing GDP figures with low-quality immigration is pure bezzle: UK plc looks (temporarily) more solvent on paper while in reality gaining millions more liabilities, bringing forward the day when our welfare state ponzi scheme collapses.
Promising steep spending cuts in the never-never land of 2026 after the current government loses by a landslide is bezzle-adjacent, tho it will be darkly comical seeing Labour inherit that particular flaming bag of plans. (Usually they get to inherit a functioning economy from the Tories, lol).
We got poorer during the pandemic-inspired lock-down – but we didn’t notice the real extent of it thanks to the furlough scheme. The Hunt/OBR statement is merely telling us about it.
Yes, the trebling of the price of imported fuel and near-doubling of the price of imported wheat has made it worse, but basically if we shut down large chunks of the economy that *must* make us poorer.
>————————-Boris Johnson———————-> [ˡᶦᶻ ᵗʳᵘˢˢ]>——————-Rishi Sunak———————->
Damn that crazy bitch.
Slightly O/T, but I spotted this at Guido’s place (reporting on debates in the HoL):
Lord Triesman on economists:
At Cambridge University, after the faculty of Economics was re-decorated, I was inveigled into taking part in a debate as to the order in which the portraits of its Nobel prize winners should be rehung and whether it should be Marshall or Keynes in the pre-eminent position. I left that debate after eight hours. No one was an inch further down the line of resolving it and, to my knowledge, the portraits have never been hung, because 20 years later no one is any further down the path of resolving it.
@pjf – LOL!
Actually I think it’s both. UK people are poorer from previous government mistakes, and we’ll be getting poorer again from current mistakes.
《Piling on the debt to pay everyone to do and produce nothing》
Aren’t Eurodollars the UK’s chief export?
After another six months of energy poverty the UK will be on its knees. An own goal is only one point. Perhaps it should be own converted tries.