Sadly, the model used by the government to decide this was produced by an organisation that used to have Richard Murphy on the board. Therefore, obviously, the answer is no.
What we want to know is whether government spending upon the renewables transition makes us richer or not. Therefore we need to use a model that is equivocal – or possibly even neutral – about the effect of government spending. Only if we start from the point that government spending is neutral can we then go on to ask whether government spending on windmills (or, to be less perjorative, the green transition) is beneficial. This is a piece of logic that should be obvious but sadly does need to be spelt out.
That’s because the model that is being used here assumes that government spending grows the economy. The results gained from the model do not, in fact, distinguish between spending upon green or upon anything else. The effect is purely driven by that original assumption: that more is better.
Brilliant. Comparing the green spending to spending on anything else. Tom Sowell would be proud.
Y’know Tim, if the government spent billions on pampering ME!!!, the economy would also grow.
Do you think you could persuade them to give me that trillion dollar pension right now??
But even the youngest Socialist knows that if you can make someone else pay for it, it’s free. That and their entitlement are the basic tenets of Socialism.
So when they take our wealth through taxes, regulations and inflation, it grows the economy.
When they spend that wealth on all their parasitic causes, that grows the economy.
Everything they do grows the economy and any wealth they let us keep …doesn’t.
So obviously the perfectly efficient economy is one where we own nothing and are happy.
I never knew that Murph was on the committee that produced the Stern Report. That explains a lot.
If Government spending grows the economy doesn’t that extra money floating around also imply that it increases inflation?
Talking of fat bletherskites, does Potty Toynbee still write for the Graun?