“Britain’s deluded politics are downstream of a deluded public. This country simply doesn’t realise how poor it is; the gulf between public expectations of the state and the state’s means of financing itself has widened to dangerous levels. People on relatively high incomes don’t feel rich and therefore assume that there are plenty of actually rich people who could be squeezed to pay for stuff. Entitlement spending, in particular, is eating British democracy alive. Council budgets are increasingly consumed by social care and special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) spending, with services cut to the bone. Meanwhile in Westminster, successive governments continually forestall capital investment to avoid tinkering with absurd commitments such as the pension triple lock.”
– Henry Hill, writing about the UK Budget statement of Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves. (For non-British readers who want to know what the “triple lock” is, it is a safeguard that ensures the state pension increases each year by the highest of three measures: Inflation: The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the previous September; Average earnings: The average increase in total wages across the UK for May to June of the previous year; and a minimum rise of 2.5%.)
I agree with Hill that many members of the public, and not just the chattering class, are so economically illiterate they have little idea of how screwed the UK is financially, given demography, state bloat, over-regulation and tax, and the rest. And anyone who pushes against it is one of those sinister people known as “neoliberals”.
It’s the other way around. If the public are deluded, it’s because our elites are deluded. The British elite are the worst in British history. The public may be economically illiterate, but that’s likely always been the case. But that’s largely irrelevant as the idea the masses rather than elites determine what economic policy is one for the birds.
If you decide to make your country into a huge homeless shelter for the world’s dispossessed, you are going to put a lot of your resources into supporting that. (“Dispossessed” doesn’t usually mean “able to pay their own way.”) Those resources are then no longer available for your original population’s needs.
The blame has to fall on whichever part of your system – people or government – that made that decision without being able to cover the costs.
If “the people” were supportive of that decision, then the blame lies on them.
If not, then they need to vote harder and smarter.
(Funny how I can’t really tell which side of the ocean to which that comment applies.)
Martin, it’s a two-way street. If a political figure speaks the truth, such as explain how financially weak we are, or that the NHS is a monster, their careers are toast. And sadly, a large number of voters buy into statism and economic delusion.
I’m just about old enough to remember Sir Keith Joseph, who explained the folly of Big Government. He was called the “mad monk” for his pains.
Politicians are not a separate, alien species. They’re drawn from the same pool as the rest of us.
Keith Joseph was elected MP of Leeds from 1956 to retirement 1987, so the public so to speak didn’t end his career. He had two ministerial posts in the Thatcher government. Joseph made a speech that went down badly with the press as it was criticised for being pro-eugenics and decided to decline to challenge Ted Heath for conservative leadership, and instead Margaret Thatcher. Again, if his career was ‘toast’, this wasn’t done by the public. It was done by elite institutions – the media and the Tory party hierarchy (Tories didn’t even have membership based leadership elections at the time).
Enoch Powell would be a much better case of someone whose political career was ruined for telling the truth. But again, it was the elites who knifed him. He was always much more popular with the public than the elites.
Many of the otherwise pro-Labour members of my Dad’s side of the family from Hull had nothing but good things to say about Enoch Powell. When he was expelled from Heath’s shadow cabinet, lots of working class people (many union members) marched to Westminster in support for Powell. Many Labour MPs apparently shit themselves seeing so many white working class men show up outside parliament chanting for Enoch Powell.
The budget gave us even higher taxes, even higher government spending, and even more regulations.
In a better time, even as recently as the 1980s, the Economist magazine would have led the charge AGAINST such policies – but for some years now it has backed higher spending and taxes, for benefits and “public services” and, of course “infrastructure” – read Corporate Welfare to construction companies. Although a lot of the benefit and public services money now goes to rather wealthy officials (the Blair revolution in the pay of officials was not rolled back) and organisations – rather than the desperately poor people it is supposed to go to. “Bidding for funding” sounds like “a market” (sounds like a market to people who have no idea what a free market really is) – but the processes of getting this money is totally beyond the poor and desperate.
I am not wealthy myself – 14 to 15 thousand Pounds a year (my income) does not make you wealthy (I do not own a car – although I do not drive anyway, or a fridge that works, and when people talking about setting their heating to X figure this is outside my experience – as I have never had central heating in my life), but I know a lot of people poorer than me – a lot poorer than I am. I know about the poverty only too well.
If endless government spending, taxes and regulations reduce poverty – why is there so much poverty?
The answer one gets when one puts this question is “Tory cuts to government spending” even though government spending was massively increased, and “Tory deregulation” – when regulations increased as well.
At least now people will not be able to make the excuses of mythical “Tory cuts” and “Tory deregulation” as the Labour government grinds this country into the dirt – which it will.
As for the United States.
When I was born California was the most prosperous society on Earth – indeed the most prosperous society the world had ever seen.
When Herbert Marcuse and the other Marxists first arrived in California they were astounded – but, like Sauron arriving in Numenor (in the writings of Tolkien – not in the pathetic “Woke” television series) they did not change their opinions – no, the success of ordinary people in California just filled the Marxists with more intense hatred, with a more vicious desire to destroy everything good. Although Marxists such as Adorno were already known for their hatred of beauty – even in art and music, and remember H.G. Wells and the other Fabians with their sick dreams of destroying beautiful buildings, and destroying anything else that was beautiful, and putting ugliness, indeed vileness, in the world in the place of beauty.
When measured against the cost of living – California now has terrible poverty, perhaps the worst poverty of any American State.
Progressive policies, pushed by Marxists and non Marxist “fellow travelers”, have done this.
There is no limit, none, to what Progressives will do – even sexually mutilate children so these children will never have children of their own, both K. Harris and T. Walz have a record of supporting this, and other, evils.
Many people appear baffled by the policies of the Progressives – “do they now know the harm they do?” they know the harm they do VERY well (and revel in it).
I find them very easy (not hard – easy) to understand – as, I am sad to say, I have a lot of darkness in myself – so finding it in other people does not shock me.
I’ve always been a science fiction fan, but one of the common tropes that has come to annoy me is the idea that having reached the nirvana of a prosperous liberal democracy, this happy state would endure indefinitely. There are many examples but Star Trek is probably the most well known. I am increasingly drawn to the idea that a prosperous liberal democracy is simply not stable, and will inevitably be destroyed by its own rapacious government.
There’s as much economics in The Economist magazine as there is salt water in The Atlantic magazine.
RLJ: Heinlein’s “Crazy Years” are a more accurate portayal of the future (from his perspective, the present from ours).
@Roué le Jour
A philosopher once argued that ‘things’ turned, by stages, into their opposite. (Hence barter became trade, trade became money, money became credit).
So, of course “a prosperous liberal democracy” will turn into a poor autocratic tyranny. I have to say that we are nearly there. But on the bright side, eventually the poor autocratic tyranny will also change – but it might take some time.
JGH: Naw. Asimov’s Foundation series.
When measured against the cost of living – California now has terrible poverty, perhaps the worst poverty of any American State.
Mississippi would like to have a word with you.
Regarding Enoch Powell – there was a man who was, literally, too smart to be a politician. A Fellow at Cambridge, full professor of Greek literature at the age of 25, served in WW2 starting as a buck private and ending up the youngest brigadier-general in the Army, fluent in Urdu, the list of his personal accomplishments reads like the wildest fiction – and stabbed in the back by his own party for things he never said. Had he risen to be Prime Minister, the inevitable endpoint of his career arc, the UK might well have had a very-different 1970s and 1980s, perhaps avoiding much of the suffering and decline that afflicts it to this day.
llater,
llamas
Rour le Jour.
Even in Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek (let alone the Woke Marxist disease that is “Star Trek Discovery” – STD), the signs as to why America, and the West generally, would decline are very clear.
The only businessmen shown are crooks – such as Harry Mud. Everything appears to be free, and the Federation promises “schools, hospitals……” (well just about everything) at no cost, to everyone it comes upon.
Gene Roddenberry knew nothing about economics – and that shows in his work (entertaining thought it is), and that is why the California of his time (the most prosperous society that had ever existed on Earth) became the excrement covered nightmare that is Califoria today – a nightmare that is set to get a lot WORSE.
People such as Gene Roddenberry meant well, they really did, but they were easy for the left to manipulate.
Easy to manipulate because people such as Mr Roddenberry lacked basic knowledge.
Hayek was wrong and Ronald Reagan (a Governor of California as well as President) was correct – people need to know, need to understand the principles of a free society, it does not just “evolve” without anyone wanting it and understanding its principles – and it can be lost in a single generation.
Unless each generation understands the principles of libertty – a free and decent society is lost.
I don’t remember Asimov’s Foundaction characters complaining about universities seeing nothing wrong with teaching entrants basic literacy and numeracy, a culture that theft and assault should not be punished “lest their live are ruined”, an expectation that sponging off the state should be seen as a more beneficial lifestyle to aspire to than being self-dependant.
jgh – I wish I could argue with you, but the facts are very much on your side.
I am sometimes asked “when will the collapse occur?” – if people compare the culture, for example the standard of education in American cities now with what existed as recently as the 1950s, the collapse has already occurred.
It has already happened – but it was not in one day, it was over decades. So many people do not understand just how radical the decline has been.
A decline this radical – can fairly be called a cultural collapse.
And the economy will go the same way – and very soon, 2025.
Is British cultural decline as radical as American cultural decline?
Perhaps not – but the United Kingdom does not have the natural resources the United States has.
The British economy will also collapse in 2025.