Author: philmullan

Britain’s zombie economy stands exposed

philmullan Debt, Economic growth, Economic policy, Politics, Productivity, Zombie economy

Britain is in the grip of financial turmoil. Over the past week, the pound has crashed and rallied, as has the bond market. Pension funds, at one point, looked to be on the brink of collapse, prompting an emergency intervention from the Bank of England. All this has followed last week’s now globally infamous mini-budget, unveiled by prime minister Liz Truss and chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng. While there is no doubt that this incoherent budget acted as a trigger, it is not the underlying cause of Britain’s woes. It simply brought the UK economy’s underlying fragilities to the fore. There’s more to this market meltdown than Truss and Kwarteng’s hapless ‘mini-budget’.

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The battle for growth

philmullan Economic growth, Economic policy, Politics, Productivity, state

Written and published before Kwasi Kwarteng’s Chancellor’s statement on 23 September, this article explains the background to the mini-budget and the financial convulsions that followed. It argues that a serious and credible plan for growth can’t be reduced to tax-cutting. It goes on to contend that successive governments have failed to appreciate the scale of the economic task at hand. And that is a cultural failing as much as anything.

This failing has three key elements. First, policymakers are plagued by an intellectual shallowness, which underplays the depth of the economic challenges. Second, they adopt a fatalistic approach to economic developments, which underestimates the capacity of the state to change things. And third, the political class has evaded responsibility, with governments repeatedly recoiling from making the decisions needed to bring about an economic renaissance.

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Fiddling with taxes won’t fix the economy

philmullan capitalism, Economic growth, Economic policy, Investment, Politics

Britain’s grim combination of record indebtedness and anaemic economic growth is desperately calling out for a vigorous government response to shake up and restructure the economy. Unfortunately, the two lightweight contenders for Britain’s next Conservative Party leader and prime minister have not heeded this call.

Instead, all Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss have been able to offer is a choice between tax cuts now versus tax cuts a bit later. The media may claim that this shows an ‘enormous’ gap between the candidates’ economic policies, but that is just empty hype. Both Sunak and Truss share the same illusions about taxation’s ability to revive or depress the economy.

But recent economic history confirms that tax reductions have no determinate effect on business investment and therefore do not contribute to improved productivity performance and economic growth. If the government is serious about tackling our dismal economic situation, it needs to drop its fixation on taxation. And it needs to lead with a genuine plan for economic transformation to drive productivity growth and lift living standards. Anything else is just fiddling while the economic crisis deepens.

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Brexit is not to blame for our economic woes

philmullan Brexit, Economic policy, Inflation, Productivity

There is little doubt that the British economy is in a worse state than most other advanced industrial economies. This calls for a nationwide debate over the causes and potential fixes for this productivity slump. But to say that it’s all Brexit’s fault is a specious thesis that has little to do with economics.

Moreover, the determination to blame Brexit for everything going wrong is letting the Tory government off the hook. Politicians used to blame the EU for their own inaction on economic policy. Now that Brexit gets the blame for Britain’s continuing economic woes, the failure of successive governments to pursue a programme for productivity growth can be downplayed.

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We are lurching from crisis to crisis

philmullan Creative destruction, Economic policy, Inflation, Productivity, The longest depression

The cost-of-living crisis is not just a question of increasing prices. The reason the current inflation can be considered such a crisis is that the UK has not been creating enough wealth for people to afford these higher prices. And while the recent dislocations and disruptions caused by the lockdown reopenings and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have had a huge impact on prices, the British government still seems incapable of acknowledging that things were not going well economically both before the war and before the pandemic.

Even when the current rapid pace of inflation eventually slows, many households will still be struggling to meet those higher prices of essentials like food and energy. And even if those particular costs began to subside, many people would continue to live on the edge, until the next shock sends them deeper into privation. These scenarios reveal that today’s cost-of-living crisis is not just a product of price increases.

Why have the increased costs become so unbearable for so many households? Why is there so little capacity at an individual, business or societal level to cope with these price spikes? Without addressing these historical issues underlying the current hardship, we are likely to see a continuation of crisis management rather than a durable fix.

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