Late night share of a new personal blog: The Cake Equation. On the illusory centre ground of British politics, or how politics has become dominated by promises to mix low taxes, high public spending and low immigration acjsissons.medium.com/the-cake-equ... - ThreadSky

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acjsissons.bsky.social • 52 days ago

Late night share of a new personal blog: The Cake Equation.

On the illusory centre ground of British politics, or how politics has become dominated by promises to mix low taxes, high public spending and low immigration

https://acjsissons.medium.com/the-cake-equation-18d7c79a647e

Comments

stevedocherty.bsky.social•52 days ago

Is part of the problem that governments (of all shades) focus on the short term gain in order to get re-elected, to then be able to focus more on the long term, only to be back to 'short termism' in the subsequent electoral cycle?

scarling.bsky.social•52 days ago

📌

oldtrotter.bsky.social•52 days ago

A couple of points. Even the 1970s were easy in that real wages grew very quickly (probably too quickly, hence inflation). Second the external context matters. Post war period generally one of trade liberalisation and China was a massive, positive, supply side shock.

acjsissons.bsky.social•52 days ago

Thanks David - both v good points.

The 1970s always fascinates me - and strikes me that the 1920s is a better analogy for now. I’m curious though - do you think a good government could have done a decent job in the 70s, or were they all doomed?

oldtrotter.bsky.social•51 days ago

They were doomed by their commitment to full employment. They couldn’t deliver that and keep inflation under control post the floating of sterling (in the same way as governments in the ‘60s found it hard to keep the balance of payments In equilibrium with a fixed exchange rate).

oldtrotter.bsky.social•51 days ago

Hicks made a famous comment about moving from the gold standard to a labour standard which is discussed here

acjsissons.bsky.social•51 days ago

Fascinating - thank you.
I’ve never heard it framed like that before, but makes a lot of sense!

oldtrotter.bsky.social•51 days ago

This is the stuff I grew up with. Other kids were ready the Beano, I was reading papers by Hicks 😂

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