nickmacpherson.bsky.social
Former Treasury official
27 posts
3,015 followers
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I dodged that question but I do recall writing an essay later on about the bright prospects for raising productivity growth in the coal industry: not the first or last time I was a tad optimistic about Britain's growth prospects.
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Fiscal rules can be useful. But the Treasury always attaches more importance to them than they deserve. And something which can be broken with impunity on a regular basis isn't a rule. It's a target. Much more important is whether the public finances are sustainable.
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Earnings related unemployment benefit abolished in 1982. Earnings related invalidity benefit and the state earnings related pension scheme lived on until the mid-90s, having been cut back in the Fowler reforms of the mid-80s.
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True. Barbara Castle's 1975 reforms exchanged income related contributory benefits for income related NI contributions. It was peak social insurance. Sadly it didn't last. By the mid-1980s it was deemed unaffordable. But income related national insurance lives on at a much higher rate.
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I signed on to supplementary benefit in 1978 -aged 18 -having broken my arm. I may be wrong but I'm pretty sure my benefit at a little under £14 a week was more generous in real terms than it is now, despite living standards more than doubling since. It was the year the UK was at its most equal.
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I've been wrestling with the same issue for some weeks. I still haven't found the answer. But I suspect washed up and cynical HMT officials (me not you) aren't the target audience.
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We have now had fiscal "rules" for more than 25 years. Arguably they have done more harm than good encouraging HMT to focus on incremental changes to live within them until they can't...cue a new rule. What matters is the substance of fiscal policy. Does it support macro policy? Is it sustainable?
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"It takes many years before governments can have any impact on the trend rate of growth, and most governments end up mistaking cyclical for structural improvements."
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I'm not sure you are right. Chris Wormald was always his own man, always worked in difficult departments which delivered the public services which matter rather than choosing an easy life in "the centre", and his promotion in the civil service was as much despite Lord Heywood as because of him.
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Maybe though in the 1950s and 1960s when the top rate of UK inheritance tax was never lower than 75% productivity grew much more rapidly than it has over the last 20 years when the IHT rate has never been higher than 40%.
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As some other Members put it, probably correctly: "this is the sound...this is the sound of the suburbs".
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Difficult to disentangle the various drivers. The sheer scale of the prospective supply of US debt has been the main driver of bond prices of late. The key thing for medium sized countries is not to stand too far out from the crowd.
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Should do...a bit. But US will borrow large amounts whoever is in power putting upward pressure on bond yields across the globe.