9
votes
UK in turmoil as government's gamble to solve economic woes fuels crisis, instead
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- Title
- The pound collapses as Britain's new prime minister gambles on tax cuts for the rich
- Published
- Sep 28 2022
- Word count
- 641 words
I think the sequence of events were
Matt Levine has a wonderful comment about this
I FEEL THIS SO MUCH.
Seriously. Some years ago I reconverted myself to work in finance. And really, I love it, but I hate it. But I LOVE it. But it's always in an "I know this is bad, but it's beautiful" sort of way.
Anyway, yes. It's a great article.
There is something truly, truly fascinating about how money works. Sometimes, I wonder if it could be called a distributed artificial intelligence.
I've always been of the opinion that "Runaway AI" scenarios occupy the same section of the brains of CEOs and billionaires that normal people have for "Economic Insecurity."
The markets are definitely an expert prediction market.
The extent and speed that they managed to fuck this up was far beyond even my normal cynical predictions. It’s so insanely egregious that it’d be funny if it weren’t so genuinely scary to be living through.
We might, at least, get a sane centrist government to clean up the mess (not my personal ideal, but a huge improvement on the last decade) - last month’s YouGov poll showed Labour and Conservative pretty much tied. Yesterday’s gives Labour a thirty three percent lead.
It's astounding. Everyone I've talked to has formed an opinion that Truss' government is terrible. It's surprisingly consistent. I've heard socialists on the continent joke about her. I've heard appalled hard Tories, even those who usually find political conversation impolite, bring up what a disaster she is, unasked. No one even feels it necessary to convince anyone that the government is terrible: they just assume anyone paying any attention to politics agrees. And they do. It's amazingly unifying.
It just seems like Truss' government is piecing together policy choices in a completely incoherent way, with no real attempt at ideological justification, unwilling to sacrifice anything except a connection to reality. Whether you agree or disagree with the politics of a government usually involves whether you agree with their project, their values, and the tradeoffs they make. Nationalize the corporations, seize the assets of the exploitative bourgeoisie, wave the red flag. Lower taxes on the rich, let the lazy poor exploiting social services choose to work harder or starve, create your free market utopia. Even choose to make sacrifices on trade and material comforts in order to preserve a sense of sovereignty and national identity in a world of hegemonic liberal multicultural internationalism. These involve tradeoffs that are not immediately ridiculous, and make some sense as a whole even if you think they are immoral, or won't actually work.
But if you lower taxes on the rich and don't raise it on the poor or cut services, and if you want to simultaneously ensure affordable gas for everyone and enormous energy company profits for shareholders and a strong currency and low inflation... almost anyone, with any political views, can look at that collection of policies and agree that it's delusional.
They're following neoliberal free market extremism. This is all as set out by the Free Enterprise Group and in Britannia Unchained. Cut taxes, cut public services to fund those tax cuts, give power to business by cutting more taxes and removing regulation.
The one person I've read sort-of defending them is Tyler Cowen (of Marginal Revolution) and it's more of an "it's not as much of a disaster as everyone thinks" defense, pointing out less-discussed changes that he thinks are good.
Please share some sanity with the USA and also Australia?
I'm convinced the massive wealth inequality that preceded the great depression is no coincidence.
A lot of fiscally conservative commentators in the UK have come out to say that we need public services, and those need to be funded by taxation, and that by not having these the UK will be harmed, and these people will not be able to make money without those services.
It's really something to see the natural base of the previous[1] Conservative party rebel against tax cuts.
[1] as opposed to this new radicalised party.
IMF openly criticises UK government tax plans
BBC News – Natalie Sherman & Tom Espiner – 28th September 2022
The pound seems to have somewhat recovered. I wonder what happened there?
We (the UK) spent £65bn to stop is crashing even further.