The Sunday Telegraph has published a summary of the argument in Jon Moynihan’s forthcoming book, Return to Growth, about how to restore growth to the British economy. In a nutshell, he argues that growth has been suffocated by a bloated public sector, punitively high taxes and too much red tape. Here’s how the piece begins:
Without economic growth, our country cannot succeed. No growth means, axiomatically, that no one in society can get a real-terms salary increase without someone else being paid less.
It means that aspiration is crushed and our society becomes dog eat dog. Capital that must be accumulated to start up new businesses won’t be accumulated. Businesses that don’t grow will wither and die because they don’t accumulate the resources to beat their competition (particularly from abroad).
And a no-growth economy isn’t static; it sooner or later shrinks, because the unceasing demands of voters at each general election, never strong on deferring gratification, mean that politicians who want to be elected promise (and as often as not deliver) more money, more stuff; and in the absence of growth to pay for this largesse, put taxes up, higher and higher.
Growth (and particularly growth per capita, the most important metric) has collapsed in the UK and the European Union, while countries in other parts of the world have motored ahead, with much higher growth rates than ours. Why? Because social democracy, their chosen political approach, is inimical to economic growth.
The key, growth-destroying features of the social democratic experiment are bigger government, higher taxes, and an ever-shrinking private sector to get those taxes from. It’s a pattern with only one eventual outcome: national bankruptcy. For most of this century, the UK has been increasingly drawn into that doom loop.
It’s hardly groundbreaking to point out the importance of economic growth; indeed, the political weather has changed so much that the three most recent prime ministers, facing the reality of a lamentable lack of growth in the past few decades, have each said that growth is their number one goal. Yet the policies each has proposed to achieve that growth are quite different from each other and it is a racing certainty that at least two of those growth policies have got it wrong; the policies they proposed would destroy, not create, growth.
So how is growth created? And will the current Government’s policies lead to economic growth? If not, what should it change? As I show in my upcoming book, Return to Growth, most of Labour’s policies are, with a few exceptions, growth-destroying.
This means that over the next five years, our economy is going to take a sharp turn for the worse. While Labour’s policies are bad, in many ways they are just a continuance of a social democratic experiment that’s been pursued by successive governments, including Conservative ones, over the past 30 years.
Unless we turn our back on that failed approach, we face ever-increasing hard times. The experiment has seen the state grow inexorably, ratcheting up the tax burden on everyone, particularly on the growth-producing parts of the economy. It has also created a regulatory thicket that has made it harder and harder for anyone to set up, or expand, a successful business.
The challenge for whoever wins the Tory leadership race – whether it is Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, Priti Patel, Mel Stride, James Cleverly or Tom Tugendhat – will be escaping this trap and charting a course back towards the free market model that made Britain a historic success.
Worth reading in full.
This piece is spot-on in my view and I would thoroughly recommend Return to Growth, which I’ve been sent an advance copy of. You can order a copy from Amazon here.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Too many commentators resolutely refuse to accept that Britain’s destruction has been planned for and has been actively pushed since that satanic Next Tuesday Bliar arrived on the scene. There will be no ‘return to growth’ because growth is not part of the reset / Agenda 2030. This country is being actively and deliberately dismantled and frankly nothing short of a national uprising will stop it. The majority of the population have their heads up their backsides and cannot even imagine what is really going on let alone see any of it. Maybe once the death count starts to rise some will wake up particularly if we have a nasty winter.
The likelihood of a new Scamdemic, which I am sure is on the way, will unfortunately not be enough to waken the masses. Perhaps the blinkers will come off when food shortages and sky high fuel bills start to bite.
Totalitarianism has taken charge. It’s grim now but will become progressively worse as the next few months unfold.
Hear hear, hux. You’re right. Britain is done and has one foot in the knacker’s yard. Meanwhile, I saw this and thought of you as you’re obviously on the same page as the author. None of this will be news to you but may be of interest to other peeps. I keep an open mind but find I still require more evidence to support this theory;
”For many years now I have offered a specific theory on the true agenda behind open border policies in western countries and I believe this theory answers most of questions surrounding illegal immigration.
The common claim within the Liberty Movement is that this is all part of the “Cloward-Piven Strategy”: A social engineering method which uses large scale relocation of migrants into a society in order to destabilize that nation. The goal is to import people with a incompatible or hostile ideology and, eventually, the target culture will break down and be forced to accept a new system of governance (i.e. from free markets and liberty to communism and slavery).
If western populations are unified in opposing the globalist ideology then the task of deconstruction becomes impossible for them. So, they simply destroy the west from within by introducing millions of people that will NEVER assimilate or unify.
My theory goes beyond the Cloward-Piven explanation, though.
I think there is a deeper and even more sinister purpose to the introduction of third world migrants to the US and Europe.
I summarized my position in my article ‘Cultural Replacement: Why The Immigration Crisis Is Being Deliberately Engineered’ published in January. I noted:
In other words, my argument was that migrants from the third-world are not merely being used as unwitting tools for cultural saturation of the west. They’re not being shipped in by the millions to simply live off the fruits of our labor and our ancestors’ labors. I believe they are being brought into the US, the UK and Europe as enforcers for the establishment.
Think about it – They are essentially bought and paid for. They are mercenaries recruited with offers of easy citizenship, government handouts and the opportunity to brutalize the very western (and generally white) populations they despise. And, they are allowed to do this while hiding behind government law enforcement agencies for protection.
Third world migrants are hired muscle for the political elites. They can terrorize the populace, and if the native population takes action to defend itself the government can step in, call them hateful racists and declare martial law. It’s a win-win. The migrants then help with the enforcement of that martial law as the government doubles down on two-tier policing.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/britain-proof-globalists-plan-use-migrants-mercenary-army-against-west
Thanks Mogs. This is exactly the drum I have been banging for many months now.
Also, remember the short clip in Ireland of the lady being escorted off the land by a couple of balaclava-wearing heavies with foreign accents? Maybe they were Georgian. Why is there a load of Georgian migrants in Ireland?
”Another military style plantation full of foreign men. This site is run by Georgians and in particular self proclaimed Georgian Mafia member, Ilia Mtsariashvili.
Ireland is under attack and our politicians and authorities are enabling it.”
https://x.com/Mick_O_Keeffe/status/1824090246281048304
Yes it seems the government are enabling it, going by this screen shot;
”As the Gardai continue to assault members of the public who engage in protest surrounding the illegal entry into the country of economic migrants who proclaim to be “refugees”
The Government is busy making sure Ireland is a destination of choice for these economic migrants, as they introduce laws to recognise foreign drivers licences from places like Georgia
This country is already unrecognisable from what it was 20 years ago, however, I believe the next 5 years will determine the fate of this country for the foreseeable future.”
https://x.com/TraceyOMahony81/status/1823786289474269219
I am fairly certain I was one of the first here on DS to make the point that the illegals were in fact an army which would be used against the native population. I have been making this point for at least three years. It is so obvious.
“Labour’s policies are, with a few exceptions, growth-destroying”:
Sadly, that has been the case in every period of Labour government in my lifetime. Quangos are one of their worst money-wasting inventions. Yesterday I was contacted by one for what seemed pointless reasons. And they are responsible for so much red tape and
excessive paperwork.
Why would Labour even want to return to economic growth? What benefit would a prosperous, wealthy Britain offer to them? As far as I can see, in order to maximize power, an impoverished population dependent on state handouts is far easier to control.
I have met quite a few Labour voters that wish to end capitalism.
“The best way to destroy the capitalist system [is] to debauch the currency.”
Lenin
Which is why public sector workers are being awarded ridiculous pay rises. The intention is to drive inflation while at the same time stoking unrest.
Too many people are writing off Labour as incompetents but when their actions are viewed as being deliberately destructive everything they do marries up. Same as the Tories who as a party were actively working for their own destruction. It is all so blatant.
“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”
Lenin
The bourgeoise being anyone with the temerity to work to improve their lot.
Oh, I don’t doubt that.
Having spent the first 24 years of my life in a socialist/communist country, at least I know what the workers’ paradise was like. They have yet to discover.
I think that this is what is behind removing the winter fuel allowance and making it means tested. Labour activists around here are pushing pensioners to apply for Pension Credits so that they qualify for the winter fuel allowance, creating another group of people dependant on means tested state handouts. What’s the betting that Labour will then ramp up the cost of domestic gas by shifting some of the costs of implementing net zero from electricity to gas. Then they’ll increase the fuel allowance to compensate for rising fuel bills, but only for the ‘most needy’.
A number of flaws here:
1) Social democracy is not inimical to growth. It is actually ESSENTIAL to it in the modern world.
2) Growth is not a free lunch, it imposes its own externalities as well, particularly upon the environment. It should always be a means to an end, never an end in itself, lest it become an “own goal”. After all, per Edward Abbey, “growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell”, which eventually kills its host.
3) A Monetarily Sovereign government that issues it’s own currency can NEVER default unless they willingly choose to. Even Trump admitted that in a “gaffe” back in 2016, where he literally said “just print the money”.
4) Rodger Mitchell’s “Ten Steps to Prosperity” will get growth going again:
https://mythfighter.com/2021/12/30/the-five-lies-that-have-destroyed-the-american-dream/
Paging Dr. Firestone!
https://www.josephmfirestone.com/2018/05/28/will-overt-congressional-financing-ocf-cause-more-inflation-than-the-covert-congressional-financing-ccf-method-used-now/
The article in the first link seems to have a puzzling obsession with money/currency. Surely meaningful material prosperity comes principally from work directed at activity that produces things people need or want- innovation and natural resources also play a part but they both involve work. To maximise prosperity you want to construct a system that encourages work, innovation and use of natural resources that produce things people want.
https://johnwaters.substack.com/p/why-ireland-matters-to-the-tyrants
This is a much more involved article than above. It is a very long read but decidedly worth it, allow about thirty minutes. What is outlined and written of about Ireland is clearly being mirrored in England.
If the Davos Deviants, or the ‘Combine’ as John Waters refers to them can subdue Ireland and the English they reckon the rest of the world will be a piece of cake. We are the testing grounds.
You cannot have the Net Zero Lunacy and growth.
Moynihan’s article was spoiled by referencing AstraZeneca and bemoaning its decision to base in Ireland.
It killed thousands and injured millions with its poorly-tested Covid Jab. It should be forced to pay compensation and be bankrupted.
I wonder how Argentina is doing? Will be interesting to see.