Read this attempt to create a distinct economic strategy for Labour - at it's heart is the idea that the share of GDP that is wages and investment need to rise for a sustainable economy. Now leaving aside the fact that the peak for 'wage share of GDP' was in 1975 - just before we crashed into the IMF's bail-out and during the height of the union power that destroyed out manufacturing industry, I was struck by an obvious alternative.
Here is our social democrat writer quoting the IMF:
"...without the prospect of a recovery in the incomes of poor and middle income households over a reasonable time horizon, the inevitable result is that loans keep growing, and therefore so does leverage and the probability of a major crisis that, in the real world, typically also has severe implications for the real economy.”
So 'poor and middle income households' can't afford to pay back loans and maintain current living standards - creating the borrowing pathology that infects our economy. The propsed solution is:
Support for a living wage in the public sector and in public procurement
That's it really. A rehash of the economic nuttiness promoted by Ed Miliband during his leadership campaign (and largely directed to the successful strategy of sucking up to big union bosses - oh, yes folks, the 1970s all over again).
And that alternative? Simpler, cleaner, less-controlling, more effective and popular?
Just cut taxes for 'poor and middle income households'
....
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