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"Perlstein said that, if she read his books with the attentiveness she claimed, she would not have risked our pensions and mortgages with a naïve belief that ta
by tuatoru 4y ago
"Perlstein said that, if she read his books with the attentiveness she claimed, she would not have risked our pensions and mortgages with a naïve belief that tax cuts would stimulate economic growth and raise revenue for the Treasury. Far from paying for themselves, Reagan’s income and capital gains tax cuts in the early 1980s sent public debt from 26 per cent GDP in 1980 to 41 per cent GDP by 1988."
This suggests quite the opposite to me. Truss has said repeatedly and clearly that she wants to shrink government.
If she has read Perlstein's books, and also Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine[1], she is merely applying what she has read.
No one should be surprised either now, or soon when the Bristish PM says that "debt has to be cut, so we are privatising the NHS and cutting pensions".
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine
- enviclash 4y ago"And so it has proved again and again. Reagan’s tax cuts, George W. Bush’s tax cuts, Donald Trump’s tax cuts all failed to deliver." Polls also show drops in popularity. What exactly do you think she got right?
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoGiving money to the people who will pay for her next election campaign. > In the 1970s, Irving Kristol, the editor of Public Interest, was explicit that politics must trump economics. The political advantage tax cuts would provide to the Republicans was so historically imperative they should be blasted through whatever the effect on the budget. ‘The neo-Conservative is willing to leave those problems to be coped with by liberal interregnums Even if they get kicked out as a result, that just gives them some economic chaos to complain about from opposition. They kicked off this latest decade of austerity because Labour paid nurses too much and so caused a global recession.
- tuatoru 4y agoPreparing the ground to massively cut the size of the state. "Small enough to drown in a bathtub" has been the goal of her ilk for generations. I thought I had clearly said this. (There is a great blind spot in the thinking. Military defence, public order, the court system for arbitration between billionaires, essential infrastructure like national roads, and more besides: all of these must be state functions. Truss and her co-religionists haven't heard the maxim, "be careful what you wish for, because you might get it.")
- deburo 4y agoI don't follow you at the end of your comment. Shrinking the spending budget doesn't necessarily imply cutting on defense & all other services they deem essential.
- deburo 4y agoShe is also already talking about spending cuts, apparently. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/liz-truss-spending-cuts-nhs-b2177946.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/liz-truss-spe...