johnmcdonald
New Member
I intend, in this comment, to show that the Sunak Government’s austerity exercise, is not only socially destructive, it is also financially unsound. And, in not applying the lessons of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, it will hurt many people unnecessarily.
In the face of the mass unemployment of the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt, rather than cutting government expenditure, adopted a very different policy. He didn’t leave the masses of hungry children and adults in their malnourished state. He strove to provide jobs, by investing billions of dollars borrowed from the banks, which private businesses were no longer borrowing.
The millions of Americans mobilised by his New Deal investments created many beneficial national assets, some of which helped America fight and defeat the Nazis in WW2. Some New Deal creations continue to benefit America today.
But so great was the horror of American conservatives at government intervention, they opposed the New Deal. Some conservatives claimed the Roosevelt Government resembled a Fascist or Communist state. Some saw in the New Deal a deterioration of the American national character. Others claimed it was an attack on liberty. Ex- President Hoover claimed that help for the unemployed was weakening the moral fibre of the American people.
What the New Deal actually did was turn millions of unemployed Americans into working taxpayers. It also invested in public services, which earned revenues for the public purse. Add to these two plusses, the multiplier effect of New Deal dollars circulating through the American economy, facilitating the creation of wealth in multiples of their face-value. Thus, through these three processes did Roosevelt’s New Deal create the means to repay the initial debt incurred in financing so many jobs.
Roosevelt became President in 1933. He invested, large scale, and balanced the books by 1937. He had done it in four years: it hadn’t taken a generation. Yet our British Conservatives claim that the alternative to cuts involves sending the bill to the next generation. Even if that glib claim was true, it would be better than leaving a clapped-out economy and infrastructure, along with a generation ravaged by unemployment, malnourishment and poor health, which was deficient in up-to-date skills needed to thrive in the modern world.
Roosevelt’s Government intervened to repair such a condition. He invested to “salvage human beings” and lifted millions of Americans out of poverty, without a “magic-money-tree” and without “leaving the bilI to the next generation”. He showed that it can be done. Yet, because of the Conservatives’ ideological distaste for government spending, despite all it can achieve, they prefer the socially harmful, financially unsound, policy of cuts.
The failure of the Thatcher Government to invest the Nation’s, approximately £100b oil revenues to secure our future should have provided the world with an example of ideological madness. Tony Benn had created our National Oil Corporation to hold the nation’s oil revenues in a fund, to be used to update Britain’s productive capacity, including our social infrastructure. His plans would have transformed our publicly owned water companies, and expanded the capacity of our NHS, and education system. And it, undoubtedly, would have built houses.
The money was there. It was ours to invest. Using that money as Benn wished, would have enabled our NHS to handle, far better, the covid crisis. However, Thatcher was so ideologically diverted, she didn’t seem to understand the concept of the Public Interest. She privatised “Tony Benn’s” creation, the National Oil Corporation, and the water companies. And she counted beds. The result of Mrs Thatcher’s, and Conservative rule since, has mostly been deteriorating standards of life in our country.
Along with the NHS and Roosevelt’s G I, Bill, better pensions had come, in large part, from the inclusiveness created by the exertions of millions of working people to defeat the Nazis. Mrs Thatcher, who had been at Oxford during the war, was obsessed with finding a way to cut Old Age Pensions, which she did. So, the generation whose exertions had won the war, received the Thatcher “thank you” of a cut in their income, in old-age.
The most damaging failure of Conservative Governments in recent years, has been their failure to invest, large-scale, in Green Energy after it became the viable (cheaper) alternative to fossil fuels. While Green Energy would quickly return revenues from energy sales and help balance the books, (sound fiscal policy), they chose Nuclear Power, using untried variants of this hazardous technology. Time might already have run out, while they fiddled. (Labour was pledged, should it win the 2019 election, to go-ahead with its Green New Deal.) So dire will be the consequences for life on Earth of not acting in time, the Conservative failure demonstrated that they and their ideology, are not remotely equipped to work for the public interest.
During the present crisis of affordability of food and other essentials, the Sunak Government has nothing to offer. Yet it is prepared to fight numerous branches of the working population, which could have been offered cooperation in a New Deal type, sound financial programme, of green, and other, investments. Such a policy could have begun the financing of our future, while winning the participation of the nation.
Yet another Conservative Government is about to harm millions, when it could be mobilising those millions to create a future for ourselves.
In the face of the mass unemployment of the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt, rather than cutting government expenditure, adopted a very different policy. He didn’t leave the masses of hungry children and adults in their malnourished state. He strove to provide jobs, by investing billions of dollars borrowed from the banks, which private businesses were no longer borrowing.
The millions of Americans mobilised by his New Deal investments created many beneficial national assets, some of which helped America fight and defeat the Nazis in WW2. Some New Deal creations continue to benefit America today.
But so great was the horror of American conservatives at government intervention, they opposed the New Deal. Some conservatives claimed the Roosevelt Government resembled a Fascist or Communist state. Some saw in the New Deal a deterioration of the American national character. Others claimed it was an attack on liberty. Ex- President Hoover claimed that help for the unemployed was weakening the moral fibre of the American people.
What the New Deal actually did was turn millions of unemployed Americans into working taxpayers. It also invested in public services, which earned revenues for the public purse. Add to these two plusses, the multiplier effect of New Deal dollars circulating through the American economy, facilitating the creation of wealth in multiples of their face-value. Thus, through these three processes did Roosevelt’s New Deal create the means to repay the initial debt incurred in financing so many jobs.
Roosevelt became President in 1933. He invested, large scale, and balanced the books by 1937. He had done it in four years: it hadn’t taken a generation. Yet our British Conservatives claim that the alternative to cuts involves sending the bill to the next generation. Even if that glib claim was true, it would be better than leaving a clapped-out economy and infrastructure, along with a generation ravaged by unemployment, malnourishment and poor health, which was deficient in up-to-date skills needed to thrive in the modern world.
Roosevelt’s Government intervened to repair such a condition. He invested to “salvage human beings” and lifted millions of Americans out of poverty, without a “magic-money-tree” and without “leaving the bilI to the next generation”. He showed that it can be done. Yet, because of the Conservatives’ ideological distaste for government spending, despite all it can achieve, they prefer the socially harmful, financially unsound, policy of cuts.
The failure of the Thatcher Government to invest the Nation’s, approximately £100b oil revenues to secure our future should have provided the world with an example of ideological madness. Tony Benn had created our National Oil Corporation to hold the nation’s oil revenues in a fund, to be used to update Britain’s productive capacity, including our social infrastructure. His plans would have transformed our publicly owned water companies, and expanded the capacity of our NHS, and education system. And it, undoubtedly, would have built houses.
The money was there. It was ours to invest. Using that money as Benn wished, would have enabled our NHS to handle, far better, the covid crisis. However, Thatcher was so ideologically diverted, she didn’t seem to understand the concept of the Public Interest. She privatised “Tony Benn’s” creation, the National Oil Corporation, and the water companies. And she counted beds. The result of Mrs Thatcher’s, and Conservative rule since, has mostly been deteriorating standards of life in our country.
Along with the NHS and Roosevelt’s G I, Bill, better pensions had come, in large part, from the inclusiveness created by the exertions of millions of working people to defeat the Nazis. Mrs Thatcher, who had been at Oxford during the war, was obsessed with finding a way to cut Old Age Pensions, which she did. So, the generation whose exertions had won the war, received the Thatcher “thank you” of a cut in their income, in old-age.
The most damaging failure of Conservative Governments in recent years, has been their failure to invest, large-scale, in Green Energy after it became the viable (cheaper) alternative to fossil fuels. While Green Energy would quickly return revenues from energy sales and help balance the books, (sound fiscal policy), they chose Nuclear Power, using untried variants of this hazardous technology. Time might already have run out, while they fiddled. (Labour was pledged, should it win the 2019 election, to go-ahead with its Green New Deal.) So dire will be the consequences for life on Earth of not acting in time, the Conservative failure demonstrated that they and their ideology, are not remotely equipped to work for the public interest.
During the present crisis of affordability of food and other essentials, the Sunak Government has nothing to offer. Yet it is prepared to fight numerous branches of the working population, which could have been offered cooperation in a New Deal type, sound financial programme, of green, and other, investments. Such a policy could have begun the financing of our future, while winning the participation of the nation.
Yet another Conservative Government is about to harm millions, when it could be mobilising those millions to create a future for ourselves.
