{"id":631,"date":"2010-02-19T13:36:21","date_gmt":"2010-02-19T11:36:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=631"},"modified":"2010-02-19T13:36:21","modified_gmt":"2010-02-19T11:36:21","slug":"631","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=631","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The Deficit<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There is a rather entertaining exchange of letters in the papers with scores of economists taking opposing views as to whether to cut the deficit this year with immediate action (or at least halt its rise) or to go on borrowing. Ordinary people find this a bit unnerving\u00a0 as they suppose economists know all the answers. Unfortunately economics is such a moveable feast that\u00a0I have for years doubted whether, as a single discipline, it really exists at\u00a0 all.\u00a0Throughout my life economists have argued and disagreed. None from Keynes to Friedman to Blanchflower have been proved entirely right, yet neither have they been proved entirely wrong. This is the point. Both sides of the argument are valid and it is somewhere in the tension between the two that the least bumpy road will be found.<\/p>\n<p>But that is by no means the end of the matter. Having selected the least bumpy road the question must be put, where does this road lead? Here the number of\u00a0experts willing to scout forward diminish to a handful whose observation are largely ignored.<\/p>\n<p>The nature of the recovery presently being engineered is not only hesitant but useless, since it ignores the calamitous structural imbalance that put the West in to this mess in the beginning, in which grouping we are actually in the biggest mess of all. It is\u00a0a fundamental strategic imperative that we re-structure our economy on a socially fairer model which relies far less on borrowing and which makes more of what it consumes, whilst saving much more significantly for the future both at national and personal levels. Relying on asset inflation to accumulate wealth is in the long term a mirage. If a restructuring programme begins, the issue of the national debt, when and how to reduce it,\u00a0falls \u00a0more readily into\u00a0context and leaves some choice about how soon and by how much.<\/p>\n<p>Failure to restructure voluntarily will, after a false dawn of failed recovery, force upon us\u00a0the biggest economic and social upheaval of the last hundred years whether we want it or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Deficit There is a rather entertaining exchange of letters in the papers with scores of economists taking opposing views as to whether to cut the deficit this year with immediate action (or at least halt its rise) or to go on borrowing. Ordinary people find this a bit unnerving\u00a0 as they suppose economists know [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malcolm-blair-robinson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=631"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":633,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631\/revisions\/633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}