Tuesday, July 05, 2011

A reply to Mr Allister Heath

UPDATE: No answer as at 12 July. Are journalists even more arrogant than politicians?
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Allister Heath at City AM has written a piece in praise of Ronald Reagan and tax cuts. I have emailed him as follows and look forward to his rebuttal:

Dear Mr Heath

Bring back Reagan? You'd have to be amazingly selective about which policies. It was under him and Mrs Thatcher that the reckless acceleration of monetary expansion began, and if you track money supply against GDP you'll see that the response of the latter, though statistically significantly positive, was also significantly less than the increase in the money supply. We got roaring inflation, but this time in the stockmarket and housing, turn and turn about. These two and their successors have led us to the present, tragically debt-laden pass.

We also got, thanks to the cuts in income tax, an enormous increase in inequality, now the subject of much well-informed comment in the USA. We'll be lucky if we don't end up with a Colombia-type society where the rich live in gated compounds (sorry, "communities") and go shopping in armoured cars, though that appears to be trending here.

I don't suppose that either the affable Reagan or the honourable and principled Thatcher, both of them fervent patriots, intended any of this, but their financial naivety was grossly exploited by the money men.

Perhaps you could submit something on how "conservatives", aren't. Or how politicians generally need to be taught far more thoroughly on the E bit of PPE.

Yours faithfully

Rolf Norfolk

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