It is an achievement of sorts. If the only aspiration is to stay level with a rapidly deindustrialising Germany, and to prove the IMF’s seemingly gleeful predictions of post-Brexit disaster wrong, then the UK is meeting it.
And yet, viewed in a wider context, our performance is dismal. Given population increases, 0.2pc growth may mean the average person is getting steadily poorer with every year that passes, with the UK falling further and further behind economies such as the United States or Australia.
For certain groups, that is of little concern. It might not bother the green lobby, and those who subscribe to a fanatical pursuit of net zero regardless of the costs. Parts of this coalition advocate “degrowth”, believing that capitalism is a cancer on the world, and want to shrink the “material size of the global economy”.
Many in the Labour Party care more about how we divide the pie more equally than how we might increase it. They peddle the “green jobs” fallacy, ignoring that these come at huge cost (and opportunity cost). In any case, the Party recently shelved its “Green Prosperity Plan”.
Meanwhile, the regulatory blob remains resolutely risk-averse, sticking rigidly to the European Union’s excessive cautiousness, perhaps for fear it will get blamed for anything that goes wrong, while receiving little credit for the dynamism that lighter touch rules-making might unleash.
Many of the well heeled, older members of our society are relaxed about the staggering rise in property prices; some actively support Nimbyism. And there are too many FTSE 100 companies with a cosy relationship to the Government, which are content to make modest but steady profits in markets where the barriers to new entrants are unacceptably high.
Our economic model is broken. Wages and productivity have stagnated. The national debt is enormous. Taxes and public spending are going up. Intergenerational inequality is widening.
It is true that some of the complaints made by the smashed avocado generation sound like a long whinge. It is always a struggle to get started in life. Even so, they increasingly have legitimate grievances.
Many of them will be paying student loans into their sixties, perhaps even after they’ve retired. It may be that they shouldn’t have gone to university, but higher education is often sold as an invaluable experience that would have a strong bearing on future earnings and career potential.
The refusal by the Government to liberalise planning so that more homes can be built means huge numbers of young people in particular cannot get on the housing ladder. Further, the war on landlords, waged with layers of regulations and additional costs, makes life harder for renters.
Stagnating Britain is no country for the young and ambitious
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It is an achievement of sorts. If the only aspiration is to stay level with a rapidly deindustrialising Germany, and to prove the IMF’s seemingly gleeful predictions of post-Brexit disaster wrong, then the UK is meeting it.
And yet, viewed in a wider context, our performance is dismal. Given population increases, 0.2pc growth may mean the average person is getting steadily poorer with every year that passes, with the UK falling further and further behind economies such as the United States or Australia.
For certain groups, that is of little concern. It might not bother the green lobby, and those who subscribe to a fanatical pursuit of net zero regardless of the costs. Parts of this coalition advocate “degrowth”, believing that capitalism is a cancer on the world, and want to shrink the “material size of the global economy”.
Many in the Labour Party care more about how we divide the pie more equally than how we might increase it. They peddle the “green jobs” fallacy, ignoring that these come at huge cost (and opportunity cost). In any case, the Party recently shelved its “Green Prosperity Plan”.
Meanwhile, the regulatory blob remains resolutely risk-averse, sticking rigidly to the European Union’s excessive cautiousness, perhaps for fear it will get blamed for anything that goes wrong, while receiving little credit for the dynamism that lighter touch rules-making might unleash.
Many of the well heeled, older members of our society are relaxed about the staggering rise in property prices; some actively support Nimbyism. And there are too many FTSE 100 companies with a cosy relationship to the Government, which are content to make modest but steady profits in markets where the barriers to new entrants are unacceptably high.
Our economic model is broken. Wages and productivity have stagnated. The national debt is enormous. Taxes and public spending are going up. Intergenerational inequality is widening.
It is true that some of the complaints made by the smashed avocado generation sound like a long whinge. It is always a struggle to get started in life. Even so, they increasingly have legitimate grievances.
Many of them will be paying student loans into their sixties, perhaps even after they’ve retired. It may be that they shouldn’t have gone to university, but higher education is often sold as an invaluable experience that would have a strong bearing on future earnings and career potential.
The refusal by the Government to liberalise planning so that more homes can be built means huge numbers of young people in particular cannot get on the housing ladder. Further, the war on landlords, waged with layers of regulations and additional costs, makes life harder for renters.
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