Flattering.
The way I see it: VL were like your drunken mate who promised one bunch of people they could break a 5 minute mile, and another that they could throw a javelin 80m.
When confronted, the punchy answer is, "why can't there by sprinters with huge arms": 1/
The way I see it: VL were like your drunken mate who promised one bunch of people they could break a 5 minute mile, and another that they could throw a javelin 80m.
When confronted, the punchy answer is, "why can't there by sprinters with huge arms": 1/
https://twitter.com/Dominic2306/status/1458855360895328270
So there are three claims. 1: we can deregulate significantly in a growth-boosting way. 2: we can seize state levers, direct resources around brilliantly and 3: you can do both.
Where Cummings is right: laughing at 3 is the least interesting attack (though still well founded) 2/
Where Cummings is right: laughing at 3 is the least interesting attack (though still well founded) 2/
Take the first. Obviously, deregulate to grow is a looooongstanding agenda, pushed by DC's admittedly lower-calibre predecessors
ft.com/content/94ba1a…
The fruits are always harder to pluck, the returns less impressive and the trade-offs more real than its advocates expect 3/
ft.com/content/94ba1a…
The fruits are always harder to pluck, the returns less impressive and the trade-offs more real than its advocates expect 3/
*Real* deregulation is what Thatcher did. Literally allowing activities that were not allowed before - like moving capital across borders! Owning a private telecoms company! The scale of what Thatcher did was *enormous* and the results ... OK, at best 4/ freethinkecon.wordpress.com/2021/11/03/no-…
Instead of people tiresomely asking DC about straight bananas/whatever tedious campaign the Telegraph is on, a lesser waste of his time is to ask what they had in mind that was remotely on the scale of what Thatcher did. The TIGRR report? 5/
gov.uk/government/pub…
gov.uk/government/pub…
Maybe the Digital Markets Unit? CMA reform? But from all available evidence, the *competitive environment* metric the UK has been in is not *that* far from the frontier (see gov.uk/government/new…) and nothing Thatcher in scale is planned
6/
6/
The most interesting question is 2: DC is the first powerful Spad in NO10 so utterly convinced by the potential of industrial strategy since ... forever.
I just don't buy it, speaking as someone responsible for pushing industrial strategy for a few years.7/
I just don't buy it, speaking as someone responsible for pushing industrial strategy for a few years.7/
A delusion found more often on the left: "if only we were in power, we could intervene to build all the Industries of the Future".
The data just isn't there. Arguably, the US et al HAVE been building industries of the Future. The GDP result: meh 8/
instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publications/p…
The data just isn't there. Arguably, the US et al HAVE been building industries of the Future. The GDP result: meh 8/
instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publications/p…
The simplistic syllogism: "Growth needs more total factor productivity; TFP means R&D; do loads more R&D and you get loads more growth" falls to bits in lots of ways. Even the "Argument from 1950s Pentagon" is not all that good. 9/
And since 2000, the US has grown multiple multi-trillion dollar new economy companies, and the effect on its overall growth rate is little. Read R Gordon!
Anyone who thinks: post Brexit we can now beat all that, in quantum, AI etc, has the burden of proof sitting with them 10/
Anyone who thinks: post Brexit we can now beat all that, in quantum, AI etc, has the burden of proof sitting with them 10/
Lots of other fallacies to be burst: how little private R&D is dictated by govt R&D (see thread), how much growth is about diffusion of existing techniques; how much postwar growth rates were about demography and high manufacturing share, etc etc 11/
https://twitter.com/Gilesyb/status/1458123585810313223
So my Remainer-y pessimism says "you think you can do both? You can't do either (in or out of the EU)".
And we will never know, because DC has the perfect alibi in the form of a government that will fail to do what he hoped for. 12/
And we will never know, because DC has the perfect alibi in the form of a government that will fail to do what he hoped for. 12/
Finally: have countries done both? Arguably, the Asian post-war export-led 'Tigers', accelerating from agriculture through low value manufacturing to modernity, somehow did.
An ageing, services-dominated, European-based island of 60m? Show me the workings 13/13
An ageing, services-dominated, European-based island of 60m? Show me the workings 13/13
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