Thread by @fetzert

I start sounding like a broken record. The issue of UK is not primarily due to a high level of taxation but due to poor use of public money & the poor quality public goods bought in return. I have documented this across numerous pieces of careful research... here is a short 🧵⬇️

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1574687942471479296

Exhibit 1: Most of austerity was a drag on growth. In "Did #Austerity Cause #Brexit?" I show that austerity itself was contractionary and the tax that could have been collected on higher incomes without austerity would have easily saved as much as austerity was projected to save.

Exhibit 2: Housing benefit cuts (FYI: these benefits are only so expensive as the UK's economic model is build on housing shortage)... but there weren't much savings as councils had to deal with the fallout: higher homeless prevention spending and putting up people in privately

run shelters. The govt is creating deprivation that can be preyed on by private firms. I dont see an issue with firms jumping on opportunities (incentives work!). The failure is that such policies see the light of day. And our study can only look at the short term cost.

Exhibit 3: Eat-out-to-help-out was a stupid policy, wasting nearly GBP 1bn in the middle of the pandemic to boost, well, COVID, at a time, when it was not safe. The result: a quicker and longer second lockdown hurting those same businesses that EOTHO was meant to protect.

I could continue but it is so self-evident that UK policy making is not working in producing outcomes that actually benefit society. Public resources are repeatedly wasted. The political answers are IMO not found in the extremes. There are no simple solutions to our problems!

But right now, we are in a situation where politics, that is supposed to provide solutions is repeatedly failing on a grand scale. Over the coming weeks and months I shall provide a research-based guide to dissecting the economic and social policy response to the economic crisis.

This crisis is very much exacerbated due to our politics failing us. We need to clean up our own house. As an academic I will use my tool of choice: carefully executed positive forward looking research. This is possible because politics is just so predictable. Watch this space.