I've just re-acquainted myself with the economics-themed legislative proposals sponsored by @KamalaHarris and, boy, there's some really awful stuff in there. Think Congress was fiscally irresponsible during the pandemic? Well, Harris proposed giving most individuals and dependents $2k PER MONTH until three months after the declared emergency was over. That would have cost approx $21 trillion. congress.gov/bill/116th-con…

I know I'm like a broken record on this, but it says a lot that the "serious" economic candidate left in the Tory leadership race is someone who gave the public lunch & dinner money to eat indoors during the early months of a respiratory virus pandemic. 🤷‍♂️ And that so many other free market tweeters will reflexively defend this policy because of COVID vibes shows one reason why the UK is in a dismal economic place on micro policies.

UK libertarians/classical liberals need to breathe, step back & ask themselves serious questions rn. I think rushing to try to rewrite history, or disown parts of previous stated views looks dishonest, foolish, and self-serving. It also compounds error with other bad qualities. Some big picture questions:
1. How effective is the Conservative party as a vehicle for your ideas? Is f-line politics the right outlet?
2. What should be the absolute priority for economic policy & were these specific tax cuts it?
3. What's your model of the macroeconomy?

It's ironic to all who know Liz that too much borrowing was the original sin that brought her down. It's sad, because she correctly identified many of the key restraints on growth Britain faces, but after that Tory MPs were never going to let her restrain spending/engage reform.

https://twitter.com/hugogye/status/1583074351506948102

The status quo of socialising a bunch of cost disease services, an innovation-free public sector, an ever-rising tax burden, constraining any successful industry or region, and bailing everyone out in any crisis has put Britain on the road to ruin. She wanted to reverse course.

Alongside uprating benefits, this amounts to Truss and Tory MPs abandoning policy of prioritising growth to protect the welfare state. It's no good saying "markets want fiscal rectitude." MPs and govt had agency to find other spending cuts to offset this cost. Terrible.

https://twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1580527513498853379

Tory MPs are perfectly comfortable with universal energy subsidies, unsustainable state pension triple lock, and unreformed NHS. They even demand subsidies for inheritees of those in social care. They are ideologically a social democratic party.

It's clear anti-Truss Conservatives seek full reversal of the "tax cuts."* They will oppose Truss on any proposed spending restraint (even benefits, aid, pub sector pay) to force that end.

* take burden back to 2021/22 levels by mainly cancelling recent and scheduled rises. They are not interested in fiscal discipline as an end. If they prioritised that, they'd be ambivalent between tax rises and spending cuts, and wouldn't support an open-ended household energy package to subsidise everyone **for 2 years**

So many economic institutions are captured by "vibes." The idea that the top rate tax cut and markets worrying about "inequality" has driven this reaction is just absurd. The IMF demeans itself with such nonsense.

https://twitter.com/benrileysmith/status/1574852489433825280

The Energy Price Guarantee certainly is open-ended and perhaps could have been less universal. But there were reasons to design the policy in the way that it's been structured: ryanbourne.substack.com/p/the-three-ps…