Torsten Bell Profile picture
Chief Executive, @resfoundation. Forthcoming: Great Britain? How We Get Our Future Back Pre-order: https://t.co/crkenPsO3y
@littlegravitas@c.im 🇺🇦 🇪🇺 🇮🇱 🇵🇸 #FBPE Profile picture Dame Chris🌟🇺🇦😷 #RejoinEU #FBPE #GTTO🔶️ Profile picture Gary Gibbon Profile picture William Hite Profile picture Paul W Profile picture 12 subscribed
Mar 18 10 tweets 3 min read
This is a REALLY good tool, that busts the myth that the biggest problem facing deprived areas is that there talented young people leave. Let's take the case of Hartlepool... 🧵 Overall, young people growing up in Hartlepool are less likely to get a degree than the national average. You already knew that. Let's get to what's interesting Image
Mar 7 5 tweets 2 min read
NEW: it's out - full @resfoundation of yesterday's Budget answering the big questions:
- are taxes are up or down?
- who wins, who loses?
- and when, oh when, will wages return to 2008 levels?
resolutionfoundation.org/publications/b… A few highlights. First up - why it's bonkers to accuse the @OBR_UK of being too pessimistic about Britain. They forecast the economy will grow 4.7% between 2023 and 2026 - that's more than TWICE the growth the @bankofengland expects Image
Mar 5 5 tweets 1 min read
Amidst all the tax cuts vs rises chat, we shouldn't miss that @Jeremy_Hunt is choosing a totally new approach to the shape of tax policy. Contrast him with @George_Osborne is probably the easiest way to see this 🧵 Osborne tax policy was:
- Cut income tax by reducing average not marginal tax rates (ie threshold rises)
- proactively create marginal tax rate problems ie child benefit taper
- ignore problem of employees paying more tax than everyone else
Mar 4 9 tweets 2 min read
Quite staggeringly confused debates about fiscal rules and the @OBR_UK "boxing the Chancellor in" over the last few days. A few clarifications as the Budget looms 🧵 Confusion 1: Lots of people saying today's fiscal rules being too tight is the problem. Just not true - these are the loosest rules ever. The Chancellor says they require debt to be falling but they really don't. Just that it’s FORECAST to fall in five years time.
Feb 8 9 tweets 2 min read
So bye bye £28bn green investment. Where does that leave us? First scale of reduction. Lots of the reporting is way out. The old plan was ramping up extra spending to around £18bn/yr by end of Parliament – in practice that meant £40 - £60bn in total (can’t be specific because Labour weren’t). New plan is £24bn. So roughly halved.
Nov 23, 2023 9 tweets 3 min read
Some highlights from our Autumn Statement analysis (for the tiny minority who disgracefully haven't already read the whole thing)🧵 resolutionfoundation.org/publications/a… This is absolutely staggering: wages are now set to remain below their 2008 level until 2028. That's a totally unprecedented TWO lost decades of pay growth Image
Nov 6, 2023 10 tweets 3 min read
What has the upcoming Autumn Statement got in store? People have been predicting grim forecasts for the public finances - new @resfoundation analysis suggests this is likely to be wrong. The problem isn't that the forecasts will be bad - it's that they're based on a fiction🧵 What has got people pessimistic? Higher interest rates. They're up about 1% since the Budget back in March = pushes borrowing up by around £15-£20bn/year. That's a lot of money. Image
Oct 24, 2023 7 tweets 2 min read
You know how nothing works in 2020s Britain - you can’t get a train, a GP appointment or a school roof that stays up. Well we can add our labour market data to the list ons.gov.uk/employmentandl… What’s going on? The @ONS is saying it doesn’t have confidence in its flagship Labour Force Survey. Which is awkward - it’s central to decisions the @bankofengland takes on interest rates or how much the government panics about ill health pushing people out of work
Oct 9, 2023 20 tweets 3 min read
Rhetoric asise, the big picture economic argument of @RachelReevesMP speech: Britain needs to start investing again. This is 1) right 2) hard 🧵 She's not wrong 1. For almost all of the past two decades, the UK has been in the relegation zone (bottom 10%) of the OECD business investment league table.
Oct 3, 2023 5 tweets 2 min read
There are big political incentives that drive both big parties to make the "towns have lost out as everyone has focused on cities" argument - marginal seats are in towns these days as cities have trended Labour and counties Conservative. But the economics is very confused... Confusion 1: does anyone really think the problem is we've tried too hard to make the economies of Manchester/Birmingham/Leeds etc successful? Every single one has below average productivity (when big cities in advanced economies generally drive productivity for their countries)
Sep 27, 2023 11 tweets 3 min read
What's wrong with public investment in the UK? Much more than HS2... There are 4 big problems to understand 🧵 The levels problem. We consistently invest too little: the average OECD advanced economy has invested 50% more (relative to GDP) than the UK since the turn of the century. The results can be seen everywhere from fewer MRI scanners in hospitals to longer commutes vs OECD norms
Aug 3, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
Who are the winners and losers from higher interest rates? My simply rule of thumb is:
- 40 year olds have the debt
- 70 year olds have the savings Image On the mortgage pain specifically - it's concentrated amongst richer households because that is where the mortgagors are. BUT the minority of lower income families that do have a mortgage is where problems are going to be most acute (ie the disposable income hits are biggest) Image
Jun 15, 2023 15 tweets 4 min read
Obviously everyone wants to talk about Boris today... but can we talk a bit about Brexit? For the first time in 50 years Britain needs a trade strategy. We don't have one. Which is suboptimal.
Jun 13, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
Markets seeing a huge reaction to recent inflation/earnings data. That's a lot of weight on two (admittedly scary) data points. What's missing? Any serious discussion of why UK would be so different to other countries to justify higher rates not just in short term but for years Explanations are limited to general mumbling about labour market inactivity ignoring:
- increase is real but now relatively small (0.7%)
- significantly higher than expected migration
- in levels terms UK employment remains well above US and many European economies
Mar 13, 2023 7 tweets 3 min read
NEW: We’re all focused on SBV, but a different three letter acronym birthed in America may have more longer-lasting consequences for us: the IRA. How should the UK should respond to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act? ft.com/content/faebb4… The starting point: we're not doing a very good job so far. People want to ignore or copy the IRA rather than getting into the weeds of what it means for the UK. Here's four more useful steps...
Mar 12, 2023 15 tweets 3 min read
It’s not on any front pages, but @Jeremy_Hunt has announced a much bigger than many expected set of policy changes for his ‘back to work’ focused Budget. Will have real impacts on people’s lives so take a break from football/immigration… Predictably there’s carrots and sticks. Summary:
- reform of childcare support in Universal Credit
- biggest reform of disability benefits in a decade
- more conditionality for households on UC where at least one person already works
Mar 11, 2023 4 tweets 2 min read
It was looking like a nice quiet Budget on Wednesday… ft.com/content/258d07… Next few days we’re going to:
- find out how big the losses some UK firms are in line for (ie what assets the UK bank still has)
- see some huge lobbying for any losses to be covered by the state (everyone’s a libertarian until they’re the ones wanting the social insurance)
Mar 9, 2023 6 tweets 2 min read
Budget childcare speculation building. @faisalislam says cap on max childcare support you can get through Universal Credit will be unfrozen. What difference will that make?
bbc.co.uk/news/business-… Image Remember system here is you can claim back 85% of up to £760 of childcare costs a month (ie up to £646) for one child. That's if you're on Universal Credit and all adults in the family are working. Proposal is to allow that £750/£646 to rise rather than being frozen currently
Feb 21, 2023 18 tweets 6 min read
There's a very active debate about inactivity - with fewer 50+ year olds in the workforce post-pandemic. What is going on and what should we do about it? 🧵 The wrong approach: early retirements rose during the pandemic (not going to work has that effect...). The result is politicians telling them to come back and asking us what policy tweaks/back to work schemes will lure early retirees into work. This is not going to work.
Feb 18, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
Keep reading versions of this nonsense - pure lobbying blah. Apparently “renters face even tougher time as buy-to-let landlords sell up”. Except they really don’t. Landlords selling up doesn’t shrink housing supply people. thetimes.co.uk/article/renter… If landlords after some sympathy start bulldozing their houses, then I’ll believe it matters for rent levels. But they probably won’t due to not totally losing the plot
Jan 16, 2023 14 tweets 4 min read
Britain: really really rubbish at saving 🧵 We're really impressively consistent at it. Since 1980, the UK's managed to have the lowest saving rate in the G7 in four of every five years.