Latest news with #AModestProposal
The Age
2 days ago
- Business
- The Age
Elon Musk is right about one thing – we're spiralling towards bankruptcy
Posting on his social media platform X, Musk has indicated his disappointment with the unwillingness of Republicans to carry out spending cuts, musing that the only way out of the 'bankruptcy of America' is to radically boost GDP growth. It's difficult to disagree with his assessment, or to find much reason for optimism in either Britain or America. Trump and Starmer are very different leaders leading very different countries, but they face the same core question: how do you keep the show on the road when your voters demand more spending? The demographic challenges facing both countries are well known: an older population has more voters who no longer work, who vote themselves a larger share of income, which increases fiscal pressure on the young and weighing on birth rates. Loading It's a doom-loop that the West's democracies have yet to find an escape from. Growing our way out of trouble would require a technological revolution. Older voters prioritise healthcare and pensions ahead of investment in infrastructure or education, which reduces the funds available for pro-growth policies. Worse still, redistribution requires taxation that directly weighs on economic activity. If Musk succeeds in solving AI, robotics and space exploration, then we might get the resources and growth we need to escape the spiral, just as the Industrial Revolution pulled us out of the Malthusian trap. If he doesn't, we'll need another way out of this mess. Solving demographics isn't the answer. Boosting birth rates is a necessary long-term fix, but doesn't address the more pressing present concerns. Short of drawing on Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal and rendering workers into Soylent Green at retirement age, there's no obvious policy that will. And if we're stuck with our inverted pyramid of people, that leaves us with 'democracy' as the factor most likely to give way. About 48 per cent of all UK public spending goes on welfare, health and social care and debt interest spending. These are the items of spending that are either too toxic to touch – imagine the outrage if Starmer stood up and announced an end to the triple lock, or swinging cuts to the bloated NHS – or would tip the country into a financial crisis via defaulting on our obligations. They're also some of the items with the most forecast growth, as today's young become tomorrow's old. The state pension is set to hit 8 per cent of GDP, health spending 15 per cent and adult social care somewhere about 2.5 per cent. A little over 25 pence in every pound earned in Britain will be earmarked for these line items alone. If we can't cut spending democratically, we'll be made to cut it. And cutting spending democratically is hard. Loading One implication of the median voter theorem – the observation that in a democratic system, the man in the middle tends to get his way – is that when median incomes are below the mean, the state will tend to engage in more redistribution. This is certainly true in Britain, where 53 per cent of the population lives in households that pay less in taxes than they receive in benefits, and it's likely to be true in the United States as well (where the top and bottom quintiles are net losers and net beneficiaries, respectively). In fact, 'democracies spend more' seems to be a good general rule. Match V-Dem democracy scores to IMF data and – with some caveats around matching names and entries – the general gist is that more democratic countries spend somewhere about 12-15 points of GDP more than their less democratic peers, with researchers emphasising spending on social protection and education. Combine this with the observation that it's entirely possible for older generations to burden their younger successors with debts, and you have a recipe for disaster. The incentives given to today's politicians are to spend to win today's votes. Unless voters today are altruistic about future generations – and when the population is ageing because fewer people have children, their motive to be so is greatly reduced – then you can end up in the sort of unsustainable spiral Britain and America have found themselves in. By 2055, the US national debt is expected to be 156 per cent of GDP, and deficits around 7 per cent. In Britain, it's for 130 per cent of GDP, and a deficit of 9 per cent. Project that out to 2073, and debt hits 274 per cent of GDP, with the deficit a healthy 21 per cent of national income. If politicians ignore the warning signs – or voters punish those who attempt to correct course – we could find the choice between debt and democracy made for us. These are ludicrous numbers. There is no prospect of funding that sort of deficit at that sort of debt. The question is what we'll get instead. The most likely answer seems to be some form of fiscal cliff-edge ending up with less democratic choice in government. This could take a 'soft' form, such as self-imposed restrictions on spending and debt which politicians agree to adhere to in order to restore market confidence. A souped-up form of the Office for Budget Responsibility and harsher fiscal rules would be one version of this. Government by bond market – where investors demand higher yields for risky policies, driving the state towards fiscal consolidation – would be another. Loading At the other end of the scale, a debt bailout would effectively cede a large degree of sovereignty to whichever institution sets the terms of the loan. Britain has been down this road before, in 1976, when the IMF imposed higher taxes and lower spending. This would be an extreme outcome. It is not entirely out of the range of possibilities. Cutting spending democratically is hard. Undermining institutions is relatively easy.
Sydney Morning Herald
2 days ago
- Business
- Sydney Morning Herald
Elon Musk is right about one thing – we're spiralling towards bankruptcy
Posting on his social media platform X, Musk has indicated his disappointment with the unwillingness of Republicans to carry out spending cuts, musing that the only way out of the 'bankruptcy of America' is to radically boost GDP growth. It's difficult to disagree with his assessment, or to find much reason for optimism in either Britain or America. Trump and Starmer are very different leaders leading very different countries, but they face the same core question: how do you keep the show on the road when your voters demand more spending? The demographic challenges facing both countries are well known: an older population has more voters who no longer work, who vote themselves a larger share of income, which increases fiscal pressure on the young and weighing on birth rates. Loading It's a doom-loop that the West's democracies have yet to find an escape from. Growing our way out of trouble would require a technological revolution. Older voters prioritise healthcare and pensions ahead of investment in infrastructure or education, which reduces the funds available for pro-growth policies. Worse still, redistribution requires taxation that directly weighs on economic activity. If Musk succeeds in solving AI, robotics and space exploration, then we might get the resources and growth we need to escape the spiral, just as the Industrial Revolution pulled us out of the Malthusian trap. If he doesn't, we'll need another way out of this mess. Solving demographics isn't the answer. Boosting birth rates is a necessary long-term fix, but doesn't address the more pressing present concerns. Short of drawing on Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal and rendering workers into Soylent Green at retirement age, there's no obvious policy that will. And if we're stuck with our inverted pyramid of people, that leaves us with 'democracy' as the factor most likely to give way. About 48 per cent of all UK public spending goes on welfare, health and social care and debt interest spending. These are the items of spending that are either too toxic to touch – imagine the outrage if Starmer stood up and announced an end to the triple lock, or swinging cuts to the bloated NHS – or would tip the country into a financial crisis via defaulting on our obligations. They're also some of the items with the most forecast growth, as today's young become tomorrow's old. The state pension is set to hit 8 per cent of GDP, health spending 15 per cent and adult social care somewhere about 2.5 per cent. A little over 25 pence in every pound earned in Britain will be earmarked for these line items alone. If we can't cut spending democratically, we'll be made to cut it. And cutting spending democratically is hard. Loading One implication of the median voter theorem – the observation that in a democratic system, the man in the middle tends to get his way – is that when median incomes are below the mean, the state will tend to engage in more redistribution. This is certainly true in Britain, where 53 per cent of the population lives in households that pay less in taxes than they receive in benefits, and it's likely to be true in the United States as well (where the top and bottom quintiles are net losers and net beneficiaries, respectively). In fact, 'democracies spend more' seems to be a good general rule. Match V-Dem democracy scores to IMF data and – with some caveats around matching names and entries – the general gist is that more democratic countries spend somewhere about 12-15 points of GDP more than their less democratic peers, with researchers emphasising spending on social protection and education. Combine this with the observation that it's entirely possible for older generations to burden their younger successors with debts, and you have a recipe for disaster. The incentives given to today's politicians are to spend to win today's votes. Unless voters today are altruistic about future generations – and when the population is ageing because fewer people have children, their motive to be so is greatly reduced – then you can end up in the sort of unsustainable spiral Britain and America have found themselves in. By 2055, the US national debt is expected to be 156 per cent of GDP, and deficits around 7 per cent. In Britain, it's for 130 per cent of GDP, and a deficit of 9 per cent. Project that out to 2073, and debt hits 274 per cent of GDP, with the deficit a healthy 21 per cent of national income. If politicians ignore the warning signs – or voters punish those who attempt to correct course – we could find the choice between debt and democracy made for us. These are ludicrous numbers. There is no prospect of funding that sort of deficit at that sort of debt. The question is what we'll get instead. The most likely answer seems to be some form of fiscal cliff-edge ending up with less democratic choice in government. This could take a 'soft' form, such as self-imposed restrictions on spending and debt which politicians agree to adhere to in order to restore market confidence. A souped-up form of the Office for Budget Responsibility and harsher fiscal rules would be one version of this. Government by bond market – where investors demand higher yields for risky policies, driving the state towards fiscal consolidation – would be another. Loading At the other end of the scale, a debt bailout would effectively cede a large degree of sovereignty to whichever institution sets the terms of the loan. Britain has been down this road before, in 1976, when the IMF imposed higher taxes and lower spending. This would be an extreme outcome. It is not entirely out of the range of possibilities. Cutting spending democratically is hard. Undermining institutions is relatively easy.
Yahoo
11-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Assisted dying's safeguards were always a sham
The 18th-century satirist Jonathan Swift was the master of cynical, hyperbolic absurdity. In a particularly striking example of his genius, A Modest Proposal, Swift mocks Whig rationalistic 'humanitarianism' by suggesting the best way to solve the problem of hunger in Ireland was by having parents eat their own children. Alas, even Swift's acerbic pen would have struggled to capture the surreal disdain for truth which the assisted dying Bill's process is exposing in Parliament. Kim Leadbeater and her flunkies seem determined to prove Swift's adage that 'falsehood flies, while the truth comes limping after it'. The latest example is the news that the oft-promised High Court oversight of assisted suicide has been downgraded to a mere review body, a panel of experts, stripped of the legal powers and authority of a court of law. Leaked to the media at 10pm to catch the news headlines, the announcement also caught committee members off-guard the night before they were to consider amendments; a committee which is, lest we forget, already overwhelmed with back-to-back hearings and reading vast amounts of evidence in a short time. 'How can we properly scrutinise this legislation,' complained MP Sarah Olney, 'when new amendments are being made at the last minute, which potentially change the entire nature of the legislation we're attempting to scrutinise?' At the start of the process many of us were prepared to give Leadbeater the benefit of the doubt; writing her off as either ignorant or a puppet in the hands of No 10 or the powerful, well-funded euthanasia lobby. (A certain set of pink and lawyerly fingers have left more prints on this particular Bill than if it were a freebie from Lord Alli). However it is increasingly clear that Leadbeater is in fact a zealot of zealots, using her particular brand of manipulative sentimentality to ram through the Bill and deceive fellow MPs. This has been especially blatant with the details of those 'cast-iron safeguards' which encouraged dozens of rightly-cautious MPs to give the benefit of the doubt and allow the Bill to proceed to a stage when those safeguards would be fleshed out. In fact, they haven't been fleshed out at all; rather, they've been stripped to the bone, in defiance of every promise about procedure. Again and again, High Court approval was sold as one of the key checks and balances that gave the Bill 'the strongest safeguards in the world'. Leadbeater and other supporters repeatedly promised this, in Parliament and on TV. More than 60 MPs stated on the record that they voted for this at second reading. We are now being asked to believe that it has only just become clear that such a system would prove unworkable, despite the high-profile criticism provided by legal experts such as Sir James Munby, former president of the Family Division, who wrote a comprehensive demolition of the idea back in October. At the time, Leadbeater and her allies said nothing. But within a few days of the Bill passing in November, co-sponsor Jake Richards wrote an article speculating about ditching High Court approval in favour of a less 'time-consuming' system. Richards even accused those who pointed this out of misrepresenting his position. Untruths were aggressively briefed to newspapers, understandably annoying reporters who were fed (and wrote up) nonsense. Now, Leadbeater allies have seamlessly pivoted from 'it's not happening, how dare you suggest that!' to 'well, it might happen' to 'it is happening – and that's a good thing'. Swift would have struggled to capture the absurdity of the committee itself. Members heard from an Australian parliamentarian who called assisted dying a form of 'suicide prevention'. Concerned relatives trying to prevent loved ones taking their own lives have often been described as guilty of 'coercion'. Now we hear from Leadbeater and her allies that removing a safeguard is in fact strengthening it; what the Bill sponsor calls 'judge plus', is very obviously 'judge minus'. Listening to this inversion of truth is enough to make anyone question their own sanity. This is not the only discrepancy to emerge. The two ministers on the committee were supposedly there as impartial representatives of the Government. However, they have since been allowed to vote on the amendments as a matter of conscience, making the committee even more numerically skewed in favour of assisted dying than it first appeared. Many social workers, doctors and lawyers will want no part in the process, meaning that future 'death panels' will presumably be made up of (self-selecting) supporters of assisted dying, further complicating incentives. If you want a vision of the future, imagine a well-heeled KC billing for signing off 40 deaths that morning, then heading out for lunch at the Reform Club. Whenever colleagues voice their concern at the shambolic management of the process, Leadbeater repeats her mantra that the debate showed 'Parliament at its best', and urges MPs to maintain the same collegiate spirit. She regurgitates this line ad nauseam, despite the increasing chaos and growing displeasure around her; as if saying it enough times will somehow make it true. Many MPs voted the Bill to committee stage on the very clear understanding of certain safeguards. The challenge to those same MPs must be, do they now have the courage to change their position accordingly? Leadbeater may not have been upfront about the manner in which she would ram her legislation through, but for those MPs she and her allies misled, now is surely time to re-evaluate their position. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
