Cut public expenditure – but not here
The “Daily Telegraph” has a story today which confirms the growing evidence that British voters are in favour of public expenditure cuts in general but have problems with such cuts in particular programmes, especially those that incur heavy expenditure such as health and education.
The other interesting feature of this news item is the suggestion that the current massive emphasis on cutting the deficit by reducing expenditure rather than by increasing taxes – 80% to 20% – has the balance wrong. It seems that a significant proportion of people would be willing to pay higher taxes and I would guess that many of those that do not would be lower earners who – if income tax rather than value added tax was raised – hopefully would not feel much of the pain.
Besides the questions of how to cut the deficit and where to cut expenditure and/or increase taxes, there are crucial questions of how much to cut the deficit and how fast. The previous Labour Government planned to reduce the deficit by half in four years, while the current Coalition Government intends to cut the deficit completely over the next five years.
I think that the Coalition Government has it wrong and could find that its plans are not workable or enforceable either because the economy goes back into recession or because voter unrest becomes too threatening.