The influential economic think tank, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, has dismissed Tory chancellor George Osborne’s “Autumn Statement” as being “unlikely to have any impact on growth” and has warned that average household incomes are set to drop by at least seven percent over the next year.
In a gloomy but realistic reaction to the latest Westminster charade, the IFS said that the “scale of cuts to public spending over the next seven years is unprecedented” and will have severe impacts on Britain, unseen since the “end of World War Two.”
In his statement, Mr Osborne announced a small firms investment scheme, £5 billion on new spending on infrastructure, an agreement with pension funds to leverage £20 billion of investment into public infrastructure projects, and a £20 billion “credit easing programme” for businesses.
Apart from the fact that even this small beer compared to the £50 million paid out per day to the European Union, or the billions spent fighting illegal wars around the globe, or even the billions spent on “foreign aid,” the reality is that almost none of Mr Osborne’s “new” projects will impact the ordinary man on the street.
As IFS senior research economist Helen Miller, quoted in a media report, accurately said: “I do not think any of this looks set to be the key to unlocking our long-run growth potential. All these plans are quite small.”
Even the “extra” spending on infrastructure is a hoax when it is considered that last year Mr Osborne announced more than £20 billion worth of cuts to infrastructure spending. In other words, in 2010, the Tories cut £20 billion from the infrastructure building programme, and in 2011 have announced a £5 billion increase in spending—all of which still means that there is a £15 billion reduction.
For some reason Mr Osborne thinks the public is too stupid to see the weak sleight-of-hand manoeuvre at work here (or possibly he has accurately assessed his supporters ability to be duped after all?)
At a press conference, the IFS’s director, Paul Johnson, pointed out that the median average income was now expected to be no higher in real terms in 2015/16 than it was in 2002/03.
Furthermore, public spending is now expected to drop by 16.2 percent in real terms until 2017. “We are running out of superlatives to describe just how extraordinary are some of these changes,” Mr Johnson said, adding that the per capita real household disposable income was set to be lower in 2016 than 2006. By comparison, the worst previous decade on record saw growth of 14%.
Meanwhile, almost simultaneously with Mr Osborne’s Punch and Judy show in Westminster, the Office for Budget Responsibility released new figures which downgraded growth forecasts to 0.9 per cent for this year and 0.7 per cent next year. In March, it put those figures and 1.7 per cent and 2.5 per cent respectively.
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Consider this:
China grows more in two weeks than Britain will do in a year!
British per capita income will be lower in 2016 than in 2002, in China incomes will have multiplied at least four-fold!
Globalisation is nothing but a disaster for Britain.