Simon Wren Lewis tweets on the Budget.
I have been puzzling over why none of the commentariat has called this budget out for what it is: an austerity budget. Let me first justify why its an austerity budget. 2010 austerity had two aspects. The first was shrinking the state: a large squeeze in public spending 1/13
— simon wren-lewis (@sjwrenlewis) March 5, 2021
The full thread talks of macro-economic illiteracy, the need to stimulate demand and the fact that this is a budget for austerity. He writes more on his blog, mainly macro where he talks about the need to spend more on those with less savings i.e. the poorer 20% of our society and repeats Econ 101, that fiscal policy is
Much of the public still associate fiscal consolidation with acting responsibly whatever the context. They haven’t learnt the folly of 2010 onwards because much of the media has not learnt it either. The big international economic institutions may have understood the need for fiscal activism during a recovery, but our media have not.
Simon Wren-Lewis – Mainly Macro
Paul Mason provides the first, comment, in which he slags of those who decided that corporation tax rather than demand was the key issue to fight the budget on.
You are right... and a few of us have been saying this ... but it got drowned out on the left by a pointless argument about corporation tax ... and the political problem is that a lot of people still support the logic of austerity ... https://t.co/b6RBGPOKIt
— Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) March 7, 2021