I was going to write a lengthy post on George Osborne, UK debt and Britain’s credit rating downgrade, but fortunately Simon Wren Lewis said pretty much everything I wanted to say:
What George Osborne did with his austerity programme was the equivalent of putting a sick patient on a starvation diet accompanied by cold showers. The UK economy without accelerated austerity would still have been in poor shape, but under George Osborne it has been a disaster.
The final verdict on George Osborne Economics at Mainly Macro
Other relevant posts
- George Osborne Economics A post I wrote in 2010 – not very extensive or particularly insightful. Just a bit of basic A Level economics that if you cut government spending in a recession, economic growth will tend to be lower, and the deficit will get worse. A reminder that austerity in a recession can fail to solve the debt problem.
- Alternatives to spending cuts (2010)
Since 2010, there have been numerous studies and evidence which give much more confidence in criticising the approach of the current government:
- Osborne austerity measures not working
- Fiscal multiplier and European austerity
- Austerity will increase UK debt burden
- how important are credit rating agencies?