Читать книгу Selfishness, Greed and Capitalism - Christopher Snowdon - Страница 20

Perhaps we do not need to identify a specific individual who espouses the ‘growth at all costs mantra’ for such an attitude to be the implicit doctrine of government. Politicians from Kennedy to Cameron might deny that they are smitten with GDP, but their actions may betray them. In other words, there may not literally be a temple to the god of economic growth, but our leaders pray to it all the same.

This argument does not stand up against the facts. If ‘growth at all costs’ were truly the mantra of the last thirty years, we would expect this to be reflected in policy. If society has a ‘blind obsession with growth’ (Peck 2012), as the New Economics Foundation claims, we should have seen massive deregulation, open borders immigration, huge tax cuts, looser planning laws, the abolition of subsidies and the withering away of the state. Instead, we have seen bureaucracies expand, regulations spread and taxes rise. Public spending in the UK more than doubled in real terms during the era of supposed neoliberalism, from £337 billion in 1979/80 to £735 billion by the end of the last decade (see Figure 1, inflation-adjusted to 2013/14 prices).11

1 Public spending in 2013/14 prices (UK)

Source: IFS (2014).