The present social contract was written when the number of taxpayers well outstripped the number of retirees. But times have changed.
How have think-tanks and campaign groups responded to the Chancellor’s fiscal and economic news?
It’s baffling why think-tanks are taking the OBR assessments as truth, given its prediction record.
A dedicated body could focus on scrutinising the economy and effectiveness of future plans. Australia and New Zealand already have similar models.
If the public conversation about lives and livelihoods doesn’t change, we risk being trapped in semi-lockdown semi-permanently.
And when it comes to paying for the crisis measures, as we must, taxes must not fall on younger workers.
Modest consolidation over decades is one thing; large increases over a Parliament would be quite another.
Precisely what does Johnson think was wrong with the 2010-2018 deficit reduction agenda? Who knows? The Tories don’t have a clear economic story.
Several wonder how these big spending pledges are sustainable.
What normalisation should mean is the return to a functioning market economy where our wants and needs are met in today’s circumstances.
If the Prime Minister doesn’t have confidence in his most senior Ministers, it’s impossible to see how anyone else can.
Hopefully it will be crisis averted, and we’ll have a bit more time to fix the hole. But sooner or later, difficult choices on tax and spending are coming.
But some free marketeers are concerned about the huge borrowing rise and the reliance on “bureaucrats picking winners.”
There are now so many of them that the degree itself has less impact on employability – this ensuring that they become less economically valuable.
If you appoint Duncan Smith to the post she now holds, as Cameron did in 2010, it follows that you must fund his plan fully.