Thanks for the interesting and thorough reply (and I'll always have time for anyone that references Dani Rodrik). I don't doubt any of what you say, not least because Rodrik et al are far more qualified than me to hold court on macroeconomics. I do undoubtedly instinctively find it peculiar that governments can have deficit year after year and be fine with that, and I would guess that there is a limit beyond which it does become a problem, as perhaps Japan, Italy and Greece have shown. We were at a time also when the global financial system had been brought to its knees by excessive and reckless lending/borrowing, so I'm sure there was a PR element to being seen not to continue that and to live within one's means.
If anything though, the Greek situation has shown what can be achieved if structural problems are addressed, even if short-term pain was inevitably caused. That has to be far better than pretending they don't exist and printing your way out of any problems.
We've been talking a bit above this about education, and there is a huge logic in improving the flexibility of the economy, whether through labour mobility (both in terms of people being able to move physically about but also retraining should economics/technology disrupt their livelihood), local government flexibility and a reformed property market via something like the land value tax.
Had Labour spent their conference talking about these things, which are in many ways causes of the leave vote in many instances, then I'd have had very little to grumble about, but instead the 4 day week and banning public schools have been what's emerged. That may well be simply the policies that have grabbed headlines, and other things have been discussed, I accept that, but I can only go by what I see (
@tsubaki has been unusually quiet so perhaps he's at the conference?).
Anyway, thanks for the considered post.
