Even the IMF says austerity doesn’t work. It’s the zombie idea that will not die | Phil McDuff
A few weeks on from the general election, and David Cameron has been disinterred to say giving public sector workers pay rises is the height of selfishness - while Theresa May is back to harping on in prime minister's questions about the debt left by the last Labour government. It's apparently 2015 all over again.
It's tiresome to have to keep pointing it out, but Dave from PR was wrong then, and he remains wrong now. He was a good salesman, for sure. Pretending that "The Deficit" is a scary monster that will eat us unless we appease it by sacrificing our wages plays into many instinctual beliefs about the virtues of probity and thrift. But if anything, the monster in the room is the prevalence of what economist John Quiggin called "zombie economics" - ideas that are constantly discredited, but insist on shambling back to life and lurching their way through our public discourse.
Related: This is what I learned in parliament: the Tories enjoy making people poorer | Laura Pidcock
Why are ethnic minorities and people on zero-hours contracts in call centres somehow excluded from the working class?
Continue reading...