Economic lessons for George Osborne | Letters

Your story "Osborne turns to 'Micawber' economics" (10 June) is very disturbing. As someone born in the mid-1930s who grew up in the postwar period and spent his working life studying, teaching and writing about democratic capitalism, I wonder if policymakers know anything about modern history. After the first world war the search for budget surpluses of the kind Mr Osborne now seeks destroyed national economies and world trade, brought ruin to millions and led to fascism, militarism and the second world war. After 1945, years of government borrowing and spending of the kind he deplores rebuilt democratic capitalism in western Europe, restored its democratic institutions and doubled standards of living by creating more wealth more equitably distributed. All this rested on new notions of economic management. Their abandonment in the 1980s and 1990s to the siren call of Reaganomics ushered in the era of unregulated world finance capitalism that crashed and burned in 2007-08 and led to our current woes. Yet like the Bourbons our leaders seem to have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
Patrick Renshaw
Sheffield

" Osborne's new "no borrowing" rules are pure hypocrisy. They will force privatisation, because private investment "does not count" as national debt - so new roads, rail and other infrastructure will need to be done that way. But to build them investors will have to borrow - no one has enough to build an airport without a huge debt. The money will have to come back via tolls or guaranteed share of government revenue.

Yes we need growth, but what is it for if not to create a society that educates, protects and supports its people?