Spending Your Way to Full Employment

Readers Question: Can you Spend Your Way to Full Employment? Full employment implies. An economy without a significant negative output gap. Full employment requires positive economic growth, averaging close to the long run trend rate of economic growth. (in UK long run trend rate = 2.5%) Very low unemployment. Economists would say full employment is …

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Spanish Youth Unemployment 2011

Spain has had one of the highest persistent rates of unemployment in the EU for several years. However, since the credit crunch and housing bubble burst in 2008, unemployment has spiked to over 4.9 million. [1. BBC Link] The problem is more acute amongst young workers. More than 45% of young Spanish are out of …

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Spending on Bicycles vs Cars 2011

Note: Bicycles left hand side. Cars right hand side Note: Scale on right hand side doesn’t start at 0, therefore drop in spending on cars looks more pronounced than it actually is. 2009 We spent £1.4bn on new bikes and £35bn on cars. [1. Cycle Stats, Cycling Info, ONS] An interesting statistic to show the …

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Economic Review article on Spending Cuts

I wrote an article in this months (April) edition of Economic Review on the theme of spending cuts. It offers detailed arguments for spending cuts and also the problems of cutting spending in the current economic climate. It was written back in September quite a few months ago. A brief summary of the article. Arguments …

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Mrs Thatcher’s speech on U Turns in Economic Policy

In 1980, Mrs Thatcher made a memorable speech. “To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only one thing to say: You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning!”(BBC Link) Background – The economy was struggling under the deflationary fiscal and monetary policy. Mrs Thatcher …

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Spending cuts of coalition government and job losses

The coalition expects 490,000 public sector jobs to be lost by 2014-15 as a direct result of its drastic spending cuts, Danny Alexander, the chief secretary to the Treasury, has accidently disclosed. (link to Guardian) In addition the spending cuts, wage freezes and job losses will have a knock on effect to the rest of …

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