Glimmers of Hope
By DAVID BROOKS
NYT
If you’re elected president or prime minister in pretty much any country in the developed world today, you’re faced with the same set of challenges: to reduce national deficits without choking off a fragile recovery; to trim the welfare state and raise taxes while still funding the things that lead to long-term growth; to try to enact brutally painful measures at a time when voters don’t trust their leaders; to do it at a time when politics are polarized and a hundred different interest groups have the ability to block change.
The chances that the world’s leaders are going to be able to do these things successfully are between slim and none. It’s hard enough to figure out the right mix of spending cuts and tax increases. It’s nearly impossible to build a political majority willing to enact them. Sometime over the next decade or so, the world will probably suffer from another series of crushing fiscal crises with significant economic pain and maximum political turmoil.
But, occasionally, there’s a ray of hope. Occasionally, a country stumbles into a political arrangement that may help it avert a crisis. And that’s what’s happened in Britain.
Britain has all the fiscal problems that plague most developed nations. British households are carrying more debt than those in any other rich country: 170 percent of annual income. British general government debt is surging — not at Greek levels yet, but getting there.
(More here.)
NYT
If you’re elected president or prime minister in pretty much any country in the developed world today, you’re faced with the same set of challenges: to reduce national deficits without choking off a fragile recovery; to trim the welfare state and raise taxes while still funding the things that lead to long-term growth; to try to enact brutally painful measures at a time when voters don’t trust their leaders; to do it at a time when politics are polarized and a hundred different interest groups have the ability to block change.
The chances that the world’s leaders are going to be able to do these things successfully are between slim and none. It’s hard enough to figure out the right mix of spending cuts and tax increases. It’s nearly impossible to build a political majority willing to enact them. Sometime over the next decade or so, the world will probably suffer from another series of crushing fiscal crises with significant economic pain and maximum political turmoil.
But, occasionally, there’s a ray of hope. Occasionally, a country stumbles into a political arrangement that may help it avert a crisis. And that’s what’s happened in Britain.
Britain has all the fiscal problems that plague most developed nations. British households are carrying more debt than those in any other rich country: 170 percent of annual income. British general government debt is surging — not at Greek levels yet, but getting there.
(More here.)
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