Workers sacrificed ‘for the greater good’

RECENT comments by Adam

Posen (a former member of the

Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee) that the Bank has “no choice but to cause a recession”, when inflation is running at its current level, highlights some real problems with the way in which we are running our nation’s economy.

Not all economists agree that this is what should be done at this point, but these disagreements are more about timing than overall strategy.

Recessions result in more unemployment, that is a logical outcome of our current economic model. In other words, when the Bank of England takes steps like this to control inflation, they are causing people to become unemployed. It is they who are taking away the ability of some people to find employment and so are being sacrificed for the supposed “greater good”.

Of course, there is a proportion of the population who for a variety of reasons are not able to work even in very favourable economic circumstances. That is another issue and cannot be mentioned here.

If our unemployed are then the “sacrificial lambs” of our economic model, then surely we as a society have a moral obligation to ensure that they have a sufficient level of support. Instead, we have a social security system in our country that is a punitive one. Our unemployment benefits have declined since 2010 and (according to a wide range of studies) are either the worst or among the worst in Europe. How can we, the sixth-largest economy in the world, act in this way?

Treating our unemployed like this reveals a narrative in which our Government seems to believe the unemployed are to blame for the situation they are in. A narrative also peddled by certain sections of the media. Instead, in reality, unemployment has been imposed on them for the alleged “greater good”. Of course, there are many international factors at play that contribute to periods of growth and recession in our economy, but it is the Government’s response through its agencies which bears some responsibility for the level of unemployment that we have.

It is not the fault of those who are unemployed. Therefore, better support should be provided for them. Instead we have a Government whose latest budget measures (according to a number of analysts) benefitted far more those who are wealthy earners. This clearly indicates where their priorities lie!

Keith Orchard Glastonbury, Somerset