A bitter pill....
The news that Huw Pill, top economist at the Bank of England, thinks we all need to realise that we are poorer is not really news. We all know or should know that we are worse off, what else do you expect after years of slow or no growth, austerity, low productivity, a credit crunch, Covid, Brexit and a war in Europe?
The news is in the solution that, we should not ask for pay rises, and companies not pass on price rises. This seems to suggest a complete lack of sympathy for the worst hit, the poorest. The rich can survive, they don’t feel this pain anything like as much as the poorest and despite earning £180,000 a year Mr. Pill should know that. After all he is being paid that much because he is a very good economist.
At heart this goes back to the old problem, the rich get bonuses, tax breaks, shares and ever higher wages because they are “worth it”. The poor get what they are given and are supposed to be grateful.
Telling us all that we need to realise we are poorer is just crass, the poor are poorer because the economy has been changed over 40 years to ensure that outcome.
To be fair, the Bank of England can only work with the tools it is given and only work in the economy that politicians have created.
But just for once someone might say that huge City bonuses distort the economy and are rarely earned, that the City was bailed out with hundreds of billions of pounds of poor peoples’ money and would collapse if the implicit promise to do the same again was removed. That the banking system is still not stable or reliable or even safe, yet manages to pay bonuses to all and sundry.
How about telling us those people are fuelling inflation by not realising they are poorer? Perhaps because they aren’t.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media