According to Michael Snyder, commenting in 2010 on the scale of US Government borrowing: We have sold our children and our grandchildren into perpetual debt slavery.[1]

Government borrowing now, as a response to the pandemic is a staggering figure, significantly greater than at the time of the 2008 financial crisis, and we can hear, from many quarters, a rising chorus of the same dire predictions: that solving problems in the present, by government borrowing, is in effect passing along greater problems to our children in the form of debt. UK Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, for example, on the 5th October 2020: We have a sacred responsibility to future generations to leave the public finances strong, and through careful management of our economy, this Conservative government will always balance the books.[2] It was this logic which drove the righteous austerity of the 2010 UK coalition government and its zealously neo-liberal Chancellor, George Osborne. Yet, is it not obvious? A parsimonious chancellor, presiding over a programme of austerity. is saving up problems for future generations by the inevitable neglect of our national assets which this entails?

Even were I a climate change denier, I might accept that our national infrastructure is in sore need of investment, whether it be housing shortages, superfast broadband, an ageing transport network, crumbling sewage systems, flood mitigation measures, and so on. To the extent that government policy fails to address this “to do” list, we pass on an inheritance to our children which will be more dangerous, more uncertain, less resilient, less prosperous. There is only one adequate excuse for such a failure, and that is a shortfall in national resources, of labour, skills, tools and raw materials. These resources are the real wealth of the country and any government which fails to develop, activate and organise them in the interest of the great challenges that face us, has failed. Where a nation issues a sovereign currency, such as in the case of the UK or the United States, it need never be lack of money which is the obstacle to taking action. Write the cheque. Get on with it. And lest there be any doubt, the private sector may well be part of the solution, financed directly by the government.

In the recent history of the United Kingdom, there is no evidence that a significant shortage of resources has been the problem, but rather the superstitious resistance of Governments to activate and organise these resources, when necessary, by appropriate public spending. It is only fair to say that, though this taboo against Government spending is most acute on the conservative end of the political spectrum, the doctrinally inspired dread of government debt exists right across the political divide and has often resulted in a sclerotic government response to situations which require vision, vigour and imagination.

Failure to act on climate change threatens problems for our children and grandchildren on an entirely different scale, that merits the language of biblical catastrophe, even apocalypse; where the sins of the fathers will indeed be “visited… upon the children unto the third and fourth generation”. [3] The Bible, however, represents the wisdom of a former era. Those of us who view matters through a scientific lens know that it is our world which has given us life, and that it is our world that we must love and care for, if that life is to be sustained, in all its diversity, into the future.

There is still time to mitigate the worst that global warming may bring, but it is reckless irresponsibility, in a democracy, to tolerate governments which, in their Micawberish desire to balance the books, leave national assets to rust and decay, just as Margaret Thatcher left the North of England and Scotland to rust and decay in the 1980’s. I think I am not alone in believing that the UK is now paying a price for this particular ideologically inspired smash and grab, in terms of political dislocation, polarisation and uncertainty. Readers from the USA may well recognise a similar pattern in their own recent history.

Like, share or comment at this Facebook link!

References

[1]Michael Snyder, writing in Business Insider: 17 Statistics That Prove We Have Sold Our Grandchildren Into Perpetual Debt Slavery https://www.businessinsider.com/national-debt-sold-grandchildren-debt-slavery-2010-12?r=US&IR=T

[2] Rishi Sunak, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, quoted in the Daily Mail: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8806141/Rishi-Sunak-warns-need-balance-books-Covid-crisis.html

[3] [Exodus 20:5, St James Bible] …for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

Featured Image

A cropped version of the image below is intended to sit at the head of this post: if you wish to view the post as intended, please follow this link.