Some Lies are Bigger than others

The other day  my Blogging friend Joey wrote a post about lies, his reminded me that a while back I too had written a light hearted piece about lies as well.   When I looked it up and found it here I was quite surprised to find that it was way back in December 2013.

Most of the lies we have both listed are pretty harmless, if annoying things like

• One size fits all
• I'm stuck in traffic
• I just have the occasional glass of wine

Well there are also some pretty big and very armful lies doing the rounds these days, and many of them are being told by people in power, those who really should know better, those who have a responsibility to act wisely and speak truthfully.

The one that is exercising me at the moment is the one the British Government have been pedaling for some time, the lie that "there is no more money". We are told that we have to operate in a time of austerity, we need to reduce expenditure, we cannot afford to care for (or about) the weak, the poor, the vulnerable, or the simply unlucky. Yet very little economic analysis is required to show that there is still plenty of money, indeed thanks to quantitive easing there is actually more money than there was before the crash.   What is not being said is where the money is.

It is a political decision not to collect more of that money into the public purse, there are several demands on the funds held by both central and local government, Health, Social Care, Benefits, developing infrastructure, defense etc. etc. etc. We are told that there are ever increasing demands on an ever decreasing resource, so we have to cut, and cut. We have to reduce our expenditure on the very things that we have government to do. Yet we are not being told that it is a political decision, not a basic fact of life that taxation is being reduced.   Any Government can choose to raise more money through taxation, what we need to be told is more about the direct relationship of the services we get and the tax we pay.   If we are prepared to pay more tax, and vote for the politicians who will increase taxation then we will be able to have better services.   If we continue to insist on politicians who will continue to reduce our taxation burden then we will continue to have cuts in our services.

If we keep doing the same things then we will keep getting the same results.