Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman statesman, lawyer and academic sceptic philosopher. He wrote ‘The Safety of the People shall be the Highest Law.’
This week, it was reported that the former health secretary Jeremy Hunt was in charge when medical advice to stockpile protective equipment in event of a flu pandemic was rejected on the grounds that stockpiling would be too expensive. By this decision, it would seem that this government chose deliberately to put cost over the health of its citizens, thus perpetuating the myths about the unaffordability of public services. The health and safety of the nation has been in the hands of a government which thought saving money was more important than keeping people protected. Jeremy Hunt claimed a while back, that public services depended on a healthy economy. That falsity will come to haunt him as we find out the hard way that it is, in fact, the other way around. A healthy economy depends on a healthy nation.
The neoliberal order which has dominated the global corridors of power for more than 40 years, combined with monetarist policies and more recently austerity following the global financial crash, has led to the destruction of public and social infrastructure not just here but in many developed nations around the world including the EU trading bloc. It lies at the heart of this crisis.
The horrors we are seeing in Spain, France, Italy, the US and other countries as the COVID-19 coronavirus compromises the ability of health and other public services to cope underline painfully the consequences of government decisions. Governments which rejected the power of the state to serve its citizens, promoting the god of the markets – the invisible hand – instead, have appeased it at every turn to favour the global corporations which have dictated the rules.
In the UK, despite the early advice from other experts in countries where coronavirus had already struck, government prevarication and failure to act expeditiously has allowed the disease to spread through the nation affecting many, not just those who are elderly with underlying health conditions. All human life is precious and yet this government has treated some as expendable and put the lives of those in the front line in the health service at risk.
As GIMMS noted in a previous MMT Lens, we will pay a heavy price for the ‘just in time’ approach to our health and public services and the lie that they were only affordable if the economy was doing well. The media, having done little to hold the government to account for decades and especially in the last 10 years, has left us without sufficient nurses, doctors and health workers, beds, ventilators, ICUs and other equipment. Our health professionals are still crying out for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and are selflessly putting their own health at risk for others. They are crying out for ventilators to keep people alive. They are crying out to be tested to keep themselves and their patients safe.
A healthy economy relies on public infrastructure, which is in short supply as a result of government choice. Ramping up the much-needed supplies is proving slow and difficult, not to mention demonstrating government incompetence. A good government delivering public purpose would have meant that we would have been better able to deal with this emergency and we might not be witnessing its current trajectory.
Our public infrastructure has been the victim of government cuts and we are now paying the price for the breakdown which is occurring as a result of limited or non-existent emergency planning, deregulation to suit market demands and privatisation – which have all been justified by the lie that the state had no money of its own and public services were a luxury determined by the health of the economy.
When the Chancellor got up to announce his spending plans and the measures to help those now unable to work, people cheered. If nothing else, this should have demonstrated quite clearly that the government was not constrained by tax or borrowing in order to spend, despite the charade that successive governments have played out about how its spending is paid for.
With big business queuing up for handouts (reminiscent of those banks that were too big to fail who were bailed out with public money) for others, it has been like squeezing blood from a stone. The very people who form the backbone of society, who keep it functioning and contribute to the economy through their work – the self-employed in particular – are being asked to jump through hoops to get any money at all, leaving them struggling and worrying about the future. People who for a decade have been living hand to mouth with scarce or no savings, working in zero-hours employment, the gig economy or in part-time work, will have to wait months for the government to pay up. Those in desperate need without employment are being asked to apply for Universal Credit for a measly £94.50 a week hanging on in telephone queues which can be as long as 90,000. It will not be long before those who congratulated the Chancellor for his largesse will have to think again, as bills go unpaid and people go hungry. People need support now, not later. The breakdown of society is in the offing if the government fails to act as it could now simply by authorising the central bank to make payments through HMRC who hold our data.
Alongside the tragedy which is playing out, the household budget narrative is never far behind, even in the words of Rishi Sunak who during his announcement of measures for the self-employed claimed that when this emergency was over we’d have ‘to chip in to right the ship’ promoting yet again that at some time in the future there will be a cost to taxpayers. Which in short there will not, since the government does not need to collect tax before it can spend!
Next, an ITV newsreader asked, ‘can the public finances take the strain?’ And this was followed by Robert Peston telling the TV audience that we’ll be ‘paying off the national debt for years’. To be clear – for the UK government, which is the currency issuer, there is no strain on the public finances and there will be no future burden on the taxpayer.
The Tax-Payers Alliance then announced that in future there would have to be ‘growth-enhancing’ measures and spending restraint’ both mutually exclusive positions which hark back to a false claim that cutting public spending could lift growth. The evidence is before us right now that this is not true.
Finally, the journalist Philip Inman suggested that Sunak’s budget spending spree could come at a high price, ‘fighting a war with borrowed money.’ Except that the government, as the currency issuer, does not need to borrow to cover its deficits; nor does it need to issue bonds in order to spend.
Our public and social infrastructure is under severe pressure and cracking under the strain, and people are suffering and dying. And yet they are still arguing about the financial cost of the Chancellor’s spending as if deficits and borrowing were the devil, balanced budgets the epitome of a government’s economic success or that there will be a price to pay if fiscal prudence is abandoned.
The ONLY cost in the future is the human cost we will face if the government fails to act in a manner that secures the lives of citizens, ensures they can pay their bills and eat during this emergency. Fiscal prudence is the least of our worries!
We must today, tomorrow and in the future, keep holding to account government, politicians and all those who peddle the economic orthodoxy that there is no money. The Chancellor has shown that there is the possibility to spend without checking the public purse first. It is a political choice. So much is now at stake and we need as nations to keep pushing with more persistence until change happens. The battle lines are being drawn as we speak. The coronavirus, hard as it is, may be our societal wake-up call. Let’s hope so.
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