A Place to Stand

    Another Scotsman letter, indeed this one is the lead letter of the day. Not bad considering I had the Lords reform one on Tuesday. Very minor editing, some grammatical which I have accepted and some removing  more controversial parts which I have kept in and  highlighted.

We are back in recession, officially. The Treasury is briefing that it is because of the EU, to which 40% of our exports go because it is barely growing. They don't mention that the rest of the world - which takes the other 60% - are growing at an average of 6%. Indeed despite all the blame that was formerly placed on the "world recession" the world economy has been growing consistently at 5% overall since the alleged "world recession" started.

Even the politicians, approved pundits and civil servants dare not dispute that it would be perfectly easy to get out of recession and into at least world average growth any time they actually wanted to. All that is needed is for politicians to get out of the way and let the free market operate. 93% of electricity prices are political parasitism. 75% of the cost of housing is political. Since regulators increase business costs by 20 times their own earnings government inspectors are robbing us of the productive labour of more than 4 million workers.

No politician dares to dispute the self evident fact we would be out of recession in days if they would allow it. When pressed they simply refuse to answer or change the subject and fortunately for them any such questioning is avoided by the mainstream media.

Adam Smith said "Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: All the rest being brought about by the natural course of things."
 
    The corollary is that nothing else is required to ruin a country than politicians who insist on controlling everything and ensuring that no competent and free economic decisions can be made.

   Again it went out to all and sundry and again it appears to have been used only by the Scotsman.

   This is a much simplified version of my multi-point programme into fast growth which, so far, no newspaper, politician in power or professional economist has been willing to comment on, though Brian Monteith thought it worthy of his website. One may take this as proof that it is so obviously wrong that nobody feels the need to even say why, or that it is so obviously right that nobody committed to our political nomenklatura, can think of any way in which it can be seriously disputed. It can't be anything in between.

   I would like to see this actually publicly discussed elsewhere. Considering the Cameronians have promised a "forensic, relentless focus on growth is what you will get from this government" and it is quite obvious that, by that measure, they have achieved less than nothing one should expect them to be looking for ideas. Well if one trusted a word Cameron said one would.

   I have a few more ideas for the programme and will update it soon. We could indeed be out of recession in days.