Walterp
Member
- Location
- Pembrokeshire
In 1978 Jim Callaghan warned the labour unions, again and again, that failure to carry on supporting his (largely successful) prices/incomes policy to defeat inflation would cause chaos, and allow back into power the very Party that had caused that ruinous inflation in the first place. No one was listening.
Alongside the developed world's lowest literacy rate, the UK has one of the poorest political spheres: low levels of interest in political analysis, low calibre MPs, and a declining ability of the English ruling classes to differentiate between self interest and the national interest.
'You get the politicians you deserve.' (Socrates)
Today, no one is listening to the case for interest rates to revert to their mean - 5% base.
Yet the Fed wants it, and the Bank of England (probably the only context in which I can mention 'England' without being howled at by over-sensitive English reactionaries) wants it - the obvious political and economic costs of suppressing the cost of money now outweigh its benefits. The law of diminishing returns, and all that.
This should be alarming UK farmers, but it is not - people don't want concepts that require them to think too much about abstracts. They want the thinking equivalent of comfort eating: raising rates will damage the economy, ergo it won't happen.
So, like luckless Farmer Jim, you can tell people that interest rate rises are likely but you can't inform them.
Instead, people invent reasons why it can't happen.
But here's one reason that guarantees that it will - 'inflation'.
Alongside the developed world's lowest literacy rate, the UK has one of the poorest political spheres: low levels of interest in political analysis, low calibre MPs, and a declining ability of the English ruling classes to differentiate between self interest and the national interest.
'You get the politicians you deserve.' (Socrates)
Today, no one is listening to the case for interest rates to revert to their mean - 5% base.
Yet the Fed wants it, and the Bank of England (probably the only context in which I can mention 'England' without being howled at by over-sensitive English reactionaries) wants it - the obvious political and economic costs of suppressing the cost of money now outweigh its benefits. The law of diminishing returns, and all that.
This should be alarming UK farmers, but it is not - people don't want concepts that require them to think too much about abstracts. They want the thinking equivalent of comfort eating: raising rates will damage the economy, ergo it won't happen.
So, like luckless Farmer Jim, you can tell people that interest rate rises are likely but you can't inform them.
Instead, people invent reasons why it can't happen.
But here's one reason that guarantees that it will - 'inflation'.