Quote of the day 16th April 2014
The penultimate paragraph in the set of quotes below has appeared as a quote of the day before on this blog , and probably will again, as a particularly significant and rare example of a Labour Prime minister talking sense - from a man who, for all the faults of his government, had ten times the understanding both of what it is like to be born into a working class family and of how the economics of the real world works that Ed Miliband will ever have.
This is a series of quotes from the speech James Callaghan gave as Leader of the Labour Party to that party's conference in 1976 and it is astonishing how many of the things he said appear so very relevant nearly forty years later.
"Britain has lived for too long on borrowed time, borrowed money, borrowed ideas." ...
"For too long, perhaps ever since the war, we postponed facing up to fundamental choices and fundamental changes in our society and in our economy. That is what I mean when I say we have been living on borrowed time." ...
"The cosy world we were told would go on for ever, where full employment would be guaranteed by a stroke of the Chancellor’s pen, cutting taxes, deficit spending, that cosy world is gone." ...
"When we reject unemployment as an economic instrument - as we do - and when we reject also superficial remedies, as socialists must, then we must ask ourselves unflinchingly what is the cause of high unemployment. Quite simply and unequivocally, it is caused by paying ourselves more than the value of what we produce. There are no scapegoats. This is as true in a mixed economy under a Labour Government as it is under capitalism or under communism. It is an absolute fact of life which no Government, be it left or right, can alter." ...
"We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession, and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting Government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists, and that in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step." ...
"That is the history of the last 20 years. Each time we did this the twin evils of unemployment and inflation have hit hardest those least able to stand them. Not those with the strongest bargaining power, no, it has not hit those. It has hit the poor, the old and the sick."
This is a series of quotes from the speech James Callaghan gave as Leader of the Labour Party to that party's conference in 1976 and it is astonishing how many of the things he said appear so very relevant nearly forty years later.
"Britain has lived for too long on borrowed time, borrowed money, borrowed ideas." ...
"For too long, perhaps ever since the war, we postponed facing up to fundamental choices and fundamental changes in our society and in our economy. That is what I mean when I say we have been living on borrowed time." ...
"The cosy world we were told would go on for ever, where full employment would be guaranteed by a stroke of the Chancellor’s pen, cutting taxes, deficit spending, that cosy world is gone." ...
"When we reject unemployment as an economic instrument - as we do - and when we reject also superficial remedies, as socialists must, then we must ask ourselves unflinchingly what is the cause of high unemployment. Quite simply and unequivocally, it is caused by paying ourselves more than the value of what we produce. There are no scapegoats. This is as true in a mixed economy under a Labour Government as it is under capitalism or under communism. It is an absolute fact of life which no Government, be it left or right, can alter." ...
"We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession, and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting Government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists, and that in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step." ...
"That is the history of the last 20 years. Each time we did this the twin evils of unemployment and inflation have hit hardest those least able to stand them. Not those with the strongest bargaining power, no, it has not hit those. It has hit the poor, the old and the sick."
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