I was aghast to read Coun Smith-Moorhouse’s letter “Austerity policies have worked” in your letters page of August 21.
It displayed a lack of understanding of economics and of the achievements of the austerity policies of this government.
Following a recession economies always bounce back, it is the natural economic cycle; in this case austerity has been a brake on that recovery.
This is the slowest recovery ever experienced and with government debt now double the size it was under the last government the policy has failed spectacularly to meet any of Osborne’s own predications. Austerity has simply been a political strategy to redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich.
Austerity has never been a way to encourage growth.
Osbornes’s strategy is based on an influential academic paper by two leading American economists, the conclusions of which have since been exposed as incorrect due to arithmetical and statistical errors in their analysis.
No wonder then that most of us are feeling much worse off than we were in 2010 with our real wages 10 per cent lower than they were at the start of this government.
The only people who seem to have benefitted from this flawed economic strategy are the Chancellor’s old school friends in the City of London and around the Home Counties.
Bill Suthers
Walsden