Dear Mr Osborne,
I am writing to you as, after not much deliberation I have come to the conclusion that you are a selfish idiot. I have come to this conclusion not through some misdirected musing, but more based on the evidence of empirical economics and science. Please bear with me while I elucidate my thoughts:
Firstly, may I bring to your attention a theory
of economics called Keynesian Economics which was first put forward in 1930's by John Maynard Keynes. It is a very famous theory of economics and has influenced global economic thinking since that time and it is thus very important for anyone wishing to assert some influence over national and international global forces (such as yourself, cos you’re the Chancellor of the Exchequer, right?) to have some knowledge of it. It appears you have none, so let me help you:
Keynes argued (and was proved right after the Great Depression, after World War II and since) that that the solution to the Great Depression was to stimulate the economy ("inducement to invest") through some combination of two approaches: 1: A reduction in interest rates, and 2: government investment in infrastructure. Investment by government injects income, which results in more spending in the general economy. This in turn stimulates more production and investment involving still more income and spending and so forth. The initial stimulation starts a cascade of events, whose total increase in economic activity is a multiple of the original investment.
In other words, in a recession, private individuals like you and me (well, maybe not you, but I’ll come to that later), perfectly sensibly, cut back our spending. We go out less, we buy less, we save more. This causes a huge fall in private demand, and with it a huge fall in economic activity. If, at the very same time, the government cuts back, then overall demand collapses, and a recession becomes a depression. That’s why the government has to do something counter-intuitive. It has to borrow and spend more, to apply jump-leads to the economy. This prevents economic collapse. Instead of spending a fortune on dealing with mass unemployment and economic break-down, with all the misery that causes, it spends the money on restoring growth. Keynes called it “the paradox of thrift”: when the people spend less, the government has to spend more.
Ed Balls (who went to Harvard as a Kennedy Scholar where he specialised in Economics - didn't you just get a degree in Modern History?) told you this 13 months ago as did Robert Skidelsky (one of our greatest contemporary economic minds), and many others equally more qualified to deal with this economic climate than you. So, what on Earth were/are you doing ignoring the sound, empirical advice of those eminently more qualified than you who gave you that sound advice when you had more than enough time to avoid a double dip and the escalation of the domestic financial crisis we are now witnessing??
It is on these grounds that I think you are an idiot.
So, having proved that very easily, why have I concluded that you are also selfish?
Well, this is also pretty easy to prove, but let me set the scene for you: The problem is that you don't care. That may seem rather glib in isolation, but allow me to continue. You don't care about the people who have very little because you have and always have had too much. I think I’m right in thinking that you are the eldest of four sons and that your father, Sir Peter Osborne, 17th Baronet, co-founded the firm of fabric and wallpapers designers Osborne & Little, which means you could reasonably be said to have been born with a very good quality silver spoon in your mouth?
Now, don’t get me wrong, this is not a wanton, unfounded railing against the so called ‘ruling classes’ and toffee-nosed snobs, but more, as I have said an opinion arrived at through an empirical process – something you seem not to be capable of - which asserts based on the research of Dacher Keltner, Professor of Psychology at University of California, Berkeley, that the less well off you are, the easier you find it to empathise and the more money you have the less able you are to able to empathise and thus be consequently altruistic.
Michael Kraus who conducted the research (which you can read about in various psychological papers and reports details of which I am happy to provide you with should wish to read further) with Keltner argues as a logical step from this that 'a government run by wealthy educated people is going to be interested in maintaining the social order. [It's members] will not be interested in the welfare of everybody, but in the welfare of themselves and their own goals'.
It is for this reason that I have concluded that you are not only an idiot, but selfish to boot.
However, having proved that you are a selfish idiot, I will give you this small piece of rope, Mr Osborne: it is not your fault. It is not your fault that you were born to a Baronet who was totally loaded and that you were taught what he was taught in turn; that you are more privileged and, therefore, better than us, the hoi-polloi. It’s not your fault that you were filled with this total bollocks from birth, so I will give you one more chance to prove that you are neither selfish or an idiot:
What you must do, Mr Osborne, is implement immediately a policy of government spending. We can still borrow money at very good rates if there is not already the money in the pot and we are no more in debt than we have been for the majority of the last 250 years, so don’t worry about the deficit. The deficit is not the problem, the stagnation of the economy is and only you can get it going again. It has been proved to us all that your policy of austerity does not and cannot work and history has proved many an eminent economist right in this time and time again..
So...
Borrow money, spend on massive infrastructure projects to give the common man money to put food on the table and feed his family and his children and the economy will move again. Cut taxes for the rich and take money from our elderly and you will only serve yourself and your cronies (the idea of the money filtering down to the rest of us was proved wrong in Thatcher’s era –n another lesson you could have learned empirically from history), so please just show me that you may have just made a very silly mistake, but that you still care enough about me and the rest of us hoi-polloi to make a massive u-turn and profuse apology and then... You put the whole damn thing right again!
Come on Mr Osborne, Prove me you are not a selfish idiot and do the right thing, NOW
I am writing to you as, after not much deliberation I have come to the conclusion that you are a selfish idiot. I have come to this conclusion not through some misdirected musing, but more based on the evidence of empirical economics and science. Please bear with me while I elucidate my thoughts:
Firstly, may I bring to your attention a theory
of economics called Keynesian Economics which was first put forward in 1930's by John Maynard Keynes. It is a very famous theory of economics and has influenced global economic thinking since that time and it is thus very important for anyone wishing to assert some influence over national and international global forces (such as yourself, cos you’re the Chancellor of the Exchequer, right?) to have some knowledge of it. It appears you have none, so let me help you:
Keynes argued (and was proved right after the Great Depression, after World War II and since) that that the solution to the Great Depression was to stimulate the economy ("inducement to invest") through some combination of two approaches: 1: A reduction in interest rates, and 2: government investment in infrastructure. Investment by government injects income, which results in more spending in the general economy. This in turn stimulates more production and investment involving still more income and spending and so forth. The initial stimulation starts a cascade of events, whose total increase in economic activity is a multiple of the original investment.
In other words, in a recession, private individuals like you and me (well, maybe not you, but I’ll come to that later), perfectly sensibly, cut back our spending. We go out less, we buy less, we save more. This causes a huge fall in private demand, and with it a huge fall in economic activity. If, at the very same time, the government cuts back, then overall demand collapses, and a recession becomes a depression. That’s why the government has to do something counter-intuitive. It has to borrow and spend more, to apply jump-leads to the economy. This prevents economic collapse. Instead of spending a fortune on dealing with mass unemployment and economic break-down, with all the misery that causes, it spends the money on restoring growth. Keynes called it “the paradox of thrift”: when the people spend less, the government has to spend more.
Ed Balls (who went to Harvard as a Kennedy Scholar where he specialised in Economics - didn't you just get a degree in Modern History?) told you this 13 months ago as did Robert Skidelsky (one of our greatest contemporary economic minds), and many others equally more qualified to deal with this economic climate than you. So, what on Earth were/are you doing ignoring the sound, empirical advice of those eminently more qualified than you who gave you that sound advice when you had more than enough time to avoid a double dip and the escalation of the domestic financial crisis we are now witnessing??
It is on these grounds that I think you are an idiot.
So, having proved that very easily, why have I concluded that you are also selfish?
Well, this is also pretty easy to prove, but let me set the scene for you: The problem is that you don't care. That may seem rather glib in isolation, but allow me to continue. You don't care about the people who have very little because you have and always have had too much. I think I’m right in thinking that you are the eldest of four sons and that your father, Sir Peter Osborne, 17th Baronet, co-founded the firm of fabric and wallpapers designers Osborne & Little, which means you could reasonably be said to have been born with a very good quality silver spoon in your mouth?
Now, don’t get me wrong, this is not a wanton, unfounded railing against the so called ‘ruling classes’ and toffee-nosed snobs, but more, as I have said an opinion arrived at through an empirical process – something you seem not to be capable of - which asserts based on the research of Dacher Keltner, Professor of Psychology at University of California, Berkeley, that the less well off you are, the easier you find it to empathise and the more money you have the less able you are to able to empathise and thus be consequently altruistic.
Michael Kraus who conducted the research (which you can read about in various psychological papers and reports details of which I am happy to provide you with should wish to read further) with Keltner argues as a logical step from this that 'a government run by wealthy educated people is going to be interested in maintaining the social order. [It's members] will not be interested in the welfare of everybody, but in the welfare of themselves and their own goals'.
It is for this reason that I have concluded that you are not only an idiot, but selfish to boot.
However, having proved that you are a selfish idiot, I will give you this small piece of rope, Mr Osborne: it is not your fault. It is not your fault that you were born to a Baronet who was totally loaded and that you were taught what he was taught in turn; that you are more privileged and, therefore, better than us, the hoi-polloi. It’s not your fault that you were filled with this total bollocks from birth, so I will give you one more chance to prove that you are neither selfish or an idiot:
What you must do, Mr Osborne, is implement immediately a policy of government spending. We can still borrow money at very good rates if there is not already the money in the pot and we are no more in debt than we have been for the majority of the last 250 years, so don’t worry about the deficit. The deficit is not the problem, the stagnation of the economy is and only you can get it going again. It has been proved to us all that your policy of austerity does not and cannot work and history has proved many an eminent economist right in this time and time again..
So...
Borrow money, spend on massive infrastructure projects to give the common man money to put food on the table and feed his family and his children and the economy will move again. Cut taxes for the rich and take money from our elderly and you will only serve yourself and your cronies (the idea of the money filtering down to the rest of us was proved wrong in Thatcher’s era –n another lesson you could have learned empirically from history), so please just show me that you may have just made a very silly mistake, but that you still care enough about me and the rest of us hoi-polloi to make a massive u-turn and profuse apology and then... You put the whole damn thing right again!
Come on Mr Osborne, Prove me you are not a selfish idiot and do the right thing, NOW