nick venedi

Wednesday 7 July 2010

Public sector cuts and negative accounting methods

A lot is being said about the LibCon approach to reducing the public deficit and the method used is an obvious one. You tell people that all is lost and that at least 40% is to go. You then announce that you very 'competently' found a way to save the country and reduce the cuts to 25% that way people will be grateful. But I don't think that the general public are that stupid and they know that its all a big con!
The major difficulty I have with the way they want to do things is that they are ignoring the huge impact their approach is going to have on growth and it is obvious that we will be moving back into a deeper recession soon. The people they are going to be making redundant soon will have to go on benefits (as there are no jobs to have) and that will place an extra burden on public finances. They are, in other words, shifting costs from one public sector cost centre to another. In some cases, given the low wages a lot of public sector workers receive, the cost to the tax payer of someone going on benefits will be higher. Its all creative (or in this cases negative) accounting!

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