ronib
MaizieD at the risk of appearing cantankerous, from my perspective the government has spent mega billions but it wasn’t to grow the economy. It was to pay for Covid, lockdowns and also the energy crisis caused in part by the war in Ukraine.
Is there any money left to grow the economy?
Well, if you'd read my post thoroughly you will see that I said that proposals for state spending could be assessed by voters on their benefit to the country, rather than a spurious 'affordability. And this was in the context of election manifesto proposals.
Yes, the current government spent 'mega billions, but this was in an emergency situation and wasn't put to the electorate to vote on. Part of its purpose was to keep the economy running when businesses weren't able to function normally (not growth) and it did, to a certain extent though it was poorly planned in that it didn't help sections of the population, such as some 3 million self employed people who weren't eligible under the qualifying criteria for support. It was also poorly executed and subject to fraud.
Also, of course, it was wasted by such things as trying to set up an entirely new test and trace system while completely ignoring excellent existing local authority systems which had experience and expertise could have been a foundation for the necessary expansion to cover the covid crisis.
And do I have to point out the unlawful procurement procedures which marginalised experienced providers of PPE and poured money into companies with no experience whatsoever but were given contracts through the VIP channel because they were set up by friends and relatives of tory ministers or by tory donors... Many of which sold the government unusable PPE at vastly inflated prices...
As for the financial support for energy bills, it was a good scheme, but marred by the fact that the government did nothing to prevent profiteering by the energy companies, nor i it attempting to claw back the excess profits by way of a windfall tax.
So much poorly planned and executed state spending...
Is there any money left to grow the economy?
The government cannot run out of money. It creates money all the time and could create enough for well planned and executed spending if it had a mind to. Which our current government doesn't.
Spending on the NHS, Education, the criminal justice system, regulation of the water industry, improving social care, green energy (and other sectors which people might name) are all areas where the money spent would sustain business and promote economic activity with the money spent to a very large extent returning to the government via taxation.
I would just point out that since the global financial crisis in 2008 governments have 'created' some £900billion of new money. Despite the common belief that 'money printing' causes inflation' there has been no general inflation resulting from this money creation. There was inflation of financial asset prices as much of the created money ended up with already wealthy people, but this is not something that affects most of the population.
The current inflation has been caused by increased costs of goods and services because of a variety of causes. But those causes do not include excess money in the economy.