Thursday, October 21, 2010

Meet The New Boss

Whilst British politics is usually characterised as being more left wing that the United States, compare the very real cuts in public spending being made by the very centrist coalition with what is on offer from the Republican Party in the upcoming midterm elections.

Even propelled on a Tea Party inspired wave, the GOP's platform pretty much rules out any cuts in spending, with promises to protect the most bloated areas of federal spending- social security, medicare and defence.

When you're being outflanked on fiscal conservatism by a coalition that includes Simon Hughes then it is hard to believe that the likely electoral success of the Republican party in November will mean any real change from the big spending ways of Obama.

3 comments:

James Higham said...

It's not the parties who run things.

Daphne said...

Yeah, that's my take too.

Needless to say, I'm not very jazzed about the elections.

Matthew said...

You could argue that as a % of GDP* UK spending will still be higher than US, so both parties are simply converging on the same level.

* I realise there are a lot of problems with this measure (e.g. it can be over 100% quite easily) but it does seem that countries with a higher % feel like they have more state spending.