Short of living under a rock since Greta Thurnberg started getting regular visits from her school attendance officer, everyone knows what the Green New Deal is; a government led transformation of our carbon intensive economy to a green one providing lots of well paid jobs in the process.
A few of you might have your suspicions about how it could be paid for ranging from:
- hope (economic boom, so taxes!)
- to panic (it’s the bees! We need to ignore the cost and just get on with it!)
- to cynicism (ahhh, I remember the first Green Deal).
You’d all be wrong.
The Green New Deal should be paid for in the same way we pay for Quantitative Easing (or to give it its proper name, Enriching The Rich Because Trickle Down). At the stroke of a keyboard, money will appear in the government’s accounts, ready for spending into our hot little hands.
OMG! But what about the money we’ll owe China? Haven’t the boomers already screwed the planet? Don’t let them add to the debt mountain!
Keep Calm and Read On. Economics 101 has meant that you think about an economy like a household budget. Money is earnt, then spent. The difference every month is the deficit, the cumulative figure is debt.
Debt is bad. Debt needs to be paid back. Debt means higher taxes. Too much debt means higher interest rates! I don’t care what Ford Prefect says, PANIC!