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Mark Pack

Why budget maths makes me thinks of Escher

By Mark Pack | Fri 2nd July 2010 - 12:50 pm

A small state is smaller than a big state, right?

But now bear with me.

Take a glance at the heated rhetoric coming from Labour ranks about how the coalition government is hell bent on a right wing crusade to slash the size of the state.

Then consider this. The coalition’s spending plans will see public spending in 2015-16 at a fraction under 40% of GDP.

And you know what? That’s higher than it was under Labour in 1997-98 and in all the intervening years through to, and including, 2003-04. (See the graph here from Peter Hoskin.)

So the horrible dreadful right-wing small state still …

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