Economic Illiteracy of The Left

I wonder if Gordon took time off from his er, busy schedule to watch the excellent series about money on ch 4 by the historian Niall Ferguson. If he did perhaps he will take the clear lessons Ferguson draws about the folly of Welfare Statism and the economic fallacy it embodies.He cited the salutary lesson of Japan whose Welfare State appeared at first to have bucked economic reality only to see its whole shaky structure come tumbling down in the face of an unforseen demographic timebomb dynamic. Exposed for a gigantic ponzi pyramid scam the parallels with the British experiment of welfarism hardly need making.

A second example was Chile which was run into the ground by Allende the mad Marxist in the late 60's, early 70's only to be rescued by the Friedmanesque monetarist policies ushered in by Pinochet, the Left's bette noire.He turns out to have been a percursor of Thatcherism,eschewing centralist command economic Statism for free market capitalism which saw Chile go from the economic basket case of Central America to its bread basket. A timely message indeed for a premier hell bent it would appear, on taking this country on one of the greatest State economic binges in recorded history.