6 July

The oldest trick in the modern conservative's playbook is to knee-cap taxation (on the wealthy), and then claim the resulting budget deficit is due to too much spending. The spending doesn't change much at all, it's just that on the income side of the ledger the government keeps cutting income, by cutting taxes. Their ultimate motive for this is to remove government services. Which they get away with by saying we 'can't afford' it. They and their crony mates get richer, by paying less tax. The rest of us end up paying more and more out of our own pockets for services that used to be collectively provided. Education and health care, road tolls, getting more expensive each year. Etc. At the same time the average person doesn't know that the Budget isn't the 'Economy', though these conservatives want them to think that. It's just a balance sheet for a given year of income and expenditure. The 'Economy' is the wider productive wealth of the nation.