20 July

How ‘The Economy’ was born. Margaret Thatcher was shrewd, she made generations of people believe that government budgets are like household budgets. Now most assume as common sense that governments need to tax and borrow to have money to spend (wrong, they actually ‘print’ money - they have an infinite amount); that government debt has to be repaid, by future generations if it’s large (wrong, it doesn’t need to repay itself); and that governments should have balanced budgets (wrong, a completely meaningless concept). These lies were invented by Thatcher to try to undermine the public sector. She succeeded.