History may not repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes. Is what Trump is doing as ‘unprecedented’ as every headline proclaims? I’m sure other wiser writers have spotted some of these historical echoes, but let’s remember some headlines from US history. Prohibition, a radical policy to appeal to the Conservative Christian right in the 1920s, made many an Al Capone (the Tech Bros of their time?) very rich. Austerity in the later 1920s took the US from slump to depression and the first go at tariffs in the 1930s, when Japan rather than China was the villain, led pretty directly to Pearl Harbour. McCarthyism in the 1950s banned many with any sort of leftish views from working in both Hollywood and Academia. Plenty of mad and radical policies there. The difference now is that he’s trying so many at once on the ‘throw it against the wall principle’’. Question is, of course, how much will stick.
“Pensions minister: ‘we have created saving pots, but not a pension system’”
The OBR (Office of Budget Responsibility, as opposed to the OBI, often said to be housed in No.11) said this week that pensions were one of the biggest problems to be faced by this and future governments.
