Statecraft without statism: Governing for shared prosperity in an age of austerity

摘要

The immediate challenges confronting the government of 2015 will be hardly less daunting than those the current one faces: regain a grip on the deficit by building a new fiscal framework from scratch, raise taxes sharply or cut deeply into delicate areas of spending that have so far been spared, and do so in a perilous political environment in which households adjust to three more years of an historic income squeeze. Even seven years after the crisis began, the recovery will be far from won. Yet governing from 2015 will require much more than a careful rescue mission. If shared growth is to be secured, an incoming administration will need to be radically reformist at the same time. It will need to both secure a recovery and fix the structural failures that caused living standards to falter, for all but the richest, before 2008. That means restoring the three conditions for broad-based real income growth: fuller employment; a stronger link from productivity to pay; and a sustainable welfare system to ensure that families with children share proportionately in growth. Attaining these conditions in the early 21st century will mean little less than re-crafting the state for new times.