New year, new deal?
January 6, 2009
The Government has announced new plans to create 100,000 jobs through a number of public works programmes including schools, hospitals, transport and environmental work. This is a move that is also being developed in America, where President-elect Obama has indicated his desire to emulate the type of projects introduced by Franklin D Roosevelt in the early 1930’s to help the United States pull itself out of the Great Depression. Gordon Brown has said:
“The imagination and humanity at the heart of some of the great New Deal innovations changed American politics for ever and shaped the future of progressive politics across the world”.
This news comes as yet more jobs are lost on the high street, with Woolworths finally closing its doors and a succession of other retailers following the same path over the last few weeks including Adams and USC. Marks and Spencer is also expected to announce 1,000 job cuts after a poor period of trading over Christmas.
It is hoped that the Government proposals will help to reduce the impact of the recession on the numbers of unemployed people, although how big a dent this will make is unclear, given that the British Chambers of Commerce has predicted one in ten Britons will be unemployed by 2010. However the New Deal style interventions appear to indicate more than a practical exercise to combat the effects of the recession; this is a move away from a style of Government implemented in the 1980s under Thatcher; which advocated less Government intervention in business and the economy, and more self-regulation and ‘look after yourself’ ideas. It has been argued that this way of thinking is the reason the credit crunch eventually happened, so a new way of leading the UK and US, with more state intervention, may be a popular move with the general public.
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