The British Economy Is Now Doing Worse than it Did in the Great DepressionThis many months after the start of the Great Depression, the British economy was rapidly converging back to its pre-depression level of production under Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain's policy of using stimulative policies to restore the price level to its pre-Great Depression trajectory.
By contrast, the Cameron-Osborne policies of expansion-through-austerity have produced a flatline for real GDP, and the odds are high that British real GDP is headed down again.
In less than a year, if current forecasts come true, the Cameron-Osborne Depression will not be the worst depression in Britain since the Great Depression, but the worst depression in Britain… probably ever. That is quite an accomplishment. As Phillip Inman of the Guardian puts it:Right now the American economy, because it has been much closer to traditional stimulus models (though not ideally thanks to the GOP taking the House in 2010 with austerity bromides), has produced a recovery though not as strong as it could be (see first parenthetical).the UK's plan for recovery from the financial crisis was based on a full-throttle recovery in 2012... consumer confidence, business investment and general spending would converge to send the economy on a trajectory of above-average growth... the lack of investment will perplex ministers. They have done what the right-wing economists told them to do and moved out of the way – the theory being that public sector spending and investment was ‘crowding out’ the private sector...It did not work: “Spain is showing the way with its austerity-driven recession. Where the weak tread, we [in Britain] look keen to follow...”
But the GOP continues to push something that will not work -- in large part somewhat successfully through an ignorant populace and a media that isn't much better and which is dominated by stock-market pushers only.