The Thin End

Shocked into action by the potential mortality from the coronavirus pandemic, governments around the world are acting to release huge sums of money into their economies.  Today, the UK chancellor announced that he was making available over £330 bn to support businesses during the crisis.  This is by far the biggest ever peace-time intervention in the economy.  It is right that governments should respond.  Millions of lives depend on them doing so.  But it should make us think about whether we have been getting our priorities right in the past, and whether we are now doing so.   Poverty kills just as relentlessly as does the coronavirus.  It attacks the most vulnerable.  Yet, the government invests too little in preventing it.  This has been particularly so over the last decade, where both child poverty and pensioner poverty have increased.  Poverty comes in different ways.  A report two years ago showed...