The Daily Telegraph is agonising over the huge question that all major (well run) economies are facing - namely why is employment growing when growth is so poor.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeremy-warner/9863483/No-one-really-understands-whats-going-on-in-our-economy.html
The real problem here is about the measures - when the global economy is expanding, it's probably a good idea to keep an eye on inflation as an indicator of monetary growth. When debt is the problem (government, private and banking) we need other objectives. Should we not be measuring the reduction in the levels of these debts? And these measures should be absolute not as a % of GDP (which measures growth). It seems to me that growth is an erroneous expectation, whilst we are downsizing the size of: our state, the banks and private debts. In fact GDP flat-lining could rationalised as good news. The ineptitude of this Government is to have set goals to shrink the economy but still expect to be judged on GDP growth!
The other major major problem with keeping a focus on these growth orientated measures is that we end up penalising the very people we should be supporting - SAVERS!
The united policy of both UK governments since the credit crunch (Gordon Brown's and David Cameron's) have been to pay for the years of largess by stealing the hard earned savers of the middle classes. Policies of increases taxation on savers and QE, which keeps interest rates low are both death to savers. This approach can be blamed on the fact that they focus on the wrong measures - if they were able to see that growth is unlikely when you need to reduce debt they would be rewarding savings. The natural consequence of this is that they would be squeezing the life out of zombie companies and over borrowed individuals who are killing our economy, which would give new life to those who can create the green shoots of recovery
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