On 15 October, the UK Ministry of Defence’s think tank, the Development Concepts and Doctrine Centre, published its sixth Global Strategic Trends report. ‘The Future Starts Today’ draws on a range of analysis across academia, business, government departments and nations from across the globe, including commissioned research by our research partners CUSP.
The second in our series of briefing papers on building An Economy That Works explores inequality in the UK. It examines the evidence for rising inequality over the last fifty years, estimates the economic welfare lost to society from an unequal distribution of incomes and addresses the critical question of managing inequality in the context of declining growth rates.
This first in our series of briefing papers on building An Economy That Works explores the underlying phenomenon of ‘secular stagnation’—a long-term decline in the rate of growth of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The paper examines the evidence, explores the causes and discusses the implications of what some now call the ‘new normal’.
Budgets are routinely analysed by people who believe there is nothing problematic about economic growth. Forecast rates of GDP growth play a key role in the Budget calculations, and Budgets are praised or criticised based on the e ect they are deemed to have on future growth. In our view, such analysis misses a critical aspect of the contemporary debate: namely the prospect that there may be environmental, social and secular limits to economic growth.