We know we owe a lot of money.
If it’s government we call it a national debt – or is it a deficit, I am never sure.
In business we call it leverage (or foreign investment).
In private households we call it a mortgage, or credit card. Or pay day loan. Or student fees. Then there’s always the pawn shop, or selling granny's engagement ring & grandad’s gold watch.
Add it all together & the nation’s true debt is many times greater than the nation’s income.
Now some bright spark has come up with the idea of starting as you mean to continue.
Babies (or parents, on their behalf) should take out a loan from a new government child-care contribution scheme to pay for someone to look after them while mummy and daddy go out to work.
Mothers in particular are said to turn their backs on going out to work if that adds very little, all things considered, to the family income. And that is bad for the economy.
Doubly bad in fact, because going out to work means that the mother earns a wage AND the value of the child care, which she used to provide for ‘free’, also gets monetised, so contributing twice over to GDP. The snag is that, without subsidy, simple arithmetic dictates that the mother must pay the one who provides the care less than she herself is paid.
These wizard wheezes are said, by Anushka Asthana writing in The Times, to be supported by senior figures in the Treasury. I hope that means politicos, not permanent civil servants. Surely they cannot fall for the line that it doesn’t count as real debt because if you can’t pay it back someone will let you off; otherwise it’s just a way of spreading the costs over time.
Isn’t that what the Ministry of Defence tried to do?
