from Hacker News

‘Liz Truss hasn’t understood a word I wrote’, says PM’s favourite author

by enviclash on 10/1/22, 7:36 PM with 19 comments

• by googlryas on 10/1/22, 9:03 PM

  This happens all the time and is just part of the boring non-news cycle.

  1) important person X says their favorite Y is Z.

  2) creator of Z has different politics than X so they do an interview saying person X is stupid and doesn't understand Z.

  3) the cycle moves on 5 minutes later.

• by tuatoru on 10/1/22, 9:00 PM

  "Perlstein said that, if she read his books with the attentiveness she claimed, she would not have risked our pensions and mortgages with a naïve belief that tax cuts would stimulate economic growth and raise revenue for the Treasury. Far from paying for themselves, Reagan’s income and capital gains tax cuts in the early 1980s sent public debt from 26 per cent GDP in 1980 to 41 per cent GDP by 1988."

  This suggests quite the opposite to me. Truss has said repeatedly and clearly that she wants to shrink government.

  If she has read Perlstein's books, and also Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine[1], she is merely applying what she has read.

  No one should be surprised either now, or soon when the Bristish PM says that "debt has to be cut, so we are privatising the NHS and cutting pensions".

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine

• by throwaway81523 on 10/2/22, 2:10 AM

  Reminds me of the Woody Allen scene with Marshall McLuhan.

• by jokethrowaway on 10/1/22, 10:14 PM

  That's correct - as long as she can't shrink the government and reduce spending.

  From my experience, governments rarely get something done, so it's unlikely she will have enough political power to cut the government down.

  I'm not following the UK news, but it sounds to me like she cut down taxes to create an emergency situation and force the political apparatus to cut down on spending or face record high debt.

  Hats off if it works: if it doesn't, I think western governments are doomed to grow larger and larger until their host country collapses, productive people flee somewhere else and who's left will rebuild a smaller government from the ashes starting the cycle again.

• by yieldcrv on 10/1/22, 8:46 PM

  Think the UK will get 3 Prime Ministers in 30 days?