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This paper criticizes the supply-side economic policy promoted by the UK government under Prime Minister Liz Truss. According to the conventional interpretation, the stagnation and productivity crisis in the UK economy is due to the excessive tax burden on large corporations and the tax burden on the richest 1%. If these tax liabilities were reduced, it would increase the profitability of investment, demand and the rate of growth. This would translate into better incomes and higher levels of employment. This story is based on the Laffer curve and associated with the "trickle down" hypothesis, falsified by empirical evidence. Tax reductions for the richest people worsen the distribution of income, and do not raise income or employment. The cause and effect is from profits to investment and growth; not from spending to profits and growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After 40 years of neoliberalism, even governments believe that they are inefficient when compared to the private sector. And economics, in its swing to the right, reinforces this view. The philosophy behind public expenditure for social purposes and the criteria for judging such projects has not been a subject of public debate until recently. In particular, industrial policy was very simple: leave it to the private sector to allocate resources as the market prompts. In Keynes's time, this was not the case. This article reviews some of the issues concerning the industrial policy that was aired in the interwar period. The debate needs to be revived, revisited and, where appropriate, revised to suit the present day, but on basic principles there is much to learn from the interwar discussions. The contrast between the recent (2018) UK government's White Paper on industrial strategy and the Liberal Industrial Inquiry's Britain's Industrial Future (1928) is quite instructive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]