This is getting ridiculous.  Shockingly bad policy is now being shown empirically to be shockingly bad. Only thing is, the policy proponents aren’t admitting they were wrong.

I get randomness. I understand that we don’t know exactly where the UK would be without austerity policies.  We don’t have a control group, there’s no clear comparison. But come on, the result is as predicted by those who said austerity was a bad idea and totally different from what proponents were claiming. Huge double dip recession at an accelerating rate in the UK.

So why isn’t their an admission and about-turn? Because no clear measure of how to measure the success of the policy were ever put into the public space. So now proponents can, and probably will, say how much worse it would have been without austerity.  Nonsense.

All major policy proposals should include an analysis of what the impact is expected to be with and without the policy, reviewed by credible, independent observers.  (Like the CBO in the US.)  Then, when the policies turn out to be rubbish, let’s haul out the predictions and see what was promised.

Madness.