Podcast 88: Britain’s negative-sum society

The concept of a zero-sum game was fashionable in the 1970s. The idea was simple: competing interest groups, and especially unions, would fight for ever-bigger shares of the nation’s cake, and their gains would mean losses to others. Fast forward to 2026, and what we have now is a negative-sum game: cake for some reduces the cake for others, and reduces the size of the cake. The result is lower economic growth.
 
This is indeed playing out now: the government’s core motors for economic growth – 1.5 million new houses, net zero  – are coming up against the need to pay for more welfare and other public services. To cover all this, the government has raised taxes, notably on the business costs of labour, and borrowed a lot more. The result: higher labour costs and higher costs of capital. Add to this the highest costs of industrial energy in the developed economies, and the results for economic growth can only be negative. Now add in the new renters’ rights with increased costs to landlords, and thence the supply of rented housing going down, whilst the higher labour costs have increased the costs of building new houses and reduced demand. 1979 is with us again. The negative-sum game is not sustainable, and thus it will not be sustained.

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