What Blair gets wrong about the economy – it is fired by people, not business | Letters

Readers respond to Jonathan Freedland’s article about Tony Blair’s vision for the future

Jonathan Freedland says Tony Blair “would say you can only address [poverty and inequality] once the economy is firing. Maybe” (Tony Blair says he is all about the future – but his vision is woefully stuck in the past, 29 May). In fact poverty and inequality are the reasons the economy is misfiring. In the big economic crashes of history, gross inequality has been present.

After 47 years, you would think that the obsession with supply-side economics might have been rumbled, but no: acres of newsprint are expended on the idea that incentivised businessmen alone can reboot the economy. There can be no animal spirits if there is no market to buy the goods. And things like people having to spend as much as 40% of their weekly salary on rent explains why there is no market, at least not without people having to get into dangerous and silly amounts of debt.