The Limits of Technocracy

UCL Uncovering Politics · Jun 16, 2022 · 31m

‘It’s the economy, stupid’. That, famously, was one of the organising principles of Bill Clinton’s campaign for the US presidency in 1992. Thirty years on, amidst a cost of living crisis, economic policy decisions still often dominate politics.

Some of the debates about economic policy relate to questions of fundamental values: how much weight should we place, for example, on the size of the cake or on its distribution?

But other debates focus on questions of fact. Would lowering taxes today fuel inflation? Did austerity a decade ago protect the public finances by bringing spending closer to…