The U.K.’s new prime minister, Liz Truss, has an ambitious plan to revive her country’s flagging economy. It’s the only plan any British politician or economist has been able to offer that has any shot at success. It also very likely won’t work, alas, and mostly through no fault of Ms. Truss. Here follows a morality tale about modern economies and the modern political right.
The U.K. for years has suffered a productivity crisis, often delicately referred to as a “puzzle.” To the extent Britain’s economy has grown over the past decade, it has done so mainly because a higher share of the population was working, not because people were working more productively. This is an investment problem created by big government and accompanying taxation and regulation.
