Marianna Mazzucato, wrong again as so often

Marianna Mazzucato is the right sort of writer for The Guardian: as the Daily Mash puts it, that newspaper is wrong about everything, always. So, here she is telling us that it's very important indeed that government spend lots of lovely money on the area that Professor Mazzucato thinks important:

Growth is determined by strategic spending on areas that increase productivity, which in the UK is still below the OECD average. This includes investing in training, education, research and development, and state-of-the-art infrastructure. So while there has been a boost to some infrastructure spending, the lack of vision on what kind of economy we need for sustainable long-term growth means there has been little discussion about the direction of growth.

Growth is most certainly produced by investment spending, this is entirely correct. But as Matt Ridley has pointed out, it does rather depend upon who does that spending:

In 2003, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development published a paper on the “sources of economic growth in OECD countries” between 1971 and 1998 and found, to its surprise, that whereas privately funded research and development stimulated economic growth, publicly funded research had no economic impact whatsoever. None. This earthshaking result has never been challenged or debunked. It is so inconvenient to the argument that science needs public funding that it is ignored.

There's not much of a case left for government spending on such things after that, is there? Which leaves Professor Mazzucato's argument where it always has been, a justification for the EU to determine what is researched via research money funneled through the EU. Which is why, in our opinion, the EU funded her research in the first place.