This economic management thing is difficult, isn't it?

We have some sympathy with this argument, despite its source:

One clear example of an industry not needing a bailout is the supermarkets, which are set to receive a £3bn business rates holiday this year as a result of the government’s support package. Shortly after the rates holiday was announced, Sainsbury’s put out a stock market announcement welcoming the news and highlighting that the company paid more than £500m in business rates last year. The company’s share price surged – the rates holiday is worth more than twice the company’s annual profit. Tesco has a business rates bill of £700m – equal to 50% of its profits for 2019. On Wednesday, the company increased its dividend by 60% – proposing a payout to shareholders of £637m. What possible argument does the company have that it needs a government subsidy?

To find ourselves having even sympathy with an argument put forward by Tax Watch UK feels uncomfortable.

The point that we - rather than Tax Watch - would make about this being that gosh, this managing an economy in detail thing is hard, isn’t it? This being a useful observation for us to carry with us into those sunlit uplands of the post-coronavirus world.

That world out there, that economy, is complex. It isn’t possible for a few people to sit at the centre and decide what should be done in it. It’s not even, as the above shows, possible for those few Fat Controllers to decide in that detail how it should be taxed or not so the idea that they can do anything more complex like decide pay rates, production levels or methods is absurd.

We are, here in crisis, attempting to do some planning of the economy and that’s fine, it’s a crisis. But the lesson to be taken from how badly it’s being done is that it’s not something we should be trying to do in the future.

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