Hard-hitting IT commentator Dr Simon Moores gives his personal take
on the hot issue of the day.
Historically, periods of economic growth and low taxation go hand
in hand. So while I welcome what the Chancellor has given to small
business, in terms of tax cuts and funding incentives for going
online, I don't believe that higher taxes for individual or
corporates will fend off the threat of a downturn in the global
economy.
Also, having once worked on a voluntary basis, one day a week, in a
large London hospital A&E unit, I'm not convinced more money
holds the solution to a crumbling health service.
Increasing the tax burden at a time of economic uncertainty has
never struck me as a particularly good idea, even when a shamefully
Goebbels-like attempt was made to sweeten the message by
surrounding a clearly uncomfortable Chancellor with a group of
small children with red lunchboxes and equally bright red
sweatshirts offering astute economic advice.
Ironically, there was a time when I wrote speeches for politicians,
so I'm hardly guiltless. In mitigation, these were on technology
matters rather than economic policy, but knowing how little they
knew about the former, I sometimes wonder how much they knew about
the latter.
We can talk, as usual, about a Budget for the IT industry or, more
accurately, a Budget for business, which this certainly wasn't, but
I do believe we need to grasp that technology and the growing
information economy is rapidly creating a gulf that politicians
can't hope to fill.
"Politicians," as the LSE's Ian Angel writes, "are complaining
about their loss of control over the national destiny. They gave up
on the financial markets years ago." Meanwhile, computerisation is
deskilling and, far worse, displacing a large proportion of the
working population, a third of the 1990s banking workforce alone.
The government, to its credit, has pursued a programme of education
designed to offer people the IT skills needed to find work in an
information society, but invariably the skills on offer don't
reflect the areas of real demand. Making the transition from
unemployed assembly-line worker to certified Cisco engineer is not
always an easy one.
Returning briefly to Professor Angel and his "Age of Rage":
"Because the masses were needed in the production process, the
bourgeoisie was forced to share wealth around and this eventually
led to the present dependency culture. But in the information age,
who are the new bourgeoisie, now that production takes place inside
a human head, rather than in a factory of machines? And what is
their attitude to the masses now they no longer need them?"
While this may have been a Budget for education, government has to
grasp the fact that technology and automation, in conjunction with
an expanding service economy, produces proportionately fewer
skilled jobs at one level and a demand for more "burger flippers"
at a second. In between, the millions who once worked in the
declining manufacturing sector have fewer prospects in
transitioning to new-economy jobs.
In planning for future Budgets, I would urge the government to
think more even more deeply about the changes that technology is
forcing upon us and the impact that this will have on our society
in 10 years' time. How do we get from where we were, a
manufacturing economy, to where we want to be, an information
economy, beyond the application of some very broad brush stroke
initiatives. There's a huge amount of work to do and I suspect,
very little time to do it in before the true social impact of new
technology makes itself felt.
Has Brown missed the boat with the Budget?>>CW360.com reserves the right to edit and publish answers on the
Web site. Please state if your response is not for
publication.Zentelligence: Setting the world to rights with the collected
thoughts and ramblings of the futurist writer, broadcaster and
Computer Weekly columnist Simon Moores.