Pay Cuts, Profit Sharing and a National Minimum Wage

The Chancellor of the Exchequer continues resolutely to march backwards into our economic past-confirming the old Keynesian doctrine that plain men, who claim to eschew theory and concentrate on practice, usually do no more than apply the theories of a bygone age. Mr Lawson — retaining as Chancellor the habits he picked up when a journalist — is always particularly excited by old ideas that have been dressed up to look as if they are new. The latest is profit sharing- an idea currently popularised by Professor Martin Weitzman, taken up by the SDP because they find the latest fads irresistible and now adopted by the Government as a headline catching alternative to introducing the changes in policy which the economy so desperately needs.