Showing papers on "White paper published in 1983"

Sir Richard Hopkins and the “Keynesian Revolution” in Employment Policy, 1929-1945*

Abstract: Between I929 and the end of the Second World War official attitudes to employment policy changed to a degree which Keynes regarded as revolutionary. In I929 it was possible for a Chancellor of the Exchequer, Churchill, to resist proposals supported by Keynes for expenditure on public works to cure unemployment by referring to the "orthodox Treasury doctrine" which held that "very little additional employment and no permanent employment can in fact and as a general rule be created by State borrowing and State expenditure".' In I944, on the other hand, the government issued a White Paper accepting responsibility for "the maintenance of a high and stable level of employment after the war", and stated its belief that "in the past the power of public expenditure, skilfully applied, to check the onset of a depression has been underestimated". Moreover, whereas down to I940 the Chancellor's budget had been concerned only with cash accounting for central government revenue and expenditure, the I94i budget, with its accompanying White Paper on national income and expenditure,3 introduced a national accounting analytical framework which Keynes described as "a revolution in public finance".4 Aggregate demand management was first adopted to deal with wartime inflation, but the I944 White Paper on employment policy also used a Keynesian analysis of the forms of total expenditure on goods and services, and said that total expenditure must be prevented from falling to a level where general unemployment appeared.5 It is true that the I944 White Paper did not include deliberate planning for budget deficits on current expenditure; but it did not preclude such deficits appearing in some years, provided budgets were balanced over a longer period. Keynes himself had no doubt that the White Paper was a major landmark. It was based largely on an unpublished report, the Report of the Steering Committee on Post-War Employment,

The balderstone report: an overview

Abstract: In September 1981, the then Minister for Primary Industry set up a Working Group under the Chairmanship of Sir James Balderstone to prepare, within one year, a policy discussion paper on agriculture. The terms of reference were wide-ranging and included the need to identify the major policy issues and options relating to the agricultural sector. The relevant time horizon was taken to be the 1980s. The terms of reference were: (a) intersectoral relationships affecting agriculture, including resource development, wages policy and assistance to other sectors; (b) trade policy, in particular the impact of the Common Agriculture Policy of the EEC; (c) factors affecting technical and economic efficiency in agriculture; (d) current government assistance to agriculture, including the financial aspects of rural credit and taxation; (e) the marketing of farm products, including the role of statutory bodies; (f) agricultural resource management, including soil and water conservation; and (g) 'animal husbandry measures' which the Group interpreted as covering some of the problems of the intensive livestock industries and live sheep exports which have attracted the concern of some animal liberation and welfare movements. It would be impossible to discuss all of the terms of reference in detail in this overview. What I propose to do is to raise some of the conceptual and philosophical issues which might be reflected in the Report and then to discuss some of the specific policy recommendations which might provide a basis for more detailed discussion. It is important to emphasise that the Group's instructions were to provide a discussion paper and not to come up with a White Paper (in the old terminology) which might have been construed as actual government policy with respect to the rural sector.

Jack Weinberg and Theodora Fine

Abstract: This commentary both affirms many of the recommendations contained in Dr. Upton’s white paper and additionally attempts to paint a portrait of the prospective problems older population groups may face in the wake of a National Health Insurance program that fails to provide coverage for nervous, mental, or emotional disorders. While we accept as a given the fact that the elderly do not have exactly the same hopes, needs, abilities, or problems as any other generation of Americans, we do believe that some of the problems and, indeed, some of the recommendations contained herein will parallel those faced by all who, suffering from a mental disorder, will seek help under a future federal health insurance program that takes as its minimum benefit package today’s Medicare program. As the white paper notes, such is the case in nearly all of the major proposals considered in the 96th and 97th Congress