*we have made it too difficult to build anything in this country. We are not building houses, we are not building business premises, we are not building infrastructure, we are not building power stations – we are not even building water reservoirs.
Britain is 4 million homes short of the European average. Similar data for office buildings, retail and hospitality venues is harder to come by, but there has to be a similar gap for those. The road network is about a third below EU average. Electricity output is about a third below the EU average. Britain needlessly deprives itself of some of the key input factors of a prospering economy, much like the pot of a Bonsai tree deprives the roots of the tree the space it needs to grow.
And that, ultimately, is the main problem with this obsession with wealth inequality. It is not just that it lends itself to bad policy prescriptions, like the wealth tax. The bigger problem is the opportunity cost. Every minute we spend talking about wealth taxes and wealth inequality is a minute we no longer spend talking about how to build things.*