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- [00:00]
Merryn Somerset Webb
This is Saigon, the story of my family and of the country that shaped us.
- [00:06]
iHeart Podcasts Announcer
From iheart Podcasts. Saigon.
- [00:08]
Andy Haldane
You don't think I'm serious about a
- [00:10]
iHeart Podcasts Announcer
free Vietnam, One city, a divided country and the war that tore America apart?
- [00:15]
Andy Haldane
This is for Vietnam.
- [00:16]
Merryn Somerset Webb
They're pouring petrol all over here. Freedom for Vietnam. There's a fire coming to this country and it's going to burn out everything.
- [00:24]
iHeart Podcasts Announcer
Listen to Saigon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:33]
Merryn Somerset Webb
Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio news. Welcome to Marin Talks Money, the podcast in which people who know the markets explain the markets. I am Maren Sumset Web and this week I am speaking with Andy Haldane, former chief economist at the bank of England. Andy, welcome to Marin Talks Money.
- [01:00]
Andy Haldane
Marin, it's wonderful as ever to be joining you.
- [01:03]
Merryn Somerset Webb
Well, the UK knocked around as sort of number six in the world in terms of GDP as a whole. Go down to GDP per capita, GDP per head, and we're actually knocking around 26, 27, which I think is something of a shock for most Brits. We're poor, we're not getting any richer, our economy is a mess, even our housing market is a mess up. I find it quite hard to find those optimistic bones in my body right now. And you know, even as we are speaking, we're speaking, by the way, On Tuesday the 21st, just as I was waiting, Andy, for you to come on, I was having it look at what was going on in the stock market and I see that Chris Nicholson is down 39% in a matter of minutes on a profit warning. I mean, quite a bad profit warning, but nonetheless, just another example to me of the extraordinary fragility of everything in the UK at the moment. So listen, I'll tell you what, Andy, let's start with some of those miseries. Got to take this seriously, you know, let's start with the UK's fiscal situation. We really do have a very major problem there and it makes it really hard for us to start doing the things that we need to do. And the classic problem there, of course, is defence. We know we have to spend more money on defense, but we simply don't have the money. Our fiscal situation is just too tight. So let's start there. Is there any hope that you can find in the UK's fiscal situation?
- [02:21]
Andy Haldane
There's absolutely hope and I feel you punctured my balloon before I even inflated it there. Sorry, The. Let's start. Listen, the starting point is not as anyone would wish. Growth is too low Inflation is too high and the fiscal position is far too precarious. That is why when the world sneezes, the UK catches a cold. And this year has been another example of that being the case. We are a high beta leveraged bet on the global economy and this year has demonstrated that, as if we needed proof. Nonetheless, and all matters fiscal, I agree with you. We are in straitened fiscal times. Our debt stock relative to national income has trebled over the course of this century. We have yet to run a fiscal surplus this century and we're shelling out now north of £100 billion each year just in interest payments. So I would say there is very little if any fiscal space left unless some hard choices are made about cutting spending. I think we are taxed out as a nation. We are maxed out when it comes to borrowing. So the knife must fall on public spending if we are to chisel out some more room for defense spending, which surely we must. Which surely we must in these insecure times.
- [03:59]
Merryn Somerset Webb
There is Tony Levin, Can I just interrupt you before we move on to the but, which I'm really looking forward to. Really looking forward to the but. You know, historically, when you look at UK tax and GDP numbers, you know, all countries, one of the odd things about countries and tax right. All countries seem to have their own limit when it comes to the percentage of GDP they're prepared to stump up in tax. And historically for the UK it's knocked around 36, 37% and we're now heading for over 40%, which seems unsustainable anyway.
- [04:29]
Andy Haldane
Yes, yes. And I think we are. I mean, even the Office for Budget Responsibility in its report around the spring statement a few weeks ago, pretty much said as much, albeit in slightly closeted terms, that we are reaching the point where any further rises in the tax rate risks shrinking revenues by disincentivizing whether it's working or selling a business or wherever it might.
- [05:00]
Merryn Somerset Webb
We may even be there already. We don't know. We'll only be able to see over the next couple of years whether we've already raised rates to the point in the Laffer Curve where everyone goes, well, do you know what I want?
- [05:09]
Andy Haldane
Exactly. So wherever, precisely, we are certainly near to that point. So the name of the game, if we are to cut ourselves some fiscal slack, will be about spending cuts.
- [05:21]
Merryn Somerset Webb
And so where do those cuts spend again? Where do those cuts come again? Before we get to the but. Which, as I say, I'm looking forward to, where would those in your mind, where would they come? One of the numbers that I keep looking at in some incredulity is the fact that welfare spending is now the same or slightly higher as the total income tax. Take. Now, obviously when we talk about welfare spending, we're including pensions, but nonetheless, if you say to a young person today, by the way, every penny, every penny that you pay an income tax is going in, welfare is going on some kind of benefit spend, that hurts, that hurts.
- [05:55]
Andy Haldane
Well, I mean, the only two places where you find yourself some real money is either the NHS budget or the welfare and pensions budget. And to be clear, so the welfare and pensions in total is north about a third of a trillion pounds per year.
- [06:16]
Merryn Somerset Webb
We spent about 330something billion. Yeah, yeah.
- [06:20]
Andy Haldane
Which actually the larger part goes on pensions rather than welfare. And indeed it's the pensions bit that's been rising more rapidly rather than the welfare bit. So I would say on the assumption, which is not an unreasonable assumption, that the NHS has some special status and indeed giving our health challenges, it'd be hard to take the knife to that anytime soon. I think then the ax would need to fall. If you're finding yourself a decent chunk of change, I'm talking, you know, real money, tens of billions. If we are on debt, on defense, if we're shy of 2 and a half percent of GDP and need to get say to 3 and a half percent of GDP, that's an extra 1% of GDP, around 30 billion per year. You're not getting that out of any budget other than NHS or welfare, pension. So I think looking seriously at the triple lock, looking seriously at the allocation of welfare spending is, I think, a sine qua non of us getting to a more defensible position on defense.
- [07:30]
Merryn Somerset Webb
There's been talk about war bonds, defense bombs, launching a specific class of guilt for defense. Does that make any sense to you? I mean, I look at that and I think when I tell you how that could really work, and it's been suggested by a few people, it would really work if you said, you know what, we're going to launch these new bonds, they're specifically for defence and we don't normally hypothecate in the uk, but you know, why not at this point, if you made those defense gilts free of inheritance tax.
- [07:58]
Andy Haldane
So on this, two things, one, I think that is an avenue, but I wouldn't pursue it as an alternative to doing something on spending. I think the market's tolerance for this, the credibility of the UK's fiscal position first needs buttressing. And buttressing means this Government demonstrating it has the ability to make politically difficult choices around spending. I think without that any further borrowing risks of raspberry from the markets subject to that. Do I think there's something that could be separately labeled and separately marketed? I think probably yes. Would that require a tax sweetener, either inheritance or maybe even as part of an temporary extension of the ISA allowance? Yes, I think as you know and as you've spoken about extensively, I think you're right to speak about it. We have north of 2 trillion pounds parked up in cash earning negative real returns. Bringing some of that into the equation in a sort of patriot bond, a war bond. I think that could be quite good marketing and quite good fiscal arithmetic. So yes, I think that ought to be an option on the table, but as a complement to, rather than substitute for doing something on spending.
- [09:31]
Merryn Somerset Webb
Okay. And I suppose none of this would matter, none of this would matter at all if the economy was growing properly. I mean, one of the. This is the core problem. This is the core problem. If the economy was growing properly in real terms by 2%, 3%, 4% a year, if GDP per capita was growing at any particular speed, then we wouldn't particularly have to worry about cutting spending because these problems take care of themselves. But it's just not. It's just not. So this is where we come to your but which I thought was going
- [10:03]
Andy Haldane
to be just not yet. And you're right. I mean growth is the great redeemer for debt problems, public debt problems in particular. You grow your way rather than digging your way out of a debt problem. So that ups the ante on us making good on the oft heard claim from politicians over many decades now, Marin, who have had growth as their number one objective. Here's the. But here's the good news, right? If you were a Martian or any other planet, actually an alien, looking at not the public balance sheet, but the private balance sheet of the uk, you would say in aggregate it is in rude health. Okay, I mentioned those fiscal deficits that have been running for the whole century. Actually, both households and companies in the UK are running financial surpluses. And if you look at their balance sheet fundamentals, levels of debt, both corporate and household are at modest levels by historical standards. So in terms of the balance sheet fundamentals of UK plc, we are poised for liftoff. There is plenty of fuel in the tank, plenty of ammunition, there's to be fired. Balance sheets are poised to be put to work, investment spending and the like. So the, you know, this is one source of optimism. If the private balance sheet was broken as well as the public balance sheet. That would be a council of despair. As it is, private balance sheets are in pretty good shape. Not everywhere and for every company or household, but in general they are.
- [11:56]
Merryn Somerset Webb
Well, that's nice, but you have to then look at that and say, find that might be a reason why people aren't spending and investing. And something has to change to incentivize them to do so. And a very high tax, very high regulation, very politically uncertain environment makes that difficult.
- [12:16]
Andy Haldane
It does, it does. So what's getting in the way? Why are they saving rather than spending their balance sheet? Why are they not putting it to work? I mean, part of it's the way of the world, let's be honest, the world is a noisy, uncertain place and I totally get the desire to squirrel away some money for a rainy day. And let's be honest, this year once again has brought a whole sequence of eight weeks of rainy days since the Iranian crisis struck. So some of that is just the way of the world. But you're right, a chunk of it is domestically induced self harm, if you like, which is uncertainty around policy, which has been very acute over the past few years. I mean, both Budget 24 and Budget 25 took the legs from beneath the animal spirits of companies and households, either because of fearfulness of tax rises or in some cases because of actual tax rises. So we need government and policy to sign the Hippocratic oath and to genuinely do no harm. I think the spring statement did a reasonable job on that actually, in that it was a, it was a much smaller known news event and that was better than some of its predecessors. But more than that, this government and previous ones need to get serious about providing the enabling environment for spending to take place, for animal spirits to be revivified, for balance sheets to be put back to work. We have. And you. I discussed this previously. We have a crazy tax system in this country. Not just the level of rights which we've discussed, but it's complexity. 21,000 pages among, if not the longest in the world. Taking a chainsaw or a pickaxe to that rather than the pruning shears is absolutely what was needed. And what's true of tax is also true of regulation. Again, it used to be a regulator, for heaven's sake, but nonetheless, the individually well intended actions of now more than 100 regulators in the UK nonetheless can collectively add up to a quagmire. And that is where we find ourselves. And on both regulation and to a lesser extent on tax this government, like its predecessors, has talked big and acted small. And that will need to change if we are to have companies and households put their balance sheets back to work.
- [15:10]
Merryn Somerset Webb
Perrin. Yeah, I mean, I think you're absolutely right that in many cases it's often less the rate of tax, particularly when it comes to corporate activity and you know, starting a small business, for example, or anything like that, you know, you don't tend to think about the actual rate of tax when you do that. What you do think about is the admin hurdles. The admin and regulatory hurdles. And these are so difficult. And we know, you know, in the great taxa billionaires saga that we hear all the time, we know that actually the majority of them, the tax gap comes from, from corporates, from small businesses. And a lot of that will, maybe some of it's deliberate, but a lot of it is just, I can't do this admin. This is just too hard.
- [15:43]
Andy Haldane
As someone who set up their own small business few years ago, I've felt the full force of that and I've been absolutely, you know, I heard the howls of derision. But now having sampled this myself, I'm completely with small business owners and thinking this is an endless and rising tide of compliance which again, individually well intentioned. But the collective consequence I think is an overburdened engine of the economy because of course, corporates are the engine of the economy.
- [16:21]
Merryn Somerset Webb
And it's an interesting utter failure of the public sector to understand the extent of the friction that is involved. I mean, we always say when it comes to. Right. About investing, we talk about investing in personal finance a lot and one of the things that prevents people investing prevents them sorting out their personal finance. It's friction, it's admin. Literally. There is nothing in the world that people hate more, apart from, you know, war, I guess. But in general, admin. Admin is everybody's personal.
- [16:47]
Andy Haldane
Hell, yes. An overly complex admin of that that oozes for every port. So there's lots that could be done. I mean, the good news is, because there's a risk there of us disappearing down a plug hole again, I blame you for that. Is we're fixable with the political will and a degree of political skill, these are fixable problems. They're not intractable, they're difficult, but they're not intractable. Problems to solve. And in the spirit of adding in a further dose of optimism, whisper it quietly. But UK PLC might be the most innovative nation on the planet, right?
- [17:28]
Merryn Somerset Webb
Absolutely.
- [17:30]
Andy Haldane
So you look at the pipeline of venture capital backed Businesses that are growing like Topsy and we rank this would be businesses north of 25 million a year revenue. So not yet unicorns, not yet with wings, but nonetheless the Celts and thoroughbreds that are rising at real pace. The businesses we know are the wellspring of job creation, of value creation, on of productivity generation. If you rank the UK on the absolute number of those cults and thoroughbreds, short of unicorns, but nonetheless with the potential to grow wings, we rank third behind the US and China in numbers and on a per capita basis because guess what, a lot more people in China in the US than around the uk. We are towards the top of the pops. So when it comes to potential scale ups, the unicorns prospectively of tomorrow, we are an innovation nation. We are smashing the lights out relative to the rest of Europe and arguably even relatively to the us. The key mehren is of course to nurture those cults and thoroughbreds to enable them to grow the wings.
- [19:03]
Merryn Somerset Webb
This is slightly the problem, isn't it, that we can be first in terms of exciting companies until 27th in terms of GDP per capita. How do we keep those companies here? I mean 20 years ago companies of that size that you're talking about would already have listed and the wealth would already have been shared around, but that's not the case now. So how do we keep those companies here? How do we encourage more of them? And crucially also from our point of view, how do we get those companies to list and make the UK stock market part of the equation?
- [19:33]
Andy Haldane
Yeah, yeah, so lots in there. Let me pick off some bits of them. So obviously the better the enabling environment, all the stuff we mentioned earlier on the more likely it is that they will grow, the more likely it is that they will stay. So that's a kind of prerequisite requisite I think for growing our own given that the seed corn is, is plentiful and strong. When we look at, you know, the UK scale up problem is not a new problem. It just so happens that we've got a particularly good crop just at the moment. The obstacles are partly financial and looking for ways of you're widening that pool
- [20:19]
Bob Pittman
of
- [20:21]
Andy Haldane
BC or PE or indeed public listing of companies. Smoothing the passage of that I think is really important. The engine of that again it's not surprise to anyone, needs to be our own pension capital investors, pension funds, insurance companies, investing more in UK plc. We are the only pension fund on the planet that does not have a home bias towards our own companies. And that is ridiculous. And that needs to Change and that then provides.
- [20:59]
Merryn Somerset Webb
Mandate that change. Sorry, would you mandate that change?
- [21:03]
Andy Haldane
No, I wouldn't mandate it, but I would, you know, I would expedite our facilitation of that by, you know, that means looking at regulation, you know, is what used to be called solmct, what's now called SOMSEA uk. Is that getting in the way of us putting those monies to work? Is it the risk aversion of pension fund trustees that's getting the word in the way of putting those monies to work? Can we provide more tax efficient wrappers to enable people to put their money towards UK companies rather than overseas ones? I would.
- [21:45]
Merryn Somerset Webb
Oh yes, we can do that. We should do that.
- [21:46]
Andy Haldane
I would work all of those channels, to be honest, because as you know, this is many trillions of pounds parked up in either overseas equities or in cash, none of which, which is starving UK PLC of the financial fuel it needs and all those cults and thoroughbreds to grow into unicorns. So part of this is financial and fixable because here's the irony. The money is there, the money is there, right? But the plumbing to get that money into our businesses, which is the same thing as saying growth tomorrow isn't there. So that's a replumbing problem. We can solve plumbing problems, we can
- [22:29]
Merryn Somerset Webb
solve the political will.
- [22:31]
Andy Haldane
With a political will, we can solve plumbing problems.
- [22:33]
Merryn Somerset Webb
If the money wasn't problem political will,
- [22:36]
Andy Haldane
I'd be far less optimistic. But the money is that it's even here at home, it's here internationally, here at home as well. So we have the businesses, we have the money to finance the businesses, we replumb the system and hey presto, you get business led growth, which of course is the only source, only type of growth of growth you can have that's sustainable over the longer term. So these are the reasons if you peer in the balance sheet fundamentals. We have the businesses to enable the growth. We have the money to enable the businesses to grow. This is a plumbing problem that's eminently tractable, Marin. And if we did that, we could be smashing the lights out not just at a startup, at Scaler, but at GDP per head and all the rest. So this is my frustration, but also my excitement about what's possible.
- [23:37]
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- [24:07]
Michael Easter
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- [24:36]
Merryn Somerset Webb
We really believe that seed oils were inherently inflammatory. We got it wrong. Many of the problems that we are freaked out about in the world are the result of stress.
- [24:47]
Michael Easter
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- [25:06]
Bob Pittman
Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia, and I'm kicking off a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic. Stories from the frontiers of Marketing. Math and Magic takes you behind the scenes of the biggest businesses and industries while sharing insights from the smartest minds in marketing. I'm talking to leaders from the entertainment industry, to finance, and everywhere in between. This season on Math and Magic, I'm talking to CEO of Liquid Death, Mike Cesario, financier and public health advocate Mike Milken. Take to Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick.
- [25:36]
Andy Haldane
If you're unable to take meaningful creative risk and therefore run the risk of making horrible creative mistakes, then you can't play in this business.
- [25:45]
Bob Pittman
Sesame Street CEO Sherry Weston and our own chief business Officer, Lisa Coffey.
- [25:50]
Merryn Somerset Webb
Making consumers see the value of the human voice and to have that guaranteed human promise behind it really makes it rise to the top.
- [26:00]
Bob Pittman
Listen to Math and Magic stories from the frontiers of Marketing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [26:14]
Merryn Somerset Webb
Andy, let me ask you about one of your other areas of expertise. Interest rates. Now, there was an expectation before the war in Iran that rates would gradually be falling and that that would be good for all sorts of reasons. But that no longer looks like it's very likely. Where do you see where it's going from here? And actually, I'm asking, asking on behalf of the property market here.
- [26:34]
Andy Haldane
Yeah. Oh, very good. Well, look like everyone else. My strong reputation at the start of this year was that inflationary pressures were abating, and they really were abating. They'd been abating for the better part of six to nine months by the start of this year. And if anything, I'd been a bit critical of my former employees at the bank of England for not lowering rates faster than they had, which I thought was justifiable given that inflationary pressures have peaked out and were falling. Now the world has changed and we saw financial markets run very quickly to the other side of the boat with an expectation of now rate rises, not just in the UK, but in the US and the euro area as well. That looks to me like a very significant overcorrection. Why do I say that? I suspect lots of people were repeating the Ukraine Russia playbook. And this is not that. This differs from that in two very fundamental and significant respects. First, the scale of shock, at least so far. Tempting in saying this, but the scale of shock so far is nothing like on the same scale that was a shock to the cost of living of north of 10% in the UK at current energy prices, we're talking short, possibly of 2 or 3%. So much smaller shock. What's more, that smaller shock to costs is breaking on an economy that's very different in a labor market. That's very different than back in 2122. Back then we had resurgent demand coming up against constricted supply post Covid, the result of which was an obvious bottleneck. And we had cost push pressures, much larger ones alongside demand pull pressures, and the result was inflation. This time we do not have those frictions. Demand is soggy, the labor market is soggy. Firms do not have pricing power. Workers do not have pricing power. The upward impetus to inflation therefore will be significantly less unless the war is a forever war. And as a result, I'd be surprised if the bank and the Fed were to raise rates this year. If energy prices remain at a close to where they are right now. This is a time for sitting gleefully on your hands and seeing how the world happens, pans out. And that would be, you know, that would be the mainstream economist view. I'm very far as you know, from being a mainstream economist on this occasion. My tribe might even have got it right.
- [29:38]
Merryn Somerset Webb
Very, very unusual. What about house prices? Obviously there's, you know, we've been looking at house prices quite a lot on this podcast and we're fascinated by the real terms decline that we've seen so far across the and particularly in London. And that has positives and that it makes houses more affordable. But of course, with mortgage rates slightly higher than they were, however affordable they may look in absolute terms, they still become less affordable as mortgage rates rise.
- [30:10]
Andy Haldane
Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, I suspect a bit like for interest rates, we might find for a period the housing market tracking sideways in the uk. I mean, it's not just about rates, although of course we've seen many mortgage products just appearing off the markets and fixed rates picking up. But this is coming alongside and on top, of course, of concerns about jobs. We've had the jobs market now weakening. Well, actually for a couple of years it's been weakening. But what initially showed up as reduced vacancies has latterly been showing up as increased unemployment. We had a report just yesterday suggesting unemployment might pick up to closer to 6% than to 5% later this year. That might be overdone, but nonetheless, fearfulness of unemployment is a good reason to hold off major purchases, houses, of course, the consummate major purchase. So I'd be surprised if anytime soon whether we see a turn in that market. Nonetheless, if this war were behind us, if there were a stronger expectation of rates being flat or perhaps even falling, if people's inflation adjusted pay keeps on rising, and let's bear in mind it has risen for the last two years and maybe in the second half of the year we could see a degree of perkiness. But nonetheless, I'd be surprised if this is a year at which the housing market turns decisively.
- [31:59]
Merryn Somerset Webb
Yeah, as was. When I look at the affordability measures, one of the things I think is that the people who would normally be buying houses now maybe the first time buyers, are also the ones who had the 9 percentage points extra of effective income tax to pay in their student loans. And that's a sort of new dynamic in the housing market that might make it drag rather more than you might have expected previously. Looking at the affordability numbers completely, I
- [32:23]
Andy Haldane
mean, at a time when I mentioned the jobs market was soggy for young people, it's dripping wet, isn't it? And that is true both of those, if you like, without a degree, and usually for those with a degree as well, rates of graduate unemployment are sky high. And that's uncomfortable against a backdrop of them carrying around this.
- [32:51]
Merryn Somerset Webb
Yeah, that leads us neatly onto AI. And when I look at the unemployment numbers for the young today and how difficult it is for them to get jobs, and everyone says, oh well, is AI taking all the entry jobs, AI taking the graduate jobs, et cetera, I Suspect that's not really true. And in fact there aren't any graduate jobs because that parts of the UK are effectively, in retrospect, recession and people simply aren't hiring because the environment isn't good enough for it. And we look at it and we're casting around for a reason, but this may just be an entirely normal employment recession of the type that we've seen many times before. Certainly when I graduated, there were literally no jobs available.
- [33:31]
Andy Haldane
Yeah, I mean the evidence we have so far on that, which is trying to kind of tease apart, if you like cyclical unemployment or in some cases not so much unemployment, but unwillingness to post vacancies from the structural AI component, can't find much of the second so far. Now, I think if you are a God fearing CEO, it's much easier to tell a story about AI as to why you're chopping vacancies or indeed heads than it is because your business is struggling. So I suspect it's being used as a defensive shield for a great many businesses when the truth is rather more mundane, which is about sluggish sales and elevated costs, of course, for pretty much everything, including people with national minimum wage and employment rights bill and all the rest of it. So actually, you know, in the spirit of a further optimism, I am optimistic about.
- [34:38]
Merryn Somerset Webb
Oh, Andy.
- [34:38]
Andy Haldane
Yeah, and I saidi that AI need not be the great job slayer that people worry about. If we play our cards right.
- [34:52]
Merryn Somerset Webb
If we play our cards right. How do we play our cards right? With the technology that we know so well, we know a lot about it, but we understand very little about how it will permeate the economy going forward, really, don't we? You listen to the range of views on it and we did. I don't know if you listened to a great podcast the other day about L&MS. And how they pretty much hit their ceiling already. There's nothing more to come there. And then of course you have the other approaches into attempting to find an AGI, which may take a little longer, but are fascinating. So it's, it's very hard to even understand how this will develop, let alone how it might embed itself in our economy.
- [35:29]
Andy Haldane
No, that's all true. And anyone who can say with confidence they know what the jobs of the day after tomorrow might be, that's a fanciful notion, I think, in this environment. Nonetheless, are we equipping our young people, and indeed some not so young ones, with the sets of agile, malleable, fungible capabilities as distinct from specific skills to enable them to ride the rapids of whatever the new technology waves. So no, we are not. And that's what I'm talking about. Playing our cards right means equipping our young people with those agile fungible capabilities.
- [36:14]
Merryn Somerset Webb
What do you think they are? Well, if you're sending a kid to university today, and this is the question we get asked all the time, so I'll get you to answer it. You're sending a kid to university today. What are you telling them to study?
- [36:25]
Andy Haldane
Well, I'm not sure what's in the university. I think that the neat rate for graduates is now higher than for A level students.
- [36:34]
Merryn Somerset Webb
Yeah.
- [36:36]
Andy Haldane
So there'd be a question about whether that is the right thing. Certainly the way it's been done historically. Do I want a block of three years studying something that is. I've half thought about on my upcast form that that's less clear to me. What are the sets of capabilities that will best enable me to surf the waves of technology? Well, a degree of job experience, I would say, which, you know, that Penny, I think is now dropping. But the skills you accrete in the world of work, including how to work as a team, how to negotiate what are sometimes called softer skills, personal skills, social skills are the ones that are least likely quickly to replace by machine and the self. Same would be true of certain classes of creative skills. You know, so creativity, the wellspring of creativity is moving across disciplines. And our current degree courses tend to be confined within disciplines.
- [37:56]
Merryn Somerset Webb
Yeah, yeah.
- [37:58]
Andy Haldane
So I think we could, even though we don't have the jobs, we can guess what the capabilities that will be needed and then ask ourselves, is our schooling and further on higher education system equipping kids with those capabilities? The answer is a resolute no to that question currently, Merryn. And that would give me cause for pause. Couldn't. Should it be fixed? Yes.
- [38:23]
Merryn Somerset Webb
Okay. Everything can be fixed. This is great. Again brings us back to political will and finding the political space to do all these things. And if you were going back to university now, as not a retiree, obviously as an older person, what would you study?
- [38:37]
Andy Haldane
Well, you know what. I am at the moment, as you know, I am intrigued about how we make lifelong learning a reality. So something in that sort of education meets entrepreneurship space. I'm not sure what the degree course would be. Maybe it doesn't exist.
- [39:06]
Merryn Somerset Webb
Make your own. Make your own.
- [39:08]
Andy Haldane
There are degrees in entrepreneurship, there are degrees in business, there are degrees in education. But how we get learning and earning to coexist on a lifelong basis I think is among the challenges. Of our time. I don't think if there exists a degree for doing that right now, maybe we should create one. A few years ago a friend of mine up in Manchester created a course in creativity because of course, contrary to popular belief, you can teach creativity. We know quite a lot about the creative process and what is needed and that's the level of abstract thinking I think we need. And so something maybe around the fusion of work, business and learning because I think that's where the action's at.
- [39:57]
Merryn Somerset Webb
Fascinating. Thank you. Andy. Is there anything that we haven't covered, anything that is super important that neither of us have mentioned and we should before we go?
- [40:06]
Andy Haldane
Well, the only thing I'd say we haven't touched upon politics, which is unusual for you and at me and I've got no desire to deep dive into politics beyond saying this. Among the fiscal free solutions to the UK's malaise is by empowering local leaders. We are the most centralized country on the planet and that is not serving us well ultimately, if the name of the game is growth, growth comes from the bottom up and comes from empowering local leaders. But I don't just mean government, I mean businesses, universities, civil society in local places too. So among the fiscal three measures I would take were I in power, thank Lord I'm not, I would do diva probably because currently it's been doing in a half baked and half hearted fashion and we will not get growth until we properly empower local leaders, plural and local citizens. And we're some some way short of that.
- [41:22]
Merryn Somerset Webb
Marin okay, thank you Andy and thank you for all the optimism you've given us today. I think we we and our listeners, we appreciate that don't get it often
- [41:32]
Andy Haldane
great is ever to chat to you. Marin. Conversation to be continued. But definitely like I say, I like flipping the aphorism right. Which is not where there's a will, there's a way, but where there's a way there's a will. And if we can define the way, we can summon the collective will, those animal spirits to get our economy going and growing. And I'm quite optimistic about that.
- [42:03]
Merryn Somerset Webb
Thanks for listening to this week's Marian Talks Money. This episode was hosted by me Marantzet Web. It was brief, produced by Sama Saadi and Moses Andam Sound designed by Blake Maples and Aaron Casper. If you like our show, rate, review and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and keep sending your questions or comments to marinmoneyloomburg.net you can also follow me and John on Twitter or X. I'm Ernesw and John is underscore Stepek. This is Saigon, the story of my family and of the country that shaped us.
- [42:35]
iHeart Podcasts Announcer
From iheart Podcasts. Saigon.
- [42:37]
Andy Haldane
You don't think I'm serious about a free Vietnam?
- [42:40]
iHeart Podcasts Announcer
One city, a divided country and the war that tore America apart.
- [42:44]
Andy Haldane
This is for Vietnam.
- [42:45]
Merryn Somerset Webb
They're pouring petrol all over here. Freedom for Vietnam. There's a fire coming to this country, and it's going to burn out everything.
- [42:53]
iHeart Podcasts Announcer
Listen to Saigon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.