Pranesh Narayanan

Today’s industrial strategy made some clear strategic choices for the future direction of the UK economy. IPPR found that there are opportunities for the UK in three key clean technology industries, all of which are featured in the strategy 1/8

Is this parody, @FT? Like, how many standard deviations of a usual daily move is this?

Electricity costs were not the root cause of our manufacturing ills until the 2020s - we had cheaper industrial energy than Germany for the entire post-financial crash era when productivity growth stalled, this is a culture war take not a serious economic analysis

Equalising Capital Gains Tax (CGT) with Income Tax is a no brainer. Here's why: 👉 It would raise around £14bn a year. 👉 It is only paid by around 0.65% of the adult population (350,000 people), but most CGT revenue only comes from the 0.02% of the population who make gains of over £1 million. 👉 Politicians of all stripes believe it is fair to tax work and wealth the same. It was famously pro-growth Conservative chancellor Nigel Lawson who equalised CGT with income tax rates in the first place. 👉 A cleaner going to work should not pay more tax than someone who gets their income from shares or investments. 👉 It's a tax rise that wouldn't hamper growth, investment or entrepreneurialism. It is a tax rise supported by millionaires (@PatMillsUK).

@jo3hill because by definition a capital gain only happens once you've made money on an asset appreciates... it is only a tax on the upside you will not be paying it unless you've made money so.

Investments come with risk - you can lose money on an investment but you can’t lose money on a day’s work. Bizarre to think that capital gains should be taxed like income - why would people bother to invest?

@saffronhuang Lovely utopia but where will government get the resources to create these programmes and jobs when AI eliminates gov's primary source of revenue (income taxes), whilst the balance of opinion in silicon valley is firmly against wealth taxation?

Here's a plausible positive scenario that doesn't require many further AI advancements. I wanted to clearly paint the path "from here to there" instead of hand-waving so it starts out negative but ends positive (I swear): A recession leads to slowed hiring and a breakdown of the early-career ladder. The political window opens for industrial policy on AI: governments encourage firms to launch apprenticeship programs to bridge the training gap between junior and senior white-collar roles, instilling discernment and judgment of AI outputs. Programs help reshuffle people with clerical jobs into education (especially elementary and middle school 1-1 tutoring) or nursing (and given AI tools to upskill into providing clinical care). Those with a risk-taking or strategic bent become entrepreneurs and executives overseeing AI agents. Industrial policy is important, but AI also helps to decrease regulatory and compliance burdens on construction; this sector expands, and the built environment starts improving (e.g. high speed rail becomes more possible). Later on, material abundance (robot manufacturing) means that goods are cheap and easier to manufacture domestically. Most people's spending is therefore on human-led services, today's luxuries. For example, high quality education: schooling in many places (including the US) has historically been low quality for most, with many knock-on effects. 1-1 personal attention by human teachers (for younger students) + AI personalized tutoring (for older students) bridges this gap. Everyone is healthy: cheap AI triaging of medical issues lowers the barrier to preventative as well as life-saving care. Entrepreneurship is enabled by easy access to AI agents. The bar for customer service is raised all-round (high-end retail and hospitality services, like what you see in Japan). Everyone works 3-4 days a week. Baumol's cost disease is a feature not a bug: the relative expense of human services stops being a budget problem and starts being a labor market solution. That is where the jobs are, and they're jobs worth having.

"British workers have half as many robots, machines or modern equipment than their equivalents in France and Germany. And that is setting them up to fail". 📻 IPPR's Sam Alvis on @LBC 👇

More details on the scheme and how I think its eligibility criteria should be designed here: ippr.org/articles/turni…

The government has an upcoming scheme to cut electricity costs for around 7,000 businesses. They should find out which companies are holding back investment due to high electricity costs, and prioritise support for them.

British industry faces a double squeeze: companies are investing too little, and they face some of the highest electricity costs in Europe, and the two are related. Here's more about what this means for workers and one way government can help 👇

The line from the right wing press over the next few months will be that this would never have happened if only we spent an extra £5 billion on defence spending. A few British destroyers could have stopped all of it!

More solar panels means more electricity supply and less reliance on fossil fuels - ordinary people understand this even if vested interests keep trying to shift the focus on to the North Sea

For decades the UK failed to capture the manufacturing value associated to its leading offshore wind industry - as we analysed in an @IPPR report ("A Second Wind"). Today's investment by @Vestas for a new nacelle factory in Scotland could mark the beginning of a new trend.

“It’s essential that the UK and Scottish governments work together to ensure this project is pushed forward and that ground is broken on the factory ASAP." Read our response to Vesta's decision to invest in a new nacelle & hub factory in Scotland⤵️ ippr.org/media-office/i…

We at IPPR have been arguing for a while that the UK would greatly benefit from a Nacelle plant and it’s great to see this is actually happening. This will create new, secure job opportunities and a real regional economic boost for Scotland. ippr.org/articles/a-sec…

Huge news for the UK industrial strategy, and the Clean Power sector plan – Vestas has announced a major new wind turbine manufacturing investment in Scotland. It’s particularly significant since this facility will produce nacelles, the most valuable component of a wind turbine.

@Stsantek @TufnellHenry @GMBScotOrg how have we made the link between de-industrialisation and our oil and gas output?

I agree with @TufnellHenry. We should remove the ban on drilling in the North Sea and ease the burden on industries. @GMBScotOrg General Secretary said current trajectory is de-industrialising the UK at rapid pace. I believe Ed Miliband can and should lead us to a strategy that balances out industry, cost of living and fighting climate change. As Henry says, off shoring our carbon emissions may make us feel virtuous but it’s all for nothing if we are importing from countries that mine coal and drill with worse environmental standards than us.