The Man Who Smashed Convention

This chapter looks at Colin Clark’s criticisms of the post-war economic orthodoxy in Britain, especially the welfare state and how his critique made him one of the progenitors of neo-liberal thought. In Welfare and Taxation (1954) Clark stated that high tax rates enfeebled the economy by undermining entrepreneurial spirit and effort. He was equally alarmed at the rate at which government spending was rising, especially the cost of the welfare state; it was already exceeding the economic growth rate with much of the public revenue obtained from taxing low-income families. Families, he held, should be left to manage their own affairs. Clark can be seen as a progenitor of neo-liberal thought with his pamphlet marking the first intellectual reaction against the welfare state and foretelling upon how a new political movement would rise up against it. Clark continued his criticism of the British welfare state in The Cost of Living (1957), where he argued that protectionism and high taxation had become ‘a complete, utter, howling, disastrous failure’. Britain was afflicted by poor productivity, high taxation and protectionism but also inherently inflationary because of the commitment to over-full employment. Clark held that the ‘strongest’ argument for assisting the British farm sector was in dispersing the nation’s population. He assigned great cultural value to a healthy rural sector which enriched the nation’s social and cultural life.