Newark Advertiser reader letters: Growth is essential

Our new government’s overriding ambition is said to be the achievement of ‘growth’. But what does that mean?

A significant statistic in the measurement of growth is GDP — Gross Domestic Product —which is a measure of what the country produces in any given period.

But none of us ever experience GDP. GDP can be divided by the number of people in the country to get GDP per capita which is the real measure of what makes it possible for each citizen (each capita) to pay for their needs, to take care of their families and to achieve a better life.

If GDP stays constant but our population rises, each citizen’s ‘share’ must go down in value.

The achievement of growth is essential if we are all to feel more ‘wealthy’, but clearly, there is a ‘race’ b et we e n growth in production and the increase in our population.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) forecasts that the UK population will grow from 67.6m in 2022 to 70m in 2026, which is a growth rate of 0.86% per year.

Growth in GDP will need to be quite spectacular even if we are just to stand still!

We now have left the EU but we still share in its social democratic approach of high spending, high welfare, high taxes and a tangled web of regulation and this means that we share its lack of growth. (In UK public sector spending is almost 45 percent of GDP paid for in taxes.)

Increase in GDP is vital to our prosperity but is a formidable challenge for any government .

However challenging our economic problems may be, it is clear to see why people from countries with low GDP and large populations see our GDP per capita as so attractive and want to share in our problems! — ROBERT SHEPPA R D , Beckingham