In Bri­tain, Chan­cel­lor George Osborne has just presen­ted his first budget, announ­cing 25% cuts to most gov­ern­ment depart­ments. Last week, pro­posed gov­ern­ment invest­ment in leis­ure, social ser­vices and man­u­fac­tur­ing was removed. A visitor’s centre at Stone­henge, a health­care centre in Leeds, and fin­an­cial sup­port for the Forge­mas­ters plant in Shef­field were some of a num­ber of pro­jects knocked on the head in the quest to reduce the budget defi­cit. I read a lot of com­ment­ary about the coali­tion government’s fail­ure to sup­port pro­duc­tion and the north­ern (post)-industrial lands, none more mov­ing than this piece by Ian McMil­lan (hey, I’m from York­shire. Just say­ing the phrase ‘brass band’ can bring tears to my eyes). 

Enorm­ous reduc­tions in pub­lic sec­tor spend­ing pro­duce unem­ploy­ment. And unem­ploy­ment makes for poverty, misery, hope­less­ness, ill­ness and anomie. Some of the cuts to pub­lic sec­tor spend­ing will remove work from soci­ety: Forge­mas­ters’ employ­ees will join the queues out­side Shef­field job centres, look­ing for jobs that don’t exist, liv­ing on the bene­fit bread­line, sink­ing into depres­sion, need­ing care. 

Other pub­lic sec­tor cuts will not remove work, but trans­fer it from pub­lic sphere to private sphere, from com­mod­ity form to non-commodity form. Chil­dren, the infirm eld­erly and the sick will carry on need­ing care (and social care isn’t part of the NHS ring­fen­cing). Someone will have to step in when budget cuts mean fewer care assist­ants or fewer pub­lic nurs­ery spaces. This might sound like Cameron’s ‘Big Soci­ety’ in action: neigh­bours help­ing because the fat state is ought to slim down. But care that is con­tin­gently gif­ted like that leaves the recip­i­ent at risk, even assum­ing that the needy are known and noticed (which might not be the case if lay­ers of admin­is­tra­tion are removed). And it leaves the care­giver exhausted by the double bur­den of paid work and care. 

It is often the case that unpaid care is done by women (see the Women’s Budget Group ana­lysis), and, though the ideo­lo­gical con­ser­vat­ism that drives the desire for a small state is not quite the same con­ser­vat­ism that essen­tial­ises gender divi­sions and wants women to be placed in the home, mar­ried and look­ing after chil­dren, the coin­cid­ence might be felt to be for­tu­it­ous by some. At nowaytoa­makealiv­ing, we are always angered by the fail­ures of ima­gin­a­tion and empathy that gen­er­ate policies inten­ded to increase inequal­ity and worsen lives.