Prosperity 2030 addresses the gridlock facing developed nations, caught between debt, environmental limits, and rising insecurity. A coherent reform programme grounded in universal provision and planetary limits, it coordinates universal services, revenue reforms, and structural reforms to build the social contract, reduce the cost of living, and create fiscal space.
Policies designed to reduce general costs of living, sequenced with tax reforms, create political permission to generate fiscal space to fund priority obligations that are not otherwise accessible in developed nations.
A coordinated recomposition of collectively-provided social support towards unconditionally accessible Universal Services, that leverage greater efficiency in reducing the costs of living, offsets unavoidable distributional losers of higher taxes while strengthening reciprocity.
This report uses a prototype policy programme to demonstrate a design and sequencing implementation in the UK, as an example for a developed nation.
The current situation is gridlock.
- Citizens, who cannot tolerate further cost increases, have lost confidence in the efficacy of collective action
- States cannot raise the needed revenues for vital collective priorities
- Social, physical, and democratic structures that are decaying, despite their foundational importance
Refocusing fiscal structures away from individualised, market choices to collective responsibilities creates agency for citizen and state alike.
- Citizens currently constrained by costs of basic living, retreating social support, and weakened infrastructure, are liberated to make their contributions
- States constrained by debts and reliance on revenues from poorly designed tax systems that mechanistically, adversely impact citizens’ costs of living, are enabled to address their priorities
- Foundational infrastructures of these societies, that currently languish under the dual constraints on citizen and state, are strengthened to build resilience