The finance sector's primary role is to extract wealth from the public domain.
The finance sector likes to pretend that it makes huge contributions to the UK economy. However,
much of finance sector activites amount to 'gaming' the system, though the avoidance of regulation
via tax havens and clever clever financial instruments.
The University of Sheffield calculates that the total cost of lost growth potential for the UK caused
by 'too much finance' between 1995 and 2015 is in the region of £4,500 billion,
amounting to roughly 2.5 years of the average GDP.
This research suggests that the UK economy
may have performed much better if: (a) its financial sector were smaller; (b) if finance were more
focused on supporting other areas of the economy, rather than trying to act as a
source of wealth generation (extraction) in its own right.
This evidence also provides support for the idea that the UK suffers from a form
of 'finance curse': a development trajectory of financial overdependence involving
a crowding out of other sectors and a skewing of social relations, geography and
politics.
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