Chancellor Alistair Darling continues to hint at Santa Clause-like limited tax cuts this side of Christmas.
 
Tory Shadow Chancellor George Osborne says this is a wretched idea. Osborne is not revelling in the festive Scrooge role.
 
He just thinks unfunded tax cuts now are likely to be paid for later in tax rises for future generations when the books eventually have to be balanced.
 
I’m on Osborne’s side of the argument here. We are in virtually unprecedented dire straits economically (the early 1990s and even 1970s recessions were of a totally different order to what we are going through now).
 
As a result, I think the rapid interest-rate cutting by central banks is justified. If further rapid rate cuts were to come I don’t think many economic commentators would complain.
 
We can’t constantly be talking about the long-term good when the waters are edging up around our noses.
 <BR>As the newly-blessed JM Keynes said, in the long run we are all dead.
 
And yet...there obviously has to come a point when you have to balance even urgent short-term needs with long-term good.
 
And hasty tax cuts, on top of the dramatic interest rate-cutting moves, may be the point of where to draw the line.
 
If the money isn’t there, which it isn’t, hasn’t Osborne got it right that we would just be building up trouble for the future?
 
I also don’t buy the logic that if tax cuts were aimed at the lower-paid rather than the middle class that would somehow be all right.
 
For one thing, it assumes the lower-paid would put the money straight back into the economy by spending it, rather than the higher paid using cuts to either pay down debt or add to savings against the storm-clouds.
 
However, in this climate I think all sections of the community, with worries about job security foremost in their minds, are going to think very carefully before spending any pennies from heaven (or Darling).
 
As such, any Darling tax cuts could achieve the double negative of storing up fiscal debt for the future while not stimulating the economy in the short-run.