We don't know what that will be but anyone interested might catch some clues from a new book by Professor Vito Tanzi, who was for 20 years director of fiscal affairs at the IMF. Called Government versus Markets, The Changing Economic Role of the State, it charts how that role grew over the last century and how that model is unsustainable. He believes the state's role will shrink over this century, with government taking perhaps 30-35 per cent of GDP, not the 10-15 per cent of a century ago. Even so, it would be a different sort of government from anything we are used to, a government that is gradually handing back responsibilities – you might say the burden – for health, pensions and so on, on to the rest of us. I think most of us intuitively know that – but adapting will not be easy, particularly if governments default on their own debts along the way.
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