[9급 국가직 영어 2012년 17번]

Britain, the biggest single beneficiary of the first age of globalization, was unlikely to gain much from its end. In the 1920s the old and tested policies no longer seemed to work. Paying for World WarⅠ had let to a tenfold increase in the national debt. Just paying the interest on that debt consumed close to half of total central government spending by the mid-1920s. The assumption that the budget should nevertheless be balanced meant that public finance was dominated by transfers from income tax-payers to bondholders. The increased power of the trade unions during and after the war not only intensified industrial strife but also meant that wage cuts were slower than price cuts. Rising real wages led to unemployment: during the Depression year of 1932 nearly three million people, close to a quarter of all insured workers, were out of work.