In may 2010 George Osborne, the new chancellor of the exchequer, announced a modest wheeze for boosting private-sector employment: a tax break for the first ten employees of new businesses set up in Britain's poorer regions. The scheme was a "nudge", intended to tip the balance towards entrepreneurial plunge-taking in parts of the country whose dynamism had shrivelled afteri3 years in a tepid bath of public largesse. Over the three-year life of the tax holiday, perhaps 400,000 employers would sign up, the Treasury guessed.
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