I found this interesting response from Michael Keating, Professor of politics, University of Aberdeen, in the Guardian Letters:
My quoted comment on the SNP’s economic prospectus – “It’s voodoo economics” – did not imply that Scottish independence is not a viable option (Can Scotland pay its way?, G2, 20 May). As I elaborate in my book, The Independence of Scotland, an independent Scottish state is perfectly feasible. In an independent, social-democratic Scotland, we would pay higher taxes than in England, we would get rather better universal services and, if we spent wisely, we could have a more productive economy. In order to reap the benefits, Scotland would need to learn how to adapt to global changes, to generate real social partnership and to spread its burdens equitably. It would have to link social inclusion policies to economic development, embrace active labour market policies and think seriously about industrial policy. None of this would happen automatically just because of independence. Indeed, were Scotland to have enhanced fiscal powers under devolution-max or independence-lite, and were to make these adaptations, then independence would become redundant.
The alternative scenario, being pressed by some neoliberal thinktanks in Scotland, is to go for a low-tax, regulated, neoliberal regime. This would entail dismantling the existing welfare settlement, abandoning universal provision and increasing social inequality. The voodoo economics is the effort to combine the social democratic and neoliberal models, or wishfully think that tax cuts pay for themselves. It is to be welcomed that we are at last moving away from obsessions with 19th-century notions of independence to serious thinking about the meaning of self-government in a globalised world and a transformed Europe. So it is not a question of whether we go for independence or not, but what we do with self-government that is critical. Let us hope that the coming debate will focus on this and not on illusions about independence itself yielding “levers” or on the supposed inability of Scotland to manage without the aid of its neighbour.
ConvinceMeOnIndependence 