Labour Leader: Keir Starmer IV
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Nick_G
pfm Member
Quite. And the Tories, the gutter press, and various actors and algorithms on social media know just what buttons to press to exploit those fears. It's going to be VERY hard to reverse the descent into the Endarkenment.
Spraggons Den
pfm Member
The deficit is bad for them, it's bad for everyone. UK paying £48 billion this year in interest.
Sue Pertwee-Tyr
Accuphase all the way down
This is similar to the old argument about Brexit, and the big red bus. We need to know what benefit the borrowed money brings, before we can assess whether paying the interest is bad for us. In other words, would we have been better off not borrowing in the first place, or has the borrowing put us in a better place. So you can’t really make a bald statement like ‘the deficit is bad for us’ stick, without going a little deeper to examine the assumption.
Brian
Eating fat, staying slim
I have the latest personal judgement of me you edited out where the ‘we’ pfm gang mentality appears yet again. You’ve been doing this a lot lately, sniping at my character, ‘tribe’, ‘demographics’ etc. Do you think it’s smart, or something?
This is a forum for discussion where people will not all share the same opinion, there is no need to continually get personal about it.
I can post the bit you took out if it helps you understand what I’m saying.
TheDecameron
Unicorns fart glitter.
Demographic: noun, a particular section of the population.
You and I are of the same damographic Brian- we used to vote Labour. It strikes me you could read something personal into a recipe book.
TheDecameron
Unicorns fart glitter.
Tribe: noun,
a social division in a traditional society consisting of families or communities linked by social, economic, religious, or blood ties, with a common culture and dialect.
a social division in a traditional society consisting of families or communities linked by social, economic, religious, or blood ties, with a common culture and dialect.
Spraggons Den
pfm Member
…bald statement?
Anyway, I don’t mind a bit of Keynes to get things going in a sluggish economy now and again, however, borrowing large sums of money year after year is unsustainable and a sure sign that something is fundamentally wrong with your economy. Look at Japan for example.
Dave H.
Revolutionary relativist
Why? Please explain in terms of macroeconomics and things like monetary policy, zero lower bound interest rates and QE, and without reference to household budgets.
Partly my question is facetious, because I suspect people say things like this because ‘stands to reason, dunnit?’. But partly I ask because I just don’t understand.
For example, why is this wrong (quoting a Nobel laureate economist, taken from Wikipedia)?
“Deficits are considered to represent sinful profligate spending at the expense of future generations who will be left with a smaller endowment of invested capital.
This fallacy seems to stem from a false analogy to borrowing by individuals. Current reality is almost the exact opposite. Deficits add to the net disposable income of individuals, to the extent that government disbursements that constitute income to recipients exceed that abstracted from disposable income in taxes, fees, and other charges. This added purchasing power, when spent, provides markets for private production, inducing producers to invest in additional plant capacity, which will form part of the real heritage left to the future. This is in addition to whatever public investment takes place in infrastructure, education, research, and the like. Larger deficits, sufficient to recycle savings out of a growing gross domestic product (GDP) in excess of what can be recycled by profit-seeking private investment, are not an economic sin but an economic necessity. Deficits in excess of a gap growing as a result of the maximum feasible growth in real output might indeed cause problems, but we are nowhere near that level.
Even the analogy itself is faulty. If General Motors, AT&T, and individual households had been required to balance their budgets in the manner being applied to the Federal government, there would be no corporate bonds, no mortgages, no bank loans, and many fewer automobiles, telephones, and houses.”
ks.234
Half way to Infinity
The National Debt was created by the need to pay for war, and by far the biggest cause of national debt is war, greater than economic crash or pandemic.
If the national debt was a problem, our politicians would be more reluctant to go to war. Fear of the national debt is only provoked and invoked to curtail public spending and worsen working pay and conditions.
If the national debt was a problem, our politicians would be more reluctant to go to war. Fear of the national debt is only provoked and invoked to curtail public spending and worsen working pay and conditions.
Spraggons Den
pfm Member
Nowt wrong with being a housewife btw.
Uk debt stands at £2,100 billion and the pandemic only accounts for about a seventh of the total.
Apart from the interest payments which we make but have literally nothing to show for, I feel bad for saddling my children and their children with the burden as the end of my own working days approaches.
It's not like the borrowing is going towards a specific purpose such as modernisation of transport system or providing us with a technological leap forward- rather its being spunked away in the general Treasury budget.
Perhaps some of you are overthinking it or getting yourself in contortions to justify a political philosophy.
ks.234
Half way to Infinity
“The budget deficit is financed by sale of government bonds. These are essentially interest paying “IOUs” which the government sells to investors. Purchasers of government bonds include pension funds, insurance companies, households and overseas investors. The bonds make up most government debt.”
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06167/
Brian
Eating fat, staying slim
ks.234
Half way to Infinity
You mention people getting “likes” rather a lot. Not sure why.
Spraggons Den
pfm Member
I would like to use awareness of the national debt to argue for a rise in the tax take in the not too distant future - be it from VAT or income tax or some other means.The National Debt was created by the need to pay for war, and by far the biggest cause of national debt is war, greater than economic crash or pandemic.
If the national debt was a problem, our politicians would be more reluctant to go to war. Fear of the national debt is only provoked and invoked to curtail public spending and worsen working pay and conditions.
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