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Brexit: give me a positive effect (2022 remastered edition)

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Nobody told them this would happen, after all.
What happened to the great Ministerium for Exiting the European Union? The tens of thousands of new officials who would graduate from Gove Academy, don their hi viz jackets, pick up their clip boards and manage our new customs border with the EU? And now the Victorian Lavatory Chain is sacking 90,000 civil servants, the money from which ‘could go toward tax cuts’ in time for the next general election.

They’re turning Britain into Venezuela, a failed petro-state but with shit weather.
 
the Victorian Lavatory Chain is sacking 90,000 civil servants, the money from which ‘could go toward tax cuts’ in time for the next general election.

The Cabinet Office has confirmed that all could go on voluntary redundancy terms. That pays one month salary for each year worked, capped at 22 months.

Even if the CS who go are only those recruited since 2016, that's 6 months' salary (CS median £27k - https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/civil-service-median-salaries-by-uk-region-and-grade) @ £13.5k = £1.2Bn. Of course, the ones who will go are likely to be those with more months under their belt, so could see a maximum one-off bill of £4.5Bn. Or, over twice the income from a windfall tax on energy providers (https://www.theguardian.com/politic...the-energy-windfall-tax-and-how-would-it-work)

Whilst that has long term savings, it's not the quick fix ahead of 2024 that it is being spun as.
 
What happened to the great Ministerium for Exiting the European Union? The tens of thousands of new officials who would graduate from Gove Academy, don their hi viz jackets, pick up their clip boards and manage our new customs border with the EU? And now the Victorian Lavatory Chain is sacking 90,000 civil servants, the money from which ‘could go toward tax cuts’ in time for the next general election.

They’re turning Britain into Venezuela, a failed petro-state but with shit weather.
Rainfall figures are comparable. Average there is c850 mm, ours 1100. Both countries have wetter mountainous areas to the west.
 
Nice article from today's Irish Times:

David McWilliams: I have a terrible neighbour, and so do you
Boris Johnson doesn’t want to ‘get Brexit done’. He wants to keep Brexit going

The final paragraph:

Fixing England will take many decades and huge investment to have even a chance of success. That task is well beyond the present government, even if they wanted to build foundations now. Far easier to wave the false flag, create phoney conflicts, threaten smaller countries like Ireland and put the theme of The Dam Busters on repeat.

It’s so tiresome to have a neighbour like this.

 
I do hope my Stanley Unwin comment was seen as complementary to the self deprecating tone of you post, rather than a suggestion that you have spoken gobbledegook. I read all your posts with interest because that are always well written and well informed. I don’t always, or even often, agree with them, but they are not gobbledegook.

Also, back onto MMT. If you ask about the merits of MMT you will get a predictable reaction that is based on economic assumptions that are built in to all economics courses. If you get another opportunity to discuss economic realities with the likes of the sensationally bright economists at your dinner, perhaps, rather than asking about MMT, ask the basis of their own deathly held assumptions; ask in what way tax actually funds our government spending, why a government deficit is a bad thing and when the government ‘borrows’, how is that government debt an asset for rich investors but a liability for the poor taxpayer.

If you come away not understanding the answers it could be because they are very clever and you are not. On the other hand, it could be that, like priests and theologians, they have spent such a long time studying well rehearsed arguments that they long ago stopped questioning the basis of the assumptions from which their arguments derive

Your amusing post on Unwin was taken in the spirit in which it was meant, worry not. I just couldn't resist my slightly barbed response into a rather beautiful open goal that I never expected to be a match winner, for exactly the reasons, well-anticipated, you have now articulated

I remain intrigued by your many detailed elaborations on MMT, and your suspicion that I mightn't be clever enough to comprehend it is not wide of the mark. The reason why I never responed to your kind PM of a few months ago remains that I simply haven't found the time and mental capacity to attempt to absorb it.

I see quite a bit of one of the young economics graduates that I mentioned, and I will indeed convey your points to him, ensuring that I do so well before I have taken any drink!
 
Your amusing post on Unwin was taken in the spirit in which it was meant, worry not. I just couldn't resist my slightly barbed response into a rather beautiful open goal that I never expected to be a match winner, for exactly the reasons, well-anticipated, you have now articulated

I remain intrigued by your many detailed elaborations on MMT, and your suspicion that I mightn't be clever enough to comprehend it is not wide of the mark. The reason why I never responed to your kind PM of a few months ago remains that I simply haven't found the time and mental capacity to attempt to absorb it.

I see quite a bit of one of the young economics graduates that I mentioned, and I will indeed convey your points to him, ensuring that I do so well before I have taken any drink!
My point there was not so much that we might be too dim to understand the answers, but that the answers are not based on truth. As an example, if I were to get into an argument about the existence of God with St Thomas Aquinas, I doubt I would understand his arguments, but that would not make what he says convincing. Aquinas might be cleverer than me, he might win the argument, but he would still be wrong. Hence my suggestion that rather than asking about MMT, you ask for proof the Monetarist assumption about the role of tax, and if you don’t understand the answer, be suspicious, not of your own capacity to understand, but of an answer that does not lend itself to ready comprehension.

I don’t think it is so much that economics is itself that difficult to understand as economics has been made difficult to understand by economists. Economists hide their secrets behind the complex language of maths in much the same way that priests and theologians of old hid behind Latin and obscure philosophical arguments.
 
I like Fintan's writing - is there any way round the paywall (a la FT)?

Sorry about the late reply Nero I was away at a little show in Munich so a bit distracted. No unfortunately not I pay the subscription as my wife enjoys the Irish Times on a Saturday. Like all of these things the prices are creeping up all the time.
 
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