jackbarron
Chelsea, London
Exactly. The other main parties also buy into the still failing neo-liberal corporate/banking/capitalist bad dream, which is why I wouldn't vote for any of them.
Jack
The chaos of Ed
- Thread starter hermit
- Start date
Exactly. The other main parties also buy into the still failing neo-liberal corporate/banking/capitalist bad dream, which is why I wouldn't vote for any of them.
Jack
Mullardman
Moderately extreme...
So how do you propose that we here in this little country set about defeating the system so beloved of every other developed ( and quite a few undeveloped) country on Earth?
jackbarron
Chelsea, London
matthewr
spɹɐʍʞɔɐq spɹoɔǝɹ ɹnoʎ sʎɐld
Don't know.
Well ignoring the silly straw man, it's worth emphasising that all this is based on what actually happened following what was essentially a massive real world experiment. Which is why the economists, if not the politicians, are pretty much all agreed.
Mullardman
Moderately extreme...
Well yes. I suppose.
I've always argued that there is no logical reason why capitalism should survive. Every preceding economic system has gone. So will capitalism.
But we'll have to have a very clear revolutionary objective. Not seeing much evidence of that.
Mull
hermit
Aye, right.
Revolutions are not very British but if anyone could ferment a revolution it would be George Osbourne. I suspect if he uses the phrase Northern Powerhouse one more time we could be looking at rivers of blood
Jo Sharp
Pulls on doors marked push
Tell that to the 70 Labour MPs who are employing their staff on zero hours contracts.
Paul R
pfm Member
Define 'austerity'.
Do you have any evidence that all government spending produces sustainable growth? If you turn down the thermostat in a government building, does that saving damage the economy?
Paul
Brian
Eating fat, staying slim
From time to time you do grab at the party politics angle in attempt to justify something that is clearly wrong. It fails every time.
I think you'll find sensible people are anti zero hours contracts regardless, given the way employers get away with taking the p*** out of workers in the UK.
Paul R
pfm Member
It might be interesting to find out. France has been operating Labouresque (tax the rich!) policies post Sarkozy.
It's way too generalized a position.
Paul
Greg
2t5b
it was a pretty simple question. Any meaningful evidence?
Brian
Eating fat, staying slim
Austerity:
The United Kingdom government austerity programme is a series of sustained reductions in public spending, intended to reduce the budget deficit.
The programme was initiated in 2010 by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government. Its original stated goal was to, "achieve cyclically-adjusted current balance by the end of the rolling, five-year forecast period." At Budget 2010, the end of the forecast period was 2015-16. However, in 2014 the Treasury extended the proposed austerity period until at least 2018.[1]
Probably ok when required but overall very damaging when done for purely ideological reasons, which is what the tories did.
Joe Hutch
Mate of the bloke
Revolutions are not very British but if anyone could ferment a revolution it would be George Osbourne. I suspect if he uses the phrase Northern Powerhouse one more time we could be looking at rivers of blood
Northern Powerhouse would be a great name for a Newscastle-based Metal band.
Productivity, is a word not banded about all that much during the run-up to the election, but when mentioned at all it seems to be still on a downwards path and what is worse some would suggest that what takes a UK worker a week to accomplish a French worker could do in four days!
Is this part of the problem or a concept deemed to complicated for the electorate to follow?
Is this part of the problem or a concept deemed to complicated for the electorate to follow?
Joe Hutch
Mate of the bloke
I think any politician who said/implied that the French work harder than the British might as well surrender his/her deposit without waiting for the election results.
Joe Hutch
Mate of the bloke
A very British revolution:
'What do we want?'
'We're not entirely sure!'
'When do we want it?'
'Whenever's convenient, really. There's no rush'.
matthewr
spɹɐʍʞɔɐq spɹoɔǝɹ ɹnoʎ sʎɐld
It's not about sustainable growth, it's about supporting an economy under very specific circumstances in the aftermath of, in this case, a financial shock. Specifically:
-- There are significant unused resources in the economy (essentially a given after a major recession).
-- Private sector actors (households, businesses) are all constrained; in this case by balance sheets and a need to pay off debt.
-- Interest rates are at the zero lower bound meaning conventional monetary policy has no traction.
-- Fiscal Multipliers are > 1 (In fact substantially greater than 1 is more or less agreed by everyone now, at least in hindsight. See the IMF here for example https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2013/wp1301.pdf)
Your thermostat example is (obviously) problematic given that any effect would be unnoticeable. But lets say we can switch of heating in all government buildings and having employees wear extra clothing has no effect on productivity.
If the saving is £50m a year the power companies just lost £50m of income. If the fiscal multiplier is 1.3 the economy just lost £65m aggregate demand. Suppose the power company in response cancels some orders for new plant and this send the already struggling local supplier bankrupt? (i.e. hysteresis effects).
But let me put the question the other way.
Given all the above and the real terms negative cost of borrowing lets say Parliament has given you £5bn of stimulus spending. We know that simply spending that money will have economic benefits (see the success of the limited Obama stimulus) but can you think of things to do that might have longer term benefits as well?
Colin L
High-tech low-life
The best way to reduce the budget deficit is not austerity alone. This is being done by the Tories purely for political dogma. The way to reduce the deficit is to grow the economy, the opposite of austerity. Increased economic activity should drive tax earnings (personal and corporate) and get people off welfare, attacking the problem from both ends.
However the problem we have is the deficit stems in significant part from the erosion of the UK tax base. Tax avoidance by corporate offshoring (Apple, Boots, etc..) means the tax take from UK industry, plus all the usual personal tax avoidance, is decreasing, and to try to offset the change the tax take on ordinary working people, income tax and VAT etc..., are increasing. This affects the little people, not the rich who are well sorted.
British business is sitting on more retained profits (cash) than at virtually any time in history. They dont want to invest because of lack of demand (austerity) so indulge in financial engineering (share buy-backs which benefit only the rich) and all the while UK productivity is tanking through lack of investment.
Growth in employment is illusory, largely McJobs (zero hours) or self-employed i.e. cant get a real job so do whatever mickey mouse part-time tasks you can do to earn a crust.
However the problem we have is the deficit stems in significant part from the erosion of the UK tax base. Tax avoidance by corporate offshoring (Apple, Boots, etc..) means the tax take from UK industry, plus all the usual personal tax avoidance, is decreasing, and to try to offset the change the tax take on ordinary working people, income tax and VAT etc..., are increasing. This affects the little people, not the rich who are well sorted.
British business is sitting on more retained profits (cash) than at virtually any time in history. They dont want to invest because of lack of demand (austerity) so indulge in financial engineering (share buy-backs which benefit only the rich) and all the while UK productivity is tanking through lack of investment.
Growth in employment is illusory, largely McJobs (zero hours) or self-employed i.e. cant get a real job so do whatever mickey mouse part-time tasks you can do to earn a crust.
matthewr
spɹɐʍʞɔɐq spɹoɔǝɹ ɹnoʎ sʎɐld
There is an argument for Austerity which surrounds expectations. That is, if we are in a situation where everyone is convinced that we must address the debt situation now or else a Greek like disaster will unfold and it will all be worse in the future. In response to this households and companies will expect higher future higher taxation and therefore save more money. Hence the "We are all in this together" > "Britain is booming thanks to our long term economic plan" is a sensible plan.
In other words, where we thought we had two explanations for Osborne's policy mistakes (he didn't understand graduate level economics or he didn't care and just wanted to reduce the size of the state) we now have a third. Namely, he was making a sort of double bluff based on a novel and subtle understanding of Ricardian Equivalence.
This proposition is not as bonkers as it sounds given that at the ZLB expectation effects are really why everything gets so hard to fix. But it has glaring problems:
1) The recovery we have since moving to Plan B (or rather secret phase 2 of Plan A) is historically very weak. We should be seeing Lawson boom like numbers given the multipliers and output gaps.
2) Occam's Razor. Osborne is a subtle, brilliant man engaged in a daring experiment that will one day earn his advisers Nobel prizes does not stack up well against the idea that he is just a) wrong or b) disingenuous.