How long to pay it all back? 2070?

amcluesent

Let's just default, with a 'pre-package' bankruptcy and sell England to the Chinese

Degenerate

vivatifosi wrote: »

Well, the UK paid the last of its WW2 debts in 2006, 61 years after the end of WW2:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4757181.stm

Bringing that up as an example just shows that you don't know what you are talking about. The WWII debt was on extremely favorable terms, so it made no sense to pay it off early. It wasn't a matter of abilty to pay.

tomstickland

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/hamish-mcrae/hamish-mcrae-age-of-new-labour-draws-to-a-close-with-deceit-and-dishonesty-1672792.html

That's an interesting article.

vivatifosi

Degenerate wrote: »

Bringing that up as an example just shows that you don't know what you are talking about. The WWII debt was on extremely favorable terms, so it made no sense to pay it off early. It wasn't a matter of abilty to pay.

As I said in my initial statement, I'm posing a question, not pretending that I know the answer. The IFS's best guess is February 2032. As you are so knowledgeable, yours is?

Degenerate

vivatifosi wrote: »

As I said in my initial statement, I'm posing a question, not pretending that I know the answer. The IFS's best guess is February 2032. As you are so knowledgeable, yours is?

Too early to tell at this stage, as there is the ever-present danger of a Tory government being elected in a year or so. If this happens, and they fulfill their promise to destroy any tentative recovery with massive premature tightening, then revenues will collapse further and the fiscal situation will get much worse.

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Degenerate wrote: »

Too early to tell at this stage, as there is the ever-present danger of a Tory government being elected in a year or so. If this happens, and they fulfill their promise to destroy any tentative recovery with massive premature tightening, then revenues will collapse further and the fiscal situation will get much worse.

How does that work then ?, the evidence suggests that most of the pain the Tory governments give out is fixing the issues that Labour won't or can't grasp. They had to do it in the 80's as Labour had let the unions run riot, and they will have to do it again this time with Labour's 'buy now, pay later' attitude. The same attitude they have let run through our whole society that has left us with the biggest, personal and public debt in history.

I mean what happened to Brown's policy in '97 of not letting the housing market destable the economy ?, which has been precisely what he has let happen.

Rochdale_Pioneers

How it works is that to get back into paying down debt you need to run a budget surplus. To do that you need an economy in growth, and to to that you need to get out of recession.

If the Tories get in next year and start slashing spending immediately and let unemployment go shooting up even more, it brakes any chance of recovery. Its a simple economic principle that you need to spend your way out of recession - thats why every government currently in recession is doing so.

I've thought about this for months now - how Osborne knows something that no other finance minister in the world does. And I now believe this - the Tories don't care if the recession is prolonged as (a) they blame Labour anyway and (b) it gives them a chance to eviscerate the working unionised types they so despise. Quite why teachers should have a pay freeze and have their pension smashed when millionaires will be given a tax free inheritence is beyond me.

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Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

Quite why teachers should have a pay freeze and have their pension smashed when millionaires will be given a tax free inheritence is beyond me.

Because teachers and other public sector workers need to understand that the private sector has to deal with these issues, their pay has been frozen in many cases and their pensions destroyed. It can't be one rule for one, and one for the other, everyone must share the burden.

The millionaire issue is a red herring, anyway, if my parents had a million pound house (they don't by the way) that they had worked for all their lives, it would be nice if they could give the proceeds of that house to their children if they so wish, not to have most of it taken by the government who have already taxed 'the' parents all their working lives.

It wouldn't be so bad if the money Labour used in taxes they used wisely, but they don't. Sure they build hospitals and schools but they also give vast sums to fekless no hopers who have 3-4 kids with different dads, then milk the system all their lives.... want proof ?, council estates in decades gone by used to have 70% of their population with at least 1 worker in the family............ that figure now is under 40%. That's over 60% of council estate families who have no one in work, and that after 12 years of a Labour government.

lostinrates

Degenerate wrote: »

you don't know what you are talking about.

There are an awful lot of us who are here to learn not teach, if noone asks the questions people like us don't get answers, or handles on the situations to learn for ourselves. I don't really see the point in discussion boards for people who know pretty much everything.

Wookster

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

If the Tories get in next year and start slashing spending immediately and let unemployment go shooting up even more, it brakes any chance of recovery. Its a simple economic principle that you need to spend your way out of recession - thats why every government currently in recession is doing so.

Rochdale the simple fact is that spending in its current magnitude is unsustainable in the short term. Did you realise that (according to Hamish McRae):

Yet we are now proposing that spending rises to 48 per cent of GDP, almost as high as the mid-1970s when the IMF came in.

All this because Brown did not mend the roof while the sun was shining.