60 Economists support delaying cuts.....

abaxas

The problem and answer is simple.

Slash and burn has worked before hence should work again. The softly softly approach has never actually worked. It's all theoretical.

aelitaman

lemonjelly wrote: »

Couple of things,

firstly, I find it quite suprising that the current government have been pillioried throughout this downturn, with a borderline witch hunt on Brown & Darling.
Now I am not of any 1 particular political persuasion, however some of what has gone on is borderline shameful. In general, when the crunch first became apparent, the main viable option for major economies that was generally agreed to be viable, was put forward by the UK (ie Brown). World leaders heralded his understanding of the situation & plans. Everyone else went off & implimented his idea.

In the UK, the media, tory party etc tried to score points & delayed the implimentation of the plan, thus reducing its effectiveness, & also prolonging the misery for many. Well done them!

We've had various individuals over the past year or so saying we need to do this or that, but whatever it is, it must be severe.

We now have quite a collective of emminent experts, generally agreeing with the current policy of the government, who are saying "lets do this gradually & carefully".

Now, am I more likely to have faith in some pillock from the sun, or worse, the mail, or a large group of people who have dedicated the majority of their lives to studying economics...

Second point. It is unarguable that severe action, & cutting vast swathes of jobs from any sector would absolutely have a massive impact on the economy, & therefore the lives of most of us. The thing is, would this sudden action be beneficial, or not? My feling is it wouldn't.

First, local authorities are already making large scale cuts - birmingham, 2000 minimum, nottingham have announced another 1000 on top of over 500 already. I'm sure many other councils are doing the same.
Second, in times of hardship, it is the statutory sector which is relied upon by so many. The jobcentres will be needed. The homeless service will be required. More people will require access to benefits. As more people have no money, for days out they're going to be using local parks, art galleries etc, cos they're free!
Third, the loss of tax income from all these cuts, added to the short term cost of redundancy payments & the additional cost of benefits payable to thos out of work would be an additional drain on the public purse in the short term. I feel this would create additional hardship, for the vast majority.

If you have a patient, who is very weak, vulnerable, and the slightest little thing would cause major ripples or even extermination, you should not go ahead & do anything which is likely to cause the patient to go into shock, as that would kill them. Simple as...

Any change has to be gradual. Placing large impact policies into place now could cause massive rammifications in the same way as was seen in places like Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and the like in the 70's & 80's where the political powers decided that they were really gonna affect the economy. Sure enough they did, but the cost was absolutely massive, & the vast majority, as well as the countries in question ended up worse off.

Loss of income tax from sacking public sector workers! What planet do you live on.

Private sector (wealth creating) pays income tax to govt, govt uses this income tax to pay public sector workers who create no wealth, they are 100% cost.

Brown deserves to be pilloried, Darling has more credibility. First off the VAT cut, what a waste of space. There was so much discounting going on the VAT cut was not even noticed apart from the Govt having to borrow another 12.5billion quid to compensate.

The Tories got it right with thier proposal for the govt to provide trade credit insurance, the lackof this was one of the major issues.

Brown could have replaced every police vechicle in the country with land rovers, Jaguars, LDV vans and Astras. Brown could have bought up the housing stock for council houses on the cheap, then sold them later on, Brown could have bought steel from the mill in Teeside and stockpile it for later use (the Chinese have been buying vast quatities of commodities whilst they are cheap and stockpiling them), Brown could have put more of the youth into extra one year top up academic programs to reskill them, what did Brown do cut the university funding by 500million whilst we are meant to be becoming a knowledge based economy.

All Brown did was try and get as many photo oppoutunities with Barrack Obama as posible and then employ 250,000 extra public sector workers whilst we have a structural defiecit of 178billion quid these 250,000 will have to be sacked next year anyway, then he copied the car scrappage scheme that the Germans inroduced whilst letting LDV vans go bust.

Brown deserves all the critisism, because all he has done is sold this country to UNITE because they are going to fund his election campaign.

We have borrowed 178billion quid and we do not have one asset for it.

EDIT: and the next part of genius Brown's plans when we need to create jobs is a tax on jobs, a rise in national insurance. The stupidity of this man is mind boggling. Even Darling knew this was stupid and wanted a VAT raise instead.

Conrad

aelitaman wrote: »

We have borrowed 178billion quid and we do not have one asset for it.

I'm a life long tory but that does not mean I can't see the good Brown has wrought. Ok he's made some mistakes but not nearly as costly as those Osborn would have made. Os was argueing against QE and Tories such as Ken Clarke & Ruth Kelly in late 2008 on Newsnight argued for interest rates to be reduced merely by 0.5% to 4.5%!! I remember shouting at the screen - how could these supposed big beasts be that out of touch:eek:

The tories I'm ashamed to say have shown themsleves to be very much behind the curve. The recession would be far far worse has Os had his way.

StevieJ

Emy1501 wrote: »

Do they say anywhere where this robust growth is going to come from? Their arguments sound fair and reasonable if they can say where all the growth is going to come from. but its bit like saying Woolworths should not have been allowed to go bust and should have been able to keep borrowing as oneday it may have grown enough to make money again,

Presumaby exports on the back of a weak currency.

StevieJ

Conrad wrote: »

The tories I'm ashamed to say have shown themsleves to be very much behind the curve. The recession would be far far worse has Os had his way.

I think I would rather have John Major :eek: I would certainly rather have the current incumbent (without the Genie on his back).

aelitaman

Conrad wrote: »

I'm a life long tory but that does not mean I can't see the good Brown has wrought. Ok he's made some mistakes but not nearly as costly as those Osborn would have made. Os was argueing against QE and Tories such as Ken Clarke & Ruth Kelly in late 2008 on Newsnight argued for interest rates to be reduced merely by 0.5% to 4.5%!! I remember shouting at the screen - how could these supposed big beasts be that out of touch:eek:

The tories I'm ashamed to say have shown themsleves to be very much behind the curve. The recession would be far far worse has Os had his way.

Interest rates are set by the BoE.

So what good has Brown brought?

StevieJ

aelitaman wrote: »

Interest rates are set by the BoE.

So what good has Brown brought?

I thought that was obvious, allowing interest rates to be set by the BOE

aelitaman

StevieJ wrote: »

I thought that was obvious, allowing interest rates to be set by the BOE

That was done before the recession. This thread was about Browns recession busting plan.

Kohoutek

aelitaman wrote: »

what did Brown do cut the university funding by 500million whilst we are meant to be becoming a knowledge based economy.

The government spends more than that on its own advertising - the Centre Office of Information cost £540 million last year. Of course, they'd rather cut £500 million from universities than the government propaganda machine.

StevieJ

aelitaman wrote: »

That was done before the recession. This thread was about Browns recession busting plan.

He thinks ahead and he could have taken it back under his wing:eek: