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UK Coalition Government Comprehensive Spending Review - Oct 20th 2010
Comments
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Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »1) The 20% figure comes from the Tories not from Labour
2) You utterly misunderstand what a deficit is. Its spending outstripping income. To close it you either cut spending or increase income. In our case a massive drop in tax receipts caused by the recession created much of the deficit.
So what would Labour cut? Simple - the deficit. Not spending, the actual deficit. Like it was cut by £20bn more than expected back in the Spring when tax receipts started to recover thanks to growth
Oh dear. I don't "totally misunderstand what a deficit is". I think you totally misunderstand economics.
The drop in tax receipts caused about half the deficit. In the simplest of terms, half of the remainder is caused by interest payments - even a Keynesian approach should have reduced this during the years of plenty, while instead the government overspent.
Sensible fiscal - ahem - prudence would have built up a surplus and a reserve for when this happened. Even GB didn't actually believe he'd eradicated boom and bust, surely?
Why, out of interest, has the Labour party not been able to make the point you consider so simple? Is it because they would have cut services, but don't want to tell where? Or do you really think that they had a nice bit of credible growth to get us all out of trouble, but that the civil service have allowed the Coalition to throw that all away?0 -
The lower deficit last year was because the recession wasn't as deep as feared, nowt to do with growth.Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »So what would Labour cut? Simple - the deficit. Not spending, the actual deficit. Like it was cut by £20bn more than expected back in the Spring when tax receipts started to recover thanks to growth
That is from an article in the Sunday Times named "Deficit may undershoot despite GDP setback" from October 25, 2009. If growth was the reason for the lower deficit then we'd have seen a deficit of 130bn last year not £155bn (a figure higher than projected six months earlier by a leading UK economist).Karen Ward, UK economist at HSBC, has gone through the assumptions the Treasury used in doing its forecast in April.
Those assumptions, some of which have to be approved by the National Audit Office, were made at the time of deepest gloom, in March, when shares were low, the oil price was weak, and economists were at their gloomiest about unemployment.
Ward has gone through these assumptions one by one and concluded that there is a small pot of gold for the Treasury in them. The higher stock market, for example, should give the Treasury an extra £3.1 billion of revenue this year, the higher oil price £4.2 billion, lower-than-feared unemployment £1.8 billion, and so on.
The result is that she expects this year’s borrowing to be £153 billion, 10.8% of GDP, more than £20 billion below the Treasury’s forecast, with the improvement running through to future years."The state is the great fiction by which everybody seeks to live at the expense of everybody else." -- Frederic Bastiat, 1848.0 -
Which spring was that - possibly the very very revised spring 09?Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »So what would Labour cut? Simple - the deficit. Not spending, the actual deficit. Like it was cut by £20bn more than expected back in the Spring when tax receipts started to recover thanks to growth
Troosernomics/Badgernomics deficit forecasts for 09/10:
March 2008 - £38bn
October 2008 - £117bn
March 2009 - £175bn
Easy innit - think of a number and massively increase it every few months, eventually it'll be 'better than expected' (even then we needed a £200bn printy printy to 'save' us £20bn...).0 -
Don't lets forget the BBC tax freeze for the next six years. That'll wipe the smile off Bill Turnbull's face when he's talking up another recession on Breakfast and threatening to boycott all coverage of coalition speeches (very politically neutral).
Where's your big red downward pointing arrow of doom now? Not quite as funny when the cannons pointing at you is it Bill and Sian?0 -
The lower deficit last year was because the recession wasn't as deep as feared, nowt to do with growth.
By definition having a less deep recession has everything to do with growth. In fact the lower deficit over the summer was due to higher than expected growth in Q2 2010 (April to June). During Q3 growth has probably slowed since the emergency budget (official figures no yet out AFAIK) which is why the deficit was worse than expected in September.Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable. J. K. Galbraith0 -
Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »
So what would Labour cut? Simple - the deficit. Not spending, the actual deficit. Like it was cut by £20bn more than expected back in the Spring when tax receipts started to recover thanks to growth
Are you denying that Labour had plans to make substantial cuts to public spending too?
Seriously?
You're denying a bare-faced fact, outlined extensively in their plans before the election.
You labour supporters take double-speak to a whole new level.0 -
Blacklight wrote: »I haven't seen the £500 figure stated anywhere other than the likes of the tabloids.
All I have heard is 'no worse off than the average working family'.
Out of interest, I did a quick check on what benefits OH and I would be entitled to if we were both out of work, claiming income support, housing benefit, child-related tax credits, all the rest of it. Our current circumstances, in terms of our ages, son, etc. We live in a 3 bed flat, but would only get LHA for a 2 bed, for example.
Total Entitlements£40,637.51£779.35 weekly
that's a hell of a lot for couple + child. That means that OH and I have to earn something like £75k between us to be better off working.
Isn't that insane?...much enquiry having been made concerning a gentleman, who had quitted a company where Johnson was, and no information being obtained; at last Johnson observed, that 'he did not care to speak ill of any man behind his back, but he believed the gentleman was an attorney'.0 -
In fact, Labours budget before the election worked out as 20% cuts on average to departmental spending compared to 19% cuts in this spending review, so it's much of a muchness.
The difference is in welfare benefits...neverdespairgirl wrote: »Isn't that insane?
Yes, the entire benefit system is bonkers. The concept that disability living allowance is not means tested is insane; the fact that most people with children are barely better off if they work is mad.“The ideas of debtor and creditor as to what constitutes a good time never coincide.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Love Among the Chickens0 -
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neverdespairgirl wrote: »Out of interest, I did a quick check on what benefits OH and I would be entitled to if we were both out of work, claiming income support, housing benefit, child-related tax credits, all the rest of it. Our current circumstances, in terms of our ages, son, etc. We live in a 3 bed flat, but would only get LHA for a 2 bed, for example.
Total Entitlements£40,637.51£779.35 weekly
that's a hell of a lot for couple + child. That means that OH and I have to earn something like £75k between us to be better off working.
Isn't that insane?
out of interest, how much of that is housing benefit ?0
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