Kicking the can

Ilya_Ilyich

Anyone want to explain how lowering aggregate demand through decreasing benefits and increasing public-sector layoffs will improve the economy? Or is this thread only for bizarre classist rants with no rational basis?

ILW

Increasing benefts and paying people to do nothing of zero monetary value can only be sustained with 100% tax rates on those that do produce any wealth. Or possibly just keep on borrowing more until it all collapses.

Ilya_Ilyich

So if we redistribute wealth to the lower classes, who spend the highest proportion of their income on consumption and thus are the most likely to drive business, we will have to make business unprofitable?

Graham_Devon

Ilya_Ilyich wrote: »

So if we redistribute wealth to the lower classes, who spend the highest proportion of their income on consumption and thus are the most likely to drive business, we will have to make business unprofitable?

The country spends more on benfits than it takes in income tax.

With recessions, the country takes even less tax, and spends more.

Therefore debt increases, and the idea is that when the economy is back on track, we pay down that debt. It works in cycles and always will do.

Over the last 15 years, the idea has been to spend in recessionary times and spend even more in the good times, leaving us running up continually increasing debts. Afterall, Gordon Brown had fixed boom and bust and bust wouldn't happen again, so he had nothing to worry about and labour politicians could simply buy votes via free laptops and the like.

We cannot afford to pay more out in benefits than we take in from taking wages. We've done that for approximately the last 7 years.

We don't have the wealth to redistribute. The wealth (taxes) are already entirely taking up. You'd have to increase taxes to just break even, and then increase them again to redistribute any extra.

This would in turn completely ruin business as it would be uneconomical to run a business in this country.

Our problem at the moment is that we already went too far with the benefits system. Therefore just at the wrong time...when the benefits system comes into it's own, we have no choice but to reign spending in.

Ilya_Ilyich

"The country spends more on benfits than it takes in income tax." Source? Can you explain why this is a problem?

"Over the last 15 years, the idea has been to spend in recessionary times and spend even more in the good times, leaving us running up continually increasing debts." Source? Can you explain why 'continually increasing debts' is bad?

"We cannot afford to pay more out in benefits than we take in from taking wages." Why not? What does one specific method of wealth transfer have to to do with one specific method of taxation?

"We don't have the wealth to redistribute. The wealth (taxes) are already entirely taking up. You'd have to increase taxes to just break even, and then increase them again to redistribute any extra." Not sure where you're going with this. Wealth transfers can and do occur with any degree of deficit.

" This would in turn completely ruin business as it would be uneconomical to run a business in this country." So you believe the way to improve our current situation is to lower aggregate demand and reduce taxation on business? Do you believe we have a surplus of demand and a deficit of supply?

"
Our problem at the moment is that we already went too far with the benefits system." Again - in what way? Is too much of our attention being devoted to the demand-side and not enough to the supply-side?

Graham_Devon

Ilya_Ilyich wrote: »

"The country spends more on benfits than it takes in income tax." Source? Can you explain why this is a problem?

Pardon?

Ilya_Ilyich wrote: »

Can you explain why 'continually increasing debts' is bad?

Yer, I think I'll step away..... slowly.

Ilya_Ilyich

Okay in simpler terms: what is the relationship between 'benefits' (please specify what you mean by this) and 'income tax' (please specify what you mean by this) that makes it necessarily bad for the one to be larger than the other?

The_White_Horse

Ilya_Ilyich wrote: »

Okay in simpler terms: what is the relationship between 'benefits' (please specify what you mean by this) and 'income tax' (please specify what you mean by this) that makes it necessarily bad for the one to be larger than the other?

are you a freakin' moron???

i think this shows us the lefty at work and why they are soooooo dangerous.

Ilya_Ilyich

idk bro can you answer the question?

The_White_Horse

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."