Labour's continual calls for the Govt to spend more

Wookster

Rochdale - when will you realise that government spending is not a panacea to our woes?

Really2

hallmark wrote: »

I'm certain that even had the Govt abandoned austerity our GDP would be no different. The UK is basically performing the same as the US & the Eurozone i.e. very slow recovery. It's unfeasible to imagine that extra spending would mean the UK would be booming whilst the US & Eurozone flatlined.

By implementing austerity at least the UK get's to benefit from low bond rates because of the perceived safety of their debt.

Spot on, why can't anyone look further than the UK? we can't keep our GDP growing without selling goods and services abroad.

The more spending we do via government will mean more debt? so you could stimulate a bit short term but would stifle growth long term as you have to tax more to pay back the debt.

Also it is fairly obvious by what is happening to Italy now if we change course we pay more to finance debt.
So there is a fair chance taking on more debt will really screw things up.

julieq

The Labour line is clear and is believed my many people:

"The evil banks caused the crisis, not Labour policies, nor the public sector who do wonderful things. By making the banks pay for their mistakes, and by taxing the rich predator capitalists more, we can carry on expanding the public sector as we were doing previously, and we don't need cuts."

It happens not to be true, but the point is to remove the weight of blame for anything that happened and allow voters to return to them. Actually the truth is that whatever Gordon Brown did that was dumb while chancellor, the reaction to the crisis was effective and generally beneficial. Probably because he was forced to take advice. We're in a far better situation than parts of the eurozone, and we have the major advantage of having a floating pound.

It's irrelevant what they recommend on cuts because they'll be ignored. They're cynically banking on continued problems which means that provided they disagree with the government they'll be able to claim that things would be different if we'd listened to them. They won't reverse cuts and they won't reverse (for example) public sector pension reforms, because fundamentally they are the right things to be doing and Balls knows that as well as anyone.

bugslet

julieq - I wish you'd post more.;)

FTBFun

Party in opposition tells party in Government to do the opposite.

There's a clue there.

ILW

I can think of very few things that governments "invest" in that actually produce real growth. Letting businesses get on with business without rafts of restrictive legislation is where the growth comes from.

RichandJ

julieq wrote: »

The Labour line is clear and is believed my many people:

"The evil banks caused the crisis, not Labour policies, nor the public sector who do wonderful things. By making the banks pay for their mistakes, and by taxing the rich predator capitalists more, we can carry on expanding the public sector as we were doing previously, and we don't need cuts."

It happens not to be true.

This. Clearest exposition of the current Labour spin I've seen.

Rochdale_Pioneers

Wookster wrote: »

Rochdale - when will you realise that government spending is not a panacea to our woes?

OK then. Will the private sector build the new motorways and railways? The fibre optic network? No?

Have to be the state then. The "public bad" mantra is very nice. But it won't build the infrastructure that the private sector needs to run efficiently

Really2

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

OK then. Will the private sector build the new motorways and railways? The fibre optic network? No?

Are BT the private sector or state as I think they are rolling out Fibre across the UK?

Was a motorway built buy the private sector under Labour (M6 Toll)?

Just a thought.

System

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

Will the private sector build the new motorways and railways? The fibre optic network?

Why not?
The railways were built with private money. Private money laid the first Atlantic cable. Private money dug the Suez canal.