Chancellor on course to hit targets

chewmylegoff

lvader wrote: »

A correct way of putting would have been.

"The banks would have gone bust had we not bailed them out"

What you said was



This is plain stupid and wrong. We already had lots of debt before bailing out the banks. Bailing the banks really hasn't changed anything. The deficit is a structual one not related to the banks.

if we had no debt now, we couldn't have bailed the banks out (unless we had then eliminated the resulting debt using magic). so it's not stupid, or wrong. the debt existing now is a consequence of what has happened in the past, including but not limited to the bail outs. they are just an example of why part of the debt exists, and why it is impractical pie in the sky to dream of a world with no national debt.

CLAPTON

chewmylegoff wrote: »

the fact that all meaningful nations have debt suggests that whilst there may not be an economic theory called the "essential government debt theory", the reality is that it is part and parcel of running a major economy.

it's also very difficult to flex taxation revenue to match whatever capital spending you may have in a certain period, particularly when governments only run for short periods of time. to take an extreme example, it would have been quite tricky for the government of the day to finance the second world war using tax revenues alone...

the reasons all nations have debt is that politians don't like raising taxation but do like spending

the way you 'flex' spending in difficult times to meet special circumstances, is to save in advance

I believe some-one thought of this before, about 5,000 years ago when it became fashionable to build up stocks of food in good times so one could eat in bad times

chewmylegoff

CLAPTON wrote: »

the reasons all nations have debt is that politians don't like raising taxation but do like spending

the way you 'flex' spending in difficult times to meet special circumstances, is to save in advance

I believe some-one thought of this before, about 5,000 years ago when it became fashionable to build up stocks of food in good times so one could eat in bad times

if people voted for politicians who promised to tax them in advance for future expenditure then i'm sure that's what we would have (expect for all the unforseen events which the government needed to borrow money in respect of...).

CLAPTON

chewmylegoff wrote: »

if people voted for politicians who promised to tax them in advance for future expenditure then i'm sure that's what we would have (expect for all the unforseen events which the government needed to borrow money in respect of...).

whilst a few (very few) events aren't foreseeable, what is known about in advnace is that there will be events in the future.

just like a household budget; I don't know which appliances/car/house related things will cause me to spend next year but it's pretty certain that something 'unforeseen ' will happen

in any event I don't object to the principle for governments to borrow for genuine investment projects but sadly can we trust them to be honest about these?

lvader

chewmylegoff wrote: »

if we had no debt now, we couldn't have bailed the banks out (unless we had then eliminated the resulting debt using magic). so it's not stupid, or wrong. the debt existing now is a consequence of what has happened in the past, including but not limited to the bail outs. they are just an example of why part of the debt exists, and why it is impractical pie in the sky to dream of a world with no national debt.

You are mixing a hypothetical answer that is impossible with fact. hense stupid.

chewmylegoff

lvader wrote: »

You are mixing a hypothetical answer that is impossible with fact. hense stupid.

I apologise for bringing some stupid facts to your clever hypothetical discussion.

Christ!