The Austerity Disaster

The_White_Horse

homelessskilledworker wrote: »

Wow!!

Pretty brutal stuff, and I am a big critic of the way the welfare state has gone. But I am also aware that there are people at the bottom of the food chain that need some tough love not unforgiving hate.

I do blame the financial centre/ Bankers in the UK today, for some reason ALL of our political parties have bent over backwards to give them whatever they want, they are still doing it now while the poor suffer.

I partly agree with Hamish, but what I would support is a huge infastructure project to bring the UK up and beyond the 21st century, the people in the UK that you now so loathe could maybe find their pride again with a spade in hand.

Let finance bog off to the far east or wherever it wants to go, we need real hope and real jobs for real people.

I have no problem with Govt spending - when they have money to spend, which they don't, because they have been to busy chucking it away on garabage.

However, the high speed rail link, new motorways, new airports etc - all that stuff should be built and be built by the bone idle scum currently being paid a huge amount to watch jeremy kyle.

It is about time that people learned that we can't save everyone. there will always be an underclass of scum at the bottom and they will always be there, no matter how much free money you chuck at them. in fact the more you do, the worse they get. Just cut them loose. Slash public sector wages and pensions - these people were screaming for Hester to lose his bonus - so clearly they agree that contracts are meaningless.

homelessskilledworker

The_White_Horse wrote: »

I have no problem with Govt spending - when they have money to spend, which they don't, because they have been to busy chucking it away on garabage.

However, the high speed rail link, new motorways, new airports etc - all that stuff should be built and be built by the bone idle scum currently being paid a huge amount to watch jeremy kyle.

It is about time that people learned that we can't save everyone. there will always be an underclass of scum at the bottom and they will always be there, no matter how much free money you chuck at them. in fact the more you do, the worse they get. Just cut them loose. Slash public sector wages and pensions - these people were screaming for Hester to lose his bonus - so clearly they agree that contracts are meaningless.

Like I have said, I do not agree with handing over piles of money to people playing the victim and using children as bargining tools and for emotional blackmail, BUT!

I do not see these people as "scum" as you put it, and I honestly believe that with many of them if you was to allow them to pay their way in life and have something to show for it, they would choose that road.

How these people ended up on welfare is complicated, and there are forces in this country that are happy to keep them there for their own selfish reason, politics and financial.

I would be carefull how you generalise people who are struggling with life, it might be easier than you imagine to be walking in their shoes one day, and then you will hoping not everyone walks over you with a dirty look.

setmefree2

Krugman Doesn’t Tell Whole Story About British Austerity: View

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-31/krugman-doesn-t-tell-whole-story-about-british-austerity-view.html

The cost of default insurance on U.K. government debt, for example, currently stands at about 80 basis points (meaning 80,000 pounds a year to insure 10 million pounds of government debt for five years). That’s roughly where it was when Cameron took power. In the same period, the cost of insuring French government debt has more than doubled, to about 165 basis points from 80.
Postponing deficit cuts hasn’t put Italy and France in a better position. Higher borrowing costs have pushed them into a period of market-imposed austerity, with all the economic pain that entails.

Forecasters tracked by Bloomberg currently expect no growth in France this year, and a contraction of more than 1 percent in Italy. The forecast for Britain is a 0.5 percent gain.

setmefree2

What Krugman Didn't Say About the U.K.'s Austerity Plan: The Ticker

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-30/what-krugman-didn-t-say-about-the-u-k-s-austerity-plan-the-ticker.html

In other words, markets have lost much more faith in the creditworthiness of Italy and France than they have in Britain's. That means Britain doesn't have to pay as much interest on its current debts, giving it a much better chance of getting those debts under control and avoiding the kind of market-enforced austerity that much of continental Europe now faces.

nicko33

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

They believed that you could have austerity and growth.

So government spending is the only thing that influences growth?

nearlynew

homelessskilledworker wrote: »

I would be carefull how you generalise people who are struggling with life, it might be easier than you imagine to be walking in their shoes one day, and then you will hoping not everyone walks over you with a dirty look.

I know a song about that ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNmty6moVW4

Conrad

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

They believed that you could have austerity and growth.

.

Canada bought in blitzkrieg austerity in the late 90's and got back to growth soonafter.

Also lets not forget the Keynesian model was all very well when mighty blighty didn't have Chinas and Indias to compete in the scramble to sell stuff to the world.

Are we not merely returning to 2007 Gov't spending levels? Was 2007 a miserable time to exist with such a level of spending?

shortchanged_2

Conrad wrote: »

Are we not merely returning to 2007 Gov't spending levels? Was 2007 a miserable time to exist with such a level of spending?

Problem is Conrad was 2007 actually all that great in hindsight?

A credit fueled boom by both consumers and government which is now coming home to roost.

tomterm8

Generali wrote: »

Hmm. Austerity, UK style. Nominal UK Government spending (incl. local and devolved Governments):

2007: £544,000,000,000
2008: £575,700,000,000
2009: £621,500,000,000
2010: £660,600,000,000
2011: £683,400,000,000*
2012: £703,400,000,000*
2013: £722,200,000,000*

*Estimated.
.

Has there been any UK government in the last 100 years whose Nominal UK government spending actually fell for more than 2 consecutive years?

When was the last time UK government's nominal spending fell even in a single year?

Austerity doesn't have much to do with nominal spending falling, and never really has. To achieve a fall in debt levels you don't need to reduce nominal spending. You can achieve falling debt levels simply by holding the growth of nominal spending below trend growth in gdp.

You can achieve a fall in debt levels even when you are increasing government spending in real terms.

StevieJ

Mr_Mumble wrote: »

It isn't an ideological question but a factual one. As Warner points out Krugman doesn't even realise the "Great Depression" was not that in the UK - if you want to look at austerity look at 1920 or the late 1940s.


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There may have been much belt tightening in the late 40's but wasn't that when the Welfare State was formed? and that in the face of a far higher public debt burden than today due to WW2.