NS&I and UK Gov Bankruptcy

Glen_Clark

themanfromamarillo wrote: »

Our government debt to GDP ratio is about 90%. Since 1800 that debt as a share of our economy has been higher in more than half the years. In the years after the Napoleonic wars that ratio was almost 3 times higher. Why would we go bust now when we hadn't gone bust in all those other years?

Because we have more democracy now. The Government daren't cut spending on things like Pensions (esp Public Sector) NHS etc (which we never had then) for fear of offending voters or unions as public sector unions are still strong.

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse (defined as a liberal gift) from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, followed always by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years." - attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler, (October 15, 1747 - January 5, 1813) a Scottish-born British lawyer and writer.

bigadaj

Glen_Clark wrote: »

Can we put the Daily Mail aside and look at the figures?
G Osborne increased our debt by more in one Parliament than all the Labour Governments put together.

That's a difficult one, the Tories managed to do this in conjunction with austerity and 'massive' cuts.


The alternative was of course to carry on borrowing.

Glen_Clark

bigadaj wrote: »

That's a difficult one, the Tories managed to do this in conjunction with austerity and 'massive' cuts.


The alternative was of course to carry on borrowing.

But we have carried on borrowing.
Tories cut benefits for claimants who are unlikely to vote for them anyway.
But the big spenders continue unabated
We still have Europes biggest Government, biggest military budget, biggest foreign aid budget, etc etc - and borrowing to sustain it

Glen_Clark

The Tory council cut spending by putting cheaper cladding on Grenfell Tower
Now they have a Coroprate Manslaughter Investigation where no individual can be held responsible. Just a bonanza for lawyers ending in one Government Department fining another. Whats the point of that?

Malthusian

Glen_Clark wrote: »

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse (defined as a liberal gift) from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, followed always by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years." - attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler, (October 15, 1747 - January 5, 1813) a Scottish-born British lawyer and writer.

The trouble with quoting people who have been dead for 200 years is that we can look on the 200 years of history that have passed without their knowledge and observe how their pronouncement has been repeatedly proven to be complete Horlicks.

(See also: my namesake, Thomas Malthus, and his theory that an exponentially growing population would inevitably outstrip an arithmetially growing food source, with the inevitable result of mass starvation.)

It is a good theory. It sounds good. It is logistically consistent. So is the theory of phlogiston. Unfortunately it is also wrong, and was proven as such over a century ago, and people who still cling to it look silly.

Stable democracies typically take turns between a centre-left and centre-right party (or coalition in PR systems), which means that 50% of the time the majority does not in fact vote for the party promising "the most benefits from the public treasury" (i.e. the centre-left one). If it did we would have permanent centre-left government. We have not, and nor has France, Germany, the USA, Japan or numerous other long-standing democracies for the past 70 years. The UK and the US among them have failed to collapse into dictatorship despite 300 years of democracy. QED.

("Ah" say Tytlerites "but the US and UK have got lucky and they could still collapse into dictatorship eventually." Well, that is a theory that is unfalsifiable, i.e. no amount of evidence can ever disprove it, i.e. it's useless.)

We only need one example of a population failing to elect the party promising "the most benefits" to disprove Tytler's theory because he said it "always" happens. In fact, out of the last ten elections in the UK alone, seven of them have been won by the party promising economic stability over the party promising the most spending. That's in a single country. I could take numerous other counterexamples across the world, in America, Europe and Asia, if I needed to.

Even this is being soft on Tytler because the party promising "the most benefits" is not Labour - it is one of the all-things-to-all-men Lib Dems, the drippy Greens or the money-is-a-lie hard left. It doesn't matter which, all that matters is that the voting public don't vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits of all - they mostly view them as dangerous idiots who will lose them their jobs and cause prices to rise. Which of course they are. The public is not as stupid as Tytler thought they were, and have repeatedly proven so over the past 200 years.

Glen_Clark

Malthusian wrote: »

The UK and the US among them have failed to collapse into dictatorship despite 300 years of democracy. QED.

I hardly know where to start. You seem to be under the illusion the UK has been a democracy for 300 years. 100 years ago women didn't even have a vote. We are still the least democratic country in Europe because we only elect one third of our constitution, which can be over ruled by either the Unelected Head of State or the Unelected House of Lords.

veryintrigued

Glen_Clark wrote: »

The Tory council cut spending by putting cheaper cladding on Grenfell Tower
Now they have a Coroprate Manslaughter Investigation where no individual can be held responsible. Just a bonanza for lawyers ending in one Government Department fining another. Whats the point of that?

Am not sure your reason for including the councils politics in this?

Are you saying other local councils of different political persuasions haven't used the same cladding for the same reasons?

kidmugsy

Glen_Clark wrote: »

The Tory council cut spending by putting cheaper cladding on Grenfell Tower
Now they have a Coroprate Manslaughter Investigation where no individual can be held responsible. Just a bonanza for lawyers ending in one Government Department fining another. Whats the point of that?

How do you cut spending by installing cladding? I think you mean "the council lavished money on the tower, but being public sector cocked it up".

dividendhero

Glen_Clark wrote: »

I hardly know where to start. You seem to be under the illusion the UK has been a democracy for 300 years. 100 years ago women didn't even have a vote. We are still the least democratic country in Europe because we only elect one third of our constitution, which can be over ruled by either the Unelected Head of State or the Unelected House of Lords.

Not only is the least democratic country in Europe - it has some of the strictest censorship in the Western World. If that's not bad enough present government are planning to tighten censorship via the "Digital Economy" bill

Malthusian

Glen_Clark wrote: »

I hardly know where to start. You seem to be under the illusion the UK has been a democracy for 300 years. 100 years ago women didn't even have a vote.

16 year olds still don't have a vote, as they do in some countries, and as the red team think they should do here. Does that make us a dictatorship?

There are varying degrees of democracy (as even you admit by referring to "least democratic" - there can't be such a thing as "least democratic" if democracy isn't a spectrum) and the UK was still a democracy even when it was a less democratic and less enlightened one.

We are still the least democratic country in Europe

Turkey? Russia? Belarus? Vatican City? Do you know how many women get to vote for the head of State in the Holy See?

Spare me the tedious republican debate, no-one wants President Blair.