Politics

[Dr Gloom 21914]

I'm telling you, the agressive drive to completely reduce the deficit (which is failing) is just cover for for the Tories' real aim - a complete restructuring of the social contract established back in the post war years. Thatcher tried but didn't quite manage it. These cunts will destroy the public sector if they can get away with it.

[ewerk 30574]

I think he said some, to which there boss laughed and replied we're not all kensians!

 

The point been it is by no means a black and white issue as some on here would have you believe.

 

No political party in this country backs the kensians approach, yet some of you would have us believe its just is thick working class that don't understand

 

Of course it's not black and white. But most observers would agree that the economic policies employed over the past few years simply haven't worked. Maybe it's time to look at what has worked elsewhere and try a bit of that? The problem is that the Chancellor refuses to budge from his current course.

[Alex 35072]

Rather than explain things, I'll just assure you that you have no idea what you are on about.

 

:lol:

That should probably be everyone's reply to every post he makes tbh.

[Kevin Carr's Gloves 3888]

I think he said some, to which there boss laughed and replied we're not all kensians!

 

The point been it is by no means a black and white issue as some on here would have you believe.

 

No political party in this country backs the kensians approach, yet some of you would have us believe its just is thick working class that don't understand

 

John Maynard Keynes any chance you could choose one way of spelling Keynesian and sticking with it?

[Christmas Tree 4725]

 

Of course it's not black and white. But most observers would agree that the economic policies employed over the past few years simply haven't worked. Maybe it's time to look at what has worked elsewhere and try a bit of that? The problem is that the Chancellor refuses to budge from his current course.

 

I've yet to hear a sensible argument as to why none of our 3 political parties decided to follow this magical approach.

 

Surely all politicians would love to avoid austerity, borrow cheap, grow the economy and solve our problems.

 

It almost sounds too good to be true!

[NJS 4378]

I've yet to hear a sensible argument as to why none of our 3 political parties decided to follow this magical approach.

 

Cowardice on the part of Labour.

Alternative agenda for the Tories - see Gloom's posts about the social contract.

Drunk on power and won't upset their masters for the Libs.

[Happy Face 29]

Cowardice on the part of Labour.

 

Precisely. The dynamics in the US are different to the UK.

 

A hugely unpopular right wing government was blamed for the crash in the US, which allowed a liberal government to implement more left wing policy to rectify the situation....succesfully.

 

In the UK it was a hugely unpopular left wing government (ostensibly) that was blamed for the crash, which allowed a conservative government to implement a more right wing policy to exacerbate the problem.

 

Obviously it wasn't particularly a problem with policy of either incumbent in reality, it was a mix of decades of deregulation/borrowing as well as criminal acts by the banks/bankers that caused the crash, none of which have been dealt with in either case.

[Christmas Tree 4725]

 

[Meenzer 15518]

Still a more qualified chancellor than Gideon.

 

Meanwhile:

 

http://hipsterttoi.tumblr.com/

[Happy Face 29]

 

Were the United States to "go over the fiscal cliff," what do you expect would happen to the National Deficit?

 

a) Increase

b) decrease

c) stay the same

d) don't know

 

Without googling, what do you think?

 

Pollsters asked this question in the US...and only one in ten got the right answer

[Alex 35072]

You'd expect a quarter even if everyone just guessed

[Happy Face 29]

CT popped into the thread and disappeared sharpish

[Gejon 2]

I reckon most would rule out C & D, or maybe most went for D.

 

Basically I don't know much.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But I know I love yoooouuuuuuuuuuu.

[Happy Face 29]

I reckon most would rule out C & D, or maybe most went for D.

 

Basically I don't know much.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But I know I love yoooouuuuuuuuuuu.

 

 

Over a quarter went for D. At least they were honest.

 

Of the remaining people who thought they knew 1 in 5 got it right. Still shite.

[Christmas Tree 4725]

 

Were the United States to "go over the fiscal cliff," what do you expect would happen to the National Deficit?

 

a) Increase

b) decrease

c) stay the same

d) don't know

 

Without googling, what do you think?

 

Pollsters asked this question in the US...and only one in ten got the right answer

 

Would have to answer D.

 

But would have thought it depended on how much they gain from austerity measures compared to what they lose in benefit payments / hit to economy.

[Alex 35072]

I reckon you googled it and still had to answer D.

[Happy Face 29]

Would have to answer D.

 

But would have thought it depended on how much they gain from austerity measures compared to what they lose in benefit payments / hit to economy.

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/47-of-people-think-the-deficit-would-increase-if-we-go-over-the-fiscal-cliff-2012-12

 

It's a doomsday device put in place to force the two parties to agree a middleground. It would reduce the deficit by $607 Billion with across the board spending cuts and tax increases.

 

It's meant to be so extreme that it forces the parties to compromise on less punitive policy.

 

Unfortunately, the fiscal cliff would ONLY cut the annual deficit by two thirds. Merely slowing the rate of growth of the national debt.

 

This is why the correct policy is to grow the economy, rather than throwing yourself off ever taller fiscal cliffs...as The Tories have been repeatedly doing for a few years now.

[Matt 0]

This is why the correct policy is to grow the economy, rather than throwing yourself off ever taller fiscal cliffs...as The Tories have been repeatedly doing for a few years now.

 

Exactly, George O must have been off sick on the day his school introduced the concept of ratios.

[CleeToonFan 1]

Obamas not Kensian, he's American!

[Alex 35072]

Does CT realise the economist and the rapper/kid off Celebrity Big Brother are two different people?

[Dr Gloom 21914]

an international take on osborne's autumn statement

 

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2012/12/george-osbornes-journey-from-austerity-to-cruelty.html?mbid=social_retweet

 

George Osborne’s Game: From Austerity to Cruelty

 

 

Over at our Daily Comment blog, I’ve put up a longer post on the latest failure of austerity economics: the admission by George Osborne, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, that, after two and half years of furious budget-cutting, he’s still failing to meet his own fiscal targets.

One thing I didn’t mention in that piece is that Osborne isn’t merely reaffirming his commitment to the deflationary economics of the early nineteen-thirties. He’s coupling it with an embrace of Reaganite trickle-down economics of the nineteen-eighties and the even harsher Benthamite economics of the eighteen-thirties. Earlier this year, he cut the top tax rate from fifty per cent to forty-five per cent, claiming that Britain’s highest earners needed incentivizing. Now, with roughly one in twelve working-age Britons out of a job, he’s cutting the value of unemployment benefits—a move that harkens back to the infamous Poor Law of 1834, which was designed to stigmatize paupers and vagrants.

 

Cutting the value of unemployment benefits won’t make much of an impact on the deficit. The savings will amount to about four billion pounds in a total budget of about seven hundred billion pounds. But the cut will be felt by the jobless and their families, many of whom already live in poverty or near poverty. In the United Kingdom, unlike in the United States, the level of unemployment benefits isn’t linked to the recipient’s wages in his or her last job. Single people get a maximum of seventy-one pounds (about $115) a week, and couples get up to a hundred and twelve pounds (about $180). For decades, governments of both parties have raised the payments in line with inflation, so that their purchasing power remains steady. But with inflation currently running at more than 2.5 per cent, Osborne has ruled that over the next three years increases in benefits will be limited to one per cent. That might not sound like a big difference, but over three years it could well add up to a five per cent drop in purchasing power.

Moreover, the squeeze won’t just fall on the unemployed. The one-per-cent cap will also apply to housing and income-support benefits, which are used to top up the income of many poor and near-poor working families. Taken together, the tax and spending changes that Osborne announced on Wednesday will reduce the incomes of the poorest tenth of U.K. households by 2.7 per cent, according to the Resolution Foundation, an independent research organization.

About the only economic justification for these sorts of benefit cuts is that they render the labor market more “flexible,” a codeword for making the poor and the unemployed more eager to seek work and accept low wages. But the British labor market is already pretty flexible, and one of the few bright spots over the past couple of years has been a steady rise in total employment.

Osborne’s primary motivation wasn’t economics; it was politics. With Britain’s “lost decade” about to enter its sixth year, and the Conservatives trailing Labour in the polls, he deemed it necessary to do a bit of rabble rousing, appealing to the base instincts of middle-class voters who resent paying taxes to support the unemployed, while also throwing some meat to the Fleet Street jackals who are forever banging on about “scroungers” on the dole. The cut in benefits was “about being fair to the person who leaves home every morning to go out to work and sees their neighbor still asleep, living a life on benefits,” Osborne declared. “As well as a tax system where the richest pay their fair share, we have to have a welfare system that is fair to the working people who pay for it.”

For a time, Osborne, who hails from the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy, appeared to be an ill-informed aristocratic dilettante posing as an economic authority. Now, he has revealed himself as a cynical and cruel politician, who, in order to distract attention from the failure of his policies, is heaping more financial misery on the poor. Good going, fella!

[Park Life 71]

There is not one instance in history where austerity policy has ever worked in re-jigging an economy. The only example where it partially worked was Chile where Reaganomics was take to its limit on the back opression.

If the UK wants to spend less and earn more it needs to flush the economy with money directed at Business, invention and national building projects. People spend more when they feel good not when they are watching every penny. I look forward to a near future where economically illiterate national traitors like Osbourne are summarily executed and their heads put on sticks.

Edited December 10, 2012 by Park Life

[Christmas Tree 4725]

82,000 drop in employment.

 

Biggest quarterly drop since 2001

 

Even the young unemployed 16 - 24 figures plummet.

 

Good News.

[Happy Face 29]

82,000 drop in employment.

 

Biggest quarterly drop since 2001

 

Even the young unemployed 16 - 24 figures plummet.

 

Good News.

 

Unemployment was 2.49 million when Dave took office (May 2010)

 

He took it to 2.68 million (Nov 2011)

 

It's now 2.51 million. Up for his time in office.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10604117

 

Don't take a quarterly drop as a sign of good governance when it's just a correction to the big increases in previous quarters alongside an increase in seasonal workers brought in for the christmas build up.

[Alex 35072]

Includes the Workfare (the cheeky bastards calling it that btw) Scheme as well.