• Welcome, guest!

    This is a forum devoted to discussion of Wolverhampton Wanderers.
    Why not sign up and contribute? Registered members get a fully ad-free experience!

REFERENDUM RESULTS AND DISCUSSION THREAD

Papper said:
Please accept my apologies for being three years out. Bottom line is we are spending an insane amount of taxpayers money servicing a national debt that increases minute by minute. Am I wrong to be concerned?

"For context, that £60 billion figure in 2019/20 is more than the Government will be spending on schools or the Armed Forces."
Click to expand...

Definition of scaremongering. That article was written in January 2015, 4 months before the General Election. He took a projected figure for 2020, and compared it to 2015 spending levels, without the knowledge of which party would be in power. That is a completely irrelevant statement
 
Papper said:
Please accept my apologies for being three years out. Bottom line is we are spending an insane amount of taxpayers money servicing a national debt that increases minute by minute. Am I wrong to be concerned?

"For context, that £60 billion figure in 2019/20 is more than the Government will be spending on schools or the Armed Forces."
Click to expand...

Whether to be concerned us likely to be based on your economic knowledge or your gut. On the face of it, it is a very large number and is growing - your gut tells you it is wrong, it is unsustainable and harming the economy. What could we do with all that money we use to service debt? A common question usually put by politicians who want you to agree with austerity as a means to reduce the debt.

Since 2008, politicians have wanted you to believe that debt is bad and unless we pay it off quickly we are all doomed. There is only one way of reducing debt, spend less than you take in. Austerity or tax increases. Both have risks attached to them, both can suppress economic growth and both can be politically toxic. The Tories have managed to convince huge swathes of the electorate that austerity is a necessity, they haven't provided any alternatives and haven't explained why it is necessary other than "to reduce the debt". They are borrowing more than any other government but that is just an inconvenient truth so not mentioned.

For generations we have had debt, it has gone up and down at various times...sometimes by choice, sometimes by circumstances. The expectation that on the back of a global financial crash, widespread economic troubles and slow economic growth that we should do a complete about turn in our economic planning is farcical. And in the UK it hasn't worked, the brakes have been eased but the harm has been done. It may be decades before our economy returns to pre2008 levels.

So no, I think your concern is overstated.
 
Deutsch Wolf said:
Depends. Do you understand that governments fundamentally run at a deficit unless they're run on extremely strange lines that essentially don't work?

The key is to make that borrowing produce actual tangible results, whether it be boosting the economy so we increase GDP and aid our ability to pay it down if necessary, or by investing in state infrastructure to improve people's lives. If you're borrowing to fund a nuclear plant which might not even work and where the profits go to non-UK companies, or building a completely pointless new train line that benefits no-one and is a mere vanity project because the headline top speed looks flashy, that's not so good.

The concept that you run an economy like a household or a corner shop is possibly the biggest UK political fallacy in the last 40 years. Trite phrases like "fixing the roof while the sun's shining" are palpable nonsense.

None of this has anything to do with immigration.
Click to expand...

No I know it doesn't have anything to do with immigration but it's an insane amount of money that is spent on interest servicing a national debt that is out of control and rising. There is no sign of the debt reducing and those you cannot dismiss those forecasts. Given the ever increasing demand on the public services and the failure to supply how should successive governments have planned for meeting demand on public services? Cut, borrow or tax?
 
The Saturday Boy said:
Whether to be concerned us likely to be based on your economic knowledge or your gut. On the face of it, it is a very large number and is growing - your gut tells you it is wrong, it is unsustainable and harming the economy. What could we do with all that money we use to service debt? A common question usually put by politicians who want you to agree with austerity as a means to reduce the debt.

Since 2008, politicians have wanted you to believe that debt is bad and unless we pay it off quickly we are all doomed. There is only one way of reducing debt, spend less than you take in. Austerity or tax increases. Both have risks attached to them, both can suppress economic growth and both can be politically toxic. The Tories have managed to convince huge swathes of the electorate that austerity is a necessity, they haven't provided any alternatives and haven't explained why it is necessary other than "to reduce the debt". They are borrowing more than any other government but that is just an inconvenient truth so not mentioned.

For generations we have had debt, it has gone up and down at various times...sometimes by choice, sometimes by circumstances. The expectation that on the back of a global financial crash, widespread economic troubles and slow economic growth that we should do a complete about turn in our economic planning is farcical. And in the UK it hasn't worked, the brakes have been eased but the harm has been done. It may be decades before our economy returns to pre2008 levels.

So no, I think your concern is overstated.
Click to expand...

So why are we failing to meet the demand on public services? How do we meet the demand without cutting, borrowing or taxing?
 
Papper said:
No I know it doesn't have anything to do with immigration but it's an insane amount of money that is spent on interest servicing a national debt that is out of control and rising. There is no sign of the debt reducing and those you cannot dismiss those forecasts. Given the ever increasing demand on the public services and the failure to supply how should successive governments have planned for meeting demand on public services? Cut, borrow or tax?
Click to expand...

If you want a ridiculously simplistic answer then their spending should be far better targeted and they should aim to increase tax take under the existing regulations, let alone creating new ones.

Of course there is no such simplistic answer and nor will either of those things happen under a Tory regime.
 
Deutsch Wolf said:
If you want a ridiculously simplistic answer then their spending should be far better targeted and they should aim to increase tax take under the existing regulations, let alone creating new ones.

Of course there is no such simplistic answer and nor will either of those things happen under a Tory regime.
Click to expand...

Appreciate the answer Deutschy. The question becomes even more ridiculous though if you contrast tax revenues with public spending in a stagnate economy that has been fuelled by consumer credit and QE. It's a problem ...
 
The financial argument that what we pay into the EU was an important point in the Leave campaign (as is Overseas Aid) - just had my tax details for 2015/16 & coding for 2017/18

The total of the two was 2.29% of the total tax I paid - dwarfed by everything else (including servicing our National Debt which came in at 5.30%)

Not sure that leaving is going to give us the financial boost that is claimed & whilst I did vote out it wasn't down to this or any issue re immigration, merely that the EU was moving in a direction that I was not comfortable with & unless it became fully federated on a financial basis that it was only going to continue stagnating. Clearly that was not something that we were going to agree to so would always be on the outside looking in & only semi attached to the EU project.
 
2017 Forecast tax revenue £716Billion
2017 Forecast public spending £784Billion
 
That rather depends doesn't it?

You could just up the debt by paying more for schools in theory. There isn't a huge amount stopping you doing so as a government.
 
Greece is completely unreliable economy based on tourism and that is about it. We are one of the biggest economies in the world and based on a massive financial services sector.

Chalk and cheese.
 
Paddingtonwolf said:
Greece is completely unreliable economy based on tourism and that is about it. We are one of the biggest economies in the world and based on a massive financial services sector.

Chalk and cheese.
Click to expand...

I know. I was referring to a deficit between tax revenues and public spending which year on year increases debt (and interest)
Thanks for reassuring me that borrowing is the way forward. About £50Bn a year extra might meet the shortfall.
 
Paddingtonwolf said:
Greece is completely unreliable economy based on tourism and that is about it. We are one of the biggest economies in the world and based on a massive financial services sector.

Chalk and cheese.
Click to expand...

Also, when they registered blind driving taxis and people drawing their state pension at 45, it can only go one way
 
Papper you really need to stop worrying about national debt.

1. We've been in debt for about 300 years.

2. We are not the same as Greece - the big difference is that we have our own currency and they do not. We can ask the Bank of England to create money by simply entering the digits on a spreadsheet.

3. The govt can essentially spend what it likes - spending is not dependent on taxation. It is part of it but not the whole story.

4. The govt has to run deficits otherwise it is needlessly extracting wealth from the economy.

5. A proportion of our debt is owed to the Bank of England. Do you think they'll ever send the boys round to collect?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

darlowolf64
  • Locked
The Clique and how to join it...
Replies
6
Views
2K
The Bear
The Bear
lemonjelly
The Mental Health thread
49 50 51
Replies
1K
Views
103K
The Bear
The Bear
Back
Top