You want me to fact check the whole article?!
Iāve always felt the UK electorate is deeply confused about what they are. We claim to be conservative and Conservative, but then some of the most popular institutions and policies (like the NHS) are unashamedly socialist.
The UK should be a mixed economy, with natural monopolies run as public services and the private sector running the rest. If you blind test policy positions without attributing them to a party, thatās what people seem to want.
Itās a shame, because Iāve always understood that if you want to fuel an economic recovery, the best way to do it is to funnel money towards the people who are most like to spend it.
Thatās not a Tory policy though sadly. Austerity proved that. Take public money and funnel it elsewhere while arguing that youāre reducing debt.
And they wonder why the recovery was so slow post 2008. Letās take money away from people who would immediately use it to stimulate the economy, and push money towards people whoāll just put it in the bank instead.
Fixed it for you
Well, tbf, interest rates for the last ten years are the lowest theyāve ever been by quite some distance.
I was partially on board with austerity but they missed a huge opportunity to invest heavily in infrastructure. Thatās what they should have done given the cost of borrowing was so cheap. That would have got the economy going quicker, imo.
I still think Brown should have nationalised RBS and repurposed it as a national investment bank.
iāve no issue with looking for efficiencies and cost savings but it was basically implemented as a tax that nailed the poorest in society. It resulted in cuts to services which is just backwards IMO.
My suspicious side almost thinks it was all part of a plan leading to Brexit and where we are now.
Except Cameron and Osborn weāre behind it and they were very much opposed to Brexit.
Austerity was nothing more than the usual Tory economic illiteracy
I read an interesting article at the time that claimed that Austerity was predicated on the idea that 50% of all government spend is wasted (or only 50p in every pound is returned to the country), which had been adopted by the OBR, who had plucked it wholesale from an IMF study into Government spending. Only problem was the IMF later acknowledged that this was bollocks and different activity actually have wildly different rates of return, or fiscal multiplication - usually with policies benefitting the wealthy (like tax cuts), returning very little, but policies benefitting the poor (healthcare, benefits etc) returning a lot more, in many cases a greater return than 1, because that money stimulates the economy, and promotes further spending.
But the Tories didnāt adjust their thinking - they ploughed on with the idiotic notion that lopping 50% off everything was the way forward.
This was not just desperately unfair - hammering people who could least afford it and hadnāt caused the crash, to pay for the recklessness of the wealthy - itās also economically bonkers as it starved the economy of the liquidity that it needed and stalled economic growth by stopping the people who tend to spend money from having money to spend.
As an interesting aside, it turns out that the single most efficient way a government can spend money is flood defence. That has the highest fiscal multiplication rate at something like an eight times return on spend. Which makes Liz āshit for brainsā Truss dutifully lopping 50% off the flood defence budget at the time an even more bonkers thing to do. Still, good job we didnāt have catastrophic floods in the following yearsā¦oh wait.
(Edit: It was actually Caroline Spelman, not Liz Truss)
Yeah, this is true - but arenāt we a bloody weird broken country that the public really like policies with a socialist underpinning - like state provided health and education - but as soon as anyone calls it socialism, then itās suddenly toxic.
yes youāre right, I remember Cameron and Osborne being opposed to it but my wild imagination does sometimes drift into thinking that they were being manipulated from elsewhere. I donāt dive in on such stuff but I never rule it out either, such has been the revelations over the last 5-10 years.
Given your comments above on Austerity, Iām again torn between the extremes of they were as thick as two short planks or it was again all about feeding their wealthy buddies. Of course itās never that simple or that black and white but I do wonder sometimes.
Fascinating insight on flood defenses. Iād like to learn more on that given that on the face of it seems an unlikely winner.
God, Iām dragging it up from memory, but itās to do with how devastating floods are economically - imagine what has to close as canāt operate in a flood, the cost to emergency services, the insurances claims, the complete shutdown of local economies etc.
There is an interesting FT article about fiscal multiplication here
https://www.ft.com/content/47ddbb14-34f6-354f-a907-8bacae72a5e6
Angry voice (very left leaning blog) about fiscal multiplication
If you canāt get the FT link to work, try putting
High fiscal multipliers undermine austerity programmes
into google. That seems to get around the paywall.
I think thatās the same study I linked to in the racism thread, as it shows that something 1 in 8 people believe ethic minorities lack the willpower and motivation to find work.
What a fucking state weāre in as a nation. Iāve no idea how we row back from here.
Youāre probably right. Any Labour leader needs to appeal and win the centre ground and keep the press moguls happy. That immediately puts them at odds with things that need to be addressed.
Breaking the myth that the Conservatives are currently a good thing for the country would be a good start but even after Austerity, Brexit and Covid it still looks as unlikely as ever. Iām still astounded by that.
Iām not. The vast majority of people do not think; they merely regurgitate whatever they hear in the media.
And the media, as we all (well, mostly) acknowledge, is only there to push the agenda of its billionaire owners and their chums.