BREXIT - Is This Really Still Rumbling On? 😴
Comments
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Puts his DUP support at the lowest point surely?
...and he may need them again given a GE win requiring coalition.
He might even have pi$$ed the Sinn Feiners at the same time.seanoconn - gruagach craic!0 -
I would say that they, like the SNP, will be pretty happy with how it's all going.pinno said:Puts his DUP support at the lowest point surely?
...and he may need them again given a GE win requiring coalition.
He might even have pi$$ed the Sinn Feiners at the same time.0 -
Japan is an exception that is providing the case study for everybody else.rick_chasey said:surrey_commuter said:
so this whole hypothesis is based upon the assumption that inflation will not return to it's historical ratesrick_chasey said:If truth is the first casualty of war, social science is the first casualty of election campaigns. So it was with Sajid Javid’s speech yesterday. He claimed that Labour will tax everybody more, “saddle the next generation with debt”, “ruin your finances” and would be “letting prices run wild in the shops.”
All this is silly hyperbole.
I say so not just because, as Simon says. Labour’s spending plans are more sustainable than the Tories because it will not inflict a damaging Brexit upon the economy.
Instead, there are two other reasons why Javid is wrong.Javid
One is that developed economies are resilient. They just don’t tip swiftly from prosperity to ruin. For one thing, high debt (even if we get it) is no barrier (pdf) to decent economic growth. Also, as Eric Lonergan says, “inflation is truly dead, and policy makers don’t need to worry about it.” Governments and central banks have struggled to raise inflation despite trying. It would be odd if Mr McDonnell had powers unknown to the ECB or Bank of Japan. And we must remember the finding of John Landon-Lane and Peter Robertson, that government policies don’t usually change trend growth by very much – a result that is comforting as well as dispiriting.
Adam Smith was bang right. There is a great deal of ruin in a nation. Countries can cope with bad policies. Those on the right who say the UK (well, actually Britain) can survive leaving the EU therefore have a point. But you cannot easily claim that the economy is resilient to changes in trading rules but ultra-vulnerable to moderate differences in fiscal policy and taxes.
There is, however, another reason why economies aren’t ruined by bad policy. It’s that such policies don’t persist. They get reversed. Examples of this include Mitterrand’s “austerity turn” in 1983 and Syriza's acceptance of EU-imposed austerity in 2015. But we have also seen examples under the Tories. Thatcher abandoned M3 targets and fiscal austerity in the mid-80s: cyclically adjusted net borrowing rose from a small surplus in 1981-82 to 2.8% of GDP in 1983-84. And Major pulled the UK out of the ERM in 1992.
Liberal democratic capitalism, then, selects against bad policies. Ones which damage the economy egregiously get reversed. If Labour’s policies are as bad as Javid claims (arguendo!) the correct inference is not that Labour will ruin the nation, but that Mr McDonnell will disappoint his supporters as so many of his predecessors have done.
Within reason. Japan hasn’t managed to do it. All the scaremongering about QE hasn’t resulted in it.
The guy’s a well respected economist. Knows more than we do.
Inflation is reckoned to have started by the influx of treasure from the new world, so making it roughly 500 years old. To announce it’s death after a mere decade of relatively benign inflation seems a touch optimistic.0 -
Farage has bottled out of challenging the Tories. Hilariously he is citing Johnson's recent statement about not extending the transition and a Canada + deal as the reason for his bottling.1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Whatever the reason, I suspect there is a lot of leftie teeth gnashing right now. Advantage Toriesrjsterry said:Farage has bottled out of challenging the Tories. Hilariously he is citing Johnson's recent statement about not extending the transition and a Canada + deal as the reason for his bottling.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]1 -
It's just acceptance of the obvious reality - they're basically the same party now. The takeover is complete.
They are currently still planning to run in Labour held Tory target seats, so it's not all gravy for Johnson. That is significant because it takes a lot less to cast a protest vote for Farage than for the Tories.
Farage is claiming to believe that the transition period won't be extended beyond December 2020. That has to be him being willfully gullible.0 -
Sounds like you've swallowed the Labour line on this quite readily.kingstongraham said:It's just acceptance of the obvious reality - they're basically the same party now. The takeover is complete.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
Even a stopped clock etc.Stevo_666 said:
Sounds like you've swallowed the Labour line on this quite readily.kingstongraham said:It's just acceptance of the obvious reality - they're basically the same party now. The takeover is complete.
Ken Clarke, Philip Hammond, Rory Stewart and Matthew Parris would probably agree to name a few.0 -
I make that every prominent Brexiteer has now turned their back on any commitments made to the Union or the DUP.
“New York has the haircuts, London has the trousers, but Belfast has the reason!0 -
Not a game changer, reports YouGov.Stevo_666 said:
Whatever the reason, I suspect there is a lot of leftie teeth gnashing right now. Advantage Toriesrjsterry said:Farage has bottled out of challenging the Tories. Hilariously he is citing Johnson's recent statement about not extending the transition and a Canada + deal as the reason for his bottling.
Baulked at losing that many deposits I suspect.1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Think it's a bit trite to say they have become the same thing. Undoubtedly the Conservatives have shifted their centre of gravity - to pretend otherwise is absurd - but they are a real party, unlike TBP, which is just an excuse to extract money from idiots.kingstongraham said:
Even a stopped clock etc.Stevo_666 said:
Sounds like you've swallowed the Labour line on this quite readily.kingstongraham said:It's just acceptance of the obvious reality - they're basically the same party now. The takeover is complete.
Ken Clarke, Philip Hammond, Rory Stewart and Matthew Parris would probably agree to name a few.1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
I would be amazed if he ends up fighting more than 100 seatsrjsterry said:
Not a game changer, reports YouGov.Stevo_666 said:
Whatever the reason, I suspect there is a lot of leftie teeth gnashing right now. Advantage Toriesrjsterry said:Farage has bottled out of challenging the Tories. Hilariously he is citing Johnson's recent statement about not extending the transition and a Canada + deal as the reason for his bottling.
Baulked at losing that many deposits I suspect.0 -
Captain Cave-in.surrey_commuter said:
I would be amazed if he ends up fighting more than 100 seatsrjsterry said:
Not a game changer, reports YouGov.Stevo_666 said:
Whatever the reason, I suspect there is a lot of leftie teeth gnashing right now. Advantage Toriesrjsterry said:Farage has bottled out of challenging the Tories. Hilariously he is citing Johnson's recent statement about not extending the transition and a Canada + deal as the reason for his bottling.
Baulked at losing that many deposits I suspect.1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Farage showing he fears a 2nd referendum. He says this is what must be avoided at all costs. Obviously he sees a considerable risk that it wouldn't go the way he wants if it happened. At odds with the presumptuous and repeated Brexit is what the people want rhetoric.0
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This poll was the one that convinced me: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/06/18/most-conservative-members-would-see-party-destroye0
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I'm not sure Farage had the votes and I think he knows it. None of the Brexit headbangers I know have even mentioned the Brexit party with regard to the election as a possible vote option, not one.0
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Oh he knew it through and through. He'd just tried some kind of trump-esque holding the cons to ransom, incredibly having the self-belief that it might work. Well, either that or he knew all along and just did it for the press attention.verylonglegs said:I'm not sure Farage had the votes and I think he knows it. None of the Brexit headbangers I know have even mentioned the Brexit party with regard to the election as a possible vote option, not one.
The guy is calculating but he doesn't have the processing power, chuck in the weakness of being self-aggrandising and there you have it. Nigel Farage.
Any party claiming regularly to be the voice of the people is driven by fuckwittery.
Particularly when you're talking about Brexit where it is about as split as you can get across the vote, it doesn't even work as PR, preaching to the converted simply doesn't work.0 -
Stevo_666 said:
That is certainly a big issue for them as it will exacerbate their debt problem.surrey_commuter said:
I thought Japan’s central problem was demographicrick_chasey said:
Japan is more comparable to the U.K. than Greece - at least for now - for any number of reasons.Stevo_666 said:
I think you're being a bit optimistic. Our GDP is around £2 trillion so 10% of that is £200 billion. Which is less than the cost of the Labour nationalisation promise for starters. Latest estimates of Labour's total spending plans are up to £1.2 trillion extra over 5 years.rjsterry said:
I've found some more figures: make that 75 years. Seems pretty sustainable to me. Greece's receipts are similar to ours (as % of GDP) but their spending is 10-12% of GDP higher than ours. If Javid or McDonnell announced spending of an extra £700bn per year then we might be close to a Greek situation.Stevo_666 said:
You've just explained how we have got to where we are in terms of debt.rjsterry said:
And yet government spending has averaged about 40% of GDP while tax receipts average 35% of GDP for at least the last 50 years.Stevo_666 said:
Sorry, but it is so obvious to anyone with a knowledge and understanding of finance and economics that a country cannot just go on building up debt indefinitely that I'm really not sure what there is to debate or why you are in denial about it.rick_chasey said:
Not the ones I’ve come across tbf.Stevo_666 said:
There are plenty of respected economists who disagree with his view. The EU also seems to disagree and they are usually right, aren't they?rick_chasey said:surrey_commuter said:
so this whole hypothesis is based upon the assumption that inflation will not return to it's historical ratesrick_chasey said:If truth is the first casualty of war, social science is the first casualty of election campaigns. So it was with Sajid Javid’s speech yesterday. He claimed that Labour will tax everybody more, “saddle the next generation with debt”, “ruin your finances” and would be “letting prices run wild in the shops.”
All this is silly hyperbole.
I say so not just because, as Simon says. Labour’s spending plans are more sustainable than the Tories because it will not inflict a damaging Brexit upon the economy.
Instead, there are two other reasons why Javid is wrong.Javid
One is that developed economies are resilient. They just don’t tip swiftly from prosperity to ruin. For one thing, high debt (even if we get it) is no barrier (pdf) to decent economic growth. Also, as Eric Lonergan says, “inflation is truly dead, and policy makers don’t need to worry about it.” Governments and central banks have struggled to raise inflation despite trying. It would be odd if Mr McDonnell had powers unknown to the ECB or Bank of Japan. And we must remember the finding of John Landon-Lane and Peter Robertson, that government policies don’t usually change trend growth by very much – a result that is comforting as well as dispiriting.
Adam Smith was bang right. There is a great deal of ruin in a nation. Countries can cope with bad policies. Those on the right who say the UK (well, actually Britain) can survive leaving the EU therefore have a point. But you cannot easily claim that the economy is resilient to changes in trading rules but ultra-vulnerable to moderate differences in fiscal policy and taxes.
There is, however, another reason why economies aren’t ruined by bad policy. It’s that such policies don’t persist. They get reversed. Examples of this include Mitterrand’s “austerity turn” in 1983 and Syriza's acceptance of EU-imposed austerity in 2015. But we have also seen examples under the Tories. Thatcher abandoned M3 targets and fiscal austerity in the mid-80s: cyclically adjusted net borrowing rose from a small surplus in 1981-82 to 2.8% of GDP in 1983-84. And Major pulled the UK out of the ERM in 1992.
Liberal democratic capitalism, then, selects against bad policies. Ones which damage the economy egregiously get reversed. If Labour’s policies are as bad as Javid claims (arguendo!) the correct inference is not that Labour will ruin the nation, but that Mr McDonnell will disappoint his supporters as so many of his predecessors have done.
Within reason. Japan hasn’t managed to do it. All the scaremongering about QE hasn’t resulted in it.
The guy’s a well respected economist. Knows more than we do.
German policy is a political choice no one based on economics. Tonnes of studies into why that’s the case if you can be arsed to read them.
See Greece for an example of a country that went too far. And watch Italy for a country that is headed that way.
But they're not.
And then there's the assumption that borrowing rates will stay the same - whereas they are likely to rise if Labour gets in. And that our income will stay the same which its unlikely to with Labour's business unfriendly policies.
It is not a viable long term strategy.
Being Greece without the sunshine is not a good prospect - but if you really want it, vote Labour.
That’s deep into double annual GDP in debt and they can’t get inflation however much they try.
In so many ways the Western world has followed Japan in how its economies have behaved - just a decade later.
Dillow understands this better than most having been chief economist of a Japanese bank for 10 years
Western Europe has the same demographic problems, only roughly the same distance behind the curve as their economies are vs Japan.0 -
The difference is that Japan has an immigration problemrick_chasey said:Stevo_666 said:
That is certainly a big issue for them as it will exacerbate their debt problem.surrey_commuter said:
I thought Japan’s central problem was demographicrick_chasey said:
Japan is more comparable to the U.K. than Greece - at least for now - for any number of reasons.Stevo_666 said:
I think you're being a bit optimistic. Our GDP is around £2 trillion so 10% of that is £200 billion. Which is less than the cost of the Labour nationalisation promise for starters. Latest estimates of Labour's total spending plans are up to £1.2 trillion extra over 5 years.rjsterry said:
I've found some more figures: make that 75 years. Seems pretty sustainable to me. Greece's receipts are similar to ours (as % of GDP) but their spending is 10-12% of GDP higher than ours. If Javid or McDonnell announced spending of an extra £700bn per year then we might be close to a Greek situation.Stevo_666 said:
You've just explained how we have got to where we are in terms of debt.rjsterry said:
And yet government spending has averaged about 40% of GDP while tax receipts average 35% of GDP for at least the last 50 years.Stevo_666 said:
Sorry, but it is so obvious to anyone with a knowledge and understanding of finance and economics that a country cannot just go on building up debt indefinitely that I'm really not sure what there is to debate or why you are in denial about it.rick_chasey said:
Not the ones I’ve come across tbf.Stevo_666 said:
There are plenty of respected economists who disagree with his view. The EU also seems to disagree and they are usually right, aren't they?rick_chasey said:surrey_commuter said:
so this whole hypothesis is based upon the assumption that inflation will not return to it's historical ratesrick_chasey said:If truth is the first casualty of war, social science is the first casualty of election campaigns. So it was with Sajid Javid’s speech yesterday. He claimed that Labour will tax everybody more, “saddle the next generation with debt”, “ruin your finances” and would be “letting prices run wild in the shops.”
All this is silly hyperbole.
I say so not just because, as Simon says. Labour’s spending plans are more sustainable than the Tories because it will not inflict a damaging Brexit upon the economy.
Instead, there are two other reasons why Javid is wrong.Javid
One is that developed economies are resilient. They just don’t tip swiftly from prosperity to ruin. For one thing, high debt (even if we get it) is no barrier (pdf) to decent economic growth. Also, as Eric Lonergan says, “inflation is truly dead, and policy makers don’t need to worry about it.” Governments and central banks have struggled to raise inflation despite trying. It would be odd if Mr McDonnell had powers unknown to the ECB or Bank of Japan. And we must remember the finding of John Landon-Lane and Peter Robertson, that government policies don’t usually change trend growth by very much – a result that is comforting as well as dispiriting.
Adam Smith was bang right. There is a great deal of ruin in a nation. Countries can cope with bad policies. Those on the right who say the UK (well, actually Britain) can survive leaving the EU therefore have a point. But you cannot easily claim that the economy is resilient to changes in trading rules but ultra-vulnerable to moderate differences in fiscal policy and taxes.
There is, however, another reason why economies aren’t ruined by bad policy. It’s that such policies don’t persist. They get reversed. Examples of this include Mitterrand’s “austerity turn” in 1983 and Syriza's acceptance of EU-imposed austerity in 2015. But we have also seen examples under the Tories. Thatcher abandoned M3 targets and fiscal austerity in the mid-80s: cyclically adjusted net borrowing rose from a small surplus in 1981-82 to 2.8% of GDP in 1983-84. And Major pulled the UK out of the ERM in 1992.
Liberal democratic capitalism, then, selects against bad policies. Ones which damage the economy egregiously get reversed. If Labour’s policies are as bad as Javid claims (arguendo!) the correct inference is not that Labour will ruin the nation, but that Mr McDonnell will disappoint his supporters as so many of his predecessors have done.
Within reason. Japan hasn’t managed to do it. All the scaremongering about QE hasn’t resulted in it.
The guy’s a well respected economist. Knows more than we do.
German policy is a political choice no one based on economics. Tonnes of studies into why that’s the case if you can be arsed to read them.
See Greece for an example of a country that went too far. And watch Italy for a country that is headed that way.
But they're not.
And then there's the assumption that borrowing rates will stay the same - whereas they are likely to rise if Labour gets in. And that our income will stay the same which its unlikely to with Labour's business unfriendly policies.
It is not a viable long term strategy.
Being Greece without the sunshine is not a good prospect - but if you really want it, vote Labour.
That’s deep into double annual GDP in debt and they can’t get inflation however much they try.
In so many ways the Western world has followed Japan in how its economies have behaved - just a decade later.
Dillow understands this better than most having been chief economist of a Japanese bank for 10 years
Western Europe has the same demographic problems, only roughly the same distance behind the curve as their economies are vs Japan.0 -
-3
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Review - Must improve sales pitch.dannyd123 said:please take my survey
thanks
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2GMP8KTThe above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
Bugger off.dannyd123 said:please take my survey
thanks
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2GMP8KT
If you want to know what people want for project at school you probably need to introduce yourself first.0 -
Wait a minute... TBP is going to stand in Labour held constituencies... and in the process potentially take Tory votes?
Very clever. Genius in fact.seanoconn - gruagach craic!0 -
surrey_commuter said:
The difference is that Japan has an immigration problemrick_chasey said:Stevo_666 said:
That is certainly a big issue for them as it will exacerbate their debt problem.surrey_commuter said:
I thought Japan’s central problem was demographicrick_chasey said:
Japan is more comparable to the U.K. than Greece - at least for now - for any number of reasons.Stevo_666 said:
I think you're being a bit optimistic. Our GDP is around £2 trillion so 10% of that is £200 billion. Which is less than the cost of the Labour nationalisation promise for starters. Latest estimates of Labour's total spending plans are up to £1.2 trillion extra over 5 years.rjsterry said:
I've found some more figures: make that 75 years. Seems pretty sustainable to me. Greece's receipts are similar to ours (as % of GDP) but their spending is 10-12% of GDP higher than ours. If Javid or McDonnell announced spending of an extra £700bn per year then we might be close to a Greek situation.Stevo_666 said:
You've just explained how we have got to where we are in terms of debt.rjsterry said:
And yet government spending has averaged about 40% of GDP while tax receipts average 35% of GDP for at least the last 50 years.Stevo_666 said:
Sorry, but it is so obvious to anyone with a knowledge and understanding of finance and economics that a country cannot just go on building up debt indefinitely that I'm really not sure what there is to debate or why you are in denial about it.rick_chasey said:
Not the ones I’ve come across tbf.Stevo_666 said:
There are plenty of respected economists who disagree with his view. The EU also seems to disagree and they are usually right, aren't they?rick_chasey said:surrey_commuter said:
so this whole hypothesis is based upon the assumption that inflation will not return to it's historical ratesrick_chasey said:If truth is the first casualty of war, social science is the first casualty of election campaigns. So it was with Sajid Javid’s speech yesterday. He claimed that Labour will tax everybody more, “saddle the next generation with debt”, “ruin your finances” and would be “letting prices run wild in the shops.”
All this is silly hyperbole.
I say so not just because, as Simon says. Labour’s spending plans are more sustainable than the Tories because it will not inflict a damaging Brexit upon the economy.
Instead, there are two other reasons why Javid is wrong.Javid
One is that developed economies are resilient. They just don’t tip swiftly from prosperity to ruin. For one thing, high debt (even if we get it) is no barrier (pdf) to decent economic growth. Also, as Eric Lonergan says, “inflation is truly dead, and policy makers don’t need to worry about it.” Governments and central banks have struggled to raise inflation despite trying. It would be odd if Mr McDonnell had powers unknown to the ECB or Bank of Japan. And we must remember the finding of John Landon-Lane and Peter Robertson, that government policies don’t usually change trend growth by very much – a result that is comforting as well as dispiriting.
Adam Smith was bang right. There is a great deal of ruin in a nation. Countries can cope with bad policies. Those on the right who say the UK (well, actually Britain) can survive leaving the EU therefore have a point. But you cannot easily claim that the economy is resilient to changes in trading rules but ultra-vulnerable to moderate differences in fiscal policy and taxes.
There is, however, another reason why economies aren’t ruined by bad policy. It’s that such policies don’t persist. They get reversed. Examples of this include Mitterrand’s “austerity turn” in 1983 and Syriza's acceptance of EU-imposed austerity in 2015. But we have also seen examples under the Tories. Thatcher abandoned M3 targets and fiscal austerity in the mid-80s: cyclically adjusted net borrowing rose from a small surplus in 1981-82 to 2.8% of GDP in 1983-84. And Major pulled the UK out of the ERM in 1992.
Liberal democratic capitalism, then, selects against bad policies. Ones which damage the economy egregiously get reversed. If Labour’s policies are as bad as Javid claims (arguendo!) the correct inference is not that Labour will ruin the nation, but that Mr McDonnell will disappoint his supporters as so many of his predecessors have done.
Within reason. Japan hasn’t managed to do it. All the scaremongering about QE hasn’t resulted in it.
The guy’s a well respected economist. Knows more than we do.
German policy is a political choice no one based on economics. Tonnes of studies into why that’s the case if you can be arsed to read them.
See Greece for an example of a country that went too far. And watch Italy for a country that is headed that way.
But they're not.
And then there's the assumption that borrowing rates will stay the same - whereas they are likely to rise if Labour gets in. And that our income will stay the same which its unlikely to with Labour's business unfriendly policies.
It is not a viable long term strategy.
Being Greece without the sunshine is not a good prospect - but if you really want it, vote Labour.
That’s deep into double annual GDP in debt and they can’t get inflation however much they try.
In so many ways the Western world has followed Japan in how its economies have behaved - just a decade later.
Dillow understands this better than most having been chief economist of a Japanese bank for 10 years
Western Europe has the same demographic problems, only roughly the same distance behind the curve as their economies are vs Japan.
At least we’re back on topic now0 -
Brexit Party apparently refusing to refund the costs of the candidates they dropped. Lies and broken promises costing people money, sounds standard for Farage to me.0
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Are we? I thought this was the Brexit thread.rick_chasey said:surrey_commuter said:
The difference is that Japan has an immigration problemrick_chasey said:Stevo_666 said:
That is certainly a big issue for them as it will exacerbate their debt problem.surrey_commuter said:
I thought Japan’s central problem was demographicrick_chasey said:
Japan is more comparable to the U.K. than Greece - at least for now - for any number of reasons.Stevo_666 said:
I think you're being a bit optimistic. Our GDP is around £2 trillion so 10% of that is £200 billion. Which is less than the cost of the Labour nationalisation promise for starters. Latest estimates of Labour's total spending plans are up to £1.2 trillion extra over 5 years.rjsterry said:
I've found some more figures: make that 75 years. Seems pretty sustainable to me. Greece's receipts are similar to ours (as % of GDP) but their spending is 10-12% of GDP higher than ours. If Javid or McDonnell announced spending of an extra £700bn per year then we might be close to a Greek situation.Stevo_666 said:
You've just explained how we have got to where we are in terms of debt.rjsterry said:
And yet government spending has averaged about 40% of GDP while tax receipts average 35% of GDP for at least the last 50 years.Stevo_666 said:
Sorry, but it is so obvious to anyone with a knowledge and understanding of finance and economics that a country cannot just go on building up debt indefinitely that I'm really not sure what there is to debate or why you are in denial about it.rick_chasey said:
Not the ones I’ve come across tbf.Stevo_666 said:
There are plenty of respected economists who disagree with his view. The EU also seems to disagree and they are usually right, aren't they?rick_chasey said:surrey_commuter said:
so this whole hypothesis is based upon the assumption that inflation will not return to it's historical ratesrick_chasey said:If truth is the first casualty of war, social science is the first casualty of election campaigns. So it was with Sajid Javid’s speech yesterday. He claimed that Labour will tax everybody more, “saddle the next generation with debt”, “ruin your finances” and would be “letting prices run wild in the shops.”
All this is silly hyperbole.
I say so not just because, as Simon says. Labour’s spending plans are more sustainable than the Tories because it will not inflict a damaging Brexit upon the economy.
Instead, there are two other reasons why Javid is wrong.Javid
One is that developed economies are resilient. They just don’t tip swiftly from prosperity to ruin. For one thing, high debt (even if we get it) is no barrier (pdf) to decent economic growth. Also, as Eric Lonergan says, “inflation is truly dead, and policy makers don’t need to worry about it.” Governments and central banks have struggled to raise inflation despite trying. It would be odd if Mr McDonnell had powers unknown to the ECB or Bank of Japan. And we must remember the finding of John Landon-Lane and Peter Robertson, that government policies don’t usually change trend growth by very much – a result that is comforting as well as dispiriting.
Adam Smith was bang right. There is a great deal of ruin in a nation. Countries can cope with bad policies. Those on the right who say the UK (well, actually Britain) can survive leaving the EU therefore have a point. But you cannot easily claim that the economy is resilient to changes in trading rules but ultra-vulnerable to moderate differences in fiscal policy and taxes.
There is, however, another reason why economies aren’t ruined by bad policy. It’s that such policies don’t persist. They get reversed. Examples of this include Mitterrand’s “austerity turn” in 1983 and Syriza's acceptance of EU-imposed austerity in 2015. But we have also seen examples under the Tories. Thatcher abandoned M3 targets and fiscal austerity in the mid-80s: cyclically adjusted net borrowing rose from a small surplus in 1981-82 to 2.8% of GDP in 1983-84. And Major pulled the UK out of the ERM in 1992.
Liberal democratic capitalism, then, selects against bad policies. Ones which damage the economy egregiously get reversed. If Labour’s policies are as bad as Javid claims (arguendo!) the correct inference is not that Labour will ruin the nation, but that Mr McDonnell will disappoint his supporters as so many of his predecessors have done.
Within reason. Japan hasn’t managed to do it. All the scaremongering about QE hasn’t resulted in it.
The guy’s a well respected economist. Knows more than we do.
German policy is a political choice no one based on economics. Tonnes of studies into why that’s the case if you can be arsed to read them.
See Greece for an example of a country that went too far. And watch Italy for a country that is headed that way.
But they're not.
And then there's the assumption that borrowing rates will stay the same - whereas they are likely to rise if Labour gets in. And that our income will stay the same which its unlikely to with Labour's business unfriendly policies.
It is not a viable long term strategy.
Being Greece without the sunshine is not a good prospect - but if you really want it, vote Labour.
That’s deep into double annual GDP in debt and they can’t get inflation however much they try.
In so many ways the Western world has followed Japan in how its economies have behaved - just a decade later.
Dillow understands this better than most having been chief economist of a Japanese bank for 10 years
Western Europe has the same demographic problems, only roughly the same distance behind the curve as their economies are vs Japan.
At least we’re back on topic now"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
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pinno said:
Wait a minute... TBP is going to stand in Labour held constituencies... and in the process potentially take Tory votes?
Very clever. Genius in fact.
It's mainly to hurt the Lib Dems.pinno said:Wait a minute... TBP is going to stand in Labour held constituencies... and in the process potentially take Tory votes?
Very clever. Genius in fact.
Let's face it, Labour aren't very 'remainy' are they?
Ah glorious first past the post. None of this would matter if the system was such that you could confidently vote for the party that best matches your political views.0 -
Cons - Leave.rick_chasey said:pinno said:Wait a minute... TBP is going to stand in Labour held constituencies... and in the process potentially take Tory votes?
Very clever. Genius in fact.
It's mainly to hurt the Lib Dems.pinno said:Wait a minute... TBP is going to stand in Labour held constituencies... and in the process potentially take Tory votes?
Very clever. Genius in fact.
Let's face it, Labour aren't very 'remainy' are they?
Ah glorious first past the post. None of this would matter if the system was such that you could confidently vote for the party that best matches your political views.
TBP - Leave.
Labour - Leave.
Liberal - Remain.
Not sure how splitting a leave vote 3 ways will hurt the Liberals. More likely to help, assuming Brexit is the main decider.The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0
