Should the UK remain a member of the EU

[ZonkoVille77]

7 minutes ago, rico1304 said:

Here we go again. I’ve never voted for Cameron, the people voted for Brexit, it’s  a complete fuckup, if JC came out for Remain I’d vote for him.  

 

Its not my party, I vote for whoever suits me.  Just like you.  

 

Did you not vote Tory for the last number of elections? 

Whatever way you look at it Brexit is the doing of the Tories which their UKIP mates doing the pushing on their behalf. 

[Rico1304]

52 minutes ago, ZonkoVille77 said:

 

Did you not vote Tory for the last number of elections? 

Whatever way you look at it Brexit is the doing of the Tories which their UKIP mates doing the pushing on their behalf. 

Yes I did, because it suited me. 

[ZonkoVille77]

14 minutes ago, rico1304 said:

Yes I did, because it suited me. 

 

Well then you voted for Cameron, since he was the leader of the party he was responsible for pressing ahead with Brexit. 

 

So directing your ire at Nigel Farage is absolute nonsense since it was the Tories who created Brexit.

 

This isn't difficult. 

[SasaS]

2 hours ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

Here's what happens when non-Fascists take action to reverse austerity. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/22/business/portugal-economy-austerity.html

 

Living standards rise, unemployment falls... and the EU welcomes the success as something others can learn from. 

Interesting article...slightly off-topic, if they managed to cut the budget deficit whilst increasing public sector wages, pensions and welfare spending, and if they kept their (horrendous) debt from growing, what did they cut then? it just says, "infrastructure". They must have had a strange structural set up if they were able to do that, by which I mean, they must have been spending on something really unnecessary. Speaking of which, there was an item in the news the other day about Greece finally no longer giving thousands of priests full civil servants status, however, the government will continue to pay them directly.
 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

18 minutes ago, SasaS said:

Interesting article...slightly off-topic, if they managed to cut the budget deficit whilst increasing public sector wages, pensions and welfare spending, and if they kept their (horrendous) debt from growing, what did they cut then? it just says, "infrastructure". They must have had a strange structural set up if they were able to do that, by which I mean, they must have been spending on something really unnecessary. Speaking of which, there was an item in the news the other day about Greece finally no longer giving thousands of priests full civil servants status, however, the government will continue to pay them directly.
 

The idea that budget cuts will reduce deficits has always been false (as amply demonstrated by the UK). Investment to grow the economy is the best way to shrink the debt; the exact opposite of austerity. 

[SasaS]

1 minute ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

The idea that budget cuts will reduce deficits has always been false (as amply demonstrated by the UK). Investment to grow the economy is the best way to shrink the debt; the exact opposite of austerity. 

Er... you cannot reduce a budget deficit (which it says they did) without either increasing revenues or cutting expenditure , how would that be mathematically possible?

[Rico1304]

2 hours ago, ZonkoVille77 said:

 

Well then you voted for Cameron, since he was the leader of the party he was responsible for pressing ahead with Brexit. 

 

So directing your ire at Nigel Farage is absolute nonsense since it was the Tories who created Brexit.

 

This isn't difficult. 

Sorry, must remember to know my place amongst the clever kids. 

[clangers]

1 hour ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

The idea that budget cuts will reduce deficits has always been false (as amply demonstrated by the UK). Investment to grow the economy is the best way to shrink the debt; the exact opposite of austerity. 

The Tories only understand a slash and burn approach, they've managed to do this in three out of the last four decades.

[Numero Veinticinco]

35 minutes ago, rico1304 said:

clever kids. 

The inferiority complex is real.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

1 hour ago, SasaS said:

Er... you cannot reduce a budget deficit (which it says they did) without either increasing revenues or cutting expenditure , how would that be mathematically possible?

Deficit and debt are measured as a proportion of GDP. Cuts shrink GDP, so the proportion represented by deficit or debt increases, even if the absolute amount decreases slightly. 

 

Cuts come with costs. For example, if you cut infrastructure maintenance budgets, you bring forward the day when the infrastructure needs replacing.  If you cut public health programmes, more people get sick and the NHS incurs much greater costs. If you make a public sector worker redundant, you have to pay their redundancy, pay their benefits and forego the tax that they used to pay and the social goods derived from their work. 

 

Austerity usually entails tax cuts (or tax freezes) which benefit the richest individuals and corporations.  They have a very small propensity to spend, because they are not incentivised to spend: they already have everything they want.

 

Instead of wasting money that way, if the government invests more money in jobs, decent pay and liveable benefits for the rest of society, that money gets spent. Poorer people have a greater propensity to spend, because they need stuff. When they buy stuff, they support businesses who, in turn, are more able to pay their staff, who are then more able to go out and buy stuff.  And every transaction, every pay packet, gets taxed, helping the government to minimise the deficit and to pay down the debt.

 

That's how it's mathematically possible.  If you want to reduce the debt, just do the opposite of what George Osborne did.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

4 minutes ago, clangers said:

The Tories only understand a slash and burn approach, they've managed to do this in three out of the last four decades.

And the debt always increases under the Tories. 

[deiseach]

10 minutes ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

Cuts come with costs. For example, if you cut infrastructure maintenance budgets, you bring forward the day when the infrastructure needs replacing.  If you cut public health programmes, more people get sick and the NHS incurs much greater costs. If you make a public sector worker redundant, you have to pay their redundancy, pay their benefits and forego the tax that they used to pay and the social goods derived from their work. 

One of the most pernicious outcomes of recent times has been the embedding of the notion of the economy as a household in the public consciousness. Economies are not like households. Your expenditure is my income and my expenditure is your income. If we were to treat a household in the same manner as the austerians have treated the economy, the policy response to a loss of household income would be to make members of the household unemployed. 

[SasaS]

46 minutes ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

Deficit and debt are measured as a proportion of GDP. Cuts shrink GDP, so the proportion represented by deficit or debt increases, even if the absolute amount decreases slightly. 

 

Cuts come with costs. For example, if you cut infrastructure maintenance budgets, you bring forward the day when the infrastructure needs replacing.  If you cut public health programmes, more people get sick and the NHS incurs much greater costs. If you make a public sector worker redundant, you have to pay their redundancy, pay their benefits and forego the tax that they used to pay and the social goods derived from their work. 

 

Austerity usually entails tax cuts (or tax freezes) which benefit the richest individuals and corporations.  They have a very small propensity to spend, because they are not incentivised to spend: they already have everything they want.

 

Instead of wasting money that way, if the government invests more money in jobs, decent pay and liveable benefits for the rest of society, that money gets spent. Poorer people have a greater propensity to spend, because they need stuff. When they buy stuff, they support businesses who, in turn, are more able to pay their staff, who are then more able to go out and buy stuff.  And every transaction, every pay packet, gets taxed, helping the government to minimise the deficit and to pay down the debt.

 

That's how it's mathematically possible.  If you want to reduce the debt, just do the opposite of what George Osborne did.

 

I am talking about deficit, not debt. You cannot reduce deficit by increased spending, if you cut expenditure, you cut the deficit (or you can increase revenues by putting up taxes or by selling some of the government held assets). There are, however, different ways of cutting expenditure, you can cut wages, welfare spending, pensions, investment in infrastructure, or you can cut military expenditure for example, maybe you are spending too much on ineffectual agricultural subsidies which benefit big landowners or whatever. This is basic macroeconomics.

 

What you are talking about is what various economic theories think would be good for the economy, more government spending, less government spending, higher taxes, lower taxes etc. In the particular example of Portugal, it is clear that they have reduced their budget deficit in short term without cutting public sector wages and welfare spending, so they must have saved on something else, the increased GDP cannot account for that, because the rise has not been enough. The article, unfortunately, does not explain in more detail what they did in that respect. 

 

 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

I'm talking about both deficit and debt.

 

What you describe as "basic macroeconomics" is just one theory. It's been the predominant theory for decades and it brought us recession after recession. It has failed, even on its own terms.

 

An alternative theory  - which is more strongly supported by real-world outcomes - follows the lines of the argument I set out above. 

[Gnasher]

8 hours ago, Jairzinho said:

Unemployment stats are load of old bollocks. 

Up to a point I agree but my point was that youth unemployment in EU is a scandle, but I suspect you knew what I was trying to get at.

 

Out of interest what's your view on current EU youth unemployment?

[SasaS]

23 minutes ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

I'm talking about both deficit and debt.

 

What you describe as "basic macroeconomics" is just one theory. It's been the predominant theory for decades and it brought us recession after recession. It has failed, even on its own terms.

 

An alternative theory  - which is more strongly supported by real-world outcomes - follows the lines of the argument I set out above. 

 

No, it's not, it's basic macroeconomics. It's how you calculate budget deficit. It would be like saying, two and two are four, but that's just one of the theories, increasingly not supported by real-world outcomes.

You cannot talk about deficit AND debt because you are talking about separate things as if they were one and the same.

EU, for example, sets the allowed level of budget deficit at, I think, 3% of GDP by its Stability Pact. You cannot say, this is just a theory, a deficit is a deficit, is mathematics. What you, however, can say, is that setting the allowed deficit at 3% of GDP, and thus limiting government spending, is wrong, as that is, in fact, just a theory, supported or not by real-world outcomes.  You can say that austerity approach is just a theory, or that Keynesian economy is just a theory. When your man Corbyn gets in he can decided to increase government spending and thus stimulate economy, spend more on welfare as a way of increasing the quality of life etc. What he cannot decide is that that will not affect the budget and the budget deficit, he will either have to increase revenues by putting up taxes, or closing the loopholes, or accept that the budget deficit will rise. He can decide that that is good, bad or irrelevant in the short term because increased spending will increase the GDP and lower the deficit. But he cannot decide that a 100 billion coming in and 110 billion going out, or vice versa, in one particular year creates an outcome which is just a theory. It creates a 10 billion in deficit, or in surplus.

[Jairzinho]

13 minutes ago, Gnasher said:

Up to a point I agree but my point was that youth unemployment in EU is a scandle, but I suspect you knew what I was trying to get at.

 

Out of interest what's your view on current EU youth unemployment?

That it's at an insanely, and entirely preventable, level. Just as it is in the UK.

 

 

[Strontium]

6 minutes ago, SasaS said:

You cannot talk about deficit AND debt because you are talking about separate things as if they were one and the same.

 

Yeah, the basic attack line from the left for the past 8 years has essentially relied upon conflation of the two. If I had a pound for every time I saw someone claim that the Tories/ConDems/whoever had failed in their aim of reducing the deficit because debt was still growing, I'd be almost as rich as my mother-in-law.

[Gnasher]

19 minutes ago, Jairzinho said:

That it's at an insanely, and entirely preventable, level. Just as it is in the UK.

 

 

I don't disagree with that though not sure what your point is.

 

Anyway here's some more stuff for EU neo con lovers to ignore

 

 

http://www.nordiclabourjournal.org/nyheter/news-2017/article.2018-01-15.4801052502

9 hours ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

I posted something recently about the varying rates of youth unemployment in the different Member States.  The facts just don't correlate with the puerile and dogmatic "EU bad/non-EU good" line.

 

Anyone who really gave a shit about youth unemployment would be looking at the facts and trying to find out what's really going on. 

You're propping up a neo lib   

[AngryOfTuebrook]

28 minutes ago, SasaS said:

 

No, it's not, it's basic macroeconomics. It's how you calculate budget deficit. It would be like saying, two and two are four, but that's just one of the theories, increasingly not supported by real-world outcomes.

You cannot talk about deficit AND debt because you are talking about separate things as if they were one and the same.

 

 

EU, for example, sets the allowed level of budget deficit at, I think, 3% of GDP by its Stability Pact. You cannot say, this is just a theory, a deficit is a deficit, is mathematics. What you, however, can say, is that setting the allowed deficit at 3% of GDP, and thus limiting government spending, is wrong, as that is, in fact, just a theory, supported or not by real-world outcomes.  You can say that austerity approach is just a theory, or that Keynesian economy is just a theory. When your man Corbyn gets in he can decided to increase government spending and thus stimulate economy, spend more on welfare as a way of increasing the quality of life etc. What he cannot decide is that that will not affect the budget and the budget deficit, he will either have to increase revenues by putting up taxes, or closing the loopholes, or accept that the budget deficit will rise. He can decide that that is good, bad or irrelevant in the short term because increased spending will increase the GDP and lower the deficit. But he cannot decide that a 100 billion coming in and 110 billion going out, or vice versa, in one particular year creates an outcome which is just a theory. It creates a 10 billion in deficit, or in surplus.

 

 

You can talk about debt and deficit if what you're talking about (as in my post above) applies equally to both. It's wrong to pretend the two are unrelated. 

 

And the idea that cuts to expenditure is a sensible way to reduce the deficit  (especially if your aim - like Osborne's stated aim in 2010 - is to pay down the debt) is very much "just a theory".

 

As for "my man" Corbyn, Labour have made it perfectly clear that yhey intend to increase tax income from those who can most afford it.  I think McDonnell has also said that a slight, temporary increase in the deficit - to fund investments in the economy - is easily tolerable, because it will pay back in spades.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

7 hours ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

Gnasher, I'll break it down further:

 

1. Do you accept that Lega is a Fascist  (or, if you prefer, a far-right, racist populist) party?  Yes or No.

 

2.  When Lega try to break Italy's agreements with the other EU Member States, do you take sides with Lega? Yes or No?

Any answers, Gnash?

[AngryOfTuebrook]

20 minutes ago, Gnasher said:

 

You're propping up a neo lib   

I would ask what this is supposed to mean, but I know I won't get a sensible answer.

[SasaS]

4 minutes ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

You can talk about debt and deficit if what you're talking about (as in my post above) applies equally to both. It's wrong to pretend the two are unrelated. 

 

And the idea that cuts to expenditure is a sensible way to reduce the deficit  (especially if your aim - like Osborne's stated aim in 2010 - is to pay down the debt) is very much "just a theory".

 

As for "my man" Corbyn, Labour have made it perfectly clear that yhey intend to increase tax income from those who can most afford it.  I think McDonnell has also said that a slight, temporary increase in the deficit - to fund investments in the economy - is easily tolerable, because it will pay back in spades.

Absolutely. However, I never said it was sensible or not sensible, or an idea, it's how deficit is calculated. And the paragraph that follows clearly shows you are perfectly aware of that too.

 

[skend04]

So Raab wasn't aware quite how important the Dover-Calais crossing was to our basic needs like eating and medicating? 

 

Brilliant!

[mattyq]

49 minutes ago, skend04 said:

So Raab wasn't aware quite how important the Dover-Calais crossing was to our basic needs like eating and medicating? 

 

Brilliant!

What's worse is that the cunt seems happy enough to admit his staggering ignorance