Keir Starmer

[AngryOfTuebrook]

On 16/10/2021 at 12:04, Jordy Brouwer said:

 a country that already can't pay its bills. 

Are we talking about the same country? 

I was talking about the UK - the 5th or 6th richest country in the world, a country that can accommodate 2.4 million millionaires without imposing a Wealth Tax - not Afghanistan or Sudan.

 

https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/how-five-million-people-became-24383336

 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

On 16/10/2021 at 12:04, Jordy Brouwer said:

 

Its trillions of pounds of spending. It would have to be funded by borrowing Angry its trillions of pounds of new spending in a country that already can't pay its bills. 

A question I asked you was if 2 trillion in new spending is good because it all pays for itself in a virtuous circle of public sector benevolence then why not 10 trillion, or 20 trillion. 

 

You know the answer, its because the dogma you have adumbrated actually does have limits. 

 

With trillions of spending you will get malinvestments on a grand scale. You actually explain in your reply that employers won't pay a wage if they don't expect a certain output. That's why the private sector isn't magicing a million green jobs out of thin air. If the government forces it you will get non-productive investments and malinvestments and crowd out better and more efficient private investments. 

 

Nope not even close to being close and the greater the orgy of spending and crowding out the private sector the less close it will be. 

 

Please do answer my question through (by the way your previous reply was inaccurate - you have asserted that spending or investement is just "good" you did so in your first reply. Also you do clearly not see debt or bad investment being much of a problem - you literally explain why you believe that in your next reply.)

 

If several trillion pounds of spending pays for itself (and more!) then surely the problem with Labours manifesto in 2019 was that it did not pledge enough. Why not five trillion? Or ten trillion? 

 

If you can answer that question honestly then I think you will have to engage with some of the problems I'm raising. 

 

"Nothing scary" about this? I have to disagree.

 

 

Why would anyone assume that the billions (not trillions) of pounds of targeted investment promised in Labour's 2019 Manifesto would be malinvested? There may be a dogmatic "private sector knows best" assumption there, which isn't supported by evidence.

 

Your arguments about"crowding out" don't stack up, as explained by that link to an article by Rathbones (a FTSE 250 investment company; hardly a hotbed of Socialist dogma) that I posted.

 

Your reference to the private sector swerving  "nonproductive investments" illustrates the limits of the private sector. Private investments are judged "productive" if they return a profit to the investors, even if they have harmful effects that the Government needs to pay for. (Take, for example, the private sector's failure to provide affordable housing - because such investments are "unproductive" - which leaves the Government paying billions in housing benefit plus the costs of cleaning up the health and social damage caused by insecure and inadequate housing.) "Pump-priming" investments in the industries of the future are exactly the sort of thing a responsible, Capitalist government should be doing.

[Jordy Brouwer]

On 17/10/2021 at 14:33, AngryOfTuebrook said:

Are we talking about the same country? 

I was talking about the UK - the 5th or 6th richest country in the world, a country that can accommodate 2.4 million millionaires without imposing a Wealth Tax - not Afghanistan or Sudan.

 

https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/how-five-million-people-became-24383336

 

The UK budget deficit was £304 billion pounds for the financial year ending March 2021. If you are talking about raising taxes by £304 billion pounds a year then that's fine but say so, and more to the point say so to the country in advance of a general election and see how you get on. 

[Jordy Brouwer]

On 17/10/2021 at 14:54, AngryOfTuebrook said:

Why would anyone assume that the billions (not trillions) of pounds of targeted investment promised in Labour's 2019 Manifesto would be malinvested? There may be a dogmatic "private sector knows best" assumption there, which isn't supported by evidence.

 

Your arguments about"crowding out" don't stack up, as explained by that link to an article by Rathbones (a FTSE 250 investment company; hardly a hotbed of Socialist dogma) that I posted.

 

Your reference to the private sector swerving  "nonproductive investments" illustrates the limits of the private sector. Private investments are judged "productive" if they return a profit to the investors, even if they have harmful effects that the Government needs to pay for. (Take, for example, the private sector's failure to provide affordable housing - because such investments are "unproductive" - which leaves the Government paying billions in housing benefit plus the costs of cleaning up the health and social damage caused by insecure and inadequate housing.) "Pump-priming" investments in the industries of the future are exactly the sort of thing a responsible, Capitalist government should be doing.

1) For the reasons given. If it was profitable to create "million green jobs" then the private sector would already be doing so. It isn't because it isn't. It would be done for the reasons either of ideology or the real existential threat we face depending on your point of view but in neither case with a regard to return on investment. 

 

2) A glut of public investment always crowds out private investment

 

3) The private sector doesn't provide affordable housing due to planning regulation that started with the Town and County Planning Act passed during the Atlee government. The private sector can't produce housing on demand to meet need but rather must go cap in hand to the Local Authority for "planning permission" to build on land that they theoretically own. 

 

"Pump-priming" investments in the industries of the future are exactly the sort of thing a responsible, Capitalist government should be doing.

 

If it actually works. Without structural reforms you hit a Keynesian "liquidity trap" where more borrowing and printing doesn't stimulate the economy and you need ever bigger doses of "stimulus" with ever diminishing returns (like a Junkie basically). 

 

The Japanese hit that 30 years ago and have been trying to stimulate the economy with hyperactive central bank action and money printing for decades. Quantitive Easiing, Qualitative Easing, negative interest rates, the central bank buying corporate bonds, the central bank buying equities, now increasingly fiscal stimulus. None of it does anything.  It has been painful to behold. 

 

I've asked you a couple of times - why not 10 trillion. Why not 20 trillion, or 30 in new spending. If there's no downside. I think the reason you are not in a hurry to answer is because on some level you must know there is. 

 

That is what is scary about certain sections of the left. I'm not against the concept of public investment - far from it. However it does have downsides. Debt. Crowding out private sector investment. A threat to the stability of the currency. In some contexts - diminishing returns. 

 

Its like comparing surgeons - people who like economists work on complex systems. 

 

If a surgeon tells you that you should have an operation and that it will be difficult, that you will be in pain for a while and that there are some risks but that it is ultimately for your benefit - by all means hire that  surgeon. He sounds like he knows what he is doing. 

 

If a surgeon tells you that it will be a "piece of piss", there are no risks or conceivable downsides and the only possible outcome is everything being great - fucking RUN!

 

[Captain Turdseye]

1 hour ago, Jordy Brouwer said:

The UK budget deficit was £304 billion pounds for the financial year ending March 2021. If you are talking about raising taxes by £304 billion pounds a year then that's fine but say so, and more to the point say so to the country in advance of a general election and see how you get on. 

I’m another that knows nowt about economics and I’m not trying to catch you out here because I genuinely don’t know the answers and I can’t be arsed Googling. What were the deficits in previous years? Surely the financial year ending March 2021, for obvious reasons, must have had some big differences to the years prior, including the years in the run up to the last General Election?

[AngryOfTuebrook]

10 hours ago, Jordy Brouwer said:

The UK budget deficit was £304 billion pounds for the financial year ending March 2021. If you are talking about raising taxes by £304 billion pounds a year then that's fine but say so, and more to the point say so to the country in advance of a general election and see how you get on. 

Four things.

 

1.  A figure for budget deficit is meaningless without a measure of GDP (because there's no way of telling how easily recoverable it is).

 

2.  Things happened in the year ending March 2021 that had an economic impact. You can't have missed them, they were on the telly and everything.

 

3.  The Tories' persistent failure to invest (in the name of the kind of balanced budgets you're alluding to here) has increased the national debt.

 

4.  There's nothing wrong, in principle, with running a deficit in order to invest. I think that's one of the few things just about every economist in the world agrees on.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

10 hours ago, Jordy Brouwer said:

1) For the reasons given. If it was profitable to create "million green jobs" then the private sector would already be doing so. 

As I've explained, that's just not true.  You're ignoring externalities.  Take, for example, the work required to insulate millions of homes. For homeowners, the cost of insulation might have too long a payback period, or they might not have access to the capital; so, without the customer base, the private sector doesn't employ enough people to do the work. As a result, huge amounts of energy is wasted, the country fails to meet its greenhouse gas emissions targets and the government has to deal with the costs of climate change. But none of that waste, failure or costs are shown in any private sector accounts, so there's nothing there to incentivise private sector actions. If I remember rightly, the Stern Report showed that each pound invested in reducing greenhouse gas emissions saves something like £20 in dealing with the effects of climate change. 

If, instead of relying solely on a private sector which is obviously not going to do what's necessary, the Government (for example) made insulation grants available to households, that would stimulate markets and create jobs (i.e. get people off benefits and get them paying taxes - both of which are, y'know, good for public finances) and help to reduce the costs of climate change - with the added economic bonus that lower energy bills mean that millions of households would have more disposable income to spend on the stuff they actually want.

10 hours ago, Jordy Brouwer said:

2) A glut of public investment always crowds out private investment

This is untrue. The link I posted to Rathbones (an investment company, who know a thing or two about this) explains it better than I could.

 

3) The private sector doesn't provide affordable housing due to planning regulation that started with the Town and County Planning Act passed during the Atlee government. The private sector can't produce housing on demand to meet need but rather must go cap in hand to the Local Authority for "planning permission" to build on land that they theoretically own. 

I don't know of a single incident of a private developer being refused permission to build affordable housing. On the contrary, councils tend to be desperate to pin developers down to adding affordable housing to their fancy-pants schemes (an obligation that developers often try to wriggle out of). It's not that the private sector can't meet the need (the need is houses; they have the capacity to build houses) it's that it won't, because there's no reason for it to do so: private companies exist to make profits; anything else they do, however beneficial or harmful, is incidental to that.

 

10 hours ago, Jordy Brouwer said:

 

"Pump-priming" investments in the industries of the future are exactly the sort of thing a responsible, Capitalist government should be doing.

 

If it actually works. Without structural reforms you hit a Keynesian "liquidity trap" where more borrowing and printing doesn't stimulate the economy and you need ever bigger doses of "stimulus" with ever diminishing returns (like a Junkie basically). 

 

The Japanese hit that 30 years ago and have been trying to stimulate the economy with hyperactive central bank action and money printing for decades. Quantitive Easiing, Qualitative Easing, negative interest rates, the central bank buying corporate bonds, the central bank buying equities, now increasingly fiscal stimulus. None of it does anything.  It has been painful to behold. 

That talk of a "liquidity trap" isn't as cut and dried as you paint it. Lots of economists argue that that part of Keynesian theory doesn't really apply anymore (as seen in practice since the 2008-2010 crisis); that's why traditional remedies (QE, etc) have failed.

 

10 hours ago, Jordy Brouwer said:

I've asked you a couple of times - why not 10 trillion. Why not 20 trillion, or 30 in new spending. If there's no downside. I think the reason you are not in a hurry to answer is because on some level you must know there is. 

I've answered that a couple of times. The question is based on a condition ("if spending is good...") which is false; we're talking about investment, not just spending.  Any question based on a false condition is obviously invalid.

Still, here's a question for you, if an apple a day keeps the doctor away, why not eat a thousand apples a day?

 

10 hours ago, Jordy Brouwer said:

That is what is scary about certain sections of the left. I'm not against the concept of public investment - far from it. However it does have downsides. Debt. Crowding out private sector investment. A threat to the stability of the currency. In some contexts - diminishing returns. 

 

Its like comparing surgeons - people who like economists work on complex systems. 

 

If a surgeon tells you that you should have an operation and that it will be difficult, that you will be in pain for a while and that there are some risks but that it is ultimately for your benefit - by all means hire that  surgeon. He sounds like he knows what he is doing. 

 

If a surgeon tells you that it will be a "piece of piss", there are no risks or conceivable downsides and the only possible outcome is everything being great - fucking RUN!

 

What if a surgeon has been operating for decades and his patients consistently come out in a worse state than before? I'd be tempted to try a better surgeon (or at least listen to what he has to say, rather than mischaracterising it and dismissing it) rather than going back to Dr Slasher.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Right on cue...

https://lm.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thelondoneconomic.com%2Fbusiness-economics%2Fnew-research-reveals-labour-is-better-at-handling-the-economy-than-the-conservatives-295748%2F&h=AT0MQg231OD3gdgu89vo_FVfm1vglFKWNGoASep6Oora5Q2DsRm93CwFlITDwYpo0oV_DrIzP9bTGfeMdAZtl5FdoR9lNBre79BfMS2fPllijgpUfg4kQWfym0EclBzUag

 

[Jordy Brouwer]

 

On 19/10/2021 at 08:11, AngryOfTuebrook said:

Four things.

 

1.  A figure for budget deficit is meaningless without a measure of GDP (because there's no way of telling how easily recoverable it is).

 

2.  Things happened in the year ending March 2021 that had an economic impact. You can't have missed them, they were on the telly and everything.

 

3.  The Tories' persistent failure to invest (in the name of the kind of balanced budgets you're alluding to here) has increased the national debt.

 

4.  There's nothing wrong, in principle, with running a deficit in order to invest. I think that's one of the few things just about every economist in the world agrees on.

 

1. Your original argument was that the Labour 2019 manifesto wouldn't have to be deficit financed. My point responding to that, was that there is already a £304 billion deficit. In that context GDP is irrelevant. In order to implement that wonderful 2019 manifesto and not deficit finance it you would have to raise taxes and by a lot. That's literally the point I made that you quoted. 

 

2. Correct. Also, if we pile a couple of trillion of spending onto that there will be no downside I'm reliably informed. 

 

3. Possibly, in some contexts. 

 

4. Your original point is that we wouldn't have to do that. Glad you've made your first admission that there might be downsides to public spending even if its just admitting that we would have to run a deficit. 

[Jordy Brouwer]

There's nothing wrong with public investment as long as you acknowledge its limitations and downsides especially at scale which is what I'm labouring to get you to acknowledge. 

 

Quote

I don't know of a single incident of a private developer being refused permission to build affordable housing.

 

Have you looked because that sounds like an argument from ignorance. It happens all the time. Here's one from just last month https://www.scottishhousingnews.com/article/decision-to-reject-350-home-plan-for-balerno-appealed

 

Quote

That talk of a "liquidity trap" isn't as cut and dried as you paint it. Lots of economists argue that that part of Keynesian theory doesn't really apply anymore (as seen in practice since the 2008-2010 crisis); that's why traditional remedies (QE, etc) have failed.

 

An fiscal stimulus has largely failed in China since 2008. They now have to deal with ghost cities, overproduction of steel which they have to dump cheaply on foreign markets. Overproduction and overcapacity here there and everywhere because of malinvestment. 

 

Quote

I've answered that a couple of times. The question is based on a condition ("if spending is good...") which is false; we're talking about investment, not just spending.  Any question based on a false condition is obviously invalid.

Then just change the word from spending to investment. The argument is the same namely that not all investment is good. 

 

Quote

Still, here's a question for you, if an apple a day keeps the doctor away, why not eat a thousand apples a day?

You shouldn't, that literally the point I'm making! That more of a potentially good thing (public investment) isn't necessarily better. That's not actually a bad analogy you have come up with for it there. An apple here or there is good but if you eat a thousand apples a day you are indeed going to have some problems. 

 

Quote

What if a surgeon has been operating for decades and his patients consistently come out in a worse state than before? I'd be tempted to try a better surgeon (or at least listen to what he has to say, rather than mischaracterising it and dismissing it) rather than going back to Dr Slasher.

I'm not arguing Labour vs Tory I'm arguing about that 2019 manifesto and the spend thriftiness as inverted virtue that has grown up on the left (Modern monetary theory being the worst offender). Its the lack of worry about the downsides of massive public spending, sorry investment that I find scary. Your original point, the one that started all this was that there was nothing scary about that manifesto. I'm trying to explain why I and many disagree. 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

32 minutes ago, Jordy Brouwer said:

 

 

1. Your original argument was that the Labour 2019 manifesto wouldn't have to be deficit financed. 

 

4. Your original point is that we wouldn't have to do that. 

Any chance you could quote the post where I parroted George Osborne's economically illiterate claptrap about not running a deficit, because I can't find it?

[AngryOfTuebrook]

46 minutes ago, Jordy Brouwer said:

 

Then just change the word from spending to investment. The argument is the same namely that not all investment is good. 

 

You shouldn't, that literally the point I'm making! That more of a potentially good thing (public investment) isn't necessarily better. That's not actually a bad analogy you have come up with for it there. An apple here or there is good but if you eat a thousand apples a day you are indeed going to have some problems. 

OK. So, let's assume that you were talking about investment all along and that your question ("If £x is good, why not £xxx?") was sincere, the obvious self-evident answer is that someone has calculated what is needed and what is affordable and come up with the figures in the manifesto.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Your objection to Labour's 2019 investment plans seem to be that some (a lot?) of the investment might not deliver the results hoped for. Well, yes. That's true of all investment, public or private.

 

The alternative to investing in things like health, education, infrastructure, etc. is to not invest in them. That's much riskier and likely to be more costly. And much scarier.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

2 hours ago, Jordy Brouwer said:

 

Have you looked because that sounds like an argument from ignorance. It happens all the time. Here's one from just last month https://www.scottishhousingnews.com/article/decision-to-reject-350-home-plan-for-balerno-appealed

 

Of 350 houses, 30% were planned to be affordable.

https://rapleys.com/balerno-proposal-description-and-the-site/ 

The developers are boasting that 30% is a high level of affordable housing. Even so, it's obviously there as a sweetener to try to get permission to build the expensive houses they want to build.

 

The private sector doesn't build enough affordable housing because the market doesn't incentivise it enough.

 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

2 hours ago, Jordy Brouwer said:

 

An fiscal stimulus has largely failed in China since 2008. They now have to deal with ghost cities, overproduction of steel which they have to dump cheaply on foreign markets. Overproduction and overcapacity here there and everywhere because of malinvestment. 

Nothing in the Labour Manifesto is in any way comparable to China's aggressive State Capitalism.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

2 hours ago, Jordy Brouwer said:

 My point responding to that, was that there is already a £304 billion deficit. In that context GDP is irrelevant. 

In the context of budget deficits, GDP is never irrelevant.

 

If the USA had a budget deficit of $500m it would be one of the better years of this century. If Burundi (for example) had a deficit of $500m, it would be more than double their worst ever.

 

At the time of the 2019 Manifesto, the UK's budget deficit was £65.6m (or 2.3% of GDP). The idea of investing to increase GDP and to make the country better prepared for the future is an obviously sensible one when the deficit is at such a manageable level. Obviously, the pandemic would have affected those plans, as it affected everything else.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

3 hours ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

 

If the USA had a budget deficit of $500m it would be one of the better years of this century. If Burundi (for example) had a deficit of $500m, it would be more than double their worst ever.

 

$500 billion, ya numptie!

[Bjornebye]

 

 

Neil Coyle is a cock 

 

[redinblack]

45 minutes ago, Bjornebye said:

 

 

Neil Coyle is a cock 

 

I was in London last week, we took a bus from Grove Park to Bromley, I tapped in with my debit card on the bus, I asked my brother do I need to tap out when I get off he said no, I said "how do they know where I get off to charge me the fare" he said "it doesnt matter where you get off the fare would be the same if you stayed on longer"

[sir roger]

tbf It's the same in Liverpool, going from  the Gyratory to Southport on the bus is the same as going from the Gyratory to Scotland Road , £2.30 I think.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

The trouble with Starmer's apparent lack of any coherent set of political/economic beliefs is that he can't offer credible opposition where it's needed - even when he gets an open goal.

 

Tories - "We're going to let our mates spray human shite all over the place."

 

Labour - "That can't be right."

 

Tories - "What would you do differently?"

 

Labour - "We don't know."

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Labour MP Charlotte Nichols, on discovering the name of the former IDS advisor who now runs a right-wing think tank on public services.

 

[sir roger]

Starmer seems to spend more time isolating than working.

[Section_31]

Starmer has unfollowed Owne Jones on Twitter, I say again, he has UNFOLLOWED Owen Jones.

 

 

[Skidfingers McGonical]

1 hour ago, Section_31 said:

Starmer has unfollowed Owne Jones on Twitter, I say again, he has UNFOLLOWED Owen Jones.

 

 

He needs to pipe down and stop being a tit as well. It’s only him that’s arsed about it.