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I have a plan!

My basic thesis is that being an adult means you worry about money. What we need to do is reduce that stress.

So, if we print lots more then everyone will have lots of money and no one will have to worry about it!

That a pint will now cost £1500 is only a mere detail.

33 thoughts on “I have a plan!”

  1. Murphy never seems to have grasped the concept that ‘money’ in this sense is just a proxy for actual goods and services.

    Didn’t Douglas Adams have a good put-down of his sort of nonsense – something about the futility of trying to make people happy by moving around bits of paper (and the scene where they used leaves as currency).

    It’s a bit much when a comedy sci-fi writer shows a better understanding of economics than a professor of economics at a British university.

  2. @ Richard T
    Yes the B Ark Golgafrinchams used leaves so that money did actually grow on trees: they were fabulously rich but most of them starved to death in the first winter.
    Also the self-styled “City University” is, and has been since its invention, in Islington.

  3. His basic thesis is wrong. There was a goodly period when, as a young/youngish bachelor actuary, I was an adult who did not worry about money (or, at least, my own money).
    Murphy cannot be quite that stupid – he just doesn’t care whether his thesis is true or false, just whether it suits his *current* narrative.

  4. Murphy no longer has any claim to be a current professor of any sort of economics.

    He’s now only Professor of Accounting Practice at Sheffield University Management School.

    https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/management/people/academic-staff/richard-murphy

    Quite how one gets expertise in the complex aspects of academic accounting by doing accounts and tax returns for actors etc (formative years in London) and farmers and small rural businesses (small partnership in Downham Market), together with the dizzy heights of international commerce (importing Trivial Pursuit games from Eire) is not obvious to me.

  5. I’m not sure I’m an adult then. House is paid for (I’m 36), run a cheap old diesel car, logburning stove. I reckon we could live on £10k a year if we had to, our actual outgoings are maybe £20k but our household income is more like £50k. For some strange reason I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about money.

    The prospect of the government printing lots of it does worry me however…

  6. BraveFart

    Particularly when the evidence is he had a ‘ringer’ sit his accountancy exams for him , making it highly amusing that he is postulating that he has a ‘plan’ for anything related to accounting. I’m sure it’s as ‘fully costed’ as Corbyn’s economics was…

  7. What he means is give all the money to him via tax so he can spend it all* on your behalf providing everything according to what he sees as your needs. Job done, stress reduced.

    *less his grifting cut

  8. Dennis, Noting The Bright Light Emanating From Ely

    My basic thesis is that being an adult means you worry about money.

    My basic thesis is that being an adult who cannot properly manage their money (and/or life) means you worry about money. If you’re always worrying about money, then find the resources (they are out there, everywhere) to help you learn how to properly manage the money (and/or life) you have.

    What we need to do is reduce that stress.

    So sayeth the Sage: What we really need is a nationwide support system that helps people get through their problems and an economy that provides people with sufficient income, either from work or benefits, to cover what are now considered to be the basic cost of living.

    And we need a system of emergency loans operated via the benefits or PAYE tax systems to provide people with ­emergency loans when crises really do hit and they have nowhere else to go for help.

    So his idea is to have the government provide a guaranteed income and provide loans to those who will be unable to pay them back.

    There is no indication that any ­politician in Westminster wants to do this.

    Shocking, eh?

  9. Bloke In Scotland

    Don’t we already have a Government delivered basic income (universal credit) and emergency financial help (crisis grants) already?

  10. @Boganboy, Those notes actually have some value as curiosa, so as a fun collection thing they’ve actually got some value that may increase as time passes and stuff gets inevitably lost.. 😉

    One of my mates is doing exactly that.. old italian Lyras, Zimdollars, etc. in nice frames stating “See? I am a millionaire!” as a gimmick item at his stand at events and webshop, besides his more serious stuff like Reichmarks and other bills/coinage of (dis)repute of days of yore.

    As he says, it’s one of the cases that proves you can polish a turd, and at least it brings a smile to peoples’ faces on occasion.

  11. BraveFart:
    Quite how one gets expertise in the complex aspects of academic accounting by doing accounts…
    After I qualified (wow – that was a long time ago) I spent three or four years quite involved in technical accounting – setting and marking exams for the CA levels and our Uniform Final Exam. Of course, these were deliberately designed to be difficult, with little tricky bits to trip up the students – but the mental effort to keep up, to know stuff inside and out, and to cross disciplines is incredible. You simply CAN’T do it by being a practitioner, you have to work at it; it isn’t a full-time job, but it’s a demanding sideline. Murphy has not made that effort, and from the rest of his drivel I doubt he is capable of it. He is as out of his league as an academic accountant as I would be suiting up for a Premiere League match.

    Van_Patten
    Particularly when the evidence is he had a ‘ringer’ sit his accountancy exams for him…
    You have made that claim several times – is there any evidence of that, or of the difficulties between Murphy and the publicans in Downham Market that you sometimes cite?

  12. Dcardno

    Your fist paragraph makes the point for me. There’s no way with his lack of accounting knowledge he could have passed the exams without help and even had he done so, none of the information appears to have gone in so in practical terms the pass was worthless.

    The evidence for the Downham Market take is an older post on a local usenet style forum way back when but even on Archive search and on Tor I haven’t been able to locate it unfortunately. Still hunting it….

    I would point out that Murphy has no hard evidence for many of his assertions and I don’t claim to be either an academic or an authority on taxation, economics or any other field…

  13. Best thing the Job Centre ever did for me in the 1990s was pay for me to go on a Basic Accounts for Small Businesses course run by the local Chamber of Commerce. Has stood me in great stead, enough to do my self-assessment tax returns for more than 25 years.

    From what I read from Professor His Excellency Sir Lord Spudcup, I’m several magnitudes more competent than he is.

  14. Adults generally worry about money because they want to spend more than they earn. Sadly this does not change if they get more money. It takes a lot more money to change.

  15. Van_P
    Yes – it would be nice to see that Downham pub ban, not that it would surprise me at all. In fairness to the murph, I don’t think I could pass the exams now (especially since we have given up on GAAP and gone to IFRS) – but they are deliberately set to be challenging. The evidence is that what little Spud learned he has forgotten, or more likely abandoned to further his grifting career.

  16. Bloke in North Dorset

    OTD 1922 $1=303.5 Marks. Roggenbrot 7.7M / Kg

    OTD 1923 $1=49,000 Marks. Subsidised bread 900M / 1.9kg, free market price for bread 2,200M

    And that was a sovereign country, albeit with a crippled economy, but Spud never provides qualifiers when he tells us sovereign countries can print as much as they like.

  17. I have never worried about money as an adult.

    When I had less I used to think about it more, because I had to be careful not to run out. But never actually worry except once or twice when I did run out.

    Since then I barely consider it.

    Spud really isn’t actually an adult.

  18. My basic thesis is that being an adult means you worry about money, but you take steps to work hard and smart enough to provide for yourself. The even more adult thing to do is to ensure that your spending is less than what you earn and in the process you lessen your stress.

  19. theProle,

    “I’m not sure I’m an adult then. House is paid for (I’m 36), run a cheap old diesel car, logburning stove. I reckon we could live on £10k a year if we had to, our actual outgoings are maybe £20k but our household income is more like £50k. For some strange reason I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about money.”

    I saw this Tweet today: “Looking to buy my first MacBook Pro. Will use for some photo and video editing, kids to use for homework.” I decided not to get involved, but no mate, you don’t need to spend £1500 for a Macbook Pro to do that. You go to Tier 1 online and buy a refurbished Dell Latitude for £200 and then stick DaVinci Resolve on for video editing.

    I just don’t get a lot of spending. Like I don’t feel I’m sacrificing my quality of life buying 2nd hand blu rays that play fine. Or Aldi gin that tastes the same as Tanqueray once I’ve put lime and tonic in. I buy games on Steam that are about 4 years old and seem about as good as the new ones but cost £7 instead of £50. Tesco jeans for £25 feel fine to me.

  20. Is Murphy projecting. Is he having some cash flow problems. Why else has he come up with this idea.

  21. “Is Murphy projecting.”

    Of course he is, he a leftist, its all they do. He accuses his opponents of being fascists bent on world domination, because thats exactly what he is.

    So if he’s now writing about how people all have money problems best bet is he’s on his uppers. What would be really funny is if he’d put all his investments into fixed coupon bonds and now he’s lost a decent chunk of of the capital due to interest rate rises.

  22. Bloke on M4

    Personal circumstances changing means I have had to look hard at elements of day to day expenditure and you are spot on. There are lots of ways to be frugal, even with kids and although it is hard work, what Murphy seems to advocate is that there is a bottomless pit of money to subsidise those too feckless to do anything. It’s ultimately unsustainable.

  23. I just don’t get a lot of spending.

    Status, and display thereof, is important to humans. So a lot of types of spending will be related to displaying status; the point of it is to show that you are able to spend luxuriously. Superyachts aren’t really necessary but are important to a lot of people with oodles of money and power.

    Conversely, there is also status in being seen to not spend luxuriously. Being part of a crowd laughing at “twats with iPhones” is pretty much the same as middle class students wearing donkey jackets with second hand books of leftist poetry sticking out the pocket.

    It’s all group identity and status display therein.

  24. PJF,

    “Conversely, there is also status in being seen to not spend luxuriously. Being part of a crowd laughing at “twats with iPhones” is pretty much the same as middle class students wearing donkey jackets with second hand books of leftist poetry sticking out the pocket.”

    I appreciate and understand luxury spending. I fully understand why someone spends £200 for stalls seats at Covent Garden, or gets a Savile Row suit made, or buys £150/bottle cognac, or goes and has dinner at Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons. These are opulent, expensive things, but you also can’t go out and get a cheaper version of them.

    Branded stuff with no intrinsic improvement just makes you a mark with bad taste. Is anyone getting more pussy buying Absolut Vodka instead of Popov? That’s what they want you to believe, but I doubt it’s true. Buy a puppy if you want that.

  25. Jim said:
    “What would be really funny is if he’d put all his investments into fixed coupon bonds and now he’s lost a decent chunk of of the capital due to interest rate rises.”

    Wasn’t he advising people to do that, because he didn’t approve of nasty capitalist shares?

  26. My name is Bloke in Wales and I have an iPhone.

    It’s not a status symbol: it rarely emerges from my pocket when I’m in company. I’ve used IOS and Android phones over the years. Before my current phone I had upper and mid-range Android phones with as stock Google OS as possible.

    Last time I bought a new phone (3ish years ago), I switched from Android to iPhone because it was becoming obvious to me that Google’s software engineering standards had nose-dived. The phone had become very unreliable, and couldn’t even hold onto a connection to my WiFi network. I decided to try an iPhone instead, and it has been rock-solid.

  27. People never worry about money. They worry about the goods & services it pays for & their personal absence of. When you’ve got to the point of worrying about actual money you’ve got to the point where you’re keeping score & have nothing to worry about.
    Since I’ve only read Murphy on the subject of money & rarely if ever on the method of creation of goods & services, he’s pretty well irrelevant isn’t he?

  28. @ Van Patten
    When I was at school there was alleged to be a type who would swot up massively before exams and then forget everything afterwards.

  29. It’s certainly ironic that he should be connected with a company named Trivial Pursuits, since he seems to have made trivial pursuits his life’s work.

  30. Van_Patten,

    “Personal circumstances changing means I have had to look hard at elements of day to day expenditure and you are spot on. There are lots of ways to be frugal, even with kids and although it is hard work, what Murphy seems to advocate is that there is a bottomless pit of money to subsidise those too feckless to do anything. It’s ultimately unsustainable.”

    https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2023/02/02/new-tech-for-the-blog/

    He spent about £2K on apple gear to help with his podcasting and if he’d spent 30 minutes googling “best podcast camera” or asking on Reddit he’d have worked out why people don’t use iPhones. And you don’t need iPads for editing either. In fact, touch is horrible for video editing. He could have spent £600-700 and had better stuff.

  31. Surreptitious Evil

    Last time I bought a new phone (3ish years ago), I switched from Android to iPhone because it was becoming obvious to me that Google’s software engineering standards had nose-dived.

    I went from Blackberry to iPhone some while ago because that was the company policy. I then did an online course (Royal Holloway) on Android security and I’ve spent my own money on iPhones since then. Despite the fact that they are 1/2 a generation or more behind in features than the better Android phones.

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