The national debt need never be repaid.
What I’ve just said is a simple, straightforward economic truth.
We’ve had a national debt in the UK since about 1694, when the Bank of England was created to lend a little over a million pounds to the then new William and Mary, who were on the throne together in a very strange situation that developed after what was called the Glorious Revolution. And we’ve never really got rid of the national debt since then.
There must, therefore, be a good reason for having it. Nothing survives for 330 years without somebody benefiting.
Lasted a thousand years, feudalism did. Must be a good system then, right?
I know the delusions of grandeur are getting stronger, but yearning for a return to the divine right of kings presumably means he thinks he will be a shoe-in as Richard IV.
I thought that the whole idea was that National Debts ( in the modern era ) could never be paid.
The USA and probably any number of other developed countries around the world are effectively bankrupt.
Certainly we will never see again any of the ingenious Great Schemes such as those of the 18th Century to attempt to pay it off.
No one really seems to care.
Think of it more as an interest-only loan.
With a central bank to do some quantitative easing, i.e. to write yourself an IOU when the credit limit is reached.
It’s a tribute to the careful and continent politics of our rulers over many decades that we are nowhere near that credit limit. It would be a terrible shame to have maxed out your overdraft before something really bad happens. I wonder what course of action Richard IV would prescribe.
As I’ve mentioned in many recent comments, this is all a problem with government money. Stop using it, you wouldn’t have the problem.
There are people who are perpetually in debt.
See for instance most farmers (not gentlemen farmers, the real ones). They’re in hock for the equipment, and keep getting loans.
Are they bankrupt? No. Do they end up getting out of hock? No. There’s always new equipment to replace old and maintenance to be done.
Do they repay the individual loans? Yes.
Do individual government bonds get repaid and turned in? Yes.
This is a stupid argument that has nothing to do with whether a government should keep increasing the amount borrowed, at a rate that will soon have them unable to repay the individual bonds.
Pedantry: it’s a shoo-in rather than shoe-in. It’s pre-War US slang for a walkover, i.e., the horse can just be shooed into the winner’s enclosure.
I’m off to Bath races now. Have a good day, everyone.
Slavery lasted from the year dot until a bunch of Quaker and Anglican eccentrics had a religious awakening on the subject.
@ dearieme
And a lot longer in Muslim and Communist countries
My personal credit card debt need never be repaid – so long as I’m willing to spend part of my income on interest expense on that debt.
So statements can be factual, AND stupid.
Yeah don’t worry about the National Debt…..
1. Health and Social Care = £229 billion
2. Work and Pensions = £228 billion
3. Education = £117 billion
4. Interest payments on National Debt = £100+ billion
5. HMRC = £64 billion
6. Defence = £54 billion
7. Energy = £53 billion
8. Housing / Communities = £44 billion.
HMRC..!?? 🙂
@ PF
That is less than 8% of the amount HMRC collects from taxpayers
John
Absolutely! The buggers do collect most of it, barring smaller chunks like Council tax etc.
It was on the analysis of expenditure side (above, although I’m not sure about energy in the same context, one might include transport as a similar function type?) that their inclusion amused…
The argument is that we’ve got away with it since 1694 so we can get away with it forever, and on any scale!
At least, until the debt starts to grow at such a rate that the lenders begin to worry that they won’t ever be paid back. Then it all suddenly collapses.