There is hardly a serious economist to be found who does not think that, in the face of mounting budgetary pressures, he should raise taxes.
Why not, ermm, cut spending in order to balance the books?
There is hardly a serious economist to be found who does not think that, in the face of mounting budgetary pressures, he should raise taxes.
Why not, ermm, cut spending in order to balance the books?
Cut spending? Isn’t that what the little people are supposed to do when they get into debt? Governments’ purpose is to spend money, not to economise.
“Serious Economist” being defined how, exactly?
No sensible person would ask that question
As all right-thinking people agree
Et cet.
Cont’d…
…
Neo-liberal
Far-right
Far-right extremists
Sexist
Racist
Misogynist
Homophobe
Transphobe
Fascist
Because that’s how Hitler got started.
…
“No true Scotsman” fallacy.
One nail hit on head… again.
My numbers show that we now have a quarter of a million more public sector employees from just before the general election, so right there is another £12.5 billion each year plus a huge bill down the line for those unfunded central government pensions.
Well, according to at least one* Labour MP the private sector can only survive because of government spending, so we should be grateful for all extra public employees.
*Looking at the rest of them and the wider party and left in general I don’t think he’s in a minority, far from it.
Well to some extent that Labour MP was right – there’s a lot of the ‘private sector’ that couldn’t exist without the State using their goods or services. Businesses that would not exist in their current form if the State didn’t send a lot of business their way. Now of course they were utterly wrong in the sense that if the State sector did not exist there would still be a private sector, as people have needs that must be met, and someone is going to do that. But what private sector exists today is often significantly the result of State directed spending. Its got to be, when the State spends nearly 50% of the economy. That is going to artificially direct large sections of the private sector in ways that it otherwise would not go.
True. But, as you say, that’s affecting what the private sector does, not its existence or size; if government weren’t distorting it, it would do something else.
You get that difference, but I don’t think they do, because they never consider second-order effects.
Guardian Media Group for one. Tom would miss it if it wasn’t there.
Thank god for light-hearted economists whose resting face is a smile.
I had bet the cat a fiver that this was Willy Hutton, because that is just the sory of moronic comment he would make. The cat says she is going to spend it on a new bag of litter.
Plantagenet Palliser was a 19thC version of Jim Hacker. He was there to fill a gap and not rock any boats. And like Hacker, any bright ideas he might have had were stymied by bureaucracy and vested interests.
The article is behind a paywall so I haven’t read it but the headline does say it’s a choice between tax rises or welfare cuts.
It gets worse:
Anybody seriously thinks that the 1,000 per day being granted PIP, for example, is not full of people “playing the system” isn’t worth listening to and he reminds me of the 364 economists who signed that anti Thatcher letter.
And this ….
What’s not to like – Labour Party delenda est.
Someone, perhaps here, pointed out that 95% of motability cars require no modifications.
Normies won’t riot if you tax them more, the underclass will if you cut their gibs.
Maybe we should swap the bureaucrats who eagerly dish out all manner of bennies with the ones that stop, slow or restrict planning…
Unfortunately they’re the same people.
In other news, in a referendum, Iceland has just rejected full EU membership 52% to 48%.
Funny, I seem to recognise those numbers. I wonder what will happen next? Will I recognise that, too?
Not even rejected membership, rejected holding talks to negotiate membership. Middle fingers don’t get much more emphatic than that.
I’m curious to know what makes Icelanders resistant to EU membership. Perhaps its the packaging and labeling bullshit which might be enough on its own. Iceland’s main product is a banking sector which after some monstrous screw-ups, is now operating in the Goldilocks zone between under-and over-regulation. Lagarde may have expressed intentions to strangle them in the approved ECB way. There’s a lot of volcano tourism, I believe, but it’s not as if EU competitors are going to export their own volcanoes to Iceland.
Is it still fishing rights?
Got to be a big part of it for sure. Fishing accounts for 10% of their GDP. And nearly half their exports. There’s no way the EU would be allowing that to stay the case after an accession, even if they granted some sort of temporary derogation. At some point they would have to give up their fishing rights to other EU members.
Yes, by the look of it.
God, we’re plagued by progressive women.
AIUI, they’re in the EFTA customs union and the Schengen area (the latter, after all, started as a Nordic free-movement area), so they get those benefits without being subject to a bunch of EU directives on areas like fishing.
Germany’s Tagesschau program in its explainer on the referendum somehow managed to find the one fisherman in favor of restarting talks.
EFTA was sensible – sigh!
That’s even better! Good for them. Nice to see a people with balls and independent spirit.
Best of luck to them. Let’s hope they learned a few lessons from here.
Mind you, they’ve got immigration problems which possibly make even ours look trivial.
20% – bloody hell
Yes. Surprising, isn’t it.
The proggies are like the face crawlers in Alien. They find a host and consume it from the inside out.
Non-Europeans are 9% of the population but seem to be mainly Filipino and Thai, not sure why. Muslims make up less than 1% of the population.
I wonder what will happen next? Will I recognise that, too?
That’s a yes, then.
Looks like the Ireland solution, then…
Here’s hoping Icelanders are wise to that game, and understand the Prague solution
Federasts never give up.
In other people it’s called “Obsessive Compulsive Disorder”
I’ve seen this movie….
No True Scotsman.
If you think that spending can be cut then you are clearly not a *serious* economist.