Budget 2015: Osborne vs. the Economy

AintNoHippie said:
Why should 'rich pensioners' be penalised?

Fair enough about not being entitled to the winter fuel allowance but if they've worked hard throughout their working life, paid their taxes and ni contributions, and still managed to save so that they can have an easy retirement.. Why shouldn't they be entitled to a state pension + their savings in later life?
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Point is if you're serious about reducing the deficit which the banks sent spiralling out of control you need to cut the biggest areas of spending, not focus all of your efforts on areas which will hardly put a dent in it. Or better still just make the banks pay back the hundreds of billions in tax payer bailouts they received.

I think it's pretty obvious to everyone by now though that austerity is just a method of destroying the welfare state and scapegoating those at the bottom for the mess those at the top created.
 
dowie said:
Frankly Labour didn't even have a serious plan...
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You do realise that growth only returned to the UK economy after Osborne rolled back from his own austerity plans and adopted a retrenchment closer to that suggested by Alistair Darling, right?

I think you'll find the current govt is actually doing a rather good job with the economy.
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The UK economy has done remarkably badly over the last five years. After inheriting a growing economy, the coalition promptly tanked with utterly unneeded austerity. Instead of helping the economy to recover and using the proceeds of growth to bring the deficit down, Osborne strangled our recovery at birth and, as a result, has left the UK much worse off than it should have been while spectacularly failing to meet his own targets on the deficit. This budget again shows how little he understands how economies work. The only bright side is how rapidly he's retreated from his own plans on austerity and is already frantically reducing the targets for how much the government will cut.
 
dowie said:
hmm strange how it is the fastest growing economy in the developed world then....
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Er, it's not*. It was, very briefly, it's not now and it hasn't been over the last five years. We'll see whether the most recent quarter puts us back on top but, personally, I doubt it and the latest budget isn't going to help us on that front.

Even Osborne's lapdogs, the OBR, are predicting sub-trend growth throughout the next parliament and their predictions so far have proved... shall we say "optimistic"?


* - note that since that article was published UK growth for that quarter has been revised up but we're still behind many Eurozone countries on the latest data.
 
MrMoonX said:
Yet no one here seems to realise that the welfare budget in the majority is spent on old people not working age "benefit scroungers" rich pensioners don't need a state pension or winter fuel allowance, 10s billions saved right now by slashing that
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The problem with cutting the state pension for richer pensioners is that it creates perverse incentives in the system. Pension saving rates are too low among working age people and we need to make sure that people who are saving today are not discouraged from doing so.

The Lib Dem's stupid Triple Lock needs to go die in a fire though; it's obscene to be protecting pensions while hammering working age benefits.
 
Mr Jack said:
Er, it's not*. It was, very briefly, it's not now and it hasn't been over the last five years. We'll see whether the most recent quarter puts us back on top but, personally, I doubt it and the latest budget isn't going to help us on that front.

Even Osborne's lapdogs, the OBR, are predicting sub-trend growth throughout the next parliament and their predictions so far have proved... shall we say "optimistic"?


* - note that since that article was published UK growth for that quarter has been revised up but we're still behind many Eurozone countries on the latest data.
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you're looking at a single quarter... it was the fastest growing economy last year...

the conservatives have done a good job whether you like it or not
 
dowie said:
you're looking at a single quarter... it was the fastest growing economy last year...
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Yes, I'm looking at the most recent data.

the conservatives have done a good job whether you like it or not
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They've done a terrible job compared to any previous recession except the great depression. They tanked the economic recovery and delayed the point where we finally nudged back to the pre-recession GDP by years, putting us far behind the recoveries in France and Germany (who then tanked their own recoveries with the general Eurozone idiocy).

Of course, the greatest irony of the Tory economic figures is how much of the GDP growth they like to pretend is a great success is down to their failure to meet their stupid immigration targets. Without the economic contribution of the many new immigrants to our country their figures would look even worse still. You only need to look at GDP per capita figures to realise the truth of this.
 
Mr Jack said:
Yes, I'm looking at the most recent data.



They've done a terrible job compared to any previous recession except the great depression. They tanked the economic recovery and delayed the point where we finally nudged back to the pre-recession GDP by years, putting us far behind the recoveries in France and Germany (who then tanked their own recoveries with the general Eurozone idiocy).

Of course, the greatest irony of the Tory economic figures is how much of the GDP growth they like to pretend is a great success is down to their failure to meet their stupid immigration targets. Without the economic contribution of the many new immigrants to our country their figures would look even worse still. You only need to look at GDP per capita figures to realise the truth of this.
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I don't really believe that the Tory approach is a bad one however - sure they've not chased the biggest/fastest gains but we've also had more of a cushion should things go spectacularly wrong.
 
dowie said:
you're looking at a single quarter...
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I'm looking at the most recent data but even if you want to view annual GDP your claim still isn't true: Ireland had higher annual GDP growth.

they've tanked the economic recovery... what by creating jobs and growing the economy? right....
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Yes, they tanked the recovery. When they took over the economy was growing at a healthy 1.0%; that recovery collapsed the moment Osborne got his hands on the economy and didn't begin to sputter back to life until he abandoned his original plans in 2012 and adopted something very similar to that the more competent Alistair Darling had proposed. It wasn't until 2014 that we saw better than trend growth - six years after the recession started - and even then Osborne was only able to manage this by recklessly stoking up the housing market and cynically manipulating the timing of his cuts to produce a pre-election bump. Even then, the latest data indicates that this brief recovery is already faltering.
 
Rroff said:
I don't really believe that the Tory approach is a bad one however - sure they've not chased the biggest/fastest gains but we've also had more of a cushion should things go spectacularly wrong.
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But this isn't true. What we needed as a cushion was economic growth because this gives us strength with which to deal with a fresh crisis and to deal with the deficit. Osborne's austerity hasn't delivered on the deficit reduction he promised and it's given us remarkably poor growth.
 
Mr Jack said:
But this isn't true. What we needed as a cushion was economic growth because this gives us strength with which to deal with a fresh crisis and to deal with the deficit. Osborne's austerity hasn't delivered on the deficit reduction he promised and it's given us remarkably poor growth.
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repeating it doesn't make it true...

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that light blue line that overtakes France, Germany and Japan... is apparently 'remarkably poor'
 
^^ Makes me wanna move to Canada.

Mr Jack said:
But this isn't true. What we needed as a cushion was economic growth because this gives us strength with which to deal with a fresh crisis and to deal with the deficit. Osborne's austerity hasn't delivered on the deficit reduction he promised and it's given us remarkably poor growth.
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Depends on how that growth is produced if its rapid but unstable the whole house can fall apart come the next crisis - not saying the Tory approach is perfect in some ways its even more accidental than intentional I think but its given the economy a bit of resistance - there are less ways that a massive failure in one area can take the whole lot with it even if its far from ideal.
 
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dowie said:
that light blue line that overtakes France, Germany and Japan... is apparently 'remarkably poor'
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Yes, it is. Compare it to any previous economic recovery. Hell, compare it to the US or Canada.

The only reason we've eventually caught up with the recovery in Germany and France is the austerity idiocy that has turned the problems in the Eurozone of 2010 into a five year rumbling crisis not because Osborne's some kind of genius chancellor. UK growth has been very poor and even measured by his own targets Osborne has done very badly. He promised to eliminate the deficit by 2015, remember.
 
Back to the budget itself: it looks like the official Labour response from Harriet Harman is as limp-wristed as their "opposition" of the last five years. She can't even bring herself to condemn the two child limit or the cut in the benefit's cap.

Pathetic.
 
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