Poll: Poll: UK General Election 2017 - Mk II

[Silly Goose On The Loose]

Deficet is a symptom of debt, yes deficet has been reduced but debt is still going through the roof.

It's like saving the sofa and being proud of yourself despite the house still burning down around you.

Well of course debt will increase when you've still got a deficit. The point is the growth of said debt has gone down significantly since 2010.

 

[Silly Goose On The Loose]

The other truth is that had Labour had been elected in 2010 we would have had austerity anyway.

 

[Trusty]

Deficet is a symptom of debt, yes deficet has been reduced but debt is still going through the roof.

It's like saving the sofa and being proud of yourself despite the house still burning down around you.

Net borrowing is going down and bond yields are going down. Please don't forget about the 2008-2013 worldwide recession, you can't blame the Conservatives for that. Had the Labour governent not left a sarcy post it note saying "no money left" maybe some of the recession could have been offset.

And IFS recommends a national debt of no greater than 80% (could be 85 but pretty certain it's 80) which since the tories have been in power has went from £1 trillion at 76% to £1.7 trillion at 89.3%.

So as above well done you've saved the sofa but your house is a smouldering ruin.

Recession? wall street crash? you blaming that on the Conservatives, yea?

 

[scorza]

I suppose under your argument we should also quash those pesky workers rights to further help these angelic businesses grow and prosper?

Not at all. In fact if you check my post history you'll see that I want terms and conditions, especially for those at the bottom end of the labour market to improve. Where I differ on Corbyn however is the method of achieving that - he thinks it can be done by imposing regulations on business i.e. ordering them to improve the Ts&Cs they offer. I don't believe that approach can work in the long term, I think you have to achieve it by controlling the supply of, and demand for labour (the former being easier than the latter).

 

[Nitefly]

Still showing large support for labour

What a turnaround.

 

[Greebo]

How so?

The deficit is going down, according to the IFS, we're in line to meet a surplus on day to day by 2020 (1st time since 2000) Labour will take a year longer, but only if they don't borrow to nationalise everything. Plus there a large holes in their manifesto...:/

No we are not. Its now 2025 minimum so thats another 8 years of austerity. In the meantime GDP growth has stalled, real time wage growth is negative and if we end up with "No deal" as an alternative to a "bad deal" then we are going to be up to £100 billion worse off per year int he short term so you may as well add another few decades of austerity onto 2025.

SO basically, austerity for the whole rest of most people's lifetime.

 

[No1newts]

You do realise that Labour started the overspending and the Cons have simply been forced to cut from day 1? It's like if you inherited my business and I was spending £200 a day and earning £100, if after 1 month you'd got that down to only spending £120 a day while earning £100 the debt would've still gone up but you would be in a better position than if I was left in charge spending £200 a day still.

Well it's not that simple and you really need to stop dealing in absolutes.

If you are spending £200 some of it is to stimulate growth of your business say £80 you cut is advertising. Yes well done you are now only losing £20 a month but you will now continue to lose £20 a month forever until you eventually hit a brick wall. Speculate to accumulate, money makes money are pretty common phrases.

Once again I'm not suggesting either path I'm merely suggesting that you are blinkered and trying to apply absolutes to something that is anything but.

For every time you say deficet reduction is good on the pure evidence you are wrong, I have a better argument than you here as it has failed. However I accept it's impossible to know stimulus would have produced better results.

 

[Trusty]

No we are not. Its now 2025 minimum so thats another 8 years of austerity. In the meantime GDP growth has stalled, real time wage growth is negative and if we end up with "No deal" as an alternative to a "bad deal" then we are going to be up to £100 billion worse off per year int he short term so you may as well add another few decades of austerity onto 2025.

SO basically, austerity for the whole rest of most people's lifetime.

day to day surplus

 

[No1newts]

Well of course debt will increase when you've still got a deficit. The point is the growth of said debt has gone down significantly since 2010.

It has exceeded the suggested ceiling which is not by any measure a success.

Net borrowing is going down and bond yields are going down. Please don't forget about the 2008-2013 worldwide recession, you can't blame the Conservatives for that. Had the Labour governent not left a sarcy post it note saying "no money left" maybe some of the recession could have been offset.

Recession? wall street crash? you blaming that on the Conservatives, yea?

As I've said a few times I'm not saying that increased spending would have reduced debt, I believe it would but I don't know.

What I'm doing here is poking holes in the arguments of those who are stating absolutely that austerity has saved us all and it's the best thing to ever happen when in fact there is no evidence of such a thing and evidence would suggest otherwise if you went by pure numbers.

I'm not going by them numbers as I'm not naive I'm just suggesting that many hear are extremely blinkered which does not help them. Though if their minds are made up it hardly matters

 

[Hades]

Its not. Thats the figures Boris is putting out to scare you all off. You need to look at how much the building plot would be worth for those £1m houses. They are not going to be worth £550k.

OK, let's say the building plot is £400k then it's "only" £12 tax per year. Still very sucky.

 

[Efour]

Still showing large support for labour

What a turnaround.

Mostly people scared of losing inheritance of parents house id wager.

 

[No1newts]

Not at all. In fact if you check my post history you'll see that I want terms and conditions, especially for those at the bottom end of the labour market to improve. Where I differ on Corbyn however is the method of achieving that - he thinks it can be done by imposing regulations on business i.e. ordering them to improve the Ts&Cs they offer. I don't believe that approach can work in the long term, I think you have to achieve it by controlling the supply of, and demand for labour (the former being easier than the latter).

Show me the business leader who will give up profit when not forced to put it into the hands of employees and I'll show you a martyr.

Anyhoo let's just ageee to disagree, I have stuff to do this evening and I don't intend to spend it arguing on ocuk.

Thanks for the debate though, it's made a slow work day more enjoyable.

 

[n111ck]

Still showing large support for labour

What a turnaround.

Still only a quarter of the original vote - would be good if someone could match up the list of Labour voters this time and compare with last time, if they are more or less the same then the poll is completely meaningless.

 

[Trusty]

It has exceeded the suggested ceiling which is not by any measure a success.



As I've said a few times I'm not saying that increased spending would have reduced debt, I believe it would but I don't know.

What I'm doing here is poking holes in the arguments of those who are stating absolutely that austerity has saved us all and it's the best thing to ever happen when in fact there is no evidence of such a thing and evidence would suggest otherwise if you went by pure numbers.

I'm not going by them numbers as I'm not naive I'm just suggesting that many hear are extremely blinkered which does not help them. Though if their minds are made up it hardly matters

Austerity was essential, like i said before, countries that were running a surplus managed to offset some of the effects of the recession. We didn't have a surplus. Several people have mentioned net debt as a % of GDP, it's true it's close to 80%, which is generally considered the cut off point. Had we not had austerity, that % might be well over 120%, 140%...who know's. We don't want to find ourselves in a similar situation to Italy

 

[scorza]

Show me the business leader who will give up profit when not forced to put it into the hands of employees and I'll show you a martyr.

Anyhoo let's just ageee to disagree, I have stuff to do this evening and I don't intend to spend it arguing on ocuk.

Thanks for the debate though, it's made a slow work day more enjoyable.

But again it's about how you force them to give more money to employees. Corbyn thinks he can force them by passing laws requiring them to, I think the best way is to force them to pay more if they want to attract/retain good staff. I'll repeat my claim (sadly, not verifiable) that in 2001-2002ish, my local McDonalds in south London was advertising for burger flippers and paying £10 p/h - I dunno how much that is in today's money but it's a lot more than what they are offering now - minimum wage. The labour market was working fine back then. I don't have a problem with minimum wage btw, I do have a problem with good workers staying on minimum wage.

Enjoy your evening and thank you for making my slow work day more enjoyable

 

[StriderX]

Austerity was essential, like i said before, countries that were running a surplus managed to offset some of the effects of the recession. We didn't have a surplus. Several people have mentioned net debt as a % of GDP, it's true it's close to 80%, which is generally considered the cut off point. Had we not had austerity, that % might be well over 120%, 140%...who know's. We don't want to find ourselves in a similar situation to Italy

Yet the US has achieved far better results from QE than we have with Austerity... and you certainly dont have any growth when the incumbent party continually tries to ruin the digital economy every which way they can.

Most growth in this country is literally debt, people doing exactly what they were doing in 2006, racking up the credit cards.

 

[No1newts]

Austerity was essential, like i said before, countries that were running a surplus managed to offset some of the effects of the recession. We didn't have a surplus. Several people have mentioned net debt as a % of GDP, it's true it's close to 80%, which is generally considered the cut off point. Had we not had austerity, that % might be well over 120%, 140%...who know's. We don't want to find ourselves in a similar situation to Italy

Ok I'm going to bite one last time before I head off. You cannot say it's absolute, debt is actually now just shy of 90% so if you went by pure numbers you could actually argue it has been a tragic failure. Have you noticed how the tories are never mentioning debt and are instead focusing on deficit to try and sound positive.

You cannot state it is an absolute as unless there is actually a multiverse and you are some unique evolutionary creature that can see every outcome across every universe. You can guess, you can assume, you can speculate but you cannot state it as an absolute fact. The one fact is debt has risen under austerity which would suggest it has failed abysmally.

Where my arguments differ from your own and others is that I'm not stating this as an absolute as i understand the fallacy in this.

Anyhow as I said to the last poster I'm off for the evening. Been a pleasure.

 

[McPhee]

Still showing large support for labour

What a turnaround.

It's startling, isn't it? To be honest, I think the public appetite for austerity has been sated. It's the people, rather than the policies, that are preventing Labour from walking this election.

In the final 2015 OCUK poll, the Tories were on 42.2%, 23.8 points ahead of Labour.

 

[RDM]

Deficet is a symptom of debt, yes deficet has been reduced but debt is still going through the roof.

Surely the debt is a symptom of the deficit? If you never run a deficit you would never get in to debt.

 

[Silly Goose On The Loose]

Surely the debt is a symptom of the deficit? If you never run a deficit you would never get in to debt.

Indeed, you would be generating money every year, i.e. a surplus.