If the UK doesn’t change drastically very soon, it will be too far behind the rest of its neighbours to recover.
Austerity doesn’t work and never has yet the Tories keep on pushing for it, maybe if they stopped stealing tax payer money and donating it to their chums through bullshit contracts there would actually be money to spend on the public…?
Elderly have all the voting power (and actually withhold their votes when they’re not serviced, unlike younger generations bought into lesser of two evils fallacy that allows their interests to be deprioritised)
They don’t need economic growth, makes little difference to them as long as their pensions are safe and house price goes up. Of course when pensions are under threat or housing market is destabilised, their wrath is brutal. There is no similar outrage for the actual economy, just defeat and acceptance.
First thought was the government debt…. but in the article:
“The paper said voters had been told austerity would result in faster growth by boosting confidence but instead it had reduced the bargaining power of workers and contributed to the UK’s low-wage, low-productivity economic model. **Britain’s debt to GDP ratio in 2019 would have been three percentage points lower at about 70%** had governments pursued a balanced budget expansion in which spending was matched by tax increases.”
Key sentence in that:
>”by accompanying spending increases with matching tax rises, (could) still have reduced Britain’s government debt burden by 2019.”
They knew that austerity wasn’t going to do what they said, they also knew that if they raised public spending they’d have to raise taxes.
But they didn’t want to do that because they wanted to hand their mates on the boards of big companies nice fat tax **cuts** instead.
They were basically robbing the poor to give to the rich, because then the rich would reward them with more ‘donations’. It’s legalised corruption, and it’s only legal because they make the laws.
How can anyone vote for them again? We have more billionaires than ever and more food banks. Trickle down economy simply does not work.
Failure to invest in large scale public projects when money was cheap is one of the biggest failures of the government.
Rather than cutting they should have boosted the economy. If they had done that we’d be in a far stronger position.
Running everything at full resource capacity leaves no headroom for problems, as we found when Covid hit and then again with the Ukrainian war.
I fully appreciate the need to not over spend, but spending where there is a return is an investment.
Absolutely scandalous. Cameron, Osbourne & Clegg have fucked this country so bad in so many ways.
While we keep the Tories in power we deserve the hell they have created. I don’t care about the argument about who would do better! Stop rewarding mediocrity and failure!
Its been the plan all along, they were never concerned about the actual country, they saw it as an opportunity to fill their grubby little pockets.
They manipulated our country into giving up everything, for them to be rich.
It’s hard to admit but when I think about my future I feel hopeless and cannot live my life to it’s full potential.
As annoying and frustrating as this is, it’s not a surprise. Tories have been stealing from the public for over a decade, using fear to fool people and saying “look this 1% increase in our economy and 1% decrease in your tax is all because of our tightening of the belt”. When in reality the numbers would have been much more different and higher if the idiots hadn’t voted Tory in, in the first place.
Don’t disagree with the sentiment, but that title is a pretty big abuse of language. How does -not- spending money “cost” anything?
The use of public money has just been atrocious.
The tax burden is ridiculous right now, and the rewards are paltry.
Nearly all of the key public services are run atrociously and burn money.
And where do you think most of that half a trillion pounds has gone to? I don’t know. Wouldn’t be someone’s pockets would it? Like, maybe people who are running the country who have their own businesses who directly profit off of them running the country? Im sure this sub has a number of links to references about this. Feel free to post them. Would be interesting.
In 2010 the UK central bank balance sheet was £247B, in 2023 it has quadrupled to 1 trillion.
So tell me, where is the lack of public spending? Where is the austerity?
The word austerity means sticking to a budget and not spending more than you bring in. But we clearly havent done that given the increase in the money supply.
‘Yeah but all that saving has created the utopia we all live in today. Let’s just get rid of all the budget and turn the country into Shangri-la!’ – typical tory
Whats worse is that the last decade has been historically ***unparalleled*** – There has ***NEVER*** been a time in history when it has been so cheap for a state to borrow money. The chance that we will ***ever*** see such cheap state borrowing in our lifetimes is effectively nil. We could have actively borrowed money to invest and so long as the RoI was above something nominal like 1% it would have been a net gain. I have to repeat again this is literally unprecedented, nothing like this period has ever been seen before in the last couple of centuries at least.
That we not only did not utilize this period to borrow, but instead actively cut state budgets and public investment imo will be looked back on as a critical failure for decades or even generations to come, like the handling of deindustrialization but on a much bigger scale.
Oh good, that means we have half a trillion pounds to save the economy with right now, right? Right? Guys? We fixed the roof while the sun was shining, right guys?
We need to start putting this into figures people can comprehend.
£500 billion over 13 years is equivalent to about £4.5 million pounds an hour less on public services… that’s £4.5 million every hour of every day for 13 years…
Absolute twats the lot of them. Greedy, spineless, self congratulatory wankers.
I’m angry, just like everyone else.
But I’m not just angry at the Tories. I’m angry at Labour for shooting themselves in the foot so many times they completely lost credibility and offered no alternative at the last general election, and very little before in the one before then.
The Lib Dems remain fragmented and equally as useless since the coalition where they let the Tories hollow them out into nothing.
The Greens last manifesto contained many utterly batshit pledges, including effectively getting rid of the army. They need to present a realistic and moderate option, never before has the British public been more sympathetic to some of their core principles that if they can reduce the frothing insanity by a nadge they could actually make some ground.
Come on political parties, please give us some actual choice! Show us you can work together to actually improve our lot and not just squabble amongst yourselves or actively work for your own interests.
Tory quantitative easing and other monetary policy has cost us around 900billion since COVID because we don’t even know where that money has actually gone.
Tory austerity has benefited Tory pockets of half a trillion pounds in profit.
Wasn’t that the point? to spend less? the point of the article is that the specific decision has left us with a weaker economy, spending less is not an axiomatic bad.
Well and the money went into the Tory donors pockets no wonder most billionaires in Europe and the most also most of the most poverty stricken regions that are now getting much worse without eu funding
I genuinely am lost at who to vote for in the next election.
Torys: not a fucking chance
Kier starmers labour: Also not a fucking chance
I dont feel represented anymore, which ever one we pick its still going to be keeping the status quo which broke many years ago.
If you’re not seething with rage at the government right now, consider yourself poorly informed.
28 comments
If the UK doesn’t change drastically very soon, it will be too far behind the rest of its neighbours to recover.
Austerity doesn’t work and never has yet the Tories keep on pushing for it, maybe if they stopped stealing tax payer money and donating it to their chums through bullshit contracts there would actually be money to spend on the public…?
Elderly have all the voting power (and actually withhold their votes when they’re not serviced, unlike younger generations bought into lesser of two evils fallacy that allows their interests to be deprioritised)
They don’t need economic growth, makes little difference to them as long as their pensions are safe and house price goes up. Of course when pensions are under threat or housing market is destabilised, their wrath is brutal. There is no similar outrage for the actual economy, just defeat and acceptance.
First thought was the government debt…. but in the article:
“The paper said voters had been told austerity would result in faster growth by boosting confidence but instead it had reduced the bargaining power of workers and contributed to the UK’s low-wage, low-productivity economic model. **Britain’s debt to GDP ratio in 2019 would have been three percentage points lower at about 70%** had governments pursued a balanced budget expansion in which spending was matched by tax increases.”
Key sentence in that:
>”by accompanying spending increases with matching tax rises, (could) still have reduced Britain’s government debt burden by 2019.”
They knew that austerity wasn’t going to do what they said, they also knew that if they raised public spending they’d have to raise taxes.
But they didn’t want to do that because they wanted to hand their mates on the boards of big companies nice fat tax **cuts** instead.
They were basically robbing the poor to give to the rich, because then the rich would reward them with more ‘donations’. It’s legalised corruption, and it’s only legal because they make the laws.
How can anyone vote for them again? We have more billionaires than ever and more food banks. Trickle down economy simply does not work.
Failure to invest in large scale public projects when money was cheap is one of the biggest failures of the government.
Rather than cutting they should have boosted the economy. If they had done that we’d be in a far stronger position.
Running everything at full resource capacity leaves no headroom for problems, as we found when Covid hit and then again with the Ukrainian war.
I fully appreciate the need to not over spend, but spending where there is a return is an investment.
Absolutely scandalous. Cameron, Osbourne & Clegg have fucked this country so bad in so many ways.
While we keep the Tories in power we deserve the hell they have created. I don’t care about the argument about who would do better! Stop rewarding mediocrity and failure!
Its been the plan all along, they were never concerned about the actual country, they saw it as an opportunity to fill their grubby little pockets.
They manipulated our country into giving up everything, for them to be rich.
It’s hard to admit but when I think about my future I feel hopeless and cannot live my life to it’s full potential.
As annoying and frustrating as this is, it’s not a surprise. Tories have been stealing from the public for over a decade, using fear to fool people and saying “look this 1% increase in our economy and 1% decrease in your tax is all because of our tightening of the belt”. When in reality the numbers would have been much more different and higher if the idiots hadn’t voted Tory in, in the first place.
Don’t disagree with the sentiment, but that title is a pretty big abuse of language. How does -not- spending money “cost” anything?
The use of public money has just been atrocious.
The tax burden is ridiculous right now, and the rewards are paltry.
Nearly all of the key public services are run atrociously and burn money.
And where do you think most of that half a trillion pounds has gone to? I don’t know. Wouldn’t be someone’s pockets would it? Like, maybe people who are running the country who have their own businesses who directly profit off of them running the country? Im sure this sub has a number of links to references about this. Feel free to post them. Would be interesting.
In 2010 the UK central bank balance sheet was £247B, in 2023 it has quadrupled to 1 trillion.
So tell me, where is the lack of public spending? Where is the austerity?
The word austerity means sticking to a budget and not spending more than you bring in. But we clearly havent done that given the increase in the money supply.
‘Yeah but all that saving has created the utopia we all live in today. Let’s just get rid of all the budget and turn the country into Shangri-la!’ – typical tory
Whats worse is that the last decade has been historically ***unparalleled*** – There has ***NEVER*** been a time in history when it has been so cheap for a state to borrow money. The chance that we will ***ever*** see such cheap state borrowing in our lifetimes is effectively nil. We could have actively borrowed money to invest and so long as the RoI was above something nominal like 1% it would have been a net gain. I have to repeat again this is literally unprecedented, nothing like this period has ever been seen before in the last couple of centuries at least.
That we not only did not utilize this period to borrow, but instead actively cut state budgets and public investment imo will be looked back on as a critical failure for decades or even generations to come, like the handling of deindustrialization but on a much bigger scale.
Oh good, that means we have half a trillion pounds to save the economy with right now, right? Right? Guys? We fixed the roof while the sun was shining, right guys?
We need to start putting this into figures people can comprehend.
£500 billion over 13 years is equivalent to about £4.5 million pounds an hour less on public services… that’s £4.5 million every hour of every day for 13 years…
Absolute twats the lot of them. Greedy, spineless, self congratulatory wankers.
I’m angry, just like everyone else.
But I’m not just angry at the Tories. I’m angry at Labour for shooting themselves in the foot so many times they completely lost credibility and offered no alternative at the last general election, and very little before in the one before then.
The Lib Dems remain fragmented and equally as useless since the coalition where they let the Tories hollow them out into nothing.
The Greens last manifesto contained many utterly batshit pledges, including effectively getting rid of the army. They need to present a realistic and moderate option, never before has the British public been more sympathetic to some of their core principles that if they can reduce the frothing insanity by a nadge they could actually make some ground.
Come on political parties, please give us some actual choice! Show us you can work together to actually improve our lot and not just squabble amongst yourselves or actively work for your own interests.
Tory quantitative easing and other monetary policy has cost us around 900billion since COVID because we don’t even know where that money has actually gone.
Tory austerity has benefited Tory pockets of half a trillion pounds in profit.
Wasn’t that the point? to spend less? the point of the article is that the specific decision has left us with a weaker economy, spending less is not an axiomatic bad.
Well and the money went into the Tory donors pockets no wonder most billionaires in Europe and the most also most of the most poverty stricken regions that are now getting much worse without eu funding
I genuinely am lost at who to vote for in the next election.
Torys: not a fucking chance
Kier starmers labour: Also not a fucking chance
I dont feel represented anymore, which ever one we pick its still going to be keeping the status quo which broke many years ago.
If you’re not seething with rage at the government right now, consider yourself poorly informed.
‘Tory austerity’ it was the consensus, here’s Labour in 2010 promising to ‘cut deeper than Thatcher’ https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/mar/25/alistair-darling-cut-deeper-margaret-thatcher