cuts - preliminary skirmishes

D

droid

Guest
vimothy said:
Ireland is going to have to spend 10% of national income servicing its debt every year for decades. That is also unsustainable. We’re fine. Just a bit retarded.
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Correction - not our debt, the debt of our banks.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
vimothy said:
Also, one of the unspoken truths in this whole debate is that if somebody saves, somebody else must dissave. If the government is going to save money then someone needs to spend it. E.g., collectively we aren’t necessarily going to save any money on tuition fees—we’re going to redistribute the costs away from the govt and towards individual students, but the actual costs haven’t changed.
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OK, that's obviously true, if by 'we' you mean the whole country. But the alternative is that fewer people end up going to university at all - that would represent a genuine saving, wouldn't it? Although whatever damage that ends up doing to the economy years down the line could wipe out that saving many times over...
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
By "we" I mean the whole country, yeah, and fewer people going would represent an immediate saving, though you are right to wonder whether the costs would ultimately offset this, since graduates earn more and therefore pay more tax on average over their lifetimes. Also, less investment in human capital might mean lower productivity and therefore lower real income.
 
D

droid

Guest
vimothy said:
Dude, you're taking one for the team and we're all very grateful.

Two best articles I've read on Ireland recently:

Eichengreen

O'Rourke
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lol. I dont think anyone really believes that. We're just kicking the can down the road. E-bonds sounded sensible, but were poh-pohed by the Germans.

Lets face it, we're looking at a euro wide default of some kind somewhere down the line.

Anyway back OT.
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
We're just kicking the can down the road.
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I actually agree with that, which is why I described it as unsustainable. Stay in your seats for the next screening at 10: Global Financial Meltdown Part II.

i suppose the thing that springs to mind is a)will there be a strong recovery and
b)what if theres not?
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a) Probably not given all the cuts, but you never know; I read the year end BoE inflation report and manufacturing and residential construction are both rebounding strongly.

b) It depends. The govt sets tax rates but actual tax revenue is a function of income at those rates. 100% of nothing is still nothing. So the revenue the govt receives is not fully under its control. And to an extent the same is true of transfers. The more the govt cuts the more it will have to pay out as benefits. So it's possible that the govt could drastically cut spending but end up with the same deficit and lower GDP (see also: Ireland).

Another way to look at it is that at present the govt's deficit is the corporate sector's surplus. If there is no recovery then the corporate sector is unlikely to want to invest its retained earnings. And if it continues to earn more than it spends (i.e. run a surplus), then by definition someone else must spend more than they earn (i.e. run a deficit). So without a rise in corporate investment, some kind of deficit is probably inevitable--though it might be carried by the household sector rather than the govt.
 
C

crackerjack

Well-known member
STN said:
Anyone seen that chiefy cartoon in the Mail? It's a bit shoddy, really.
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You mean the one accompanying the Littlejohn column mocking Jody McIntyre as Andy (or is it Lou?) out of Little Britain.

I've just broken my PCC complaint cherry on that filth.

If you fancy doing likewise go here. The
relevant breaches are 5.i and 12.i

Twit pic of the piece here, though if you want to make a complaint you'll need the URL for the original (today's Littlejohn piece, underneath whatever shite he said about the bomber in Sweden)
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
i cant think of anything worse than a dubstep rebellion, particularly one with mark-k-punk standing on the sidelines with a megaphone, berating everyone about oed-e-o-pods and cold rationalism or specualtive realism or spinozan dogging or whatever it is this week....
the other thing i want to ask you vimothy and forgive me for demanding so much personal attention is why are you the only person i have seen anywhere put foward this argument? can you direct me to some articles or soemthing?
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
K-Punk's post on the protest has some awesome lines:

In one of the dream-like transitions that are becoming increasingly common in the new atmosphere...
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What Cameron doesn't grasp, doesn't want to grasp, is the way that the fees are only the immediate cause of the new militancy. What has been provoked is a generalised discontent with nothing less than capitalist realism itself.
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5.30 PM, December 2nd. Neoliberalism isn't working--I've been stuck on Dartford station for ninety minutes.
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Paul Mason talks of a "dubstep rebellion" [but]... Dan Hancox is surely right: it wasn't dubstep that was being played last Thursday but "rnb, bashment, road rap, american hiphop and - albeit only once or twice - grime".
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what we can hear exemplified, in fact, is the disengagement from politics that Jeremy Gilbert has persuasively argued was typical of the 90s hardcore continuum.
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What we've grown accustomed to is a split between leftist political commitments and the most vibrant, experimental dance musics. No doubt this is an aspect of capitalist realism.
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We've broken out of the end of history onto terra incognita. What's certain is that the old world is disintegrating...
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"The New Atmosphere": Awesome.

Dunno who to recommend re the deficit though luka. It seems to me that everyone is making this argument, but that can't be right or you'd be familiar with it. Krugman and DeLong are both pretty solid, though not focused on the UK. I'll have a think about this.

Couple of good articles:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/10dabd3a-dbba-11df-a1df-00144feabdc0.html#axzz18BOAdAwS

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/19/spending-cuts-deficit-growth

First is by the conservative Wolf at the conservative FT, the second is by a prof of economics at Cambridge. The Guardian article is probably a bit easier to read and a good primer on the arguments for a more literate fiscal policy strategy.
 
B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
crackerjack said:
I've just broken my PCC complaint cherry on that filth.

If you fancy doing likewise go here. The
relevant breaches are 5.i and 12.i
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Definitely worth doing, but in some ways complaining about the Mail in itself is like complaining about the fact that some people are arseholes - they still continue to print filth and always will. Still, good to flag it up for as many people as possible to read.

In a way it's less noxious than that BBC interview with Jody McIntyre, as the BBC operate with this veneer of impartiality (despite the fact that, being a state broadcaster, its support for the state isn't surprising, as McIntyre himself pointed out), which I think many more people buy into. Better way of putting it - lots of non-fascist and in other ways pretty spot-on people would think the BBC impartial, while that's not true of the Mail.

- here's the interview, and links to relevant complaints forms etc.
 
U

unknown soulja

Wild Horses
Frustratingly looks like the Beeb just arent going to repsond (further than Kevin Bakhurst's initial dismissal) to complaints about Jody Mcintyre...
 
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