Why is that idiot Osbo continuing with austerity when we know it doesn't work?

Re: @Lodgie

Just baiting :)

Re: Another Example

I tend to favour the limiting of taxation and government taxation to a set percentage, during times where the economy does well they can get a surplus and invest for times of recession. Only in times of emergency should the government be able to whip out the nation's credit card. The fact that this year the Adam Smith Institute calculated Tax Freedom Day to be 31st May speaks volumes meaning that approx 5/12 of people's salaries will go on government spending.

Re: Another Example

"

A government wouldn't be able to cover up inefficiencies by simply borrowing more; it would ultimately have to get the population to pay for those inefficiencies. And everyone would know why.

"

No, people would *not* know why. The government would blame rising taxes on paedoterrorists or the Russians or the Chinese or global warming. Or maybe pretend that they have not really raised taxes at all, but simply changed the structure or withdrawn a government service that we now have to pay for. The things that governments are *really* good at is obfuscating the true facts and finding scapegoats to cover their mistakes.

Re: Another Example

You'll get better responsiveness when everyone actually shares the burden of government equally. What we have instead is a system in which almost half the people bear no burden for government and that half insists that the half that does doesn't bear the burden.

While I admit the idea of prohibiting deficit spending, I believe it has to be there for true emergencies. The problem is, too many foreseeable expenditures keep getting classified as "emergencies". Until we have more honest pols there's no law that will get us out of our conundrum. Yeah, I know. They'll be selling ice water on all levels of Hell except the one that's looking for hot tea before that happens.

Re: Another Example

If pretty much the whole developed world is in debt, who owns this debt? The banks?

Since the weeds that are choking the flowers is interest payments, perhaps we need a UN led initiative to allow a certain amount of 'recovery' time to re-stimulate the world economy.

E.g. An interest free year on national debt for ALL countries.

Obviously not going to happen, but perhaps it's time to start thinking of what can be done on a larger scale than trying to sort this out at a national level.

@John H Woods

It is actually all claptrap. Keynesian economics was shot dead with a double-barreled shotgun on the watch on one James Earle Carter. The signs and portends had been visible since one Richard Milhous Nixon famously proclaimed "We are all Keynsians now," but no one wanted to admit it. But with both unemployment and inflation headed for the stratosphere, Keynes' economic theory was quite, quite dead. it survives only because it gives leftists license to do things that can't be done in the real world, so they won't let it die. Chief amongst his lies is that government spending increases economic output and that's at the heart of everything Tim wrote here. So they keep propping him up like the Soviets propped up Lenin for 50 years after he was a corpse.

Re: What the...?

"just write a cheque to the people who are actually likely to spend it and actually need it"

ISTM that an efficient way of doing this would be to put some more money into people's pay packets at the end of each month.

Re: What the...?

STOP private corporations (banks) from creating money with a government license

This sort of nonsense has long been one of my red flags. Its observation tends to reveal an total lack of understanding of finance, economics, or taxation on behlaf of the poster.

And as for the minority of people to whom this massive debt is owed, tell them that their investment hasn't worked out, sorry.

And its always nice to be right, and have the poster deliver their own confirmation of said lack of understanding... Sorry Mike, but its back to the drawing board for you: your ideas, if implemented, would be economic armageddon and would impoverish the entire nation. Even Gordon Brown didn't quite manage that feat.

Re: @BB- What the...?

Our 'broken' electoral system did exactly what it's meant to do (with the occasional statistical fluke, like 2010) - deliver a working majority for the most popular party. People who hate FPTP never seem to specify precisely which system they think would be an improvement (perhaps some of them have read and understood Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, though I doubt it). But if we'd had absolute PR, we'd have a working coalition of Conservative, UKIP and Ulster Unionist MPs; whether or not you think that would be an improvement or have led to less austerity (except, presumably, in Northern Ireland) is a matter of taste.

At the insistence of the LibDems the electorate were offered an alternative to FPTP just a few years ago. They roundly booted it into touch, much to the consternation of our North London 'opinion formers'.

Re: @BB- What the...?

Quoting the SNP vote as a percentage of the entire UK is disingenuous at best, since all of their candidates stood in Scotland, whereas the LibDems and UKIP were (generally) standing across the UK.

The SNP share of the vote outside Scotland was negligible (if not outright zero), and their seats outside Scotland reflect that.

The flip side is that the SNP result shows that the LibDems and UKIPs best options for increasing their seats is to persuade all of their voters to move into the same area, and then they'd win those seats.

Re: @BB- What the...?

The SNP didn't put candidates into every constituency in the UK. so the 4.7% figure is very misleading. Round figures, Scotland is 1/12 of the total UK population, so that 4.7% of the total UK votes is around 55% of the Scotland total.

I'm wondering if I got that wrong now, there's a couple of reasons it's only a good guess. Checking for the Scotland results with the BBC, and the SNP got 50% of the Scots vote, a 30% swing in their favour, and 56 seats out of 59.

When I first saw the handwringing about the 4.7% it was from a Conservative. It was entangled with English Votes for English Laws. It's all part of the routine misleading use of statistics to score political points.

If that "Australian" voting system had been passed in that referendum, it wouldn't have made much difference, not when the SNP ended up with 50% of the vote in an FPTP system. Some SNP MPs would have been elected without second-choices even coming into play. And the low-ranked parties in Scots seats didn't generally get enough votes to make up the difference between the top 2 parties in a seat.

(People could have voted differently in a transferable vote system that sort of guesswork can lead to whatever result you want.)

If you want to look like an idiot, carry on talking about the 4.7& of the national vote that the SNP got.

Re: What the...?

"England voted and chose steady hands and smart minds over vacuous left-wing ideas."

The trouble with that argument is twofold.

1) England is not the UK, and it was a UK election not an English one.

2) The total percentage of the votes cast in the recent election (39.6) to the Conservatives means that 60.4% did not vote for all this austerity.

As for the "steady hands and smart minds" a quick look at the recent "Vote yes in the EU referendum or get sacked" fiasco seems to show neither. Unless that is you think that a death grip on the rudder of a ship heading for the rocks is "steady"