Comments on: Nailing Brown’s Big Lie : GDP Can Grow During Fiscal Squeezes

By: Georgeous George

Georgeous George — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 22:10:07 +0000

Even if Darling cut spending economic growth might not follow. Jonah would curse it by saying it would.

By: talamunji

talamunji — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 08:49:01 +0000

‘Shovel-mouth’ Brown will pick up on that.

By: Duncan

Duncan — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 21:09:15 +0000

I think the concern is about LONG TERM growth. I’m not saying they’re right, but the logic is plausible consider; suppose we cut all the money from the education budget and put it into subsidising high-tech industry. It seems easy enough to predict there would be a short term growth spike followed by a long term decline. Now I’m not saying that’s what happened with Thatcher, but it’s not a question you can resolve simply by pointing at a graph and saying there was growth simultaneous with fiscal tightening; that’s confusing correlation with cause. You need more substantive analysis of fiscal policy to establish a connection one way or the other.

By: A pox on them all

A pox on them all — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 14:29:53 +0000

If you did some research rather than rely on perpetually ill-informed humanities graduate journalists, then stopped grasping for anything apparently controversial for long enough to think, you’d have discovered that the early 80′s “growth” was actually North Sea oil revenues coming on stream and the 90′s growth was the release of pent-up demand for consumer durables following the catastrophic economic mismanagement of the Major governments. Hardly towering triumphs of Tory economic policy.
No coincidence that Thatcher, who wasted the North Sea oil tax revenues on increased social security for the millions of the unemployed she created, Lawson who presided over the appalling housing boom/bust of the late 1980s and Major/Lamont who wrecked the fragile UK economic recovery in 1990-3 by (inter alia) astonishing political and economic incompetence in dealing with the EU, were all, you guessed it, Tories.
Labour may not be working now but there hasn’t been an economic “success” under a Tory government since the repeal of the Corn Laws (which the Tories opposed), unless you count the rise from penury funded by the USA after WWII, and with respect, even the Tories could not have cocked that up.
A lesson here perhaps?

By: Cherrycot7

Cherrycot7 — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:50:38 +0000

No-one has even mentioned the PFI timebomb that will explode in the not too distant future. Has anyone ever seen an accurate total of the amount of money the country is in hock for for this barely concealed balance sheet fraud?

By: English Liberation Front

English Liberation Front — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:17:58 +0000

What you are missing from this picture Tugs, is Brown’s reckless profligacy before the CC ever hit us. If Brown had not been deficit spending during the (faux) years of growth, this country would have been much better placed to weather the downturn. Because of Brown, this country was in a much worse place to deal with the credit crunch than most other advanced economies!

By: Dave S

Dave S — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 09:45:59 +0000

Public Sector Pensions Liability is around the 2 trillion mark, add in bank bail outs and all the hospitals and schools bought on the credit card (PFIs), and you are looking at 4 to 5 trillion.

So the ‘official’ National Debt of around 900 billion is looking rather disengenuous.

By: Dave S

Dave S — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 09:28:30 +0000

NuLab have been running the economy in yearly deficit since 2001, starting modestly borrowing only 12 billion. The current economic model is, earn 500 billion, spend 700 billion, borrow 200 billion. Clearly unsustainable, the madness is they propose to do the same next year should they (heaven forbid!) be re-elected.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:04:29 +0000

I love how “Major’s tightening” on the graph takes place between 1998 and 2003. Anyone would think this site was party political…

By: Momentum Party

Momentum Party — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 18:29:20 +0000

The only reason our GDP is so high is because this incompetent Government keeps spending more and more money. GDP includes Government expenditure so if the Government taxes the private sector to death GDP will keep increasing until it finally all collapses. That point might be pretty dam close as by my reckoning this Government is spending 30% more than the Conservatives were in their last year. The outcome of all this expenditure is:-

1. It is now even easier for uneducated people to have large families and produce an even bigger generation of benefit claimants.
2. Our small business owners spend most of their time dealing with petty beauracracy.
3. The money has not actually been spent wisely as this Government has built up massive future liabilities and wasted all the money on employing people to make it even harder for business to make money.

I hope you continue to be just tugged and tossed as any children with your genes will be another drain on the society your beloved Labour twats have ruined.