Comments by "Grim Affiliations" (@grimaffiliations3671) on "The New Statesman" channel.

  1. The worst thing about austerity is that it doesn't even save you money in the long run. All that pain and suffering for nothing
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  2. Hopefully her use of the outdated and ridiculous "credit card" analogy when referring to government finances was just a hiccup
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  3. Check out the documentary premiering in the UK called "Finding The Money" to see why these tory light economic policies are not the way
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  4. Thatcher's vision was wrong. Doesn't matter how well you execute a vision based on falsehoods and misconceptions
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  5. Why do people always ask how we're "going to pay" for things? The UK is monetarily soverign, if we can physically do something, we can afford it. All these labour people need to read The Deficit Myth by Stepahnie Kelton
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  6. It was terrible and simply not true. "Pain" is not necessary and there is no "black hole" in our finances
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  7. He'd be an improvement if you prefer tax cuts for rich people over investments in everyday people
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  8.  @MCDONALD6969  contractionary fiscal policy like austerity lead to a collapses in tax revenue (not that taxes fund government spending) and that inevitably leads to larger and larger deficits. It's why Japans debt to gdp ratio is so high
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  9. Mayor of london should run on a land value tax
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  10.  @stopthetories she didn't say the tories were planning on maxing out the "credit card"
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  11.  @khar12d8 their numbers are propped up by their tax haven status, it's no way near as prosperous as the numbers suggest. Companies funnel their profits there on goods that weren't sold in Ireland, In 2018, the imf estimated that a quarter of thier growth was from iphone sales around europe. If you want real prosperity you have to invest in your people not impose painful cuts on them. Its understandable when a country like ireland engages in austerity, because they don't control their own currency and thus have to budget like a household. But a monetarily soverign nation like the UK should be doing a lot better
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  12. People didn't vote for labour to get watered down tories. He needs to stop the bollocks about the country being broke
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  13.  @siskinedge Obama didn't drive growth, he opted for status quo austerity and oversaw an incredibly slow and painful recovery as a consequence. Biden learned from that experience and chose to invest heavily after covid, and now they have the faste growing economy in the g7
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  14. Americans have a choice between an orange wanabe dictator and the guy who delivered the largest infrastructure investment in recent memory, the largest climate legislation ever and an unprecedented boom in manufacturing US manufacturing
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  15. real labour vs diet tory
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  16.  @khar12d8 We've had tremendously painful austerity budgets at least from 2010 to 2020. The country has been poorer since 2008 because of those austerity budgets, not the financial crisis. Bold fiscal policy would have supported demand created jobs and put upward pressure on wages, as we're currently seeing happen in the US after covid, instead we got a decade of aniemic growth and stagnation. Also the labour didn't "borrow" anything, the govenrment doesn't borrow money, it makes it. Borrowing is what they call selling bonds, but bond sales do not finance government spending
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  17. I agree with everything you said but it's important not to perpetuate the corporate narrative around the national debt. Adding to it isn't inherently bad if you do so in order to invest in the public good. Trump adding to the debt was the bad kind though because he did so to shovel more tax cuts to the elite
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  18. Much of Biden's weaknesses are overblown in my opinion, polls that have Trump winning the majority of young people aren't to be taken seriously
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  19. sadly they'll both fail because they both fundamentally misunderstand the powers of the public purse and of the government as the monopoly issuer of our currency. So long as we condemn ourselves to austerity, the country will not grow
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  20. austerity is the one thing they're all honest about
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  21. taxes don't actually fund anything the government does
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  22.  @peterc2248  Fun fact, taxes don't actually fund anything the government does. They're simply debited out of existence upon payment. They make us pay them to create demand for the currency, not to fund the government. If you think about it , it doesn't make much sense to say we fund the government with our taxes, because the money we're using to pay the taxes had to be spent into the economy by the government in the first place
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  23.  @johnassal5838  i agree that the wealthy should be taxed for inequality purposes, but we tend to get caught up in "pay for's" whenever ambitious programs are discussed by the government. It hamstrings a lot of potentially great policies by reinforcing the idea that we need rich people to fund our priorities. That's the first question everyone asks, how are you going to pay for it? As if the government isn't the monopoly issuer of the currency and can't just conjure it into existence. This perpetual fear of the "deficit" or "national debt" is so tired and misplaced. The government running a deficits just means it's keeping more money in the economy than it's deleting via tax. Limits on government spending should always be in terms of inflation, not deficits or "debt". Sadly this phobia only presents itself when we discuss programs that could benefit the public, "pay for's" never ever come up when discussing how much to send to the war machine
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  24.  @adamalexander5181 hopefully these outdated positions are just politics
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  25.  @kingthomasthehun8408 I didn't say debt doesn;t matter, i said anything we can physically do, we can afford. The real constraint on government spending is real resources, not debt, deficits or price tags. Thats the only real limit. Kelton also points out that the bank of England has full control of interest rates, so they can always set the rate below the growth rate, no matter what the "national debt" is. In fact, selling bonds at all is completly optional. They don't actually fund government spending
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  26. will they let us keep our currency? Always wondered why we were given the huge advantage of keeping our currency and thus being able to carry out our own fiscal objectives
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  27. ​ @_xeere  Adopting the Euro would be nothing short of a disaster. I get that it has it's trade perks, but we would essentially be forfeiting our ability to conduct our own fiscal policy in ways that align with our domestic objectives. We are in a unique position today, as one of only a handful of nations on the planet that issues our own currency and takes up debt exclusively in that currency. Because we have this super power, we can never lose control of our interest rates or enter a sovereign debt crisis. Our central bank controls our currency, and thus can produce however much of it is necessary to pay for our obligations. We can also overrule any market driven moves in our interest rate. This is not the case for euro users, since they do not control their own currency, they can literally "run out". And since they can run out, the market is able to jack up their interest rates to account for this added risk. This is why countries like Greece and Spain saw their interest rates explode after 2008, while ours remained pinned to 2%. This is also why those countries remain plagued by high levels of unemployment. They can't produce their own currency so they do not have the fiscal capacity to pursue full employment Sadly neither of our parties understands our unique powers as a monetarily sovereign nation with the ability to produce our own currency and use it in furtherance of our priorities. We shackle ourselves and act as though we have the same constraints as these monetary dependents because we've bought into decades of fear mongering about "deficits" and the "national debt".
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  28. taxes don't pay for anything the government does. It pays the interest by rolling over existing debt. They should stop fear mongering about the national debt and make investments in the country that people need
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  29. The US isn't having trouble selling bonds, and even if it were, that wouldn't affect the government's ability to fund it's priorities. Bond sales do not finance government spending
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  30. it only bakes that austerity in if you believe we need tax revenue to fund our priorities. This isn't the case, anything the government wants to fund can be funded through deficit spending. People don't consider this because of how scary deficits are as a concept, but deficits don't mean the government is spending money it doesn't have. It just means it's leaving more money in the economy than it's taking away. As long as we don't spend beyond our productive capacity, deficit spending is harmless
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  31.  @georgesdelatour  yeah
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  32. labour should go from "tax and spend" to just "spend". No reason to raise taxes as they don't actually pay for anything the government does. The government doesn't actually need or use our taxes. Taxes are simply debited out of existence. They tax us to create demand for the currency, not because they need our money. So rather than tying themselves into pretzels trying to fund our priorities without raising taxes, they should just pay for them through deficits (deficits are just private sector surpluses)
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  33. how about tax all the elites
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  34. it's taxes quite easily in other countries
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  35. sadly labour are committed to the same austerity as the tories. None of them understand modern monetary theory or the power of the government as a monopoly issuer of our currency
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  36.  @ProffAndy mismanagement is not measured by debt levels in a country with all of its debt in its own currency. Its measured by inflation
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  37.  @ProffAndy  covid/war in ukraine supply shocks were inevitably going cause inflation. It's inflation caused by fiscal policy that is a sign of mismanagement
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  38.  @CmdrTobs  government debt is private sector assets. Nothing inherently wrong with it, and selling bonds at are is optional. Bond interest is not an issue because its due in the governments own currency
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  39. taxes don't actually fund anything the government does. The rich should be taxed for inequality purposes, but we don't actually need them. Anything the government wants can be funded via deficit spending. Check out a book called the Deficit Myth and discover they truth they've hidden from you
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  40.  @leekelly9639  taxes dont pay for government spending
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  41. taxes dont even fund anything the government does so im not sure why people always focus on raising taxes
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  42.  @gaza2322  raising rent would be admitting that the value of your land has gone up, which would increase the tax. It's the only tax that can't get passed on to consumers
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  43. taxes dont actually fund anything the government does
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  44.  @jaisriram295  Trump inherited an economy in the tail end of a recovery, and he manged to squander that by the end of his term. The economy now is certainly better than it was when Biden took over. Trump's only legislative accomplishment was a tax giveaway to rich corporations
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  45. you can have austerity or growth but not both. We need to overcome our fear of deficit spending
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  46. people with insane wealth are famous for wanting to tax themselves
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  47. How come the UK was allowed to keep it's currency last time and why did other countries not demand the same? That was a huge advantage
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  48. i think we're too pre-occupied with taxes in the first place. Taxes don't actually fund government spending anyway. We need to overcome our fear of deficit spending, growth can only happen through it
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  49. the US also commits to large amounts of government spending. They understand that growth can only come through government deficits for any nation with a trade deficit. This is because the 3 sectors of the economy (private sector, public sector and foreign sector) can't all be in surplus. The only way for the private sector to run a surplus (which it needs to do to stay out of recession) is to draw that surplus from one of the other sectors. And since it can't draw the surplus from the foreign sector because of our trade deficit, it must draw it from the government
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  50. that national debt could just as easily be called the national savings account. It's not something to worry about, it simply represents the money currently circulating in the non-government economy. It represents the assets and wealth of the private sector. I highly recommend checking out a book called The Deficit Myth
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