Comments by "Grim Affiliations" (@grimaffiliations3671) on "Labour must rejoin single market and tax wealth | Andrew Marr | New Statesman" video.

  1. 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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  2. taxes don't actually fund anything the government does
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  3.  @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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  4.  @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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  5. 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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  6. ​ @_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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  7. 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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  8. 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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  9.  @georgesdelatour  yeah
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  10. 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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  11. how about tax all the elites
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  12. it's taxes quite easily in other countries
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  13. 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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  14. 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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  15.  @leekelly9639  taxes dont pay for government spending
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  16. taxes dont even fund anything the government does so im not sure why people always focus on raising taxes
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  17.  @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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  18. taxes dont actually fund anything the government does
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  19. you can have austerity or growth but not both. We need to overcome our fear of deficit spending
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  20. people with insane wealth are famous for wanting to tax themselves
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  21. 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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  22. 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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  23. 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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  24. 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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  25. why do people always ignore the other way of funding priorities, government deficits? I always hear about "finding the money" or "raising taxes" as if the government isn't the monopoly issuer of the British pound and can't just conjure money into existence
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  26. it all started when we left the teaching of Keynes for the teachings of friedman
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  27. can you define the national debt?
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  28. the torries have destroyed the middle class over the past decade
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