And WHY is that specifically the case then? Ok, I can see that it is clearly not sustainable to run an annual deficit that widens massively every year, but even Labour agreed with you there. I just remain totally unconvinced that slashing public services to the levels they are going to do is the sign of good government. I'd have prefered measures that got people back into work, paying taxes, that were used to narrow the deficit.
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UK inflation rate falls to 4% in March
- Thread starter Beach Hut
- Start date
And I'm sure they applauded the Irish government's austerity measures, you know, just before that country went into economic meltdown as their own savage cuts took hold. Ireland is now in a mess thanks to these policies.
I am sure we would all have PREFERED measures that got people back into work and paying taxes... and to some extent that will be the case, but the scale of the deficit is clearly unprecedented and just hoping that we can grow our way out of this mess is the sort of wishful thinking that has failed in Greece, Ireland, Portugal and whoever is next in line for being crushed by their levels of spiralling debt.
I don't know about the other two but with Ireland that is absolute bollocks. Ireland is in a mess precisedly because they slashed everything back ridiculously.
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Interesting. I'd need to look at what the differences are between the Irish slashing of public funding and our own. Not that I have time now, as I have a promotion party to attend. :yahoo:
sten_super
Brain Surgeon
I know that bushy has already pulled you up, but this could not be more wrong if it tried (well, okay, I'm sure there's a way). The austerity measures were introduced due to the government realising just how far up the creek they were. It's difficult to say whether they caused a further contraction in the economy (that was already shrinking rapidly), but the base issue was that the Irish government guaranteed all debt held by Irish banks; it then had to foot an absurdly large bill when these assets were shown to be worth significantly less than estimated, to an extent that was beyond the economy's scope to pay, and as such had to take a bailout.
But the deficit is structural which means a large proportion of it still exists even when the economy is performing at its best...there is an entrenched gap between tax and spend policies which has to be solved, at least in part, by reductions in spend or rises in tax
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Your own hopefully ?
Well actually "is" HAS. Firstly, you're just cherry picking the past 5 years. How about looking at the past 200 years, since the industrial revolution? Or even the 12 years that Labour were in charge? Of course you wouldn't do that because of your ridiculously simplistic view on the Labour party. But the bottom line is that you're showing me that Labour's deficit was only problematic for just TWO years? Christ on a bike.
Silly me - I've obviously misunderstood the meaning of the word ALWAYS !