Tory MP proves we are poorer than when Tories came into power

[bobjimwilly]

https://twitter.com/DominicRaab/status/1072744754096549888

Dominic Raab, take a bow son! He's just proven on twitter that UK workers are poorer than when Tories came into power 

He tweeted, "ONS data showing real wages rising at fastest rate in 10 years ... is good news for working Britain."

Surely he can't have actually looked at graph before posting?

[RoversAlias]

Brilliant. This really is The Thick Of It territory isn't it.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Look at what happened because of Austerity in 2010.

Look at what happened when Osborne stopped Austerity in 2013-14.

Look at what happened because of the Brexit vote in 2016.

It is enough to make you f**king weep. So, so obvious.

As for Raab, he is a non-entity of the highest order. It shows the absence of talent at the top of the Tory party that he was second favourite to replace May. Behind Johnson...

Raab's Twitter profile says he's a boxing fan. Obviously no-one's ever punched any sense into him.

[Axholme Lion]

I know i'll get shot down in flames here, but I am being serious and not controversial. I only have a normal, average wage type of job, but I can't say I have ever felt any effect of so called austerity, what is all the fuss supposed to be about?

[MachoMadness]

Remember this is a bloke who said he didn't understand how important Dover was to UK trade. This isn't even his biggest gaffe this winter.

[drfchound]

Looking at the graph though, wages have been rising since 2014.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Hound.

Yes. Osborne quietly shelved the worst of the Austerity idiocy in 2013/14, because he was on course to lose the Tories the 2015 election otherwise. And, whaddya know? The economy picked up sharply. Just like every sane economist had said it would. The point is what was lost from 2010-2013/14 because of the insanity of Austerity.

But wages haven't risen since 2016. They've stagnated. Because of the economic slowdown due to the Brexit vote. At precisely the time that the rest of the world has been having a mini-boom.

Big problem now is that there are growing signs on the horizon that the next recession is on the way. If it is, you're going to see that graph of average wagess pitch downwards once again, before we've even got back to the level that we had prior to the last recession. That has not happened in recorded economic history. And that is ALL because of the two monumental f**k ups of this Govt - Austerity and Brexit.

[Boomstick]

https://twitter.com/DominicRaab/status/1072744754096549888

Dominic Raab, take a bow son! He's just proven on twitter that UK workers are poorer than when Tories came into power 

He tweeted, "ONS data showing real wages rising at fastest rate in 10 years ... is good news for working Britain."

Surely he can't have actually looked at graph before posting?

Nothing to do with the financial crisis and recession in 2008 then?
That happened an labours watch, and despite Gordon brown claiming an end to boom and bust.

[BillyStubbsTears]

And off round the hamster wheel we go once again.


1) It was a global recession that hit every major economy. Blaming it on Brown is, frankly, stupid.
2) There are well established ways of recovering from a recession. Ways that have worked for 80 years since they were discovered by John Maynard Keynes, and used by Franklin D Roosevelt to pull the USA out of the Great Depression. They involve INCREASING Government spending to keep the economy from nosediving as private companies panic and stop investing. From 2008-2010, we were doing precisely that, because Gordon Brown understood economics. (The rest of the world did pretty much the same thing by the way.) By Summer 2010, we were emerging from the 2008 recession pretty much on course. The recession had been very damaging, but we were recovering sensibly, with strong growth re-established. The first thing the Tories did was to slash Govt capital spending, because they had built their entire case around the (stupid) idea that controlling the deficit was the most pressing challenge. As a result, the economy stagnated for three years. We lost something between £100-300bn of economic activity depending on whose figures you take. And wages collapsed at a time that they should have been recovering. Every single word of that is supported by the evidence.


And then, Brexit...

It's all there in that graph. You can blame Brown all you want, but the fact is that NO recession should lead to a 6 year reduction in wages. Recessions cause reductions in wages AT THE TIME OF THE RECESSION. If the reduction carries on for half a decade afterwards, it is because the political response to the recession was wrong. That's what happened with us.

The effect of Austerity was predicted by sane economists. They were proved right as that graph shows.

The effect of the Brexit vote was predicted by sane economists. They were proved right as that graph shows.

That kind of explains why the t**ts on the Right of the Tory party don't want you to listen to "experts". Because the experts are constantly saying that the policies of the Right of the Tory party will be disastrous, and they are constantly being proved right. Whereas the only people saying the policies of the Right of the Tory party will NOT prove disastrous are snake oil salesmen like Johnson, Rees-Mogg, Raab, Gove and Farage.

I'll now sit back and wait for your "No it wasn't like that, it was like something else, but I'm not going to bother explaining what" response.

[RedJ]

Now we just need bpool to come along and make up something about how it would be the same whoever was in power and we've got a full house.

[Glyn_Wigley]

Now we just need bpool to come along and make up something about how it would be the same whoever was in power and we've got a full house.

At least it would mean that he couldn't blame Gordon Brown for it!

[Axholme Lion]

Can anyone please tell me what the effect of austerity is supposed to have been, I am still waiting for an answer?

[RoversAlias]

And off round the hamster wheel we go once again.


1) It was a global recession that hit every major economy. Blaming it on Brown is, frankly, stupid.
2) There are well established ways of recovering from a recession. Ways that have worked for 80 years since they were discovered by John Maynard Keynes, and used by Franklin D Roosevelt to pull the USA out of the Great Depression. They involve INCREASING Government spending to keep the economy from nosediving as private companies panic and stop investing. From 2008-2010, we were doing precisely that, because Gordon Brown understood economics. (The rest of the world did pretty much the same thing by the way.) By Summer 2010, we were emerging from the 2008 recession pretty much on course. The recession had been very damaging, but we were recovering sensibly, with strong growth re-established. The first thing the Tories did was to slash Govt capital spending, because they had built their entire case around the (stupid) idea that controlling the deficit was the most pressing challenge. As a result, the economy stagnated for three years. We lost something between £100-300bn of economic activity depending on whose figures you take. And wages collapsed at a time that they should have been recovering. Every single word of that is supported by the evidence.


And then, Brexit...

It's all there in that graph. You can blame Brown all you want, but the fact is that NO recession should lead to a 6 year reduction in wages. Recessions cause reductions in wages AT THE TIME OF THE RECESSION. If the reduction carries on for half a decade afterwards, it is because the political response to the recession was wrong. That's what happened with us.

The effect of Austerity was predicted by sane economists. They were proved right as that graph shows.

The effect of the Brexit vote was predicted by sane economists. They were proved right as that graph shows.

That kind of explains why the t**ts on the Right of the Tory party don't want you to listen to "experts". Because the experts are constantly saying that the policies of the Right of the Tory party will be disastrous, and they are constantly being proved right. Whereas the only people saying the policies of the Right of the Tory party will NOT prove disastrous are snake oil salesmen like Johnson, Rees-Mogg, Raab, Gove and Farage.

I'll now sit back and wait for your "No it wasn't like that, it was like something else, but I'm not going to bother explaining what" response.

This post needs pinning to a wall somewhere everyone can see it. Bang on to the letter, BST.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Yep.

Austerity is the reduction of Govt spending to lower levels than that needed to keep the economy growing.

When you have a recession, consumers and companies have less money. So they spend less and they borrow less because they are scared about getting into debt. So they buy less. So other companies sell less. And you go into a downward spiral of less economic activity.

The standard way to address that is to reduce interest rates. So your savings get eroded by inflation (which encourages people to start spending rather than sit on their savings). And it encourages people to borrow and spend. All that keeps the economy afloat. And when the economy is booming again, you raise interest rates to control the boom and stop it getting out of hand.

But the global recession of 2008 was so severe that even dropping interest rates to zero wasn't enough to do the job.

In that situation, the standard approach is for Govt to borrow and spend more. Spend it on houses and roads and reducing taxes and generally supporting the economy until the private sector gets its mojo back. Get people working and earning more and spending more and supporting the economy.

The idea is that this Govt spending gets the economy roaring again for a few years. Because you need to bounce back and catch up the lost ground due to the recession. THEN Govt can cut its spending once we've recovered.

That is standard textbook economics which is taught to first year University students. It works.

But in 2010, the Tories in the UK and the Republicans in the USA swept to power claiming that Govt spending was out of control. They said that if ordinary people were struggling, the Govt should cut back too. That was the Austerity argument.

So they cut back Govt spending. More aggressively here than in the USA.

The result was that America's economic recovery slowed down. And ours stalled altogether.

Since Austerity started in 2010, we haven't had a single year where economic growth was as high as the long term average between 1950 and 2008. Not one.

As a result, we have lost hundreds of billions of pounds of economic output. And that is why wages fell after inflation is accounted for. It's why we're all working harder just to standstill.

Osborne, quietly, recognised that in 2013/14 and turned on the Govt spending taps again. And the economy started rebounding. Just as the standard theory says it should.

And then we had the Brexit vote and the economic brakes went on again.

It is a historic mistake that has caused us problems that it will take a lifetime to recover from.

[Axholme Lion]

Oh for the days of high interest rates!

[tommy toes]

BST
You could have saved yourself a lot of time and angst by copying and pasting those last two brilliant posts every time someone mentioned Austerity or Brexit.

[BillyStubbsTears]

AL

You'll have high interest rates when the economy gets booming again.

One way to ensure you don't is Brexit...

[Axholme Lion]

AL

You'll have high interest rates when the economy gets booming again.

One way to ensure you don't is Brexit...

It's been low interest rates for years before Brexit though hasn't it?

[Glyn_Wigley]

AL

You'll have high interest rates when the economy gets booming again.

One way to ensure you don't is Brexit...

It's been low interest rates for years before Brexit though hasn't it?

That's because the economy hasn't been booming, like BST says!

[Axholme Lion]

AL

You'll have high interest rates when the economy gets booming again.

One way to ensure you don't is Brexit...

It's been low interest rates for years before Brexit though hasn't it?

That's because the economy hasn't been booming, like BST says!

I agree with spending on infrastructure schemes to oil the wheels of the nation, but I do feel that too much has been made of benefit cuts and the like. The welfare state has gone out of control throwing money around like water on many people who have never, and will never do a days work in their lives. Before anyone blows their top at that, I fully understand that the genuine needy should be helped but the balance has all gone.

[Glyn_Wigley]

AL

You'll have high interest rates when the economy gets booming again.

One way to ensure you don't is Brexit...

It's been low interest rates for years before Brexit though hasn't it?

That's because the economy hasn't been booming, like BST says!

I agree with spending on infrastructure schemes to oil the wheels of the nation, but I do feel that too much has been made of benefit cuts and the like. The welfare state has gone out of control throwing money around like water on many people who have never, and will never do a days work in their lives. Before anyone blows their top at that, I fully understand that the genuine needy should be helped but the balance has all gone.

Do you agree that being able to lift an empty cardboard box once is proof that someone is capable of being able to do a full-time job?

[bobjimwilly]

The welfare state has gone out of control throwing money around like water on many people who have never, and will never do a days work in their lives.

Have you used any facts or stats to back that statement up? If you're referring to benefit fraud, it hasn't changed in the last 12 months and has risen just 0.4% over the past 10 years to an estimated 1.2%.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fraud-and-error-in-the-benefit-system-financial-year-201718-preliminary-estimates

If you're referring to more benefits legitimately being given out per person, you're forgetting we're under a Tory government and you're off your rocker!

If you mean overall, then I'd imagine benefits have gone up due static wages amongst the working poor over the last 10 years and the number of housing benefit payments increasing as people are priced out of the housing market and turn to council housing etc.

[wilts rover]

The poorer you are the worse you have been hit by austerity. The lowest household incomes have seen a 10% year on year drop in income, the richest less than 1%.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/neweconomics/not-together-distributional-impact-austerity/

[Axholme Lion]

AL

You'll have high interest rates when the economy gets booming again.

One way to ensure you don't is Brexit...

It's been low interest rates for years before Brexit though hasn't it?

That's because the economy hasn't been booming, like BST says!


I agree with spending on infrastructure schemes to oil the wheels of the nation, but I do feel that too much has been made of benefit cuts and the like. The welfare state has gone out of control throwing money around like water on many people who have never, and will never do a days work in their lives. Before anyone blows their top at that, I fully understand that the genuine needy should be helped but the balance has all gone.

Do you agree that being able to lift an empty cardboard box once is proof that someone is capable of being able to do a full-time job?

There you go again making out I am speaking about everyone on welfare, when I clearly was not. I am talking about the multitude of people roaming around town centres each and every day who never have, and never will do a days work, whilst I am getting out of bed at 5.30am to get off to work. While we're at it I also despise the tax dodging rich and big business who are just as bad.

[bpoolrover]

Now we just need bpool to come along and make up something about how it would be the same whoever was in power and we've got a full house.

red you seem to go around lots of people on this board trying to be the big man, you have to say f..k in just about every sentence it does not make you a big man

[RedJ]

Now we just need bpool to come along and make up something about how it would be the same whoever was in power and we've got a full house.

red you seem to go around lots of people on this board trying to be the big man, you have to say f..k in just about every sentence it does not make you a big man

Aye, if that's what helps you sleep at night. Couldn't give a f**k what people think of me on here, nor am I trying to be the big man x