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Author Topic: Coronavirus  (Read 860277 times)

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Ldr

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10740 on April 19, 2021, 11:39:55 am by Ldr »
You two need to get a room, definate bromance blossoming



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SydneyRover

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10741 on April 19, 2021, 11:48:16 am by SydneyRover »
There isn't room in Bentley for both of us Ldr

BillyStubbsTears

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10742 on April 19, 2021, 12:04:01 pm by BillyStubbsTears »
The easiest thing in the world would have been to give the NHS staff a bigger pay rise. I'm sure your great leader Starmer would have done so if only to make a name for himself as Mr Generous, despite it being someone else's money he'd have used to pay for it.


No. It isn't someone else's money.

You totally misunderstand macroeconomics if that's what you think.

Bentley Bullet

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10743 on April 19, 2021, 12:16:54 pm by Bentley Bullet »
Whose money is it then?

BillyStubbsTears

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10744 on April 19, 2021, 12:51:30 pm by BillyStubbsTears »
In  adepressed economy, like the one we have now and have had for a decade, you can (in fact, you SHOULD) fund increases in salaries of poorer workers through borrowing. Essentially from the Bank of England.

That never gets paid back. It just becomes a smaller and smaller debt over time as the economy grows and inflation whittles it away.

And here's the stinger. In a depressed economy, giving money to lower paid or unemployed people (who will almost certainly spend it, rather than horde it) gets the economy moving again. Them spending that money means that other people are earning (*). And that encourages them to spend. And that increase in spending encourages companies to produce more, invest in new facilities, hire new staff. So we all get richer.

Watch the USA over the next couple of years. They are borrowing eye watering amounts, and giving most of it away to the poorest, through massive child benefit and Universal Basic Income by another name. Watch what happens to their economy as a result.

It is SO f**king simple and we have known this since the 1930s. But right wing politicians chose, for political purposes, to bullshit the electorate on this topic from the late noughties. Sunak sanctimoniously telling the country last year that we have to pay back our debt is showing that the leopards haven't changed their spots. Choosing to mislead the public and making all of us poorer as a result.

(*) That is the key to all of this. If I spend more, you earn more. If I stop spending as much, you earn less so you stop spending as much. So I earn even less. It really IS that simple. It is not a zero-sum game where, if you're going to earn more, it has to come out of my pocket. We can both win and we can both lose, depending on policy. This is called The Paradox of Thrift. Been known to economists for 80-odd years. You have to ask yourself why successive Tory PMs and Chancellors (many of whom will have been taught this at University) have chosen to keep you ignorant of it BB.

belton rover

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10745 on April 19, 2021, 01:00:23 pm by belton rover »
Billy. A very genuine question: that sounds like a an absolute winner for everyone, including the government in terms of a popularity contest. So if it is really that simple (and I have no idea), why don’t they just do it?

BillyStubbsTears

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10746 on April 19, 2021, 01:16:29 pm by BillyStubbsTears »
Dead simple Belton. Two reasons

1) The Tories seized on the debt that we had in 2008 after the GFC and screamed that it showed that Labour was incompetent on the economy. They weaponised the concept of Govt debt and that has dominated our economic discussions ever since. It's bloody hard for a political party to then put its hand up and say "You know what? We've mislead you for 13 years and we really should be doing what Labour said we should do all along."

2) There IS a loser from debt-fuelled growth, but it's not who BB thinks it is. It's not him and thee and me. It is people who have vast amounts of capital stored away. Because what debt-fuelled growth does is to raise longer term inflation. So if you have a very large amount of money stored away, it gets progressively lower in worth over time. And if there is one philosophy that the Tory party has always stood for, it is protecting entrenched wealth.

You might remember the 2010 Election campaign. Cameron banging the lectern and saying it was immoral to run up debt because it is not fair to take the money from "Our children." In fairness, you could say he was being breathtakingly honest when he said "our children". It's just that people thought he was taking to them about "their children".

As I say, the USA under Biden has finally put this debt bullshit to bed. Watch the effect over the next few years. Their economy will grow at a rate that ours can only dream of.

Axholme Lion

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10747 on April 19, 2021, 01:24:34 pm by Axholme Lion »
Dead simple Belton. Two reasons

1) The Tories seized on the debt that we had in 2008 after the GFC and screamed that it showed that Labour was incompetent on the economy. They weaponised the concept of Govt debt and that has dominated our economic discussions ever since. It's bloody hard for a political party to then put its hand up and say "You know what? We've mislead you for 13 years and we really should be doing what Labour said we should do all along."

2) There IS a loser from debt-fuelled growth, but it's not who BB thinks it is. It's not him and thee and me. It is people who have vast amounts of capital stored away. Because what debt-fuelled growth does is to raise longer term inflation. So if you have a very large amount of money stored away, it gets progressively lower in worth over time. And if there is one philosophy that the Tory party has always stood for, it is protecting entrenched wealth.

You might remember the 2010 Election campaign. Cameron banging the lectern and saying it was immoral to run up debt because it is not fair to take the money from "Our children." In fairness, you could say he was being breathtakingly honest when he said "our children". It's just that people thought he was taking to them about "their children".

As I say, the USA under Biden has finally put this debt bullshit to bed. Watch the effect over the next few years. Their economy will grow at a rate that ours can only dream of.



It's all well and good if we are helping lower paid workers and not benefit shirkers. I would support one but not the other.

belton rover

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10748 on April 19, 2021, 01:37:13 pm by belton rover »
Thanks for that, Billy.
One thing I would say is that I would expect Johnson to go to many lengths to keep hold of power, including saying that previous Tory leaders/governments got it wrong.

BillyStubbsTears

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10749 on April 19, 2021, 01:41:06 pm by BillyStubbsTears »
I agree that Johnson doesn't have any political principles other than furthering his own career, and he will chuck anyone and anything under the bus if it helps him.

 But he will have to get rid of Sunak as Chancellor to do what you say. And I suspect he would lose that battle with the Tory party.

Bentley Bullet

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10750 on April 19, 2021, 01:45:40 pm by Bentley Bullet »
So, if this world of eutopia means no one pays for it, why do we pay taxes, and why does the Labour party like to tax us more?

BillyStubbsTears

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10751 on April 19, 2021, 01:58:34 pm by BillyStubbsTears »
Slow down BB and read what I said.

My argument only applies in a depressed economy. When the economy is pumping, if you continue to rely heavily on debt, inflation gets out of control.

Over the long term, you raise money from taxes to pay the Govt's way. But the point is, you are doing that in a much stronger economy where on average, everyon is far wealthier. Because you borrowed when you needed to do to get the economy going.
« Last Edit: April 19, 2021, 02:01:27 pm by BillyStubbsTears »

Bentley Bullet

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10752 on April 19, 2021, 02:34:47 pm by Bentley Bullet »
BST, so what happens when all these people who are going to pay for all this, the ones who have vast amounts of money, decide to f**k off and live somewhere else?

BillyStubbsTears

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10753 on April 19, 2021, 03:02:10 pm by BillyStubbsTears »
BB.

I'm not sure what you are not getting here. They DON'T pay it off. No-one does.

Have a read of what I've written. Read it carefully, with an open mind and it should make sense. I really can't put it any simpler without being accused of being a condescending t**t.

Bentley Bullet

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10754 on April 19, 2021, 03:10:55 pm by Bentley Bullet »
I must be as thick as Rishi Sunak here. You said "There IS a loser from debt-fuelled growth, but it's not who BB thinks it is. It's not him and thee and me. It is people who have vast amounts of capital stored away."

So you're saying they are not losers?

BillyStubbsTears

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10755 on April 19, 2021, 03:22:25 pm by BillyStubbsTears »
You asked me who pays for the debt.

I'm saying no-one pays for the debt.

Those people lose because their money is losing value in an inflationary economy.

If they "f**k off and live elsewhere" it doesn't make a blind bit of difference to what happens to the debt.

Apologies for not spelling it out previously. I thought it was obvious.

Bentley Bullet

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10756 on April 19, 2021, 03:29:31 pm by Bentley Bullet »
Right, I see. So was Corbyn going to take this route had he won the election?

BillyStubbsTears

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10757 on April 19, 2021, 03:33:38 pm by BillyStubbsTears »
More or less. It's a bit more nuanced than that but basically, yes.

Biden is now, as we speak, doing that on steroids.

Bentley Bullet

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10758 on April 19, 2021, 03:36:21 pm by Bentley Bullet »
What I don't understand is why was Corbyn going to increase taxes?

BillyStubbsTears

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10759 on April 19, 2021, 03:44:15 pm by BillyStubbsTears »
If you are truly interested BB, I'm happy to go through the macroeconomic and political detail.

But I suspect it would be another of your black holes where you have decided what you believe before we start, so if it's all the same...

Suffice to say, whether you need to increase taxes to pay for spending depends on how much you are going to spend relative to the spare capacity in the economy. Corbyn wanted to spend a lot, and that would have overheated the economy, so there was a need to go someway towards balancing the books and damping down inflationary pressures by taking money out of the economy.

That doesn't apply now, because the virus has tipped us into a massively depressed economic state.


Bentley Bullet

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10760 on April 19, 2021, 03:49:50 pm by Bentley Bullet »
So if Corbyn had won the election he would have funded the nurses pay rise by taxing me and thee?

BillyStubbsTears

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10761 on April 19, 2021, 03:53:34 pm by BillyStubbsTears »
Second point is the politics.

I assume the Corbyn team believed they could have run with a very unbalanced book (which they could, and given who was advising them on economics, they'd have known this).

The effect would have been moderately higher inflation as the economy overheated. That's not a massive disaster and is certainly preferential to having the economy consistently underperform (which ours has done for 11 years). But the problem is that the political atmosphere in this country has been twisted by a decade of people equating "debt" with "disaster". So politically you couldn't say "We are going to run a large deficit and it doesn't really matter" because that would have been electoral suicide. Hence the need to be seen to attempt to balance the books.

BillyStubbsTears

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10762 on April 19, 2021, 03:55:11 pm by BillyStubbsTears »
So if Corbyn had won the election he would have funded the nurses pay rise by taxing me and thee?


BillyStubbsTears

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10763 on April 19, 2021, 03:56:17 pm by BillyStubbsTears »
I don't know about thee BB, but since Labour wasn't planning tax rises on anyone earning less than £80k taxable income, they certainly weren't planning to tax me.

Bentley Bullet

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10764 on April 19, 2021, 03:57:46 pm by Bentley Bullet »

BillyStubbsTears

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10765 on April 19, 2021, 04:06:31 pm by BillyStubbsTears »
As I'm sure you realise BB, that was about the politics, not the economics. It was a pifflingly tiny tax (in terms of balancing the books) and Corbyn's Labour wanted rid of it because it gave money to people in one specific type of relationship.

If you're relying on that to make the case that the economic argument I've been setting out here is flawed, that kind of underlines my gut instinct about what your real intention is here. 

Bentley Bullet

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10766 on April 19, 2021, 04:24:47 pm by Bentley Bullet »
I feel your aggression coming on BST. I'm simply pointing out that what Corbyn said was inaccurate. Had Boris Johnson said it he would have been called a liar, but Labour MP's don't lie, do they, they just say things that are untrue. 

BillyStubbsTears

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10767 on April 19, 2021, 05:21:28 pm by BillyStubbsTears »
It's not aggression BB. It's weariness at me once again thinking you might be interested in an intelligent discussion, when in fact you are just once again moving the goalposts to be able to shout "Gotcha".

Whether Corbyn did or did not deliberately mislead people over an obscure tax has got sweet f**k all to do with what I thought we were talking about. Yet here we are.

Bentley Bullet

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10768 on April 19, 2021, 05:38:03 pm by Bentley Bullet »
No BST. YOU changed the goalposts. YOU said "no, it isn't someone else's money." when it clearly would be someone else's money. I was meaning it wouldn't be HIS (Starmer's) money.

I brought Corbyn into it because his policy was relevant to my point, which was that should he have become PM, me and thee would have paid higher taxes to pay for such as NHS workers payrises.

BillyStubbsTears

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Re: Coronavirus
« Reply #10769 on April 19, 2021, 05:44:52 pm by BillyStubbsTears »
Yeah BB. Have fun.
I wouldn't have been paying any more tax because I wasn't even aware of that tax refund, so obscure was it. No-one I know has ever mentioned it to me. But you pat yourself on the back for winning. Good lad.

 

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