Rishi Sunak and economics

[BillyStubbsTears]

BFYP

I have not and would not criticise Sunak for his personal successes. I'm criticising him for deliberately (or ignorantly) misleading people on basic economics, in a way that would, if successful, result in policies which benefit those like him who have significant wealth, to the detriment of those who don't.

[BillyStubbsTears]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/business-54824120

The only criticism is that this should have come before the lockdown, many thousands lost their job on 31st October when the original furlogh ended

Agreed. Very good that it has finally been extended. Very bad that it wasn't done at least a month ago when the writing was on the wall.

While we are weighing up the pros and cons of Sunak, it's worth noting what was widely reported in September. Johnson was talked into the firebreak lockdown by SAGE. Sunak threatened to resign if the firebreak happened.

Result: Another month of rampant spread of the virus. Maybe 25,000 more deaths than there would have been if we had had the firebreak. Followed by a much longer and more damaging lockdown. And the finger pointing at Sunak.

[Filo]

Turn sound on 😂😂😂

https://twitter.com/femi_sorry/status/1324347826395074565?s=21

[belton rover]

Turn sound on 😂😂😂

https://twitter.com/femi_sorry/status/1324347826395074565?s=21

Very good 🤣

[BillyStubbsTears]

Turn sound on 😂😂😂

https://twitter.com/femi_sorry/status/1324347826395074565?s=21

Like Marina Hyde said a few months back. Johnson liked the idea that he would be PM and he likes the idea that one day he will have been PM. It's the bit in between that is difficult.

[wilts rover]

Sunak is a public schoolboy, ex-city stockbroker who has twelve houses, married a billionaires daughter and has his own savings in an off-shore trust so he doesn't have to pay tax on them.

To be fair to him, what does he know about paying money back? He only ever spends it, either his own or somebody elses.

......and i reckon most of us would be delighted to be in his position.
Even if it meant being pulled to bits by people on a football forum.

Of course - who can doubt that a multi-millionaire chancellor with links to hedge funds and tax avoidance schemes has the best interests of the ordinary Britsih public at heart. Certainly not you it appears:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/14/new-chancellor-rishi-sunak-challenged-over-hedge-fund-past

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rishi-sunak-wealth-investment-blind-trust-b1342418.html

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/pressure-mounts-on-rishi-sunak-to-reveal-contents-of-blind-trust-8zmshbxs9

[drfchound]

Each to his own eh wilts.
Of course you would like to have his assets.
Like him, you wouldn?t give a monkeys about football forum political ?experts? having a pop.

[wilts rover]

Each to his own eh wilts.
Of course you would like to have his assets.
Like him, you wouldn?t give a monkeys about football forum political ?experts? having a pop.

It must be nice to be like you hound and assume everyone is like yourself. I've travelled a bit and know they are not.

Maybe you should set up your own forum if you don't like this one?

Opinions eh...

[drfchound]

Each to his own eh wilts.
Of course you would like to have his assets.
Like him, you wouldn?t give a monkeys about football forum political ?experts? having a pop.

It must be nice to be like you hound and assume everyone is like yourself. I've travelled a bit and know they are not.

Maybe you should set up your own forum if you don't like this one?

Opinions eh...

I have travelled wilts, more than you will ever know.
Don?t think I am naive, that would be another mistake you would have made.
As for this forum, I enjoy the football threads and laugh at much of the stuff posted on the political ones.
So many experts who know so much......and yet they express their views on here rather than from a position that their expertise could possibly place them.
Keep up the good work.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Strange attitude Hound.

Do you think that, because this is only a web forum of a provincial football club, we should have a low level of informed discussion? Do you want us not to share facts and analyses? Is that us getting a bit too clever?

[drfchound]

Typically condescending response from you BST.
As for your question, of course people can have an opinion.

[BillyStubbsTears]

No Hound. It's not condescending. YOUR post was the condescending one. You clearly think that discussions on here are pointless and smart people are wasting their time on here.

Me, I genuinely have higher ambitions than that. I honestly believe democracy thrives when there are a million well-informed micro-debates going on every day.

[sha66y]

Who really is being mislead and how does it actually matter to anything at all....the complete irrelevance of current politics is easier to fathom:

Nothing reported is fact
Nothing written is fact
Nothing matters less than blowing smoke to try and make more clouds, ...

I read these little monologues and wonder how bitter some people are becoming with the machine they are living in, this is a game with rules that don?t involve us pawns......we live, we try to progress and achieve our level 1 and then move to level 2

Sleep shit repeat......................

I do hope you guys aren?t like this in real life ( off-forum) 🥰

I think you throw snowballs at the oncoming tanks.....

[BillyStubbsTears]

Just to re-emphasis some of the points in this thread, here are figures from the OBR on debt interest costs.

https://mobile.twitter.com/OBR_UK/status/1331597566706933762

Historically low, despite the large debt. And the bond markets are fighting like cars in a sack to lend us more. The Govt can currently borrow for ten years at a fixed rate 0.32% interest.

Anyone who says, in those circumstances, that it is vital that we get the debt down is talking utter bullshit. A sensible Govt would be borrowing more and using it to get the economy coming roaring out of this recession.

[Filo]

Sunak is the typical Tory, interests in business based abroad and not paying Tax, son in law of a billionaire, freezing the pay of public sector workers, getting the poorer people to pay for all this while he continues to coin it in. And on another note, my boss has had not one penny support throughout all this, because his business is based at home, but you can bet your life on it that when the inevitable tax rises come Sunak will expect my boss to pay more tax, even though he has had no support!

[River Don]

I would not mind betting, given the very positive news on vaccines that the global economy is likely to bounce back strongly in the late summer. That will change the economic outlook in the UK radically.

[SydneyRover]

Just to re-emphasis some of the points in this thread, here are figures from the OBR on debt interest costs.

https://mobile.twitter.com/OBR_UK/status/1331597566706933762

Historically low, despite the large debt. And the bond markets are fighting like cars in a sack to lend us more. The Govt can currently borrow for ten years at a fixed rate 0.32% interest.

Anyone who says, in those circumstances, that it is vital that we get the debt down is talking utter bullshit. A sensible Govt would be borrowing more and using it to get the economy coming roaring out of this recession.

Not quite across this but would all existing government debt be renogatiated down to the new lower rates, is this what happens?

[BillyStubbsTears]

Pretty much over 5-10 years. The debt is re-financed on a regular basis. A bit like a fixed term mortgage. Actually, more like having lots of fixed term mortgages, each one covering a chunk of the debt with different refinancing dates.

[SydneyRover]

Thanks bst, belt tightening is not logical under these circumstances.

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

There is a fine balance though, yes borrow, perhaps earlier than you might have done, but that shouldn't link necessarily to spending on everyday items, that should be linked to capital spends, bring forward the capital projects and get people working on them which boosts GDP as a whole.

I'm not sure on the political points on the overseas aid spend.  By definition as it's % of GDP it had already been drastically cut given the proportionate spending, now it gets cut even further.  I'm not sure that's the right move.

I do think the policies went further than I would have on low income pay.  A large % living wage increase is the wrong thing right now.  All those small businesses now facing substantial pay increases for staff will be delighted with that policy.

Sunak is the typical Tory, interests in business based abroad and not paying Tax, son in law of a billionaire, freezing the pay of public sector workers, getting the poorer people to pay for all this while he continues to coin it in. And on another note, my boss has had not one penny support throughout all this, because his business is based at home, but you can bet your life on it that when the inevitable tax rises come Sunak will expect my boss to pay more tax, even though he has had no support!

I would argue the state paying most of his salary, staff salaries and the recent one off payment for taxi drivers is a fairly positive thing for his business (they didn't have to do that).  As a home based business he already benefits from not having some of the liabilities a business would have at external premises (EG business rates).  Of course he'll also be claiming the home working tax reliefs and as a business owner also would have benefitted from differing remuneration methods that are much more tax efficient than a standard employee's salary.

[BillyStubbsTears]

This thread started off with a video of the Chancellor getting basic economics so wrong, it's difficult to comprehend what was in his head.

Here's the BBC's Political Editor similarly showing her ignorance of basic economics, while idly repeating shite soundbites that have come out of the Tory party for over a decade.

Just, awful.

https://mobile.twitter.com/PositiveMoneyUK/status/1332274059460087810

[BillyStubbsTears]

The reason why this is so important is that you have there, the BBC Political Editor, basically saying that there is no alternative to the economic policies which the Tory party will CHOOSE to implement.

And that is simply, categorically wrong. There are many alternatives. Due to central bank policies and the chronic lack of global demand, bond markets are queueing up to lend the Govt money effectively for free. It is simply outrageous, in that context, for Kuenssberg to repeat the Tory meme about "maxing out the country's credit card." She's basically acting as a channel to pour out unfiltered Tory policy propaganda.

If she's doing that knowingly, she should be sacked.

If she's too thick to realise she is doing that, she should be sacked.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Here's the simple bit about debt that seems to go straight over Kuenssberg's head.

Governments rarely pay back debt.

After WWII, our Govt debt was £21bn. Today it is 100 times higher at £2trn.

But, because the economy has grown even more than that, £2trn debt today is only about a third as big in relation to our GDP than £21bn was in 1945. It's so f**king simple, yet useful idiots like Kuenssberg repeat this "got to pay it back" claptrap.

My example, from a personal standpoint.

When I bought my first house in 1992, I took a 100% mortgage because I had nothing saved for a deposit. So my debt was exactly equal to my assets. Interest payments on that mortgage took nearly a third of my take-home pay.

Today, having moved up the house ladder a couple of times, my outstanding mortgage debt is three times what it was in 1992. But my current house is worth 5 times that debt. And my mortgage interest payments are less than 1/10th of my take home pay, because interest rates have collapsed.

I am far more indebted in terms of mortgage now than I was 28 years ago. But in a far better position overall. Because debt, in and of itself, is not the issue. It's what your debt is like compared to your assets and income. If your assets and income rise faster than your debt, it doesn't matter if your debt continues to get bigger.

[BillyStubbsTears]

This is a superbly clinical dissection of the ignorance Kuenssberg shows in those comments.

https://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2020/11/maxxed-out.html

Well worth a read.

[Donnywolf]

Sunak is the typical Tory, interests in business based abroad and not paying Tax, son in law of a billionaire, freezing the pay of public sector workers, getting the poorer people to pay for all this while he continues to coin it in. And on another note, my boss has had not one penny support throughout all this, because his business is based at home, but you can bet your life on it that when the inevitable tax rises come Sunak will expect my boss to pay more tax, even though he has had no support!

.... and another disobeying the Rules by not declaring family interests that run into billions on the Register of interests as he should

Big new story - and again would normally be enugh for a sacking / resignation

Cue Johnson. He will read the "accusation" or fact depending on which side of the debate you are and proclaim - Ive had a look and am satisfield he has done nothing wrong and (of course) the matter is now closed

[Donnywolf]

I know people like Links and here is top one off the pile

https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news/westminster-news/guardian-probe-finds-chancellor-failed-to-declare-interests-6543042

[Janso]

Here's the simple bit about debt that seems to go straight over Kuenssberg's head.

Governments rarely pay back debt.

After WWII, our Govt debt was £21bn. Today it is 100 times higher at £2trn.

But, because the economy has grown even more than that, £2trn debt today is only about a third as big in relation to our GDP than £21bn was in 1945. It's so f**king simple, yet useful idiots like Kuenssberg repeat this "got to pay it back" claptrap.

My example, from a personal standpoint.

When I bought my first house in 1992, I took a 100% mortgage because I had nothing saved for a deposit. So my debt was exactly equal to my assets. Interest payments on that mortgage took nearly a third of my take-home pay.

Today, having moved up the house ladder a couple of times, my outstanding mortgage debt is three times what it was in 1992. But my current house is worth 5 times that debt. And my mortgage interest payments are less than 1/10th of my take home pay, because interest rates have collapsed.

I am far more indebted in terms of mortgage now than I was 28 years ago. But in a far better position overall. Because debt, in and of itself, is not the issue. It's what your debt is like compared to your assets and income. If your assets and income rise faster than your debt, it doesn't matter if your debt continues to get bigger.

This is basically (in simplistic terms) what gearing is, if you put a similar situation into the context of a private sector business. The level of debt as a percentage of what you're raking in is what determines (among other things, obviously) how healthy the business is, not directly the actual amount of debt.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Janso.

Precisely. And as that last link I posted shows, private saving has gone up precisely for the same reason that Govt debt has gone up. People aren't spending anywhere near as much as they used to. So Govt both loses tax income, and has to pay out to supplement the incomes of those who aren't earning because of people not spending.

Focussing on Govt debt on its own is just stupid. But that's Kuenssberg for you. We need impartial experts at the BBC informing and educating the public. Instead we has a vacuous chatterbox who knows Dom's phone number but not much else.

[SydneyRover]

If government debt is viewed in relation to GDP and the ability to pay it back via taxes, no deal and the increase in cost to the UK will effect this pay-back ability and result in a lower standard of living.

Is this a reasonable assumption?

[wilts rover]

I dunno Syd. You would have thought if it was that big a deal the actual Chancellor of the Exchequer might have mentioned it when delivering his speech on the major spending priorites for the next year.

The OBR when analysing his speech mentioned it 62 times. What did he say about it again...