Buy value brands

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

https://news.sky.com/story/cost-of-living-crisis-worsening-as-shop-prices-rise-at-fastest-rate-in-more-than-a-decade-12604935

And they wonder why people think they are out of touch!  The guy's an idiot.

[River Don]

There are enough Aldi and Lidl stores to suggest there are millions of people who don't have room to cut back very far

[Filo]

Can someone suggest which vakue brand gas or electricity I could buy

[BillyStubbsTears]

https://news.sky.com/story/cost-of-living-crisis-worsening-as-shop-prices-rise-at-fastest-rate-in-more-than-a-decade-12604935

And they wonder why people think they are out of touch!  The guy's an idiot.

Some of us HAVE been pointing this sort of thing out for...about 40 years. It's hardly news.

[albie]

I would like to change water supplier, as I am unhappy with the service provided.

Competition between providers must mean that I can switch to a different water company who offer a better service.

But no, I can't swap....because no matter how bad or expensive the service gets, I am stuck with a privatised monopoly.

So where exactly is the public interest in this rigged market?

[rich1471]

I have started using an app called olio , supermarkets and shops give away food going out of date ,people collect it and put it on the app and you colle t from their house and it's all free,really good to use and too good to waste app is useful as well

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

https://news.sky.com/story/cost-of-living-crisis-worsening-as-shop-prices-rise-at-fastest-rate-in-more-than-a-decade-12604935

And they wonder why people think they are out of touch!  The guy's an idiot.

Some of us HAVE been pointing this sort of thing out for...about 40 years. It's hardly news.

40 years ago is long before my time BST...

[BillyStubbsTears]

Maybe BFYP.
I do remember an exchange 10 years ago though where I explained why Austerity was dangerous voodoo economics that would do great harm to the country and you disagreed. Do you now accept that the Tories were, at best wildly out of touch with economics then?
(Although I think that would be giving them far too much credit. They knew precisely what they were doing, and they did it anyway for political reasons.)

[BobG]

I was explaining this morning why the Conservative Party has allowed  social care, and especially mental care, to fall into such an awful state that today, a very close friend with a history of mental problems, was picked up by the police and taken, under something I think called a Section 136 referral, to a mental hospital in Aylesbury. That hospital, having interviewed the lady, put her in a taxi and sent her back home to Reading. Upon being questioned about the wisdom of this, the very concerned doctor said that she knows the lady should be sectioned and treated, but the rules now are so restrictive that she had no other choice. And this for somebody who has 4 times been in intensive care following huge prescription medicine overdoses.

But of course, the sufferers of mental illness tend to be the disadvantaged don't they? Why spend money on people unlikely to ever vote Conservative? Much better to rig the tax and benefit system to encourage the Tory voting classes to stay loyal. And if you don't  believe that, just let me know. I'll  give you chapter, verse and the bloody hymn sheet too.

The Tory Party is mendacious. Legalised theft of national income by the middle classes and even more by the toffee nosed classes, costs this country far, far, far more than the useful propaganda claims made about benefits fraudsters.

BobG

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

Maybe BFYP.
I do remember an exchange 10 years ago though where I explained why Austerity was dangerous voodoo economics that would do great harm to the country and you disagreed. Do you now accept that the Tories were, at best wildly out of touch with economics then?
(Although I think that would be giving them far too much credit. They knew precisely what they were doing, and they did it anyway for political reasons.)

Nope, still fundamentally believe in balancing the books as much as is possible on everyday spending and avoiding unnecessary capital spend. If anything my time working with the public sector reinforced my hate of waste more than anything else (and I include waste during covid in that).

[Glyn_Wigley]

Well, if you're going to view the economy as if you're a bookkeeper and not an economist you would think like that.

[mugnapper]

How long before the out of touch Tories launch a 'Grow your Own' campaign, to reignite the War time spirit?

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

Well, if you're going to view the economy as if you're a bookkeeper and not an economist you would think like that.

I don't agree with this approach there's more than one aspect to it. The approach of any spending is good spending is not at all the right approach and some economists do think that way (incorrectly in my view).  I've seen lots of it in the public sector aswell particularly around Feb/march when they want to spend budgets.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Maybe BFYP.
I do remember an exchange 10 years ago though where I explained why Austerity was dangerous voodoo economics that would do great harm to the country and you disagreed. Do you now accept that the Tories were, at best wildly out of touch with economics then?
(Although I think that would be giving them far too much credit. They knew precisely what they were doing, and they did it anyway for political reasons.)

Nope, still fundamentally believe in balancing the books as much as is possible on everyday spending and avoiding unnecessary capital spend. If anything my time working with the public sector reinforced my hate of waste more than anything else (and I include waste during covid in that).

That's very depressing BFYP. When someone as intelligent as you digs your heels in on something where you are categorically wrong, it doesn't bode well for the future of democracy.

There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that Austerity was a horrifically misguided policy. Your comment about balanced books gets to the core of it. In simple terms, treating Govt expenditure like a household or company budget is totally misguided. Every economist knows that. Balancing the Govt books at a time when private industry is on its knees is the very worst thing you can do. We have known for almost 100 years that the role of Govt in those circumstances is to spend as much as it needs to do to get industry firing again. Anything at all that gets money circulating in the economy will do the job. Doesn't have to be public works (although those actually are the most efficient way - despite your jaundiced experience, it is better to spend on public works quickly and inefficiently than not spend, when  the economy is depressed).

When I pointed that out ten years ago, and said Austerity would give us a lost decade, you told me that was old fashioned economics, whatever that was supposed to mean. But I was right. We HAVE had a lost decade. The worst economic growth and real wage growth in 200 years.

It was all utterly avoidable. We chose not to avoid it. Cameron and Osborne spun homely metaphors about belt tightening and maxing out the nation's credit card which they knew totally were utter b*llocks. They did it for party political benefit. The nation took a massive hit as a result. And if we don't learn from that, we will continue to be deceived by politicians that put party before country.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Well, if you're going to view the economy as if you're a bookkeeper and not an economist you would think like that.

I don't agree with this approach there's more than one aspect to it. The approach of any spending is good spending is not at all the right approach and some economists do think that way (incorrectly in my view).  I've seen lots of it in the public sector aswell particularly around Feb/march when they want to spend budgets.

Any spending IS good spending when the economy is depressed. You are confusing people getting round arbitrary accounting conventions with what is correct for overall macroeconomic policy.

[BillyStubbsTears]

This highlights a massive problem for democracy.

Even highly intelligent voters cannot often afford the time to become genuinely expert in the areas that most affect the country. So, ideally, you want politicians who will not deliberately mislead on major areas of policy where there is little argument among experts. You want to be able to trust politicians to give you genuine opinions.

On macroeconomics, that was the case from 1945 to 1980. Economists broadly agreed that Keynes's approach to macroeconomic management broadly worked. Opinion on the detail could vary, and mistakes could be made by politicians, but no-one really questioned the basic premises.


Then Thatcher's Govt took a wild experiment with the monetarist theories that a small but influential sect of economists came up with. That was OK in principle. There was a difference of opinion in economic circles. Thatcher took one side and was honest about it. It was an utter disaster and turned a normal recession into a cataclysm in 1981. And they ditched the new policy and went back to Keynesianism.

And this is where the problem starts. They insisted that the subsequent recovery proved they were right all along. That has gone down in political mythology. In 1981, 364 senior economists wrote a letter to Thatcher telling her how wrong they thought the new policy was. Thatcher insisted they were wrong. That was the "Lady's Not For Turning" legend.

But she DID turn. Quietly and without ever admitting it. And she went back to what we knew worked. And it worked. And ever since, the Tory party has, to this day, crowed that Thatcher was right and the economists were wrong.

In 2010, Osborne and Cameron pulled a similar scam. They went all in on the Austerity idea, despite the overwhelming majority of economists telling them what damage it would do. And it did horrendous damage. something like £200bn of lost output from 2010-12. And then, with an election looming, they ditched Austerity and started spending and borrowing. The result was a rebound in the economy just in time for the 2015 election. But they insisted that they had done no such thing and the recovery was all down to Austerity being correct. By the time the Treasury figures were published, things had moved on. And the electorate doesn't have the patience or will to drill into detail anyway.

And this is where we are. We have politicians who have learned that deceiving the electorate gets them a benefit, because the electorate isn't interested in holding them to account.

[DRCraig]

We buy loads of supermarket own brand items. Don't do it with toothpaste. Although my dentist did say to me it would do me no harm. If my memory is correct I was told it had more of a ingredient in it that in fact would benefit me more. Forgot what and how.
Also I just cannot have cheap bread. Otherwise, Go budget.

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

I'm not sure it's a problem for democracy is it?  The pure strength of it is that people have different persuasions on all things.

It is not as cut and dry as spend or not is it never has or will be? Fundamentally bst you believe in an active state and high spending by that state. I don't and fundamentally believe that money is better placed in the hands of all of us and particularly the experts who are better placed to spend it.

[BillyStubbsTears]

BFYP.

I am not talking about general policy on the size of the state.  I am talking specifically about what economic theory and observations from history agree is the most optimal way of getting a depressed economy out of the doldrums.

There should be no more political argument about this than there is about gravity. But there IS political argument, because one side has knowingly misled the electorate on this issue for 40 years.

[DonnyOsmond]

I agree whole heartedly with the Keynesian approach but if BFYP is more USA than Denmark then that's up to him, you can spend days telling him his economical beliefs are wrong but you're just wasting both your time, BST.

[BillyStubbsTears]

DO

Once again, I'm not talking about the general role and size of the state in normal economic times. I'm talking about what you do when the economy is struggling.

Biden has implemented massive Keynesisn stimulus spending in the USA. There's no (or there should be no) political argument about the effectiveness of stimulus spending based on your political standpoint.