Sunak or Truss

[tommy toes]

Couldn't be better for the Labour Party.

Sunak, who's fiscal policies hark back to Osborne. He seems to think that cutting public spending and tightening the purse strings is the way forward, after 12 years of proof that it isn't.

Or Truss, who's as mad as a box of frogs and like Sunak, is mired in Johnson's muck, as well as being a closet remainer; not to mention having all the charisma of a dead parrot.

[mugnapper]

Good to see 2 new faces, untainted by the failures and law breaking of Johnson's previous Government, being given their chance.

[wilts rover]

Whoever wins 2/3rds of Tory MP's didn't want them:

Cameron (2005) 45.5%
May (2016) 60.5%
Johnson (2019) 66.6%
Sunak (2022) 38.3%
Truss (2022) 31.6%

[danumdon]

Whoever wins 2/3rds of Tory MP's didn't want them:

Cameron (2005) 45.5%
May (2016) 60.5%
Johnson (2019) 66.6%
Sunak (2022) 38.3%
Truss (2022) 31.6%

It is what it is unfortunately.

Saying 2/3rds of Tory MP'd didn't want them is about as much use as saying over half of the electorate didn't want the party voted into power for however many years. Pointless.

Its now down to the Tory party members to decide who to make PM. Whatever we say about these two individuals the nation will get its say in the next 24months.

[BillyStubbsTears]

A believer in Austerity Vs a believer in Monetarism.

Choose which failed, discredited, catastrophic previous Tory economic policy you prefer.

[ncRover]

Sunak has spent more than any previous chancellor hasn’t he? Hardly austerity…

[drfchound]

A believer in Austerity Vs a believer in Monetarism.

Choose which failed, discredited, catastrophic previous Tory economic policy you prefer.

You weren’t complaining when Sunak announced the furlough scheme that helped your business survive through covid.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Sunak has spent more than any previous chancellor hasn’t he? Hardly austerity…

Circumstances. That wasn't a choice. The country would have fallen apart without furlough.

By instinct, every bone in his body wants to cut Govt spending. That was the core of the fall out with Johnson.

[phil old leake]

Furlough and COVID had to be paid for. People were grateful to take months off work on 80% of their wages with no travelling to work costs

Now we’re getting over COVID and people are back to work there’s a lot of short memories now it has to be paid for

I know People are accusing him of making his wife more money and being out of touch because he’s wealthy. If he is or isn’t I don’t know
Personally I can’t see how it could have been handled better.  Some people seem to forget that accounts have to be balanced

[belton rover]

Sunak has spent more than any previous chancellor hasn’t he? Hardly austerity…

Circumstances. That wasn't a choice. The country would have fallen apart without furlough.

By instinct, every bone in his body wants to cut Govt spending. That was the core of the fall out with Johnson.

Yet you commended him at the time. And you have used that commendation regularly since as ‘proof’ that you don’t have a blanket of hatred for everything the Conservatives do and credit them when they do make the right choices.

Now, because it suits your ridiculously biased agenda, there was never a choice to make!

You are embarrassingly pathetic.

[drfchound]

Sunak has spent more than any previous chancellor hasn’t he? Hardly austerity…

Circumstances. That wasn't a choice. The country would have fallen apart without furlough.

By instinct, every bone in his body wants to cut Govt spending. That was the core of the fall out with Johnson.

Yet you commended him at the time. And you have used that commendation regularly since as ‘proof’ that you don’t have a blanket of hatred for everything the Conservatives do and credit them when they do make the right choices.

Now, because it suits your ridiculously biased agenda, there was never a choice to make!

You are embarrassingly pathetic.

See this.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Furlough and COVID had to be paid for. People were grateful to take months off work on 80% of their wages with no travelling to work costs

Now we’re getting over COVID and people are back to work there’s a lot of short memories now it has to be paid for

I know People are accusing him of making his wife more money and being out of touch because he’s wealthy. If he is or isn’t I don’t know
Personally I can’t see how it could have been handled better.  Some people seem to forget that accounts have to be balanced

Phil

That's the root of the issue. It DOESN'T have to be paid for. Accounts DON'T need to be balanced when you're talking about Govt debt.

That is the lie that Sunak was spreading a year or so ago, when he said that he'd have to cut spending because we have to pay back what we borrowed.

That is absolute horse shit. It's 100 year out of date economics. What Governments need to do is to make sure that, over time, the economy grows faster than the debt. Do that and there's absolutely no need to EVER pay back a penny of the debt.

Try to cut the debt by cutting back spending and what happens is that the economy shrinks and the burden of debt gets even higher. If there's one lesson that should have been learned from the Austerity of a decade ago it's that. But Sunak seems determined to follow the same path all over again.

There's a historical example of this happening before.

In WWI, the Govt absolutely didn't want to run up large debts. It went against everything they believed. But the Chancellors gritted their teeth and borrowed billions to pay for the shells and the boats and the tanks.

They didn't believe that Govt spending was a potentially good thing. It was a necessary evil at the time.

After the War, they believed that the debt had to be paid back. And they savagely cut Govt spending. The result was an extended recession, 25% on the dole and the Govt debt actually went up!

That's the kind of mistake we may be heading into. Not as vicious as the early 1920s recession, but a totally unnecessary economic slowdown based on shite economics that sound sensible, but are actually totally wrong.

[Glyn_Wigley]

Furlough and COVID had to be paid for. People were grateful to take months off work on 80% of their wages with no travelling to work costs

Now we’re getting over COVID and people are back to work there’s a lot of short memories now it has to be paid for

I know People are accusing him of making his wife more money and being out of touch because he’s wealthy. If he is or isn’t I don’t know
Personally I can’t see how it could have been handled better.  Some people seem to forget that accounts have to be balanced

This is the result of looking at an economy like a bookkeeper and not as an economist.

[phil old leake]

BST
I hear you and I disagree. We have different opinions on this

[BillyStubbsTears]

Phil.
It's not me you're disagreeing with. It's the whole of economics.

[Nudga]

Different cheeks of the same WEF arse.

We're f**ked either way.

[tommy toes]

This talk about paying back the debt and balancing the books is pie in the sky nonsense.
It's impossible and unnecessary in the medium term and trying to do that by Austerity has palpably failed.
That should be obvious to anyone, whatever party they support.
Austeriy has hampered growth over the whole period since 2010, yet Sunak seems not to have noticed, and have no doubt, he's committed to continuing with it.
If he wins then we're in for a sorry two years til the next election.

[Nudga]

The economy will crash anyway and then Sunak will bring his CBDC in.

Build back better! Also known as Problem, Reaction, Solution.

[danumdon]

Phil.
It's not me you're disagreeing with. It's the whole of economics.

Phil.
It's not me you're disagreeing with. It's the whole of economics.

Is this your tacit endorsement of Truss's longer term policy of paying back the built up debit?

[BillyStubbsTears]

DD

How do you figure that out? We virtually never pay back Government debt. Because we don't need to. What matters is whether you can service the interest in the debt. And whether your economy grows so that the debt becomes smaller as a proportion of our wealth.

In 1919, Govt debt was £7.5bn. That was 140% of GDP. The Govt tried to pay it back by cutting spending. The economy tanked. In 1924 the debt was  still £7.5bn but because the economy had crashed that was 160% of GDP.

In 1950, after WWII, the debt was £26bn. That was over 200% of GDP. But for the next half century, instead of trying to pay it back, we borrowed more and used that to build the economy.

By 2000, the debt was £340bn. But because the economy had grown beyond recognition, that was 30% of GDP.

That's how it works. It's nothing like a personal debt. You try to cut Govt debt, what happens is you crash the economy and the debt grows as a proportion of our wealth. We knew all that in 2010, but the Tories did it anyway because that was what they needed to tell people to get elected in 2010.

I assume Sunak knows that. Because he'd be economically illiterate if he didn't. And I don't think he is. But he's planning the same approach anyway. Because it's in the Tories' blood. They don't have any alternative that doesn't admit the other side were right all along.

Truss? Christ knows whether she understands it. She's proposing to repeat the batshit monetarist approach of the early 1980s that Thatcher championed for a couple of years before she realised it was moonshine and shelved it.

[River Don]

Sunak will run the economy into the ground to try and bring inflation down.

There are question marks about the competence of Truss. She can't wait to "hit the ground" apparently.

It's an incredibly difficult choice but if I were voting, I think I'd go for Sunak and hope he will react to the onset of recession that is coming.

[Bentley Bullet]

Why don't we just put BST in charge?

[danumdon]

DD

How do you figure that out? We virtually never pay back Government debt. Because we don't need to. What matters is whether you can service the interest in the debt. And whether your economy grows so that the debt becomes smaller as a proportion of our wealth.

In 1919, Govt debt was £7.5bn. That was 140% of GDP. The Govt tried to pay it back by cutting spending. The economy tanked. In 1924 the debt was  still £7.5bn but because the economy had crashed that was 160% of GDP.

In 1950, after WWII, the debt was £26bn. That was over 200% of GDP. But for the next half century, instead of trying to pay it back, we borrowed more and used that to build the economy.

By 2000, the debt was £340bn. But because the economy had grown beyond recognition, that was 30% of GDP.

That's how it works. It's nothing like a personal debt. You try to cut Govt debt, what happens is you crash the economy and the debt grows as a proportion of our wealth. We knew all that in 2010, but the Tories did it anyway because that was what they needed to tell people to get elected in 2010.

I assume Sunak knows that. Because he'd be economically illiterate if he didn't. And I don't think he is. But he's planning the same approach anyway. Because it's in the Tories' blood. They don't have any alternative that doesn't admit the other side were right all along.

Truss? Christ knows whether she understands it. She's proposing to repeat the batshit monetarist approach of the early 1980s that Thatcher championed for a couple of years before she realised it was moonshine and shelved it.

Im no economist but don't governments have to borrow on the markets by issuing bonds, these bonds will have a maturity date. Who picks up the tab for these if its not the nations taxpayers?

We obviously allow great chunks of interest to be consumed by inflation over time but at the end of the day an outstanding debt cannot be just hid off the nations balance sheet and has to be paid for, we cant just rely on the rise in GDP to swallow it whole,

Is this not where you end up with Mozambique dollars for a currency?

[BillyStubbsTears]

DD.

Don't take my word for it. Look at history.

In £ terms our national debt increased  about 14-fold in the second half of the 20th century. But our economy grew about 80-fold.

So. Higher debt. Far less of a debt problem.

What really matters is whether you can pay the interest on your debt. But generally this isn't a first order problem for Governments.

In 1950, the interest on our debt took about 5p of every £ we earned. In 2000 it was less than 2p. Today, even with a much higher debt after the GFC and COVID, and after a decade of truly awful economic growth, mainly due to Austerity, it is still only about 4p.  Many of us take in mortgages with FAR higher interest repayments as a percentage of our income. When I took out my first mortgage 30 years ago, the interest payments were nearly 30% of my take home pay.

[SydneyRover]

Why don't we just put BST in charge?

typical tory, wants to make british summer time user pays

[drfchound]

When people talk about what something cost x number of years ago they never seem to factor in how the value of £1 has changed over time.
I took out my first mortgage in 1974 and the repayment amount was more than half of my take home pay.
My wife was working though and so between us we could afford to pay it and manage to live.
The value of £100 in 1974 equates to over £1150 now.
Telling people that the national debt or GDP has risen from x to y doesn’t tell the whole story but it fits the rhetoric.

[tommy toes]

Hound 4p in the £ in 1950, is the same as 4p in the £  today or in 1348.
So what's the point of your post?

[phil old leake]

https://www.ig.com/uk/bonds/what-are-government-bonds

How government bonds work. Borrowed for a set period of time etc etc

[Glyn_Wigley]

DD

How do you figure that out? We virtually never pay back Government debt. Because we don't need to. What matters is whether you can service the interest in the debt. And whether your economy grows so that the debt becomes smaller as a proportion of our wealth.

In 1919, Govt debt was £7.5bn. That was 140% of GDP. The Govt tried to pay it back by cutting spending. The economy tanked. In 1924 the debt was  still £7.5bn but because the economy had crashed that was 160% of GDP.

In 1950, after WWII, the debt was £26bn. That was over 200% of GDP. But for the next half century, instead of trying to pay it back, we borrowed more and used that to build the economy.

By 2000, the debt was £340bn. But because the economy had grown beyond recognition, that was 30% of GDP.

That's how it works. It's nothing like a personal debt. You try to cut Govt debt, what happens is you crash the economy and the debt grows as a proportion of our wealth. We knew all that in 2010, but the Tories did it anyway because that was what they needed to tell people to get elected in 2010.

I assume Sunak knows that. Because he'd be economically illiterate if he didn't. And I don't think he is. But he's planning the same approach anyway. Because it's in the Tories' blood. They don't have any alternative that doesn't admit the other side were right all along.

Truss? Christ knows whether she understands it. She's proposing to repeat the batshit monetarist approach of the early 1980s that Thatcher championed for a couple of years before she realised it was moonshine and shelved it.

Im no economist but don't governments have to borrow on the markets by issuing bonds, these bonds will have a maturity date. Who picks up the tab for these if its not the nations taxpayers?

We obviously allow great chunks of interest to be consumed by inflation over time but at the end of the day an outstanding debt cannot be just hid off the nations balance sheet and has to be paid for, we cant just rely on the rise in GDP to swallow it whole,

Is this not where you end up with Mozambique dollars for a currency?

When the an individual bond matures, the government pays out. That is how the interest is paid on the National Debt. It doesn't reduce the National Debt because new government bonds are issued to provide the money to pay the matured ones.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Christ, where do you begin with that Truss interview on R4 this morning?

She wanted Johnson to remain as PM.

She says cutting taxes will bring down inflation.