Reply to: How long do you think the current UK economic and employment downturn will last for?

[Ignis Fatuus]

The downturn will end when the country is viable. In other words when we export more than we import and have a surplus GDP

So the world economy will be viable only when every country exports more than it imports?

[OwlHoot]

So taxpayers don't have to make those interest payments then, £50 billion a year and rising?

.. if the debt keeps rising as it is, we will one day be paying more in interest than we can affiord to spend on public services.

Of course that's true, and I agree it isn't ideal. But the point is we are increasingly paying for busibody politicians and bureaucrats to do nothing, because they have less and less spare cash for any of their pet projects (especially EU aggrandizement). Also, public services can be done much more efficiently by private enterprise.

[EternalOptimist]

Explaining counterintuitive economic concepts to AtW (and one or two others round here) is like trying to teach a chimp quantum field theory.

Let me put it another way. This debt helps shield us, the general public, from the worst effects of Government and EU interference and gives more leeway for private enterprise to step in and achieve things much more efficiently than meddling Governments ever could. Their impotence, trapped behind their wall of national debt, is our freedom. Can't you see that?

National debt is NOT LIKE private debt, as those pathetic Daily Wailish "£1000 per person" comparisons would suggest. It'll never need paying off and while it persists (as it has for the last two centuries at least) we can sleep more soundly knowing that tyranny is far less likely.

P.S. Having lived in Russia, you of all people Alexie should understand that debts afflicting the USSR and other communist countries led to more freedom.

I must confess that I always treated my company finances the same way that I treated my domestic finances, ie keep income high, costs low and cash flow secure.
I always looked at the National finances in the same way. I never understood why some of these concepts you are discussing would alter that

I must be missing sommat

[AtW]

National debt is NOT LIKE private debt, as those pathetic Daily Wailish "£1000 per person" comparisons would suggest.

It is indeed nothing like private debt which is financed by the company, it's lenders and ultimately shareholders.

With public debt everyone finances - even the poor as they'd have to be paying extra VAT in a month time.

Effectively Brown turned national debt into new deferred taxation.

P.S. Having lived in Russia, you of all people Alexie should understand that debts afflicting the USSR and other communist countries led to more freedom.

Putin's Russia repaid a lot of Govt debt and now Russia has got very low debt/GDP ratio, however it is much less free now than it was 20 years ago when it had a lot of debts.

[Doggy Styles]

Explaining counterintuitive economic concepts to AtW (and one or two others round here) is like trying to teach a chimp quantum field theory.

Let me put it another way. This debt helps shield us, the general public, from the worst effects of Government and EU interference and gives more leeway for private enterprise to step in and achieve things much more efficiently than meddling Governments ever could. Their impotence, trapped behind their wall of national debt, is our freedom. Can't you see that?

National debt is NOT LIKE private debt, as those pathetic Daily Wailish "£1000 per person" comparisons would suggest. It'll never need paying off and while it persists (as it has for the last two centuries at least) we can sleep more soundly knowing that tyranny is far less likely.

So taxpayers don't have to make those interest payments then, £50 billion a year and rising?

I think you are missing the point completely, that if the debt keeps rising as it is, we will one day be paying more in interest than we can affiord to spend on public services.

But if that's OK I think someone should tell Ireland and Greece to chill out a bit!

[Green Mango]

Explaining counterintuitive economic concepts to AtW (and one or two others round here) is like trying to teach a chimp quantum field theory.

Let me put it another way. This debt helps shield us, the general public, from the worst effects of Government and EU interference and gives more leeway for private enterprise to step in and achieve things much more efficiently than meddling Governments ever could. Their impotence, trapped behind their wall of national debt, is our freedom. Can't you see that?

National debt is NOT LIKE private debt, as those pathetic Daily Wailish "£1000 per person" comparisons would suggest. It'll never need paying off and while it persists (as it has for the last two centuries at least) we can sleep more soundly knowing that tyranny is far less likely.

P.S. Having lived in Russia, you of all people Alexie should understand that debts afflicting the USSR and other communist countries led to more freedom.

You are using archaic economic theroms of a few dcades ago to justify the present.

I'm afraid things have moved on since the 1960's and the West is no longer the dominant force that it was.

[OwlHoot]

Debt is at critical point when you have to borrow again in order to pay off lenders - this has been happening in the West for a long time now, so the mountain is so large that interest payments alone (at current artificially depressed rates) are massive: £73 bln per year predicted for 2014/15. That's over £1000 for each person in the UK including children and elder, or £3.5k per household per year interest payments only.

That's about the amount VAT raises I think, so in order to pay just for those interest payments VAT would have go go up to 35-40%.

Yes, the debt is THAT massive.

Explaining counterintuitive economic concepts to AtW (and one or two others round here) is like trying to teach a chimp quantum field theory.

Let me put it another way. This debt helps shield us, the general public, from the worst effects of Government and EU interference and gives more leeway for private enterprise to step in and achieve things much more efficiently than meddling Governments ever could. Their impotence, trapped behind their wall of national debt, is our freedom. Can't you see that?

National debt is NOT LIKE private debt, as those pathetic Daily Wailish "£1000 per person" comparisons would suggest. It'll never need paying off and while it persists (as it has for the last two centuries at least) we can sleep more soundly knowing that tyranny is far less likely.

P.S. Having lived in Russia, you of all people Alexie should understand that debts afflicting the USSR and other communist countries led to more freedom.

[AtW]

That's where we were heading.

Nothing printing presses can't solve - soon they'll revive the Fleet Street...

[Clippy]

I think it may possibly have been a joke.

go up - woooof



aww fergerrit

I know, was just saying, like.

[EternalOptimist]

Isn't that illegal?

I think it may possibly have been a joke.

go up - woooof



aww fergerrit

[Clippy]

I'm going to start stock piling petrol. It's guaranteed to go up.

Isn't that illegal?

[Incognito]

Bloated sovereign debt means Labour is in power

Yearning to reduce, or even eliminate, the national debt shows Labour has lost power

Fixed that for you.

[Doggy Styles]

How many more times?

Excessive individual debt is servitude and lost opportunities.

Bloated sovereign debt means freedom from interference, and more opportunities.

Yearning to reduce, or even eliminate, the national debt is naive and frankly childish.

As AtW says, the lower the debt, the less interest you pay.

Rather than being frankly childish, it is up to each nation to decide what level of debt they can cope with.

Too high, and the proportion of GDP lost paying interest is too high. This is compounded by rises in the rate of interest we'd be charged if markets lose confidence in ability to repay.

That's where we were heading.

I hope this helps.

[AtW]

Yearning to reduce, or even eliminate, the national debt is naive and frankly childish.

Debt is at critical point when you have to borrow again in order to pay off lenders - this has been happening in the West for a long time now, so the mountain is so large that interest payments alone (at current artificially depressed rates) are massive: £73 bln per year predicted for 2014/15. That's over £1000 for each person in the UK including children and elder, or £3.5k per household per year interest payments only.

That's about the amount VAT raises I think, so in order to pay just for those interest payments VAT would have go go up to 35-40%.

Yes, the debt is THAT massive.

[OwlHoot]

Interest payments on national debt are currently running at £45 billion. I think that's nearly half the cost of the NHS. Those payments will increase all the time we have a deficit.

We cannot even start reducing those payments until we have done away with the deficit and moved into surplus. It's anyone's guess, but I don't see that point happening for best part of 10 years, and that's even if the coallition's plans work.

How many more times?

Excessive individual debt is servitude and lost opportunities.

Bloated sovereign debt means freedom from interference, and more opportunities.

Yearning to reduce, or even eliminate, the national debt is naive and frankly childish.