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Post by Ariel Manto on Oct 30, 2024 10:18:21 GMT
I'm always nervous about comparing things like GDP over a year or two and then using that to say whether a politician or a thing is good or bad. It just seems like GDP is affected by loads of things? Like GDP could have grown by 3%/year, but then let's say the politicians did something like burn a big pile of money* that made it only grow 1%/year. All the people who support pointlessly burning money could say "look! Burning money didn't hurt the economy, it's grown 1% each year since we started burning it, so burning money is good!" *actually maybe that would boost GDP in the short term since it's work? Just imagine a dumb thing that hurts growth. I don't know about burning money, but you are correct that GDP should not be compared over short periods. The capitalist system is cyclical, with good years when growth is good followed by inflation which means governments have to tighten their budgets. It used to be called "stop-go". Furthermore different countries are at different points in their own cycle and out of step, usually it is the US that leads the cycle and other countries follow. Then there is the disturbances created by world effects such as the pandemic, wars, energy crises, etc. Different countries are impacted to different degrees by these affects. In the case of energy there are losers and winners, like Canada in the last energy crisis. The UK was severely impacted by the pandemic because of the Johnson's government slowness to act, despite the lessons to be seen what happened in Italy. Merkel managed the pandemic much better. The period before the 2008 crash is a case in point where governments allowed reckless lending and borrowing in the financial markets. Turning to Brexit, those opposed repeatedly compare UK economic performance just before leaving the EU and afterwards, assuming the pandemic affected everyone the same. But the UK economy was recovering from the 2008 economic crisis and coming out out recession and austerity during the second decade of the century. The growth of GDP was much better during the 2010 to 2019 period than the previous 20 years. If you extend long term graphs over many decades you see steeper growth, usually driven by lack of financial prudence by government, followed by a sharp downward correction, then a steep recovery. In 2018 and 2019 the UK was achieving record exports. If you extend the graph post 2020 and continue to achieve the growth that Brexit opponents claim would have happened if the UK had remained in the EU with their doppelgangers and counterfactuals, then UK growth would have been the highest in the G7 and better than the US which is quite frankly nonsense. You’ve literally just spent the biggest part of 3 weeks arguing that the UK economy was stagnant since 2008. |
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Post by Gawa on Oct 30, 2024 10:37:31 GMT
I admire Mr Cokes resilience in this thread I have to say.
Surely though the answer to Brexit is joining an even bigger trading bloc in BRICS? One which is growing and thriving?
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Post by oggyoggy on Oct 30, 2024 10:46:30 GMT
I admire Mr Cokes resilience in this thread I have to say. Surely though the answer to Brexit is joining an even bigger trading bloc in BRICS? One which is growing and thriving? It depends if you want to do business with the likes of Putin. I’d steer well clear. I think morality is important, as well as the rights of individuals and workers. Doing more business with nations that pay no respect to those rights is, in my opinion, not a good idea. |
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Post by Gawa on Oct 30, 2024 10:51:29 GMT
I admire Mr Cokes resilience in this thread I have to say. Surely though the answer to Brexit is joining an even bigger trading bloc in BRICS? One which is growing and thriving? It depends if you want to do business with the likes of Putin. I’d steer well clear. I think morality is important, as well as the rights of individuals and workers. Doing more business with nations that pay no respect to those rights is, in my opinion, not a good idea. So should we be removing any business from nations which fund murdering women and children en masse? Or is mortality OK to turn a blind eye there? If mortality is turning a blind eye to states funding the mass murder of civillians then I don't really know what is mortality anymore. |
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Post by oggyoggy on Oct 30, 2024 10:55:01 GMT
It depends if you want to do business with the likes of Putin. I’d steer well clear. I think morality is important, as well as the rights of individuals and workers. Doing more business with nations that pay no respect to those rights is, in my opinion, not a good idea. So should we be removing any business from nations which fund murdering women and children en masse? Or is mortality OK to turn a blind eye there? If mortality is turning a blind eye to states funding the mass murder of civillians then I don't really know what is mortality anymore. I don’t think it is that simple. I don’t think we should be looking to increase business with certain nations on moral grounds. Israel and Russia are top of that list right now. Putting it another way, I think doing business with EU nations who more generally align to our morals and standards of products and rights for individuals would be better than doing more business with certain BRICS nations whose standards don’t align well and so would mean some compromise on our standards or increase in their standards for the trade to work well. |
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Post by mrcoke on Oct 30, 2024 11:04:49 GMT
I don't know about burning money, but you are correct that GDP should not be compared over short periods. The capitalist system is cyclical, with good years when growth is good followed by inflation which means governments have to tighten their budgets. It used to be called "stop-go". Furthermore different countries are at different points in their own cycle and out of step, usually it is the US that leads the cycle and other countries follow. Then there is the disturbances created by world effects such as the pandemic, wars, energy crises, etc. Different countries are impacted to different degrees by these affects. In the case of energy there are losers and winners, like Canada in the last energy crisis. The UK was severely impacted by the pandemic because of the Johnson's government slowness to act, despite the lessons to be seen what happened in Italy. Merkel managed the pandemic much better. The period before the 2008 crash is a case in point where governments allowed reckless lending and borrowing in the financial markets. Turning to Brexit, those opposed repeatedly compare UK economic performance just before leaving the EU and afterwards, assuming the pandemic affected everyone the same. But the UK economy was recovering from the 2008 economic crisis and coming out out recession and austerity during the second decade of the century. The growth of GDP was much better during the 2010 to 2019 period than the previous 20 years. If you extend long term graphs over many decades you see steeper growth, usually driven by lack of financial prudence by government, followed by a sharp downward correction, then a steep recovery. In 2018 and 2019 the UK was achieving record exports. If you extend the graph post 2020 and continue to achieve the growth that Brexit opponents claim would have happened if the UK had remained in the EU with their doppelgangers and counterfactuals, then UK growth would have been the highest in the G7 and better than the US which is quite frankly nonsense. You’ve literally just spent the biggest part of 3 weeks arguing that the UK economy was stagnant since 2008. Here is a graph to show you what I was posting about: data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=GBThis shows the steady growth from 1981 to 2001 which if you extend shows the current UK position is in line with that trend. Post 2001 Bush and Blair allowed banking to get out of control and the economy grew faster on the back of personal debt, the financial organisations lending money that could not be repaid, until the correction came in 2008. I don't know where I am supposed to have posted that the UK economy was stagnant after 2008. Apologies if you find my long posts too difficult to follow. I don't usually post much without a link to support my arguments which regrettably I did in my last post and have now corrected that omission. Joining the BRICS is I agree a step too far, but people should be aware we are well down the road on trade agreements with India, Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, and even Israel* if you check on the government web site. It still should be understood that the EU is not a trade group, it is a customs union with government, Parliament, court, treaties committed to ever closer union, etc. A completely different animal to the many other trade organizations. If some want to hand over sovereignty that is their choice, it is not mine. * hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2024-03-11/debates/24031148000011/UK-IsraelFreeTradeAgreementFourthRoundNegotiations |
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Post by Gawa on Oct 30, 2024 11:08:31 GMT
So should we be removing any business from nations which fund murdering women and children en masse? Or is mortality OK to turn a blind eye there? If mortality is turning a blind eye to states funding the mass murder of civillians then I don't really know what is mortality anymore. I don’t think it is that simple. I don’t think we should be looking to increase business with certain nations on moral grounds. Israel and Russia are top of that list right now. Putting it another way, I think doing business with EU nations who more generally align to our morals and standards of products and rights for individuals would be better than doing more business with certain BRICS nations whose standards don’t align well and so would mean some compromise on our standards or increase in their standards for the trade to work well. Why is it not that simple? And why do you put proxy states like Israel on your list but not the country which funds 70% of their military? Mortality allows us to turn a blind eye as long as you pay someone else to do your dirty work? I don't think mortality can be used as an argument when you're willing to turn a blind eye to those bank rolling the collective punishment of civillians. If its about morals apply them equally or you're at risk of coming across as lacking principle. |
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Post by oggyoggy on Oct 30, 2024 11:16:19 GMT
I don’t think it is that simple. I don’t think we should be looking to increase business with certain nations on moral grounds. Israel and Russia are top of that list right now. Putting it another way, I think doing business with EU nations who more generally align to our morals and standards of products and rights for individuals would be better than doing more business with certain BRICS nations whose standards don’t align well and so would mean some compromise on our standards or increase in their standards for the trade to work well. Why is it not that simple? And why do you put proxy states like Israel on your list but not the country which funds 70% of their military? Mortality allows us to turn a blind eye as long as you pay someone else to do your dirty work? I don't think mortality can be used as an argument when you're willing to turn a blind eye to those bank rolling the collective punishment of civillians. If its about morals apply them equally or you're at risk of coming across as lacking principle. Based on morality, we can’t even trade with ourselves. Every nation has had an immoral government/leaders at some point. Global trade doesn’t just stop because we don’t agree with something the particular leader does at one time. For me, Israel and Russia stand out at this moment in time as particularly immoral and so we shouldn’t increase business with them as a result. Russia being part of BRICS of course. You were suggesting we could increase trade with BRICS or join it, which includes Russia. I disagreed and said I would prefer to increase trade with nations more similarly aligned, both in terms of morality but also, crucially, in terms of product standards for consumers, and rights for individuals in those nations. That points primarily to the EU. That’s just my opinion. |
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Post by Ariel Manto on Oct 30, 2024 12:42:13 GMT
Leaving the European Union was supposed to usher in an era of lower taxes, a smaller public sector, and a larger more vibrant community of small businesses.
Almost none of that was delivered by post-2016 Tory governments. And almost exactly the opposite of the right-wing Brexiters’ utopia is coming from the newish Labour government, with the budget - which will reconstruct and reset the British state and British economy in a form that would be an anathema to more-or-less all Brexiters on the right.
There is zero chance that the chancellor Rachel Reeves will frame her historic budget tomorrow as the first ambitious attempt to remake Britain after Brexit. But that is what it will be, because it will endeavour to achieve three very big things, by exploiting the money-raising and allocative power of the state rather than via the distributive mechanisms of the market and private sector.
These are the three main budget themes.
1.To increase public sector investment each year by more than £20bn, as a carrot for significantly greater private sector investment. This will be achieved via a reform of the debt fiscal rule. The purpose will be to stimulate productivity, growth and rising living standards
2.To increase borrowing for investment to the tune of those tens of billion pounds, but simultaneously to finance day-to-day spending wholly through tax revenues by 2029. This is how Reeves hopes to reassure investors and avoid fiscal shocks. It in turn necessitates an increase in taxes to the tune of up to £40bn a year, which could be a modern record.
3.To reform public services so that over time they become both more efficient and more affordable, especially health and welfare, against the expensive backdrop of an ageing population.
In this way Reeves and the prime minister hope to achieve their twin ambitions of economic and monetary stability on the one hand and economic growth on the other. What’s striking is that their means is via higher taxes, borrowing and public spending, when all are at or near post-war records.
And you’ll recall that the two of them spent most of the recent general election campaign saying they really didn’t want to increase taxes, because they’d risen so much in preceding years.
But Reeves will argue their hand has been forced by an inheritance from the Tories of crumbling public services and unfunded spending over-runs.
It’s an excuse she and Starmer can use only once, and only now. Which is why the budget will announce a lot of potentially unpopular and painful measures, in the hope and expectation that they won’t have to come back and ask voters for a lot more in additional taxes between now and the next election.
That said, some of what they will unveil will be described by economists and tax experts as sub-optimal.
For example, their plan to claw back Jeremy Hunt’s £20bn in national insurance cuts for employees via a £20bn rise in national insurance for employers is a fiscal prompt for the words “daft” and “brush”.
It would have been far cleaner and would have posed less of a risk to employment to simply reverse the employee NI cut. But Starmer’s manifesto pledge not to tamper with NI rates precluded that.
Similarly there was a strong case for reforming capital gains tax, but apparently HMRC lacked the resource to properly work through the consequences of root-and-branch change, so instead Reeves has opted for the path of least resistance, via an increase in the basic rate from 20% to around 24%.
But the potential tax change that interests me most - because it’s all about whether Starmer’s government puts wooing the right-wing media above or below his supposed fundamental convictions - is whether Reeves imposes the fuel duty escalator for the first time since 2010.
You would think that this government would raise fuel duty by the rate of inflation or more, given that it badly needs the £1.5bn or so it would yield, and based on its climate change principles.
But there is a powerful motorists’ lobby that - via its friends in the tabloid press - has managed to put the escalator on ice for well over a decade.
If Reeves chooses not to increase fuel duty, she may claim that’s because she’s anxious about hurting small businesses.
What she should say is that she is anxious about hurting small businesses more than would otherwise be the case - because it is the small business sector that will struggle most with the significant cost increments from her national insurance change, a big rise in the national minimum or living wage and Angela Rayner’s reforms to employees’ contractual rights.
At best the small business sector will stagnate. At worst, many small businesses - that have been barely profitable for years - will collapse.
Big businesses, by contrast, are likely to welcome the budget. They find it easier to absorb the assorted increases to their running costs, they want a predictable stable path for tax, spend and borrowing, and the public-sector investment plans will yield significant profitable opportunities for them.
It is in keeping with long political history for the biggest companies to prosper under a Labour government. The idea of Labour as a proponent of the corporate state is as old as the mixed economy.
All of which will be agonisingly painful for the right-wing Brexiters who believed leaving the EU would see the UK remade as Singapore-on-Thames. If anything, it has ushered in a UK that is diverging at pace from the structure of the US or Asian economies and converging much more with the corporatism of continental Europe.
(https://x.com/peston/status/1851318933611012498?s=46)
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Post by toppercorner on Oct 30, 2024 18:39:48 GMT
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Post by mrcoke on Oct 30, 2024 20:19:00 GMT
If you believe the Independent you had best give Rachel a call to stop all the tax payers money being poured into ports around the UK. www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/labour-promises-1-8bn-investment-in-uk-port-infrastructure-19-04-2024/www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/dp-world-london-gateway-port-investment-summit-p-o-boycott-rogue-operator-b1187642.htmlBut of course the Independent has its facts wrong. The OBR are talking about trade intensity. This is a complex ratio comparing trade with GDP. Some countries have very high ratio like Luxembourg, Singapore, the Netherlands and some very much lower like the US, China, and Japan. I am in favour of increased trade intensity if it is due to higher exports, but not if it is higher imports. Lower trade intensity could be interpreted at greater self sufficiency, which I would like to see the UK have like the US and Japan. Trade figures have changed significantly by leaving the EU. The "Rotterdam Effect" has been reduced where large ships from far east go to unload and then goods moved to the UK are were counted as imports from Netherlands. Now they are described by country of origin, plus Felixstowe has been developed to accept the world's largest container ships. www.southeastlep.com/port-of-felixstowe-deepening-complete/Furthermore the nonsense of goods moving back and forth across Europe between the producing factory, the European distribution centre, and the purchaser has been reduced to stop goods crossing the EU border we now have. Exports to the EU are down in real terms but that is due to the state of the German economy as much as anything. We can expect exports to France to also drop. Today the Chancellor took action to close a £40 billion "gap," France has been told to close a €60 billion "gap" by the EU Commission, the unelected bureaucrats who run the EU. |
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Post by oggyoggy on Nov 4, 2024 12:47:55 GMT
Brilliant! www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/04/stormont-not-bringing-the-change-northern-ireland-needs-says-new-sdlp-leader“Brexit did two things. It sucked the oxygen out of politics. Normal politics just didn’t exist, the politics about waiting lists, infrastructure just didn’t happen. Politics just walked off the job. And [secondly] it was all so polarising,” she said. Speaking of Johnson and his Brexit negotiator David Frost, she added: “They have left a wholly negative legacy for this island. They denigrated Britain, they damaged Britain’s reputation and made Britain a laughing stock in its decisions, its arrogance and delusions about the possibilities of Brexit. “We have wasted the last eight years talking about a problem that did not need to exist,” she said. She said she thought Brexit “hugely accelerated” the conversation around a united Ireland but that a border poll was “unlikely” in the next five years. However, she said she believed it had given Northern Ireland an opportunity to take back control of its destiny. “They [Johnson and Frost] wanted to tear down relationships to a kind of ground zero, and as we try to rebuild those, the only responsible thing to do is rebuild them in a way that gives us more control over our lives and restricts the control that people like David Frost, who remains a parliamentarian [in the House of Lords], has over our lives. That is a key motivator for me,” she said.” |
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Post by Rednwhitenblue on Nov 4, 2024 13:08:02 GMT
Brilliant! www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/04/stormont-not-bringing-the-change-northern-ireland-needs-says-new-sdlp-leader“Brexit did two things. It sucked the oxygen out of politics. Normal politics just didn’t exist, the politics about waiting lists, infrastructure just didn’t happen. Politics just walked off the job. And [secondly] it was all so polarising,” she said. Speaking of Johnson and his Brexit negotiator David Frost, she added: “They have left a wholly negative legacy for this island. They denigrated Britain, they damaged Britain’s reputation and made Britain a laughing stock in its decisions, its arrogance and delusions about the possibilities of Brexit. “We have wasted the last eight years talking about a problem that did not need to exist,” she said. She said she thought Brexit “hugely accelerated” the conversation around a united Ireland but that a border poll was “unlikely” in the next five years. However, she said she believed it had given Northern Ireland an opportunity to take back control of its destiny. “They [Johnson and Frost] wanted to tear down relationships to a kind of ground zero, and as we try to rebuild those, the only responsible thing to do is rebuild them in a way that gives us more control over our lives and restricts the control that people like David Frost, who remains a parliamentarian [in the House of Lords], has over our lives. That is a key motivator for me,” she said.” Aside from the fact that the Unionists would probably go mad, the idea of a united Ireland is probably quite palatable to a lot of Westminster politicians. It gets rid of that whole question of the 'occupation' of Ireland once and for all and, from a purely Brexit standpoint, removes the idiotic Irish Sea border arrangement that is currently in place between different parts of the same country! If they do ever have a referendum on it, you'd have to hope the Unionists (assuming they lose) don't pick up where they and the IRA left off before the GFA. |
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