No. What I would like to see is a balanced budget, something you have advocated as being desirable in previous threads. How do you propose getting to that position? It would seem that in your world the greater the government spending the greater the good? Surely that can't be the case though? I believe that governments of any colour have an almost limitless ability to spend other peoples money, it is up to us to reign in that desire.
Governments spend our money on us for our benefit, subject to democratic control. So what is wrong with that? Government spending is on purposes like health, education, transport, defence, justice, etc etc and as far as I can see these are purposes which are beneficial to us all. Which of them are, according to you, not beneficial? You seem to be saying expenditure on these purposes is a bad thing, and ought to be reduced on principle - but you do not explain why you take that view, or what basis it has in reality. Like I said, making cuts out of necessity, to align expenditure with income, is something forced upon us sometimes and we all have to accept that. Making cuts as a policy of choice, and delighting in doing so, is an entirely different matter.
So when are we going to start doing that at a level that is significant and what are you prepared to sacrifice to achieve that ? It would be lovely if we all were just given everything we needed free at the point of delivery (like Saudi Arabia, assuming you are a Saudi). But that denies the basic economic problem which is that demand is infinite and supply is limited. A fact that yer typical leftie seem to have difficulty understanding.
good lord Pete. You seem to be suggesting that because you don't have sufficient money, you insist that your neighbours give you their money so that you can spend it on their behalf. <MassiveGeneralisation> Socialists think they know how to spend your money more effectively than you can </ MassiveGeneralisation > Your solution is just to spend money that we don't have and steal it from the population by demanding tax increases? No thought to structuring expenditure to minimise the impact on taxpayers? WTF!
An approach often adopted politically, if you are forced to make cuts, is first to draw up a long list of (say) 100 cuts which could potentially be made, each of which would save some amount of expenditure. Second, the items are arranged in order of undesirability, i.e. the harmfulness of each cut. Third, the decision is made how far up the list the cuts have to be taken, to achieve the required level of savings. A different approach is the across-the-board, cut X% off everything, no-sacred-cows way of doing it. Whichever way it is done, inevitably there will be different opinions on the priorities, and much complex political wrangling takes place at each stage of the process both internally and (later) in public. If you really want to get down to specifics, you can pose questions on the lines of: Which should be cut - 10,000 soldiers from the army or 10,000 nurses from the NHS? We could have an infinite number of debates on those sort of questions.
Tinkering at the edges. The deficit is £100-120 billion, approximately a quarter of all government spending, as you very well know. Why is it always a choice between soldiers or nurses, with a few teachers thrown in for good measure. Take a look at the jobs pages in the Guardian for some other ideas.
650 MPs……….lets half them and ask them each to just double the amount of work………..not unreasonable, in keeping with all the other public services and hence there is a massive saving!
The state employs directly about 5-6 million people IIRC. So a fag packet calculation gives an answer to your question of about 1 million people.
ahhhh, takes me all the way back to my second year in Primary School, and short trousers, the last time i heard that simple lecture………... My question, and hence the quote of the earlier thread, was directed towards Johnv, establishing who he was talking about, as part of his case, as opposed to a finger wagging 'lecture'……. thanks anyway…. Tell me again, whats a 'General Election' - apparently Governments sometimes change after one….. wowweee, wonder if i will ever see one - are they like comets?
I was referring to government in its widest sense. Equally I could have used The State. Pete seems to believe that all government spending is good. I disagree. If it was all good and we increased it would it still be good ? If not at which point does it no longer become good ? We could eliminate the deficit by increasing all taxes by 33%. Would that be good ?
Indeed. In these threads, we tend to start off assuming a certain level of basic knowledge. If some poster makes it plain that they are not familiar with the background and the terminology, I am always willing to take the time to provide some basic foundations. If you happen not to need them, TT600, good for you. Feel free to sneer if it makes you feel good.
Eh? Although people use "government" in a range of senses, as I said, you seem to use it your own special sense - which includes people who are not in, and are opposed to, the actual government. I don't think I have ever heard anyone suggesting that the State is the same thing as the government!
No. The reason it would not be good is that suddenly taking such a large amount out of the economy would inevitably have a whole series of adverse macro-economic effects (including reducing spending, saving, investment and employment, among other things). It might even precipitate a major recession. The tax-take is generally in the 35% to 40% range in developed economies, and departing radically from this would be a risky and perilous enterprise. As well as being politically non-feasible, of course.
So you accept that the term 'government' can be used in a range of senses; good. Given that we were referring to spending money, other peoples money at that, and the government spends money on behalf of the State, I think it is a bit pedantic to try to confuse the issue in this way. Incidentally I do not recall suggesting that the government and the State were one and the same, clearly they are not.
Good, we agree on that then. So if, in your world, all government spending is good what about increasing taxes, leaving the deficit as it is, and increasing government spending. Just think of all the extra good work the government could do. People would have less in their pockets to spend but they would have a rosy glow knowing that their sacrifice was being used to help others and indeed themselves also. Would this be a good thing ?
