The topic under discussion related to that minority of people who go to live and work (and possibly claim benefits) in other member states, not to the majority who remain in their home states. It is true that it '... fails to address the economics of those who don't go and work in another member state.' So what? Since you did not make any point at all about those people (not even a foolish one), obviously no response was required. That is why I did not bother to reply. If you really have something to say about that category of people, please feel free to go ahead and say it. I might respond, if you have a point to make; and I might agree with you, if it's a sensible one.
Economist...An economist is someone who’s pretty good with numbers but who doesn’t have the personality to be an accountant.
I'm not an economist but I can see the fatal flaw in this: "You rightly state the level of national debt but as a figure this is useless without the corresponding GNP figures which are around 2.3 Trillion, also growing. The service cost of that debt is around 3% of GNP. If you compare it to household income it's as if you had a combined mortgage, credit card and bank debt of £100k but an income of £50k, it actually means you're in a relatively comfortable position" No, bearing in mind the fact that the UK has a horrific budget deficit (as well as a huge debt, increasing as a result of the deficit), the hypothetical "household" with its income of £50K, is spending £60K every year, meaning it has to borrow an extra £10K per year. This makes the debt that much larger all the time - the fact that the interest rate on the debt, for now, is low, is merely helpful, it does not mean that the household will not eventually go bankrupt!
No, the hypothetical household uses it's expected income in the future to pay for stuff now. You don't declare bankruptcy if you buy a new car (or bike, we are on a ducati forum after all :wink before you clear your mortgage.
I'm not an economist but I have run a couple of businesses and studied some basic accountancy on my management training course at Cranfield Uni, enough to understand and read a P&L account. Not a huge amount but enough to know not to believe the press when they start pulling numbers out of their arse.
Confusion between debt and deficit I think. It's OK to have multiple debts if you are able to service them, but the UK is effectively using its credit card to pay some of the mortgage and car loan interest! Try telling a bank that you want to borrow more money to help with the fact that you can't keep up with the interest on the previous loans, after taking other expenditure into account.... A small amount of this behaviour is more normal for a country (which can sell bonds, and even keep interest rates on those bonds artificially low by buying its own bonds back using a computer) than it is for a household, but you cannot get away with it indefinitely.
That is only one side of the equation, those who stay at home are the other side and therefore cannot be ignored. With the wide range of benefits available across the EU there are clear advantages to be gained by some with a corresponding increase in costs for others. The cost benefit analysis for the UK is much worse for a member of the UK working abroad than it is for a Bulgarian. Clearly you think this is a price worth paying, which is your right, but I and quite a few others here would disagree.
That is perfectly OK assuming a rising income, in the case of a household, or rising GNP, in the case of a nation. There comes a time in most households when earnings peak and when that happens some difficult choices have to be made. If there is significant debt at that time those choices become much harder. I remain to be convinced that any projected rise in GNP for the UK and the EU justifies the current level of expenditure funded by debt. We are slowly but surely falling into a black hole of debt that will be very difficult to climb out of, and if interest rates rise that problem will be made worse. Historically GNP has risen slowly, if at all, and it has only been the last two centuries when GNP has increased dramatically due to the industrial revolution and its aftermath. There is a school of thought that thinks this is unlikely to continue.
We are naturally protected to a degree due to our geographic position. It's not cheap to drive from Romania to the UK, so without a job Italy is a considerably cheaper option
Forgive me for making a point already made more than once before, but "debt" does not exist in a vacuum - there are two sides to it. Every debt that someone owes is also an asset that someone else owns. Both sovereign debts and personal debts are also assets, on the other side of the balance sheet. The concept of an ever-increasing black hole of debt does not make any sense, unless you also take into account the corresponding ever-increasing mountain of assets.
That's an actuary. "An actuary is someone who’s pretty good with numbers but who doesn’t have the personality to be an accountant."
As the volume of assets / debt increases interest needs to be paid requiring increasing GNP/GDP, it is a system that requires constantly increasing input. The question is whether the economy can increase indefinitely or whether there are limits. Also the value of that asset / debt depends upon the ability of it to be realised / paid. There seems to be a growing acceptance that ever paying off that debt or the assets being realised is increasingly unlikely and a new paradigm is emerging. So the question then becomes what is the value and point of holding assets that can never be realised ? So we have to not panic and continue to believe. In the meantime those holding assets, mainly bonds, still require interest paying. Hence the rich are getting richer, the poor will always be poor and the middle is being squeezed.
An economist is someone who is very good at explaining the past but very poor at predicting the future.
Unfortunately not all debts and assets are equal. Take sub prime mortgages for example. There is also a big difference between a debt such as a mortgage(sub prime apart) and a debt to service a loan .Another example is the debt Woolworths owed its suppliers when they went pop. I forget the exact payout but the creditors were not paid in full so the assets did not match the value of the debt. Nothing to do with benefit tourism but there you go.
Good point. Some debts become bad debts, and have to be written off - they become losses. Most debts are not and never will be bad. The £1.3 Trillion UK national debt that was mentioned earlier, for example, is not a bad debt - it corresponds to good assets as I said.
Did someone mention 'rivers of blood'?! BBC News - Newspaper review: Storm warnings and 'rivers of blood'
theres definately a shortage of quality romanian palm-readers. the last fecker I seen at the fairground said id be happily married and surrounded by wealth. she got the surrounded by wealth bit right...every fecker I walk past is richer than me. Don't mention the divorce
