It is if you're in the boom part of the cycle and have growth anyway, and then have money aside to spend when recession hits to encourage growth and soften the blow.

You're the guy that couldn't add up the cost of the university fees policy right? Makes sense.

Glad to hear that. I'm trying to have the debate, but the established view by the majority here appears to be that fiscal responsibility is unnecessary and austerity is an excuse for Tories to be evil to the poor.

Where do you stand on borrowing to renationalise the railways (among other things)?

I agree. I do think the tax system needs some reform as well, there's too many bands as thresholds for things like child benefit don't tie in with the tax bands, so you end up with some areas where the marginal rate is ridiculous. Personally I think it would be fairer if married couples could share tax allowances too, or maybe as an alternative make childcare tax free to help parents go back to work.

Not loose wording - just lack of understanding.No one believes we can.

Jecross again changing the goalposts,not understanding posts and not getting the point.
The US invested their way out of the slump - trading growth for debt (67% pre crash) which topped at 103% ratio pre Trump - with record levels of employment and confidence in the economy and an improved infrastructure (proven to help growth)
We've seen austerity take us from 50% to 90% over the same term (a greater proportional increase) with worryingly low levels of growth,real term wages falling,losing our AAA rating and no infrastructure investment.
Now tell me which country is better placed to deal with their deficit?

Your entire line of thought was based on

which is simply incorrect.
Frightening that someone who offered to take on Sklansky in a math SAT can't interpret a graph.

How is the 2016 number post Trump? He took office in 2017 and the election was November 2016. You can't just delete it.

And I'm the one who can't interpret a graph? Stop falsely selecting data to try to make your point because the expert book your beliefs are based on was written in 2015.

It's certainly not pre trump is it? Even if we take the 106% it's still far better.
I won't use your "loose wording" excuse.
That aside it doesn't detract from the rest of my post.
The US is in a far better post crash position than the UK.
One invested and the other implemented a policy historically proven to fail.
I'm still waiting for you to show why we can't run a deficit forever.
You're "loose wording" excuse doesn't cover "and we shouldn't have been running one pre financial crisis." Or are you claiming we were running "an increasing unbounded debt to GDP ratio" pre crash?


Until you can show any case at all for austerity we should just move on rather than get bogged down by your pedantry.

8% lead for Labour and now ahead with every age group apart from the over 65s
How do you like them onions?

The problem with running a surplus is it feels a great idea in principle but not all economies can do it like it's impossible anyway mathmaticaly.
Also it depends structurally how they are built.
Someone like Germany for example who are an export based economy it makes sense.
For import based economies like Greece it's impossible to run a surplus they literally have nothing to export really.

What's interesting is that video that was posted suggested that it's fine to run a deficit as long as debt to GDP ratio is going down and you make cuts when the economy is in boom. Classic Keynes economics essentially.

Precisely what you were saying jeccross but ironically you dismissed what was being said (or more likely didn't watch it)

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Of course 2016 was pre trump, the election was in November and he took over in January 2017, 2016 was in the book then.

Your argument was that the US spent more than us and that they have done better in terms of GDP to debt, and the data clearly does not show that. Are you now moving on to "well they're clearly in a better position anyway despite that"? If so, then I think you need to justify that.

I've already been clear on the deficit point, I concede that you could run a deficit forever, if you have the GDP growth to offset the borrowing keeping the ratio down. This isn't what's happening in the US at the moment though.

Interesting that you want to move on now you're struggling and you've gone back to partisanist "banter". I think we exhausted your expertise a while ago though so lets move on.

I didn't watch it, I am already familiar with Keynes. Maybe that was my error - I should have watched it to reference the parts that made my point, but I didn't have access to sound when it came up.

It's a good talk, but I'd have been far more impressed if he'd written his book in 2010.

So is more spending always better than less spending? Or is it probably a curve.

Given this is probably the lest austere period that has ever been labelled 'austerity' (typical millenials ) is the current view that all prior periods of austerity, and most periods of business as usual, would benefit from more spending?

I'm not sure that's an economic consensus.

If there were ever a way to prove it, my money would be on the minimum wage turning out to have caused more 'poverty' (1st world problems-style, not real poverty) than government spending decisions.

Essentially wages = benefits, benefits being funded from a proportion of wages. Eg. unemployment benefit is security to offset the fluctuations in the labour market. Wage decline mirrors social security decline, so I don't think it is worth counterposing them.

??
Yes it does.
Their GDP to debt ratio increased less than ours.
During this period they also spent massively on infrastructure and had a higher growth rate than us.
50 to 90 UK (an 80% increase) under austerity compared to 67 to 106 (54% increase) US with investment (which accounts for some of the rise).
During this period (since they adopted investment and us austerity)they've had sustained growth averaging over 2% and we've averaged a bit over 0.5% mostly fuelled by an enormous increase in personal debt.


Good to see that you've conceded that the building block of your entire line of thought was fallacious though.

Again please show us brainwashed lefties any evidence at all in whatever form you wish that austerity works.

2010



As us lefties harp on about, "austerity" is simply a cover for the biggest redistribution of wealth from the many to the few in modern history.
Austerity does not get you out of a slump - it puts you into risk of recession.
Cuts should only be made in a boom,
The two books and video I posted pages ago explain why but were dismissed.
I've yet to see a single valid justification for austerity in this thread and strongly believe those posters originally arguing for austerity no longer believe in it themselves.

Yes lots of people made this argument in 2010, and of course now these people are getting plenty of airtime as hindsight has seen them proven correct - at least to a point.

If Labour had won in 2010, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have made the cuts the Tories have. Whether they would have invested wisely enough that GDP would have risen enough to cover the lack of cuts and reduce the deficit by £100bn.... well, I'll leave that to the economists to ponder, now they are blessed with the benefit of hindsight

See video above

Seriously, just stop quoting misleading figures to back up your poor arguments.

Why the **** are you looking back to 2008 (apart from cos it makes your ratios work?) Austerity started in 2010 in the UK (and probably didn't kick in to impact figures till 2011). Labour ran the 2010 election campaign on spend to encourage growth.

2008 to 2010 is the impact of the crisis, it's meaningless in this argument. Looking at 2010 to 2016 the increases are about 16/17% for both and looking back to 2011 it's 9/10% for both.

Noone said that the impact should come through over the same period though, the UK chart shows a clearly reducing rate of change, but the US chart shows a worrying 5% spike last year. It's quite possible the UK change will look better next year.

This is showing no meaningful difference between the UK and US, so stop claiming it is.

^ excellent clip. Most of us have known this but it's always good when an academic says it.

Awesome.

Thats not what happened there or you were watching something else.

He wasn't comparing a household to an economy.

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First UK austerity measures started 2008 - the coalition ramped it up in 2010
This isn't labour v tory - it's austerity v anti austerity
Obama's stimulus package started Feb 2009
So let's take 2009 as base year
UK increase 64.5 - 89.3 or 38%
US increase 82.4 - 106.1 or 29%
They've had much higher growth than us and invested 100's of billions into infrastructure.


As I've stated I've yet to see a single valid justification for austerity in this thread and strongly believe those posters originally arguing for austerity no longer believe in it themselves.

Please post some figures,graphs,cartoons,articles, videos in fact post anything at all to back the case that austerity is working for us or anyone else for that matter.
You can't.
Sh@t or get off the pot.

I've been clear, we didn't make cuts in the boom, so the only option is to make them in the recession.

You've clearly never looked for any evidence yourself, because your only aim here is to confirm your preheld view.

Watching/reading and understanding are two different things - a common theme with elrazor and jecross.

Your own figures are the evidence. You just aren't willing to look at them correctly. Pretty sure we're at the end of line on this one - you can go back to how I'm "entitled" if you like, would love to hear the logic behind that.

Nonsense - please give your reasoning

I've looked high and low for evidence - just can't find any.
Please point us to some.

I'm bored of pointing out the obvious to you. Go back to my post on the increase in debt to GDP from 2001 to the crisis. Or just look at the graphs you incorrectly described that I had to post to correct you.

Your evidence for austerity failing is what's being disputed, and you aren't doing a good job of defending it.