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| l3v1ck wrote: Have I read that correctly? They're only committing not to borrow for day to day spending, but can borrow year after year after year for 'investment'. | |
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Depends I suppose. if they're borrowing for investment do they have to have a specific infrastructure project to put the money into first? (genuinely don't know what the suggested 'rules' are).
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| l3v1ck wrote: In other words they aren't planning to balance the books at all? | |
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Define 'balance the books' in the situation where you can print money.
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| l3v1ck wrote: A bit like Gordon Brown saying he'd balance the books over an economic cycle, but he never stopped borrowing and when we got to the downturn post of the cycle we were screwed. | |
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Or like George Osborne, who promised to eliminate the deficit by 2015. Sorry.. he meant 2020. The difference in the past is most chancellors haven't been dumb enough to announce targets at all, since the evidence suggests the economy does pretty much what the hell it likes anyway regardless of what they do. Brown and Osborne are both arrogant enough to believe they actually do run things, when in fact they're steering a boat down some rapids. They can affect it a bit, but it's pretty much always going where it's going.
When a chancellor can do is affect which bits of society are supported by the state and which aren't.
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| l3v1ck wrote: If labour want to be taken seriously (and trash the NHS ruining Tories at the next election) they need to show they can balance the books. People will accept tax rises, but they won't accept never ending borrowing any more. | |
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"People' in general have no idea how government finances actually even work. So we're going to go basically on a position of pandering to total ignorance. Joy!