Spring Budget: Tory – and Labour – economics are nonsense
The Conservatives want to cut the civil service again, for no very good reason. But the important part of Jeremy Hunt’s comment on the subject is that he thinks we can have better public services without spending money on them.
Liam Thorp is absolutely right:
Ah yes, spending less money on public services can make public services better
Of course – that’s exactly what we’ve seen over the last 14 years isn’t it… https://t.co/8JFNbfytts
— Liam Thorp (@LiamThorpECHO) March 3, 2024
Cutting funding for public services has not improved them. In fact, they are considerably inferior – across the board – to their efficiency in 2010.
And it seems clear that taking the money away from this useful purpose hasn’t stopped the Tories from spending money like it was going out of fashion:
Tory MP Jeremy Hunt: “Conservative governments spend more wisely”#TrevorPhillips #bbclaurak pic.twitter.com/4XD0BKg2yM
— David (@Zero_4) March 3, 2024
Fury as #Tories wasted £100bn of taxpayers' cash in 4 years since 2019 election https://t.co/c7HOiWjvPL @DailyMirror @BestForBritain
One of our @VoteTrueAndFair policy proposals is for a Parliamentary Budget & Procurement Office to make sure our taxes are being spent properly -…
— Gina Miller (@thatginamiller) March 3, 2024
Only £100 billion? Gary Stevenson reckons it’s eight times as much.
And with the Budget coming up, Hunt also made another outrageous claim that should be blown away as soon as possible:
Jeremy Hunt's Claim Tories Always Aim To Lower Taxes Leaves People Pointing Out The Obvious https://t.co/ACU1Ds5Qy9
— HuffPost UK Politics (@HuffPostUKPol) March 3, 2024
In fact, as the article states:
in the last four years, five different Tory chancellors have pledged to bring taxes down – only for them to rise to a historic level.
In fact, the current tax burden in the UK is the highest since World War 2.
The problem is that the Tories are trying to gaslight us into thinking that national finances are like household budgets – and they aren’t.
Sadly, this thinking appears to have become contagious as Labour’s Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is coming out with the same nonsense:
“The Government should do what any good housewife would do if money was short,” Thatcher.
Now look at Reeves' messaging. pic.twitter.com/L8oXAYFOJ3
— Liverpool Community Independents (@LIndependents) March 3, 2024
Oh, and the media are keen to echo the lie, too – but some of us are debunking it:
Laura Kuennesberg says in an alarmed tone that public debt is "nearly as high as the whole economy".
So?
Many households have debt that is x3 or more their income. It's called a mortgage.
We need to borrow to invest, to grow the economy, not panicking about debt.#bbclaurak
— Andrew Fisher (@FisherAndrew79) March 3, 2024
Bear this in mind:
After WW2, UK debt was 250% of GDP.
How did Labour reduce it?
By SPENDING on homes, NHS, public services…
Economy grew, causing debt to shrink as a fraction of GDP.
Economics is counterintuitive. https://t.co/eCKsfgmyD8
— Marcus Chown (@marcuschown) March 3, 2024
Most debt since WW2 has been racked up by the Conservative not Labour. And, even if you take into consideration that the Conservatives have been in power for longer, they rack up more debt per year than Labour.
But Tories control the media so they can tell you the opposite. https://t.co/gSezsShA35
— Marcus Chown (@marcuschown) March 3, 2024
The simple fact is that money never runs short in an economy like that of the UK, where the government can create as much as it needs.
Money is simply a tool – the lubricant that allows the economy to work by making it easy for us to buy and sell the goods and services that we need.
Government creates money to fund projects that it believes the country needs – or at least, it should. In recent years, the Tories have simply given hundreds of billions of pounds to their rich friends for no good reason at all.
As a result, those rich people have bought up the nation’s assets, making everything more expensive for the rest of us – those least able to afford them. The majority of the people of the UK have been priced out of their own market.
So we now live in a country where everything is phenomenally expensive, and we’re being taxed more than in living memory for services that are rubbish.
And neither the Tories nor Labour intend to do anything about it.
You would have to be insane to give your vote to either of them.
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When the Conservatives have a problem they don’t stop and analyse the issues they react by choosing the nearest off-the-shelf aspect of Tory Dogma which sounds as if it is related.
It doesn’t much matter which belief they pick as all are wrong and inappropriate as solutions for any crisis.
Unfortunately, Labour now works to the same plan backed by its small army of HO workers who have been inculcated with the same useless ideologies.