We're fucked! Goodbye, cruel world. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jun/29/budget-job-losses-unemployment-austerity So Osbourne and his 'sensible' budget is going to remove hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs and... hundreds of thousands of private sector ones! Great. That's not quite the 'private sector growing, released from the shackles of state waste and bureaucracy' is it? Who's got the revolver?
^Youd have to be an idiot to not be surprised by this. Given how many private sector companies are reliant on the public sector for contracts and service agreements, this was always going to haapen. Shedding some public jobs and budget is easy enough to do, taking account of the jobs which will be lost which were reliant on the state is quite another.
Oh, I'm not surprised. I'm just surprised that it took over a week for someone to call Georgie boy on his bullshit. The depressive effect of laying off thousands of public sector workers is one thing but there's scant admission of the knock on effect for all the people servicing the sector or being commissioned by them.
You guys were about to lose your credit rating status, making all additional funds borrowed by the government much more expensive. Sooner or later the piper comes calling. But I guess it's more humane to spend more now so your grandkids are the ones that get hit. Fiscal responsibility is SOOO passe. LOL. Tell you what, we'll send you Obama and our congress, we'll take a guy who can actually count. It's a win-win!
I'm not so sure we were about to lose our credit rating actually. Especially since no-one is proposing doing nothing about balancing the books. The argument has long been about how much to cut.
So its fiscally responsible to cut 1.3 million jobs, therefore reducing the tax bill considerably whilst at the same time increasing the benefit bill massively?
Actually, yes it is. Those jobs were economically unsound, as demonstrated by the fact that they can disappear because of the government no longer backing them up artificially. The adjustment will be hard. That's why so many people do not want it. They much prefer short-term ease, even if it will only make the situation worse in the long run. Nevertheless, once that adjustment is made, the economy will be much stronger, because (unless the government caves in to the public pressure to "make it easy now and who cares about tomorrow!") once people are employed again, there will be a larger percent of them involved in ecomically sound jobs. That means jobs that are producing useful goods and services, and "useful" means goods and services that people want bad enough to pay the price the people performing the work want. As long as jobs are "protected" artificially by the government employing (public sector) or paying (private sector) people to do things that don't need to be done, the whole economy is weakened more and more. But as soon as steps are taken to correct that error, the political left cries out: "We're done for!" That kind of short-sightedness is what is destroying the world economy right now. Those who aren't willing to face the difficult years of straightening it out, by cutting economically unsound public-spending-based jobs (whether those jobs are themselves in the public or private sectors), will be the first ones to wail in anguish that "The government ought to do something!" when it all starts to crash down. But since they are the first ones to weep and whine when the government does do something, the only logical conclusion is to ignore them. They are about like a homeowner whose house is on fire, complaining to the firemen that they shouldn't use so much water because they're going to make a mess of all the furniture...
I wouldnt say a job is always unsound just because the government has the ability to cut it, or by cutting it we lose associated private sector jobs...
Of course but, again, the question is over how much to cut and when. Not whether there is any action needed at all. To pretend that 'the left' simply want no cuts is facile.
Well those positions are either helpful to the over all economy or not. If they are not, you don't gain anything by hanging on to them any longer then it takes to eliminate them. No matter how severe the short term pain is, getting rid of poisonous aspects of your economy and budget is what is best in the long run. So the answer is to cut however much is necessary, or in this case, the government jobs and contracts that aren't necessary as soon as possible. Anything short of that is just delaying the inevitable at risk of further pain. Take a drug addict. What does he gain from cutting his substance abuse by a half or a third? He's still poisoning himself, just at a slower rate. He doesn't begin to heal until he stops poisioning himself completely.
^^Aye. Half-ass measures will only lead to temporary cutbacks, with a dramatic increase in spending as soon as the smallest hint of a recovery (phantom or not) is detected. Cold turkey is the best way to go.
Is the same document that says there will be a net increase of 1.2 million jobs? Why, yes, yes it is! Would this be Daily Mail-esque, thoroughly-biased, gutter press journalism? Why yes, yes it is!
Is there another solution? This is what you get for insensible spend, spend, spent tactics. Now deal with the consequences.
None that the deficit fetishists are willing to listen to. And most of the "spend spend spend" was to bail out the banks, let's not forget. The bill for their binge is now being handed to the public.
Oh, I'll also add the very same report also states that the public sector job losses under Labours would be 150,000 higher. And that it includes numbers from the Future Jobs Fund. But yay for partisan tribalism and all that.
Yes, because they think there are going to be 2.5 million new jobs created. And not a lot of people believe them!
Indeed. Power, especially of the big and corrupt government kind, is more addicting than drugs by several orders of magnitude.
Which has little to do with this, countries can spend as they like as long as the market feels they're capable of repaying. When you have a hefty structural deficit however, the parties over. When you're up to your eyeballs in national debt as well, the parties not only over, but someone has puked all over the carpet, pissed in the plants and left suspicious stains on the back of the sofa.
Yet they believe the job losses in the exact same report? Should I ask why you choose to believe one and not the other? And even giving a 50% margin of error, suddenly the Big Scary Number isn't quite that big, or scary.
You don't manage a drug addiction. You suffer from it until it kills you or you get off your addiction. Managing an economy is not the same as maintaining your own personal finances, it's about having the power to dictate every one elses and power is one of the most addictive drugs there is.
Reading Iain Dale again? I don't think it is unreasonable to believe one and not the other because it is much easier to accurately estimate the number of jobs you are going to get rid of - especially the ones in the public sector - than it is to work out how many you will create. And the major disputes are with the 2.5 million jobs created figure. Do you have any idea how optimistic that prediction is?
Fine, ignore the walls burning down around you. I suggest you make lots of friends who will let you cut behind them at the bread and cheese line.
Standard scaremongering. Anyway, on that basis - given that Obama continues to spend - I presume the cheese line will be longest with you guys?
