McDonnell's la la land economics- Don't need no number$
Discussion
PurpleMoonlight said:
Why is it madness?
Looking at it simply.
Say the Government borrows £500bn over say 15 years to buy all the utility companies, They then use the profits of them over the next 15 years to repay the borrowing and interest.
After 15 years we are quits in.
To ignore many of the other issues. Looking at it simply.
Say the Government borrows £500bn over say 15 years to buy all the utility companies, They then use the profits of them over the next 15 years to repay the borrowing and interest.
After 15 years we are quits in.
That does rather assume that a firm in public hands will have exactly the same profits as one in the private sector. One of the reasons for privatization was the large public subsidies needed by many nationalized industries.
Murph7355 said:
What we need to do is stop blaming the Tories and Labour. And start blaming ourselves.
We all want a better NHS, better schools, better police, better roads etc. As long as someone else pays for it.
If a figure I saw on here is correct - that 43% of people pay no income tax - then I don't see any party ever being able to get the magical surplus sorted. Let alone one that will actually allow meaningful pay down of the national debt.
All that said, Gordon Brown was a cretin.
The average person has no idea how demanding the public can be. Chatting to my mate within Highways and the constant requests to investigate "dangerous" roads and demand action that all is unnecessary (speed bumps) you would know why we spend so much. Every time someone writes in you are potentially looking at a couple of hundred pounds to reply. We all want a better NHS, better schools, better police, better roads etc. As long as someone else pays for it.
If a figure I saw on here is correct - that 43% of people pay no income tax - then I don't see any party ever being able to get the magical surplus sorted. Let alone one that will actually allow meaningful pay down of the national debt.
All that said, Gordon Brown was a cretin.
PurpleMoonlight said:
Why is it madness?
Looking at it simply.
Say the Government borrows £500bn over say 15 years to buy all the utility companies, They then use the profits of them over the next 15 years to repay the borrowing and interest.
After 15 years we are quits in.
What profits?Looking at it simply.
Say the Government borrows £500bn over say 15 years to buy all the utility companies, They then use the profits of them over the next 15 years to repay the borrowing and interest.
After 15 years we are quits in.
The reason given to nationalise is to "stop rip off prices. "
That translates to no profit.
Shows how the current bunch in Government are so useless that they don't target McDonnell more and just let him get away with keeping his head down. He's the softest of soft targets and they never even think to have a poke at him.
Last time he was given a financial brief Ken Livingstone had to sack him from the GLC for being utterly useless. Actually that's generous; he fiddled the figures to push his ideas of how things should be rather than accept reality.
Lots of stuff in his background that could be used to bash him with, and never touched. Even the activities from the 70's you'd think would have been questioned at some point given everybody else seems to have been dragged through the mud.
Last time he was given a financial brief Ken Livingstone had to sack him from the GLC for being utterly useless. Actually that's generous; he fiddled the figures to push his ideas of how things should be rather than accept reality.
Lots of stuff in his background that could be used to bash him with, and never touched. Even the activities from the 70's you'd think would have been questioned at some point given everybody else seems to have been dragged through the mud.
JagLover said:
PurpleMoonlight said:
Why is it madness?
Looking at it simply.
Say the Government borrows £500bn over say 15 years to buy all the utility companies, They then use the profits of them over the next 15 years to repay the borrowing and interest.
After 15 years we are quits in.
To ignore many of the other issues. Looking at it simply.
Say the Government borrows £500bn over say 15 years to buy all the utility companies, They then use the profits of them over the next 15 years to repay the borrowing and interest.
After 15 years we are quits in.
That does rather assume that a firm in public hands will have exactly the same profits as one in the private sector. One of the reasons for privatization was the large public subsidies needed by many nationalized industries.
The vast numbers of people shed from those companies over the years, before IT became a major factor I might add, was astonishing, and yet performance (duties and services) didn't become worse.
I would say that one of the biggest problems when dealing with many utilities companies today, is the holdover idea from state ownership days, that they are a law unto themselves, and beholden to none when dealing with the general public.
There is on the other side of the discussion an argument for nationalisation.
The vast levels of unemployment that the country will be facing through automation and improvements to IT over the coming years. Those people will either have to be paid to 'stay home' or given jobs.
However, I would far prefer boiling in oil to having that pack of vicious, envious, disingenuous Marxists in charge of it.
And yet I seem to recall when Corbyn was running to get elected many right-wing posters on here joining the Labour party just to get a vote and then dancing with joy and boasting about making Labour unelectable for 100 years or so.
Those of us who pointed out the folly of this were sneered at.
You reap what you sow.
Those of us who pointed out the folly of this were sneered at.
You reap what you sow.
Some of the infrastructure investment slack could be taken up by the private sector if we stopped gold-plating EU rules on pension funds. There is no doubt that a massive elephant in the room, regarding both productivity and also business investment (including FDI) is the state of the roads. Having hundreds of thousands of people at best, spending big chunks of their respective working days in traffic is dumb, but the drain on the economy every time a major road or motorway is shut because of an accident is ridiculous, almost incalculable.
PurpleMoonlight said:
Why is it madness?
Looking at it simply.
Say the Government borrows £500bn over say 15 years to buy all the utility companies, They then use the profits of them over the next 15 years to repay the borrowing and interest.
After 15 years we are quits in.
What is government's track record of running infrastructure?Looking at it simply.
Say the Government borrows £500bn over say 15 years to buy all the utility companies, They then use the profits of them over the next 15 years to repay the borrowing and interest.
After 15 years we are quits in.
How much profit is actually being made by the current incumbents?
If the end consumer pays just the same as before (presumably the 15yr payback is based on profit figures that are themselves based on the levies to the consumer), what is the point?
We'll simply end up with 2.5tn of debt that cannot be paid back. I'd suggest it would be far better to look to repair the holed/bottomless bucket before we go adding additional complications to it.
CaptainSlow said:
amgmcqueen said:
Yes I do....are you able to answer the question?
Blame it on all the current voters that put the risk of another Labour government closer to reality because they don't like Tory's trying to make spending savings.crankedup said:
God thing imo, hope the Tories manage to pull thier trousers up now. Nothing like a bit of competition to bring out the best, live in hope.
Except that's not how it works."Free money" versus "live within our means" is a no contest to the general public in this country these days. It looked like it might have had a chance 7yrs ago, but it seems we all have very short memories and aren't actually ready for the sort of pain that was always required. At worst we've had "austerity-lite"/"stealth austerity" (eroding wages etc).
BigMon said:
And yet I seem to recall when Corbyn was running to get elected many right-wing posters on here joining the Labour party just to get a vote and then dancing with joy and boasting about making Labour unelectable for 100 years or so.
Those of us who pointed out the folly of this were sneered at.
You reap what you sow.
I must have missed the part where Corbyn became Prime Minister. Those of us who pointed out the folly of this were sneered at.
You reap what you sow.
He remains unelectable
Hearing Ronald McDonnell on R4's Today a few weeks ago was enlightening, because he seems completely flustered when asked to provide figures for things, even approximations of spending plans. And this is the man who would be Chancellor. Really, really worrying that he might have a route to No.11 if the government don't pull their bloody finger out.
And just so we are all using the correct figures
Presently the deficit is £69bn per annum
National Debt in total is £1.6 trillion - or about 80% of GDP per annum
In 2007 it was around 30% of GDP. (it was just above 60% by the election in 2010) IE in three years Brown doubled the National Debt.
Since when we have not achieved a current account surplus, despite "cuts"
All we have achieved is slowing the rate of increase.
To add £500bn to this debt would be essentially a criminal act in my opinion.
Murph7355 said:
crankedup said:
God thing imo, hope the Tories manage to pull thier trousers up now. Nothing like a bit of competition to bring out the best, live in hope.
Except that's not how it works."Free money" versus "live within our means" is a no contest to the general public in this country these days. It looked like it might have had a chance 7yrs ago, but it seems we all have very short memories and aren't actually ready for the sort of pain that was always required. At worst we've had "austerity-lite"/"stealth austerity" (eroding wages etc).
So far as the austerity measures go, perhaps some people have been hit a lot harder than others and are now sick of seeing an increasing wealth gap. Being as our Governments have allowed cheap labour to dominate the working persons wage at pitifully low levels whilst major ompanies boast of increased profits seems to me to present an unbalanced Society. That imbalance, it seems is about to be paid for.
Agree, stealth austerity born by the less well off.
Gargamel said:
And just so we are all using the correct figures
Presently the deficit is £69bn per annum
National Debt in total is £1.6 trillion - or about 80% of GDP per annum
In 2007 it was around 30% of GDP. (it was just above 60% by the election in 2010) IE in three years Brown doubled the National Debt.
Since when we have not achieved a current account surplus, despite "cuts"
All we have achieved is slowing the rate of increase.
To add £500bn to this debt would be essentially a criminal act in my opinion.
Also the interest on the National Debt is around £43 billion a year, rather more than the defence budget.Presently the deficit is £69bn per annum
National Debt in total is £1.6 trillion - or about 80% of GDP per annum
In 2007 it was around 30% of GDP. (it was just above 60% by the election in 2010) IE in three years Brown doubled the National Debt.
Since when we have not achieved a current account surplus, despite "cuts"
All we have achieved is slowing the rate of increase.
To add £500bn to this debt would be essentially a criminal act in my opinion.
Dr Jekyll said:
Gargamel said:
And just so we are all using the correct figures
Presently the deficit is £69bn per annum
National Debt in total is £1.6 trillion - or about 80% of GDP per annum
In 2007 it was around 30% of GDP. (it was just above 60% by the election in 2010) IE in three years Brown doubled the National Debt.
Since when we have not achieved a current account surplus, despite "cuts"
All we have achieved is slowing the rate of increase.
To add £500bn to this debt would be essentially a criminal act in my opinion.
Also the interest on the National Debt is around £43 billion a year, rather more than the defence budget.Presently the deficit is £69bn per annum
National Debt in total is £1.6 trillion - or about 80% of GDP per annum
In 2007 it was around 30% of GDP. (it was just above 60% by the election in 2010) IE in three years Brown doubled the National Debt.
Since when we have not achieved a current account surplus, despite "cuts"
All we have achieved is slowing the rate of increase.
To add £500bn to this debt would be essentially a criminal act in my opinion.
jsf said:
What profits?
The reason given to nationalise is to "stop rip off prices. "
That translates to no profit.
I don't quite see how stopping companies charging rip off prices,The reason given to nationalise is to "stop rip off prices. "
That translates to no profit.
equates to making no profit at all.
Have'nt the Tories , more or less, adopted Labour's proposal to cap energy prices, well
at least it was in their manifesto, for a while.
Tankrizzo said:
London424 said:
There's also a lot of 'off-book' stuff that isn't even factored in...like pensions.
And PFI! God knows what the total liabilities of those contracts are.The Treasury said that future liabilities under PFI total about £242bn (once existing payments are taken into account) and that this figure would shrink to £122bn if it were adjusted for future expected inflation. Nonetheless, details of the contracts compiled by the Treasury make clear that some NHS organisations will end up paying almost 12 times the initial sum over what is usually a 30-year contract.
For example, while the capital cost of rebuilding Calderdale Royal Hospital in Yorkshire is £64.6m, the scheme will end up costing Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust a total of £773.2m. Similarly, the cost of building the new Walsgrave district general hospital in Coventry will jump from an initial £379m to an eventual £4bn.
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