I sincerely hope sweet FA….

So you prefer the economic collapse scenario? We’ll all be starving and penniless, but at least it’ll be fair!

Some top stereotyping going on 😀

Alpin, you wouldn’t say everyone that smoked weed was a stereo-robbing layabout would you?

Why should I pay out for others frivolity?

Why should I pay out for others frivolity?

Good question to ask in normal times. In a deflationary economy though it’s irrelevant, because everyone (well, almost everyone) suffers equally in the great race to the bottom. The only ones who benefit are those who are cash rich and un-leveraged.

Still stands…

Those that live within their means get **** over twice…

If everything bought on tick gets taken back, then fair enough, but that won’t happen, will it?

Then should I get a credit card buy all the things I’ve lusted for over the years but not bought because I don’t want debt hanging over my head now because my debt will be wiped clean?

Why should I pay out for others frivolity?

Of course none of our opinions really matter with 4 years before the next election but it’s probably better the think pragmatically.

It’s an fact the Western Economies are based on Debt Fulled Consumer spending. If your one of the minority who has no debt and saves for big purchases that’s fine. Really it boils down to your financial morality and what helps you sleep at night. I’ve got a mate who is exactly the same, he even keeps a reserve of Gold in a safe in his house. He’s not a wealthy Guy, just very prudent.

Anyway, even if you decided that’s the way you want to handle your finances it doesn’t mean you haven’t benefited from other people spending what they don’t have, your Job no doubt relies on it.

Don’t you live in Germany? I seem to recall they’re pretty anti-borrowing for consumer crap? You’re probably more in-step with Germany than the UK

Cheers DONK,

Never seen that quote before, or heard of Robert Hanlon.

‘Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity’

I’ll throw another one in, ‘why would it be different this time’ Nail Ferguson that one. There was an economic crisis a decade ago, are we happy with how that was dealt with? If not, then ask yourself, is the situation going to be handled differently this time? or are we about to repeat the same mistakes.

Those that live within their means get **** over twice…

Like I said, we need to rethink our entrenched prejudices and instincts. On the surface ‘living within our means’ sounds virtuous, but equally you could argue that if everyone had to do that then there would be no way people could escape poverty. Why should I live within ‘my means’ and be poor when the person with inherited wealth lords it up?

Why should I live within ‘my means’ and be poor when the person with inherited wealth lords it up?

That is another question in itself. Maybe have a think about who we vote for and what kind of society we want to live in.

Never seen that quote before, or heard of Robert Hanlon.

neither had I, if you google him he is “famous” purely for sending that quote into a competition apparently!

Curiously the very similarly named Robert Heinlein (who you might’ve heard of, wrote Starship Troopers etc & who I originally assumed was being referred to) wrote something VERY similar back in the 40s “You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity”

Two really similar quotes from persons with really similar names.

It’s the stuff of science fiction that is.

Or one for the conspiracy theorists.

@TiRed the rest of your post makes sense but this is pure bullshine

Everyone who has suffered economically in this is a hero

A hero? for doing what exactly – and for clarity I am almost certainly one who has due to failed house sale as direct result of lockdown

A hero? for doing what exactly

I think he’s referring to the fact that many people have been asked, and have on the whole agreed, to massively change their behaviour even though it punishes them financially, to safeguard the health and lives of other people they don’t know. One of the few good things to come out of this is the extent to which people have willingly and entusiastically put their own interests aside in favour of the greater good. They couldn’t have done that without the necessary government support, so talk of withdrawing that support risks undoing all the things that have been achieved so far.

I think he’s referring to the fact that many people have been asked, and have on the whole agreed, to massively change their behaviour even though it punishes them financially, to safeguard the health and lives of other people they don’t know

Exactly.

While on a personal level I agree with Alpin on the unfairness, what are the long term consequences of writing off debt:

Mortgage
Credit Cards
Bank Loan
Student Loan

which of these gets the treatment, and how does that affect the likely behaviour of anyone in the future who might be considering home ownership, doing a degree, borrowing to buy a car. And what is the consequence of that?

Two really similar quotes from persons with really similar names.

Pretty sure I was introduced to Hanlon’s razor on here, had to google who/where it originated tho & wiki said Robert Hanlon/joke book story

Or one for the conspiracy theorists.

Make’s you think…

As per AJW on the surface it seems unfair but nose spite face scenario if we all end up in the shit without it. But

which of these gets the treatment, and how does that affect the likely behaviour of anyone in the future

are the gov really going to care about future behaviour? Sounds like the economy has to be saved and there’s less concern about long term ramifications.

what are the long term consequences of writing off debt:

The objective of debt relief and income support is to prevent a deflationary downward spiral. You wouldn’t need to write off debt, but you could suspend it or restructure it into more favourable longer term debt. Stuff like student loans could be written off as they are ‘virtuous’ debts. Mortgages could be frozen at low interest rates, credit card debts suspended and/or restructured until the debtor has the means to repay (which would result in some write-offs). The other option is to give people a one off payment and allow them to choose for themselves how to use it (so called ‘helicopter money’), or boost their incomes via UBI. Or do all of these things.

Everyone who has suffered economically in this is a hero

Spoke to my b-in-l yesterday evening.

He’s £500 down on his usual pay. He now receives 2900 instead of 3400. Hardly going to mean he has to visit a food bank.

And you in the UK, with 80% furlough pay, are doing well. Here in Germany it’s 60%,67% if you have kids. They’re going to up it over time to 80%.

But the shit is, the guy working at BMW earning 120,000k a year gets his 60%, yet the waitress earning 1,500k only gets 60%. Is that fair?

And worth regards to help for the self employed, the man who has a few cars on tick but with only 5k on his account gets hand outs so he can keep financing his cars, whilst me with a bit more on my account (due to my resistance to debt) gets nothing. He needn’t sell one of his cars, but I’m expected to burn through my savings until I’ve nothing left and then I can go to the state with cap in hand.
Unfair?

But the shit is, the guy working at BMW earning 120,000k a year gets his 60%, yet the waitress earning 1,500k only gets 60%. Is that fair?

In UK its max’d at £2.5k per month so Mr bmw would get way less unless Co make up the difference.

Still not getting the hero bit for just complying with current gov laws & regulations 🤔

Stuff like student loans could be written off as they are ‘virtuous’ debts.

I’ve got ~£25k left (about 6% interest) on mine. I could nearly pay that off with what I’ve got waiting in my house deposit fund (at below inflation interest).

I’d be giving the gov. more money than I’d pay in half a decade of income tax; plus then have an extra £180 a month on my salary for ‘leisure spending’ in my local economy.

Would have done so already if it wasn’t for corbyn/momentum rumouring to cancel them.

Any threat that it might be written off means I wont be over paying, as I’d be throwing money away.

So it will hide in a bank account or ISA or premium bond until I either buy a house, or am forced to spend it to feed myself.

Nicely explained dazh,

But I see what you have presented as being three options.

Suspend /restructure debt.
Parachute money. (sorry, helicopter money)
Universal basic income.

I see them as medium term, short term and long term, in that order.

Still not getting the hero bit for just complying with current gov laws & regulations 🤔

Lots of businesses and individuals who were not compelled to cease activity did so, for the benefit of the wider public and the detriment of themselves. Not sure I’d go with hero, but lots of people had a tough choice to make and, perhaps surprisingly, chose society rather than self.

But the shit is, the guy working at BMW earning 120,000k a year gets his 60%, yet the waitress earning 1,500k only gets 60%. Is that fair?

it may not be fair (or it could be, if its paid out of the equivilent of national insurance) – but it is what you want if you want the economy to come out of ‘pause’ in a normal way. If you just paid everyone £1500, the waitress would be likely to continue to spend money as normal, and so the businesses she supports continue after the lockdown in BAU – however all the businesses the rich guy spends money with suddenly get nothing at all as he is stretched to simply service his debt (assume a large mortgage at the very least), and therefore go bust. The intent of the payment is to pause the economy, not to ensure people have a certain lifestyle.

Funny how some people are now worried about fairness when we live in a fundamentally unfair society. I wasn’t happy about the banks being bailed out, but it was necessary so that us plebs could get paid and get money out of our bank accounts. This is much the same, except it’s the people who need bailing out, not financial institutions.

Funny how some people are now worried about fairness when we live in a fundamentally unfair society

+1

I think the issue of fairness is only seems to become a problem when other people get something and you don’t, even if that actually makes things fairer.

Whilst it may have been necessary to bail out the banks a decade back, were you really happy with how they were bailed out? With little or no oversight, leading to an even greater concentration of wealth and power than existed before?

The system failed then because the banks got too big to fail, having used their profits to buy up smaller banks, creating effective monopolies and extracting bonuses and dividends like there’s no tomorrow. (Tomorrow didn’t matter to them, they’d paid themselves against forecasts that projected sun when in fact there was a storm of their own making on the way.)

When it all went tits up it had no effect on them. They then used the bail out money to do exactly the same things as they had done before. Including a lot of stock buy back to fatten their packages. Same for the corporations who are asking for pay outs now, when the going was good they spunked all their profits on bonuses, buy backs and bubbly for the shareholders party. Then they came cap in hand to governments.

There’s a danger of history repeating itself. I agree that this time we need to bail out the people but we should be aware that a lot of the bail out money will go to the same old culprits and is probably already sitting in off shore bank accounts.

Funny how some people are now worried about fairness when we live in a fundamentally unfair society

fair is very much what you make of it.

I’ve got friends of all ages and varying professions (via cycling); and a load of friends of my age and education but vastly varying upbringing (from uni). That’s likely broader than many people’s circle of acquaintances.

However I still dont know anyone who’s a career benefit claimant, anybody living on just state pension with no assets, anyone who’s an upper class “living off their estate” type person.

My judgements will of course be coloured by that.

Take me and my colleague. same approximate age, job, salary. Both childless, cohabiting with partner.
We have almost the same car. Mine, bought cash (second hand). His, bought on finance via bank (second hand).
on some of the suggestions in this thread, he gets a free car, while I’m stuffed. I would be very resentful (to the government, not him) about that. I’d call that unfair.

However if they whack up income tax so they can pay for a decent unemployment package for every redundant hospitality and leisure industry worker I’d call that fair – even though over a few years it would cost me far more than that car ever did.

Em… does this mean I should buy that TVR I’ve always wanted now?

were you really happy with how they were bailed out?

Not at all. But without it things would have been very much worse. Same goes this time. There’s no perfect way to bail out an economy. There will be winners and losers as always but it is necessary. I don’t hold much hope that it’ll happen, especially with the tories and Trump at the helm. I think this time the collapse will happen, and we’ll still be recovering from it for decades. They’ve done the bare minimum and so far it’s been enough, but they show zero appetite for doing what’s required from this point forward and naively think we can all just go back to work and pick up where we left off.

Meh, nothing will change, printing money has consequences, it’ll devalue our currency, we’re in connected world. If it was easy every populist government across the globe would be doing it.

We’re in for a big recession, proper austerity (will make the last 10 years look bountiful), and we’ll make it even worse by forging ahead with Brexit.

UBI, no chance most of the population (not just those on higher incomes) won’t want it, we’re a very competitive society at the moment.

Student loans are a time bomb waiting to go off, in the next 5 years many will come to full term without having been paid off, that’s a lot of money to be written off. The interest rate is terrible on more recent loans.

it’ll devalue our currency

And deflation and depression won’t? I’m sure we’ll all be able to take great pride in the value of the pound when we’re losing our jobs and seeing our pensions and saving evaporate.

We’re in for a big recession, proper austerity

A recession yes, but not austerity I reckon. Not if the tories want to get elected again that is. We’ll see MMT by the back door without them really admitting it. The money tree will be in overdrive and the government will pretend it doesn’t exist by hiding it behind convoluted and opaque mechanisms like quantitative easing which the voters don’t understand. And then they’ll take credit for it by falsely claiming they fixed the economy with their usual prudent and responsible measures which only the tories can be trusted to enact.

A recession yes, but not austerity I reckon. Not if the tories want to get elected again that is.

This. Boris is going to be spending money like water in the next four years in a gamble to get the economy going and win the next election. Any government would.

Then we’re going to have Labour offering themselves as the party of fiscal prudence and the next election is going like 2010 with every party promising to get a grip on debt/spending.

I can’t see any other way it can go. There just won’t be a gap for Labour to offer themselves as the “more spendy” party.

Labour’s counter to that should be “look, the tories now admit it’s OK to spend money, but they’re spending it on the wrong things”

Labour’s counter to that should be “look, the tories now admit it’s OK to spend money, but they’re spending it on the wrong things”

We’re going to have eye watering debt and a global recession/depression, there won’t be a list of attractive options, it will be a case of borrow + get whatever tax revenue we can get away to spend in areas that provide CPR for the economy.

Arguing to stop spending on stuff that might help the economy and spend it on stuff that won’t isn’t going to win votes.

I’m tempted to max out the credit card on an advance, take a big loan and get mrs_oab to save the cash for me.
If this credit wiping thing happens I’m quids in. If it doesn’t, I can repay or live off the wedge for a while.
Win. Win. Win.

Whilst it may have been necessary to bail out the banks a decade back, were you really happy with how they were bailed out? With little or no oversight, leading to an even greater concentration of wealth and power than existed before?

RBS simply tore the piss out of it.

The very day they announced the Bail Out, our useless CEO stood in front of the cameras on the News at 10 and said words to the effect of “now we’ve be given liquidity we are making £1bn worth of fairly priced loans and other financial facilities to small and medium sized business to end the credit crunch”.

I was amazed, I was an Account Manager for a sub brand called Lombard, we provided secured loans and faculties for business, basically any loan for a business from RBS, NatWest our Coutts that wasn’t a cash loan came via us. We financed everything from Shop Racking, to Printing Presses and Aircraft. In the months before we’d had our underwriting authority removed and basically couldn’t lend unless it was high rate and completely safe, we thought “well this is great, off we go again, we’ll drag this bank out of the shit”. What actually happened was they made 50% of us redundant, our redundancy terms were fantastic, 3 weeks per year served, 3 months gardening leave, etc etc etc. They basically took the bailout money to clear the Ambro nightmare and pay the redundancy costs. They’ve been running it down ever since. The Dept I worked in had about 1000 managers nationally and about the same in admin / support / management. It’s 12 people now, 1 rep per regional office.

I’ll not make any predictions about what path the government will take, I’m not sure anyone really has an idea of what the economy will look like in 3 months time let alone a year from now.

Heading out of lockdown feels even more precarious than heading in. Were witnessing the same confusing messaging from the gov’t that we saw at the beginning of the crisis. The lack of guidance is demoralizing and will be a hindrance in building confidence for business and public alike.

My feelimg that there will be a public awakening of some sort, emerging from a landscape similar to the Ballardian nightmare that dazh describes. Issues surrounding corporate greed, taxation, tax havens etc will boil over. It won’t be led by the usual suspects or political groups, it won’t be Antifa, it’ll be Aunty Fi. it’ll be the nurses and healthcare workers suffering from PTSD, shopworkers and warehouse staff along with the millions of recently unemployed.

If the Brexit mob thought they could shout the loudest they haven’t seen anything yet. I’m hoping that nationalism is a busted flush, it might not go quietly but it will go meekly. (I know thats a bold prediction but I’ve said it now)

Any assumption that the usual Tory Labour hegemony will see it through to 2024 is exactly that, an assumption.

Sorry for all the doom and gloom. Don’t worry, it’ll be just like the 70’s, strikes and tea lights, three day weeks and carry on camping.

I’ve got a mate who is exactly the same, he even keeps a reserve of Gold in a safe in his house. He’s not a wealthy Guy, just very prudent.

Doesn’t sound prudent to me. What’s he going to do with that when he needs cash? Pop it in his rucksack and head off down to the local gold dealer? Sod that.

Then should I get a credit card buy all the things I’ve lusted for over the years but not bought because I don’t want debt hanging over my head now because my debt will be wiped clean?

Not everyone with credit card debt has spunked it all up the wall. Quite a few people use them to stay alive, and end up being unable to shift them. And as for fairness – when is society ever fair? I could go on all day about how the rich get to **** everyone over, but everyone seems to accept that particular bit of unfairness without much bother.