Has the deficit got smaller under the Tories?

This is just a tax, you end up paying a bigger mobile phone bill as the companies need to recoup their expenditure.

Prices are set on competition levels, so just depends on what they are able to charge, some reduction in profit probably.

wobbliscott – Member

Over the last 3 years the deficit has been reduced by 56 billion, which is not a ‘Small bit’ as some have described it. Whilst at the same time delivering some economic stability and small level of growth

Course, a lot of people believe that UK austerity has handicapped the recovery, and that the consequent GDP and revenue loss has impacted the deficit.

… and for me a successful country is about finances, it’s about how well it serves the needs and wants of the population that matters

Finances are a means not and end, even GO argues this albeit somewhat unconvincingly in my view.

But if we most, look at debt in real terms and as % of GDP since WW2. The levels of borrowing and investment to rebuild after the war were huge, but up to late 60s was a much more sustained period of growth than subsequently, but also public spending increased massively – NHS and welfare state, raising schoool leaving age etc. But, I guess there was literally a country to rebuild.

Ps apologies for spelling, I couldn’t find my bins

….. is not about finances….!

I really need to find my glasses

Course, a lot of people believe that UK austerity has handicapped the recovery, and that the consequent GDP and revenue loss has impacted the deficit.

Well, the natural thing to do there would be to compare us with neighbouring countries with broadly similar economies that didn’t follow a similar austerity programme.

Yep, find a country that had a similiar economy beforehand and pursued similiar policies throughout, but then didn’t bring in harsh austerity early… Good luck with that!

Well, the natural thing to do there would be to compare us with neighbouring countries with broadly similar economies that didn’t follow a similar austerity programme.

Choose countries that fit the argument you are making and then use those 😮

… as I said there are plenty of very well informed commentators who think austerity has been a hinderance to growth and others who argue the opposite. They tend to draw on theory and history. I’m not sure some half arsed national comparisons on here is going to swing the argument either way…

Well, the natural thing to do there would be to compare us with neighbouring countries with broadly similar economies that didn’t follow a similar austerity programme.

germany?

Germany

Makes lots of useful things

Its are exports uniquely protected from becoming too expensive by the Euro

Germany pro or anti austerity? Doing better or worse than UK?

Anti austerity article talks about Germany forcing austerity on rest of Europe and killing recovery.

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/joseph-e–stiglitz-wonders-why-eu-leaders-are-nursing-a-dead-theory

This is just a tax, you end up paying a bigger mobile phone bill as the companies need to recoup their expenditure.

You can’t have it both ways. The loss to the treasury (if we’d have held onto the gold) was about £3.3Bn, now as it happens the treasury did buy the long term foreign currency bonds that they planned to do (just not as many 🙂 ) and they did do quite well up to about 2008 (funnily enough), so the ‘loss’ could have been worse. The 3G auction raised £22Bn over it’s expected price. Balancing out the two, ‘we’ came out of it pretty well, admittedly no thanks to Brown but I doubt a Tory CotE would have fared any better.

germany

the fourth-largest by nominal GDP in the world, and fifth by GDP (PPP).

agriculture: 0.8%,
industry: 28%,
services: 71.2% (2012 est.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Germany

uk

world’s sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and eighth-largest by purchasing power parity.

Agriculture: 0.7%
Construction: 6.3%
Production: 15.2%
Services: 77.8% (2013 est.)

was tring to think of a similar sized country with a dominant financial services sector
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_Kingdom

just shows the how hard it is to compare 2 countries!

Prices are set on competition levels, so just depends on what they are able to charge, some reduction in profit probably.

This is fine and dandy, but when everyone in market buys one, the pressure on prices is less present – the point being tax at a corporate level is either a tax on shareholders, employees or consumers – someone has to lose out when a company spunks a load of cash to a government. In this case it probably caused a few companies to go bust – so shareholders lost out – but also reduced competition. Some argue it was responsible for the telecoms crash which had a knock on effect to the whole economy. The point being it raises money for the government but there is a substantial cost which is shared ultimately between the stakeholders and maybe in this case more widely.

You can’t have it both ways. The loss to the treasury (if we’d have held onto the gold) was about £3.3Bn, now as it happens the treasury did buy the long term foreign currency bonds that they planned to do (just not as many ) and they did do quite well up to about 2008 (funnily enough), so the ‘loss’ could have been worse. The 3G auction raised £22Bn over it’s expected price. Balancing out the two, ‘we’ came out of it pretty well, admittedly no thanks to Brown but I doubt a Tory CotE would have fared any better.

I’m not – you are comparing apples and oranges – one (gold) is a matter of asset allocation – the other (3G) is the sale of an asset, the future cost of which will be borne as noted above.