Labour fudging the definition of debt in order to allow themselves to spend more is actually in some ways a smart move. The general public are of the belief that public debt is very bad when in fact a certain amount of it is very good, especially when the economy is struggling like it is.
Long term though, they are going to have to change the narrative. The Tories have been riding the back of "balancing the books" for too long and to keep lip service to that is playing into their hands.
the other thing is that while the wiser might tell you the government budget doesn't work like a household budget, actually our own household budget hasn't been that dissimilar in the past. when we were hard up, the bills went on the credit card. when we got jobs, it got paid off. that's the sensible way round. not getting your electricity cut off and starving half to death to pay off debts in the expectation of being able to live it up later.
we were just lucky we had such a good credit rating. you know, like the government.
the entire Tory austerity program wasn't just based on the logic of household finances. it was specifically based on the logic of household finances of someone with a rubbish credit rating who doesn't believe they will ever be better off in the future regardless of what they do.
so yeah i kinda get how they conned a lot of working class people into voting for them.
also it's absolutely right to consider student loans as an asset, not a liability. this is money that students owe the government, not the other way around. it was always on the wrong side of the balance sheet. it's not Labour who are now fudging the figures to allow more spending. it was the Tories who were fudging the figures to justify austerity all along.
what you want is for the debt to GDP ratio to be long term stable. that means that you can borrow at the same rate as the economy grows to keep it level. and if you don't do that, what you may find is that GDP goes down faster than the debt. So debt to GDP ratio goes UP. the converse is also true.
this is how the government budget differs from a household budget. because of the feedback mechanism. if i take out a loan it won't get me a payraise. but that's exactly what happens for a government.
@mrsbeanbag actually getting a loan can get you a pay raise, if you invest in the money in yourself. The same is true for government, gdp will only grow if the borrowing is invested.
@ekg yeah it can. career development loans for instance. there wasn't enough space in a toot for all that. pretty much anything the government usually spends money on counts as an investment, though. healthcare, education, transport infrastructure.. as long as they're not, oh i don't know, channelling funds into their mate's offshore accounts through spurious government contracts, to pick a random example
@mrsbeanbag classic exempel of non productive, as in not generating growth, government spending is military spending.
I didn't mean to say you got anything wrong, I just wanted to add too what you said.
@ekg i'm actually in two minds about whether military spending counts as an investment or not. although tbh i don't really approve of it either way.
@mrsbeanbag most studies have the return on investment of less then 1, meaning the economy grow less then what is spent.
Most military spends, not counting salaries, goes to import of equipment. Imports are by definition counted as a decrease in growth.
@ekg yeah i was going to say, as long as they primarily use a domestic arms supplier. which the US largely does i guess. other countries less so. which goes some way to explain something i'm sure.
@mrsbeanbag more importantly net exporters of equipment, count isreal, usa, and a few more, have a positive impact on growth.
Growth is calculated as: private spending + public spending + net foreign investment + net exports.
@ekg true although NATO members are only allowed to buy arms from suppliers in NATO countries. so it's a kind of military-industrial protectionism.
@mrsbeanbag I don't think that's true, but their certainly exists a lot of pressure on members to buy from the alliance.
Both Sweden and Israel, with others, made the call that an independent defence required an domestic arms industry, that is not without reason.
"Companies wishing to be considered as NATO HQ suppliers must be established in NATO member countries."
But maybe "NATO HQ suppliers" is a more specific thing than i thought.
@mrsbeanbag NATO HQ is an office building in Belgium, technically the people that works their. This is going to be true anyway, it would be a long way to ship office supplies from outside the alliance.
@mrsbeanbag I may have described NATO HQ as an office building in Belgium, but after recent expansion it's the third largest office building in the world. After the Octogon, where the Egyptian dod is housed, and the Pentagon where the us dod is taking up space.
@ekg i just looked it up and i now consider it a crime nobody calls it The Big Zipper
@mrsbeanbag I want to point out that NATO have expanded faster then the newly dubbed The Big Zipper, forcing newer members, including Sweden, to send their delegation to nearby buildings instead. Housing military command is a true challenge, requiring some of the most impressive infrastructure we humans build.
@ekg new theory about the purpose of the Tower of Babel just dropped
@ekg God destroys the military headquarters of a vast totalitarian empire. the tabloid press: "God hates it when everyone speaks the same language"
@mrsbeanbag I like the description of the Bible as an tabloid, I think that is an fair assessment of the amount of trust to place in its words.
@ekg some of the source material for the Pentateuch certainly (although it doesn't exactly make out the Tower of Babel to have been good, as vague as it is about the reason for its destruction). the prophets are like when an opinion columnist writes a book. Ecclesiastes is like when your English assignment is rewrite the Epic of Gilgamesh from a different point of view. lamentations are goth poetry. psalms are folk music. the song of songs is basically porn.
@mrsbeanbag I imagine it doesn't help most English speaker accept The King James version uncritically. In Sweden the most recent translation is from this millennium, not that I know if that helps. I have actually never read the Bible, not in hole at least. My most recent experience is YouTube Atheist reading select passages with their unique interpretation, if you remember thats era of YouTube you know what I mean.
@ekg i would be wary of anyone calling themselves "Youtube Atheist" tbh, that in itself is a doctrinal bias right off the bat. not sure how prevalent King James Only is but the NIV is certainly popular among the trendy evangelical youth you get at universities. and i really hate that one even more than the KJV.
oh also the Book of Judges serves largely the same function as cowboy films
@mrsbeanbag the Atheist community on YouTube is thankfully dead now, but it was an misinformation engine. I spent way to much time consuming that uncritically.
What is NIV referring to, might be worth reading about.
@ekg New International Version. it's disturbingly simple-minded in its approach. a good test is to ask one of these people what Leviathan is, and if they say it's a crocodile you sound the QI Klaxon.
@mrsbeanbag after skimming the Wikipedia page, I am shocked shocked I tell you that a morden English language bible isn't based on king James, I guess I still belive some of the misinformation taught by the YouTube Atheists.
@ekg quite a lot of them aren't, there's also updated versions of the KJV that keep the style of the language but correct some of the gross translation errors. a lot of scholars (reliable or otherwise) have gone back to the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek sources over the years, it was a big thing in the 19th century. I actually find the Jehovah's Witness translation not that bad actually, for all its faults. But you might be interested in the Julia Evelina Smith Parker Translation.
@mrsbeanbag "the entire bible unaided [...] translated literally from the original tongues, and was published in 1876" - Wikipedia, what the fuck. That sounds unplausible.
@mrsbeanbag thank you for the recommendation, unfortunately I seem to have an mission and a half to get my hands on a copy.
@mrsbeanbag I appreciate that, but I am as much interested in the artifact as its content.
@ekg the entire thing is online. it really is translated very literally, however.