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Haha, the law of probability says we had to agree on something at some point!
This change over of governments is the first one I've been properly politically conscious for and I'm utterly incredulous at how simple-minded and fickle people are being. Watching the overly simplistic yah-booing over the 5% cut in the top rate of tax was amazing. Facts about revenue generation were out of the window and it was all "I told you Tories hate the poor". I was quietly confident that no matter how much the Tories were getting a drubbing, and rightly so at points, at least Labour were completely irrelevant and no one was taking a word they were saying seriously. But it turns out two years are long enough for rose-tint.
Now, I'm not fan of the Tories either. I don't think anyone really is: the Tories are something you tolerate. But, fuck me, Ed Balls is the poster child for political demagoguery and I can't stand the sight of the creepy, smug fucker. It was only two years ago his lot were in charge of our economy - the good ship Cluster Fuck - and he was First Mate.
Labour ideology and politicking sucks as much dick as the Tories' does - more at the moment, I'd say. But you vote for ideology. That's the whole point of a political party: they're bound by common ideas and vision. There's a twisting of the word going on at the moment in an attempt use it as a pejorative term. The fact is that if you're suddenly surprised that a political party is operating in accordance with everything it's ever stood for, then naive doesn't even begin to cover it.
I'm not claiming that the Labour party would be any less ideological in their tackling of this crisis, just that their ideology would just happen to lead them to the right solution on this occasion.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with having a well thought-out ideology, just insisting that it is automatically the solution to every single problem that occurs during your time in power. Peter Hitchens (who generally supports the Tories) is a big supporter of privatisation of government sectors, for example, but he isn't in favour of it in the case of the train network. And example of someone being able to see past his wider ideology to see that it may not be the solution in all cases. I guess that's the problem with politicians, though. How often do we hear that a party cannot take a particular course of action, not because it would be wrong, but because it would alienate a section of their supporters?
Unless you have a crystal ball you're making assumptions based on your ideology, rather than any certain knowledge. As I was told on my first day of studying A'level economics if you get 100 economists in a room you'll get 100 different opinions and it was about the only thing all economists agree on (and still some of them say its 99 opinions and others say 101). What weight you put on individual economists opinions will depend on your ideology, so I put more weight on people like Tim Morgan, who are anti-stimulus seeing it as unsustainable
Now of course you may be right, but plenty of economists disagree and think that closing the deficit is the only option as increasing spending (or rather as I said increasing it as a faster rate) will only lead to a higher interest payments and any increased amounts of tax generated by increased spending will be more than drowned out by the increased money we're spending on serving our debt.
It's also probably true that Osborne by the cuts may have given Govt enough flexibility to reduce or stop if the Eurozone melts down, without leading to massive interest hikes.
(and when I say cuts, I should caveat by saying we're not talking cuts, we're talking about a slowing of the increase in Government spending.)
As it happens on the control of your own currency being a good thing I am a strong supporter, as of course were the majority of the Tory party. It of course is not only (or indeed main) reason for low interest rates - which are also to do with whether your trusted to pay the money back - Argentinia controls its own currency for example, but its interest costs are above the UK's
But on the why we're not in growth, some general thoughts on why I think the Government strategy is fundamentally right (though I might disagree with some of the specifics)
1) We're dealing with counter-factuals, ie we know what happens under this ecoonomic strategy we don't know what would have happened under Labours. Sure we might be hitting stratospheric levels of growth, but we might equally be flatlining or declining
2) We're not divorced from what's happening with the Euro, the weakness of European economies (and the US and Japan) has a major impact as they remain our biggest trading partners
3) It could well be that pumping more money into the economy produces short term growth, (as it happens I think it would), but thats at a cost that will need to be paid in the future and at a much greater choice - the growth we get now will be outweighed by the costs 10-15 years down the line as we struggle to service debt
4) The UK remains heavily dependent on financial services for tax generation and jobs; this is changing but it isn't going to do overnight
5) Keeping interest rates low, by showing that you are trying to reign in the public finances is massively important - it allows cheap Government borrowing (and the Government makes no bones of the fact that we're only reducing the deficit, not getting rid of it and certainly not paying off debt), reduces the cost of borrowing for private sector companies and as we learnt from the 90s' is massively important to stop houses being repossed (even more important now to keep costs down as another cause of the 'growth' from 1997 to around 2008 was house prices massively outstripping both inflation and more importantly wage growth.
6) Japan has been trying a 'stimulus' programme for years from the mid 90's - it resulted in a Gocvt debt of near 200% and the so-called lost decade
Do you see the deficit as an issue? Even Labour, who have the scantest regard for the relation between tax and spend, agree the deficit needs to be reduced - of course it's like fighting a cloud when you actually try to pin them down on specifics. All parties are in agreement that the U.K. needs to reduce how much it overspends - how they go about it is the disagreement. They all claim their ideology is the solution: the Tories say reduce public spending and cut taxes for business, because that's what they do. Labour say spend some money, usually money it doesn't have, and tax the rich, because that's what it does.