The shame of Austerity Britain

This isn’t some extreme left wing economic model. It’s mainstream economic theory and has been used to manage economies around the world since the 1930s.
It started in the US with ‘The New Deal” to boost the economy after the Great Depression.
It has been used recently very successfully by Japan to pull themselves out of a decade-long recession.

Raising taxation is usually used by the Treasury to restrict economic growth not stimulate it. If growth and inflation are becoming out of control, fiscal policy could be used to increase taxes taking some money out of an overheating economy.

Tax rises are not useful for stimulating the economy.

So to boost an economy and create jobs, investment funded from borrowing would be used to pump prime a low growth economy.

When an economy is in a state where growth is at a rate that is getting out of control (causing inflation and asset bubbles), contractionary fiscal policy can be used to rein it in to a more sustainable level. ... In order to eliminate this inflationary gap a government may reduce government spending and increase taxes.
economics.fundamentalfinance.com/fiscal-policy.php

It might seem contradictory to some, but injecting Government money into a low growth economy is a good way to to give it a boost. Taxation can be increased to restrict growth when inflation is getting out of hand.

For the avoidance of doubt, I know full well that there are many deserving of a better NHS/schools system et al and I do not necessarily believe everything published in newspapers, however, I cited only a few instances in the pursuit of brevity. One would have to be a moron to believe every published article.

I totally agree with charboy

What about those waiting over long times for desperately needed operations. elderly people stuck in hospital because no care home will take them because social services will not pay enough for their care? Care homes shutting for the same reason, Seriously ill people unable to get an appointment with their GPs for weeks, Disabled people being unable to pay for the help they need. Children in oversized classes, schools dismissing staff because they cannot afford to pay them.

Anyone can think of people they do not want to help and read papers that give the impression that every benefit recipient is undeserving, Such selfish indifference to the suffering of many people, just because a few are on the make,

It is the story of the Good Samaritan played out in modern dress.

Jane10
I'm not.

Many street sleepers, indeed, I'd venture a guess as high as 65% of them, actually PREFER it to the restrictions of supervised accomodation or living alone in a bedsit. For many, their only friends are other street sleepers and, un a weird way, they look after each other like a loose family arrangement.
They can and do make much more money than they would receive in benefits and don't have to pay for utilities etc. Some earn £200 pd which goes to feed their habits.
Some DO have living arrangements but choose to beg and, when they've 'earned' enough to cover their habit, they pal up with others in squats or on a users floor.
As for food banks, there are some who are deserving and some who have never worked and many in-between. Lots of them have iPads, iPhones, 55" tvs, smoke and eat junk food/takeaways.
You can live on a modest income if you budget properly but there are always those who use excuses for their spending habits.

I actually wouldn't want to pay more tax to enable government to hand out higher benefits, nor would I be pleased if that extra money was spent on treating obese, drug/alcohol/ cigarette abusers or those who clog up A&E on a weekend after drunken fights or piddling ills such as a cough or bottles stuck up their rses.

For those posters who suggest a pound of mince rather than a food bank, and simply say where is your human compassion.

Many individuals now living in our society would have been in some form of institutional care not so long ago. People with an IQ of 58, for example, seen as able to live a totally independent life. Yes, yes, I know those individuals ‘should’ qualify for support from the l.a team whose job in to support peopke with learning difficulties/disabilities. Add to the low IQ a history of childhood neglect and abuse. You’re likely to then be in some kind of stand off between various agencies, all if whom say the individuals needs would best be met by eg, mental health, drugs, alcohol, domestic abuse, the police, the adult social work team, the children’s services team (because the individuals children are the subject of care proceedings).
I’ll stop ranting but I do sometimes wonder what those posters with simple solutions to complex problems would do if they had responsibility for trying to sort out this mess. Cutting child benefit - that’ll sort it ?

I quite believe it Jalima - it would seem that many of them are never actually paid for.
Electric cars are slightly different because as they are such new technology some of the manufacturers want to have the cars back after a couple of years to see how they have worn with the general public driving them.

Watching the Foodbank scene in “I, Daniel Blake” had everyone in my cinema in tears.

Welshwife apparently the leasing system for cars is a disaster waiting to happen.

No, you can't just turn up and ask for a bag of food!
It does have to be a referral.

I don’t think it’s easy to go to a Food Bank. You have to have a voucher from a Health Visitor, GP, CAB, Jobcentre etc. You can only use the FB three times I think.

The users have usually not been eating regular meals.

Ill health is a very common feature. Almost two-thirds of users had a health condition, half of households using food banks included someone with a disability and a third had mental health problems.
Debts and a long tail of repayments are often dragging them down.
They can be months behind with bills and having to pay back bank loans, credit cards, loan sharks, pawn shops and payday lenders

The majority of claimants at food banks are genuine. They have to have been referred to it by a doctor, social worker or job centre and they can only get help every so many months or so many times in a year.

Is the system perfect, no of course it isn't, but this shrugging things off just because, say, 5% may be cheats, is lazy thinking of the 'No bread? let them eat cake'.variety and we all know what happened to Maria Antoinette.
The other 95% of Food Bank recipients are in desperate need and to shrug them off as not mattering is contemptible.

Oh dear charjoy have you visited a foodbank, or volunteered at a foodbank or just read about them in the Sun/ DM/Express???

Wow charboy just wow

How many of those going to foodbanks are genuine?
How many go to takeaways each week rather than buy a pound of mince etc ?
Take out Fish and chips and pizzas etc are a luxury when you consider what they charge.
Perhaps we need a bit more education on how to manage.

This point was lost on Margaret Thatcher who used the bonanza of North Sea oil to clobber the unions , especially the NUM, rather than invest that money in the country's future - infrastructure, housing and sustainable energy for when the oil and coal were gone.

Bemoaning the cost of national debt is missing the point – we must invest in the economy
A country that stops investing in public infrastructure will find everything it does becomes more difficult
For a government to always cut investment first is bad for the longer term health of the economy. In this sense, a government is just like a company. A firm that chooses to carry on working with the machinery it bought decades ago will not have to pay much debt interest, but it will gradually lose out to competitors that invest in more productive, efficient machines.
www.newstatesman.com/politics/economy/2017/11/bemoaning-cost-national-debt-missing-point-we-must-invest-economy

lollee I assure you that the people I know who have had a drop in salary in no way find it made up to the same amount due to the personal allowance going up. The few hundred of extra allowance translates to only a small proportion of the money lost.

I don’t think that anyone suggested raising the tax level to 33% but simply commented that it was the existing tax rate when some of us started work.

Many people have cars on a lease system now and need to change them every couple of years or pay the remaining amount agreed when the lease was taken out - when we bought our last car the salesman told us we were very unusual actually paying for the car - not a great big car but a small modest one which does a good mileage.

But no sympathy for those who bought new cars, expensive holidays or maxed their mortgage to get an even bigger better house.

I'd have no sympathy for them either, MOnica,but the fact remains that, as you said, if interest rates rise they will be in trouble and no longer spending , so the economy will suffer. It;'s not good that people are freely spending money that they don't have.

But I wonder how many are getting into debt just to cover everyday living expenses. Do you have figures to show that it's not happening?

I think very low interest rates for a long period have lulled people into an expectation that interest rates will always remain low. Many do not have the slack in their budgets to cope with an interest rate increase of 1%, let alone 3 or 4%.

I do not think people have learnt, or remembered anything from the last credit crunch. If they had indebtedness would be falling not rising. Many younger people do not remember the last time interest rates were over 5%, let alone the consistent 5 - 10% that most of us will remember.

Jallimall08 - I suspect most of it is paid on the 'never never'. People don't like to go without even if it means getting in debt

I'm not so sure, I think people learnt last time when they got into debt and we had the credit crunch.

Do you think we could be heading for another credit crunch knickas and are people are getting into debt or are they just spending and not saving for the future?

As I understand it there is a restriction on benefits to only 2 children, however those already in receipt of benefits keep it. The restrictions only apply to those having more children after the rules changed.
Like many on here I would agree with paying more income tax. Unfortunately it wouldn't affect me very much as I am on a very low income, most of which is covered by the personal allowance, but I would be happy to pay a little more on the amount of taxable income I have. It would also mean I could gift aid more to the charities I support, so it wouldn't increase the government's revenues, but at least I make sure it does some good! I'm not suggesting we go to 33% - no government would dare anyway - but a 1p or 2p increase would surely make an impact if spent wisely.