Unicorns and Magic Money Trees

[Workingman]

Once they were only in the realms of fantasy. Now there are herds and forests of them.

The question is not: Who has them? It is more: Who has the biggest herd and the largest forest?

Ah well, back to reality - beans on toast for tea.

[cromwell]

Watching politicians promise things isn't good for my blood pressure. Welcome back Frank.

[TheOstrich]

How on earth was that protester even allowed to get anywhere near Theresa May on the podium? Defies belief.
Security at the event needs a complete kicking. So does the prankster, for that matter.

[Suff]

Now here is the funny bit. What you're asking for is Cameron and Osborne and austerity.....

You know the whole fiscal responsibility bit and you'll just have to suck it up and if you don't like it, tough!

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't everyone decide that the magic money tree was the way to go? After all they voted for Corby and he is ALL about the mmt.

Or is it just a case of being mmt when people don't like what it's being wasted on??

For me the most honest of them all was Cameron and everyone hated him.... So why not shake the mmt?? Nobody's going to thank them for telling the truth.

[Workingman]

Actually I was trying to point out the total hypocricy of the politisphere.

When May called the opportunistic but totally unnucessary election Labour came up with a 'supposedly' costed manifesto. It did not take long for the right wing and Tories to come up with 'Unicorns and Money Trees' being needed to pay for it - and rightly so.

Had things stayed much the same it would have again been used against Labour at the next normal general election, but a week is a long time..........

May lost and had to make room in the bed for the DUP, and even to pay them to jump in. The ratings of both her and the party began to tank. Then came the conference and suddenly there is money for the Northern Powerhouse, Help to Buy, Social house building.....

Labour and the left are now asking about Tory Unicorns and Money Trees. What goes round comes around.

[Suff]

Labour and the left are now asking about Tory Unicorns and Money Trees. What goes round comes around.

It is a bit different taking about nearly half the national debt to fund Labour's "give away" and the Tories talking about easing funds to meet some of the more pressing issues in the country.

But, of course, in the politisphere it doesn't need to add up, it just has to sound good.

Whilst I, personally, would have said hang on for just another 3 years till we get our feet clear of borrowing so we can start on the mountain of national debt, I can understand the pressures. I can even understand ignoring the mountain of debt (so long as we are no longer borrowing), because it will eventually depreciate to the point where we can just pay it off. As Maggie did with the War Debt.

This is very, VERY different from saying we're going to borrow, or print, half a trillion £ to meet a political ideal. With no plan for how that money spent is going to drive the UK economy to the point where it will pay the money back; or even a plan as to how that is going to be paid back at all. It is nothing more than buying votes with borrowed money.

Now I know that buying votes with borrowed money is all in a days work for a politician and we have to expect it. The magic money tree comes out when the politicians start talking about the kind of money you spend in war mobilisation for nothing more to show for it than a few votes and a hell of a lot of pain.

It appears that we have to learn that one. All over again. Every generation or so. Because, apparently, we forget.

May was quite right to censure Corbyn over NHS when she told him that if we were not paying more than the entire annual payments to the NHS, to service the debt run up by Labour, there would be a lot more money about for the NHS.

The Tories will have to spend a Hell of a lot more of our money before I start accusing them of the MMT.

[Workingman]

At the time of May's opportunistic and failed election the Torygraph, no less, estimated Labour's budget promises, if delivered in full, to be £250bn. That is about 1/6th the national debt at the time, which is some way off half. No, I'll rephrase that... it is a *king long way from half.

When the Tories came to power in 2010 the National Debt hovered around £1tn and a large part of that was due to a) the globall financial disaster, and b) how it was dealt with both locally and globally. Come the next budget the debt will be £1.8tn. That is an average increase of £100bn for every year the Tories have been in power.

We'll be in a right old mess if the Unicorns ever stampede through the Magic Money Tree plantation. We might have to elect a government that looks to the long term whilst living within its means - I do not see any takers doing that on the horizon.

[Suff]

The Torygraph estimated the direct costs.

Nobody estimated the initial and ongoing costs of the nationalisation that Labour promised, nobody could even begin to come up with more than a WAG (wild assed guess).

I was working on around 1.6tn but, yes, you are correct, it's more like 1.8 so I'll modify that to around 1/4 rather than 1/2.

As for the "Tories having run up 100bn per year", the Tories have only been in government for 2 years. Lest everyone wilfully forget, the Tories were in Coalition with the LIb Dems and they put a serious brake on cuts to the point where the 160bn per year the Tories took over was not brought down fast enough.

The interesting point is that the economy has been growing in line with borrowing so we are not much more %wise of GDP in pounds, more than we were in 2010 in public debt.

We might also want to contrast that the deficit is sitting somewhere around 50bn right now (given that the OBR get's it's act together and actually releases a revised figure), yet Labour campaigned, in 2010, 2015 and 2017 on spending 200bn per year, 180bn per year and, most recently, some unspecified debt figure likely to be totally eyewatering in its size.

Talking about the Tories having presided over a 1tn to 1.8tn rise in debt over the last 7 years is pots calling kettles black. Under Labour we would be worse than Italy and with a world credit rating little better than Greece.

So any time Labour starts wittering on about the Tories and "Magic-ing" money from nowhere, without the press lambasting them back into the stone age, I get a tad ticked off.