Crikey, ok let me amend that. Cos that’s totally different.
If your mortgage is crippling then your first thought is probably not to spend more
In fact, just in case I’m being misunderstood. If you have ( fill in huge debt here) then your first thought is probably not spend more
Just to be extra clear the Tories shouldn’t have tossed in last minute tax cuts which we can’t afford. This isn’t a party thing. We need to pay down debt period
Thing is, the mortgage
isn't crippling - we're reaching the tenuous limits of the analogy here, because comparing a nation with a household just really doesn't work - but if we continue to labour it, then what's the average mortgage these days?
5x salary?
Okay, in the past it was maybe 3x salary?
Currently our debt is ~100% of GDP (I think it's actually a little less right now, maybe ~90%) so that's like having a 1x mortgage - hardly 'crippling' and to put into perspective, I think the worst ever national debt on record was post-WW2 when it went to around 250% of GDP.
Bearing in mind that was the time when - rather than tightening the nation's belt and cutting back (mostly - there was still rationing and some austerity) we created the NHS, created the welfare state and embarked on a programme of housebuilding the likes of which has never been seen since.
We were more indebted than we'd ever been before or since (on record, which I think goes back to the mid-1700s or something) and yet we went out and spent like it was going out of fashion, and the country was fine.
In fact, it was thanks to that period that we now have many of the institutions we take for granted.
Because this is where the state vs household analogy completely breaks down...a country borrowing money generally (if it's not doing dumbfuck stuff like using it to subsidise tax breaks, secret handshake deals that shaft the nation or bail out rich cunty mates) creates economic activity as a result.
Speculate to accumulate you could call it.
In that sense it's perhaps more akin to a business loan - but one that is at a ridiculously low interest rate and over a ridiculously long period, because bond yields are often over 30 years and at really low rates because as a sovereign nation we're seen as a sure thing.
If the government acts in the same way as the households and tightens its belt,
at the same as the households, then we're totally stuffed, because nobody is spending any money, demand dies and economic activity grinds to a halt.
This is hardly revolutionary stuff, it was the basic economic model (Keynesian economics) that sufficed from the 1930s through to the 1970s, when stagflation (stagnant growth but high inflation) came along and it was decided we needed to throw it out.
That's when our current model (Monetarism) came into play, where they decided fuck that investing in the country and building stuff shit, let's just control the money supply instead!
Bizarrely, we're back to stagflation again, and yet nobody seems to be suggesting that our entire economic model is fucked and doesn't work.
I guess the whole "let's fuck the little guy and flog off the public assets to our mates while they fuck everyone in the arse" strategy is pretty popular with the people that actually count, and the people that don't are easy enough to convince that it's in their best interest...
