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Ed Balls - Keynesian Idiot


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0
HOLA441

Leicestersq - spot on the man himself apparently was appalled by what was done in his name during his lifetime.

Simple

complete free trade (makes everyone's food cheaper - obviously this means leaving the EU)

Allow shale gas drilling (makes energy cheaper in the long run)

Deregulate the planning system (a right to build if you like) to make housing cheaper.

Remove regulations and licensing from most professions excepting medical ones, (to make services cheaper)

Raise interest rates and take a recessionary hit like Iceland did to clear out the deadwood businesses and houses.

sell off the banks and let them go bankrupt.

replace all benefits with a citizens income (not including disability benefits)

simplify all income tax and NI into a flat tax at 35%-40% (with no personal allowance due to citizens income) this would mean that work always paid more than not working.

remove the minimum wage (since the citizens income should be sufficient to keep people in food)

remove all subsidies and tax breaks from the corporation tax code and cut corporation tax to 10%-15% (look to cut this to 0% in the future)

tinkering is not good enough - we need a wholesale change in attitude.

This would hurt like hell, but we need to pull the scab off and clean out the wound, not let it fester into gangrene.

Sounds very similar to what the Chicago School economists advocated for South American puppet regimes in the 1970s and would likely require a military junta to keep the people in check while it happened surely. Even Maggies who pulled a watered-down version needed to turn the police into a lawless private army to do her dirty work on the streets.

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HOLA442

Ed Balls has a simple strategy and it goes as follows. Take somebody else's money and spend it. If it works take the credit and ignore the damage caused from where it was taken. If it does not work (like his spending in Liverpool on new "fashionable teaching and concepts" which spent a lot of money turning schools into failures then simply move-on....

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HOLA443
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HOLA444

As Galbraith noted the depression of the 30's happened because the rich stopped investing, because the returns had collapsed so they hoarded.

Giving the poor more money won't boost growth significantly, we have imbalances in the economy these need addressing.

You can't be a Keynesian until you've saved in the boom. Labour didn't save, Balls is no Keynesian.

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HOLA445

Ok, I'm not an economist but Keynesian stimulus ain't the solution. I spent 6 years in Japan and saw those bridges to nowhere and walked the expensive marbled tiling to Shinjuku station in Tokyo

I think Keynes was being very misleading about getting people to dig holes and fill them in again. He'd been burnt in the early 20's over Germany and I think that made him dress up his ideas in a very woolly way.

Pointless investment is well a waste of money, resources and labour. Yes it boosts growth for the time you waste the resources but then what? If you are going to invest than it has to give productive long term benefits, I suspect that this is what Keynes was really wanting but couldn't explicitly say it. He had to dress his ideas up for the stupid, ie the politicians and hope that someone would have the common sense to realise what was needed.

When you have total power of govt expenditure wasting money is very easy especially if you have crony and corporatist capitalism like we have.

Short termism is too hard to resist for our political elites meaning Keynesian dig a hole and fill it in again mantra literally becomes that and serves no productive good.

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HOLA446

He's completely correct of course.

Osborne's 'austerity' has increased the debt at a more rapid rate, forced more people out of work and had a catastrophic effect on growth in what is somewhere akin to the mid 1930s (and he's barely got going yet, so hopeless are his 'plans')

These idiots who equate govt. debt to household debts are empirically wrong and yet so caught up in their own primary school economics they refuse to see it.

Osborne's tried his nonsense for 2 years and it has failed.

Time to grow a pair, admit he's a pygmy and change course, else we're headed straight to the late 1930s.

He thinks it's 1980. Unfortunately for him household debt in 1980 was in its infancy. Thatcher was only just getting warmed up with her financialisation, deregulating of banksters and WTO stuff. Today isn't 1980. Households are still leveraged up 150% of income, only somewhat below the peak fo 170%, corporates are hoarding cash, and so if households are to deleverage back to a position where his policies would make any sense at all, govt debt must fall more slowly, we must have much faster growth and corporates must be forced encouraged to take up the slack by reversing their hoarding and run deficits. Osborne doesn't seem to get this at all, and the nutters in his party of course even less so.

If we find oil in the Falklands he might get lucky. Thatcher had the oil boom, it masked a lot of the UK's structural problems which she failed to tackle.

As far as I'm aware govt debt isn't falling, we currently keep adding about £150bn a year to the debt pile, in fact the debt pile has been growing year on year well pretty consistently. I think the govt is doing a more than adequate job of not allowing govt debt to fall.

Although I agree with the hoarding, that's a major problem but I think we've already gone beyond the point where corporates spending will turn this over indebted super tanker around.

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HOLA447

Prosperity comes from efficiency (i.e. per-capita output). Efficiency comes from workforce skill level, technology level, automation, economies of scale, commodity and resource (including land) availability etc.

Injecting more money into the economy is only beneficial when specifically to targeted one of these efficiency improving areas. Even then all you are doing is temporarily shifting the overall balance of wealth towards the efficiency improving area in the hope that the efficiency increase will offset the wealth you have effectively sucked out of everywhere else. Simple giving people more "money to spend" does jack sh*t.

.....giving 'money to spend' only pushes up costs and prices......lowering the cost of living, such as tax, land prices and commodities gives people more of an incentive to work and save...when there is little or no hope, people give up hope.........investment in the new energy for the future, homes and transport....less money spent on wars. ;)

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HOLA448
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HOLA449
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HOLA4410

Short termism is too hard to resist for our political elites meaning Keynesian dig a hole and fill it in again mantra literally becomes that and serves no productive good.

They would rather throw money at the problem, easy that, instead of trying to solve the underlining, fundamental, structural problems....like a doctor treating the symptoms not the cause, like the pain killer suppressing the pain.....what happens next when the medicine is withdrawn? ;)

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HOLA4411

We want to kick the can down the road, create another bubble, more mal-investment, creating more jobs in the wrong areas. For the short term we'll feel rich, and then become very poor again. The insiders cash in, the rest take the brunt. This is how it will continue to be.

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HOLA4412

Balls and New Labour are a pathetic joke, arrogant and ignorant with absolutely zero credibility.

There is no one who seems to have any clue, no strategy, no vision, no leadership, pisspoor communication skills, in short Labour just don't seem to 'get it'.

At a time when a credible opposition should be holding the govt to account, moving the debate forward and giving a voice to millions we have Balls, millipede and co scoring cheap points and talking crap about 'giving people more money'. Hopeless.

The only Labour figure who seems to have any clue / credibility is Darling, but it's clear he's been put in his box and doesn't have the stomach to fight to be heard.

I just can't see any of our 3 main parties representing me or my views any time soon, they have all been infiltrated / corrupted by big business, banks and their own self serving greed.

I really don't know how to fix it, we need a complete re-think about politics and democracy in this country, but that'll never happen whilst the current incumbants decide what suits them and theirs.

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HOLA4413

Balls and New Labour are a pathetic joke, arrogant and ignorant with absolutely zero credibility.

There is no one who seems to have any clue, no strategy, no vision, no leadership, pisspoor communication skills, in short Labour just don't seem to 'get it'.

At a time when a credible opposition should be holding the govt to account, moving the debate forward and giving a voice to millions we have Balls, millipede and co scoring cheap points and talking crap about 'giving people more money'. Hopeless.

The only Labour figure who seems to have any clue / credibility is Darling, but it's clear he's been put in his box and doesn't have the stomach to fight to be heard.

I just can't see any of our 3 main parties representing me or my views any time soon, they have all been infiltrated / corrupted by big business, banks and their own self serving greed.

I really don't know how to fix it, we need a complete re-think about politics and democracy in this country, but that'll never happen whilst the current incumbants decide what suits them and theirs.

Darling is probably the only one I would give the time of day to.....the rest seem to be as reckless as some of the bankers are, career politicians that make their money whilst they can...quick,short-term fixes.....then fly off to the sunset somewhere and leave the rest of society to pick up the pieces. ;)

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HOLA4414

Dear Mr Ball

The highly respected Sir John Maynard Keynes’s ideal was very simple and common sense. That is - government should “Save in good time and spend in bad time”.

However, most politicians being brain damaged, they can only remember the second half of the above. Labour being brain damaged and with impaired vision, can only see and remember one word “spend”.

Unlike you, Keynes was a modest genius. He never actually answered, nor claimed to answer nor attempted to answer the question “what if you have a moronic government that hit bad time without any saving in good time to start with?”

I believe he was rather counting on democracy would always elect at least half decent representatives. The great man underestimated how easy voters can be corrupted with benefits and printed money.

If the great man is resurrected today; and you have the balls to ask what he would do with your mess, it is in my humble opinion that he will tell you in the words of the great Gunnery Sergeant Hartman from movie Full Metal Jacket - “I will poke your eyes out and scull fuxk every of you!”

Best Regards

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HOLA4415

Wasn't that more of a parable than a suggestion to take literally?

Even as a parable it's rather dangerous, as it blurs the distinction between prescriptive and descriptive.

I agree, but I think the political elites have taken it literally! I'd argue it's no longer a parable.

Although certainly with the roads in Sheffield the holes already exist they just need filling in. :P

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HOLA4416

Personally, I think after 1000 years and the primacy of "contract law" in order to protect entrenched interests (which didn't seem to matter very much when they invaded in the first place) should be torn up.

Forcible redistribution.Ejection from the upper house, the House of Lords.

It's not going to happen, is it? I don't think the British have the stomach for forced redistribution. Until they are literally starving, then maybe.

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HOLA4417
The shadow chancellor said he favoured a cut in VAT - which is a sales tax rather than a tax on income - because it would be the "fastest and fairest" way of boosting the economy.

"We've got to get growth back in the economy," he told the programme.

Totally a$$-backwards!!

How the hell did he get the job?

Edited by spp
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HOLA4418
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HOLA4419

Totally a$$-backwards!!

How the hell did he get the job?

He was advocating a VAT cut in the Sunday Times today too. Beggars belief doesn't it?

The country is tipping into deflation and he wants to accelerate the process. He reminds me of the school tw*t. You know, the one whose parents didn't let their kids watch TV.

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HOLA4420

Tell the people the truth that the last 15 years have been an illusion based on debt and if we keep borrowing the can will be thrown back at us!

But if it was not for those nasty banks/bankers/Americans/Tories/Greeks/Irish/Spanish* etc the illusion of a robust economy that was entirely sustainable - after all Boom and Bust was ended for a while - could have been continued.

To say we have run out of money would not be helpful - all we need to sort things out is some more of the miraculous brand of 'growth' that Mr Brown was so good at giving us - Balls is an expert in this topic.

*delete as applicable

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HOLA4421
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HOLA4422
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HOLA4423

OK so what is your alternative economic strategy?

Subsidise genuine production and earnings (aka don't tax them to fvck), match housing provision to population, discourage rentier and rentier-like activity via increased taxes to replace reduced taxation on production and pay. Work out what social services you can actually afford and respond to the dangers of dependency (whether real or perceived) appropriately. See what happens.

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