Quote:
Originally Posted by danielf
Yes, debt has gone up since '97 (disregarding the crisis now), but it actually decreased as a % of GDP, which would presumably be the most appropriate number to look at.
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Yep - for a couple of years the Tory economic plans were still doing their thing causing a nice rapid drop and the economy was doing very well with good sustained growth - much better than the Eurozone's.
For the bored you can compare the UK to other countries
here.
---------- Post added at 15:34 ---------- Previous post was at 15:28 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flyboy
Another interesting piece of data from that article suggests that taxation as a percentage of GDP, relevant to the first thirteen years of Tory government, from nineteen seventy-nine, was higher than the same period for the Labour government. So on the face of it, another myth busted it would seem.
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Which myth would it be busting?
It refers to tax take not tax rate, when the economy is in the excrement tax take goes down due to less people working and paying taxes, this doesn't mean the nominal tax rate is lower just that less of it got paid for whatever reason.
Something of note in the figures in the article is that the Tories in the 13 year period between 1979 and 1992 you mention reduced the national debt from 47.2% of GDP to 27.2% of GDP, on similar levels of tax take to 1988-89 when the Tories reduced the deficit by approximately 6% of GDP (a boom period pre-early 90s recession) under Labour the deficit was actually rising and in any event you can't compare the two - if you're looking for a nominal tax rate those aren't the figures we need, that's just what was paid, not what was being charged.