[ianch99]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

How many times has the budget been in surplus in the past 30 years?

Deficit versus growth and what the deficit is being spent on are key. Not making essential investment shifts bills onto the following generations too, and potentially at higher interest rates.

Debt to GDP ratio matters, not nominal debt.

Simply saying surplus good, deficits bad is a gross oversimplification. A fair amount of the relaxation of austerity the Chancellor has done has actually been the right kind - they went after the 'easy' and expedient savings and quickly realised this was a bad idea.

Some of it, however, the more cynically politically motivated cuts and short-termist sales of assets, is nuts.

The ongoing shifting of more activities onto local authorities while continuing to cut their budgets so that they rather than central government will take blame for example is repugnant.

---------- Post added 01-03-2016 at 00:05 ---------- Previous post was 29-02-2016 at 23:55 ----------

Incidentally the major issue is that ridiculous requirement to be running a surplus in 'normal' times.

The Chancellor is hoist on his own petard, has robbed himself of flexibility, and has run the economy for political and ideological ends way too much.

The OBR predicted that private debt would be the substitute for public borrowing and that is, with interest, what is happening.

The economy is more dependent on services than ever before after it became politically expedient to ignore rebalancing attempts.

We have had a big asset price boom that's led to huge amounts of capital not generating any economic growth. Employment is high but productivity is still in the toilet - the jobs don't seem to have been much good.

The economy is very precarious indeed and this is nothing to do with Labour but a Chancellor whose long term economic plan is more like a long term plan to try and become the Prime Minister.

This.