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Originally Posted by OLD BOY
I think you need to think more deeply than this. For example, you say that investing in the NHS does not lead to an appreciating asset. Yet in believing that, you are completely ignoring the loss of productivity resulting from delays in treatment by the NHS and the decline in the nation's health resulting from delayed treatments and a lack of availability of appropriate remedial treatments. If you are relatively healthy and have not had to rely on their responses, you are likely to be completely ignorant of the problems patients face with its inefficiency.
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The NHS is a continuing expense. It's not the same thing unless you're talking about building hospitals or something. Every year the NHS requires funding so to make it sustainable you need to meet that funding via income not debt. You can borrow to fund HS2 because ultimately the bulk of that funding will end and you can start paying it back over a longer timeframe.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OLD BOY
I appreciate that many socialists don't like the comparisons between managing household budgets and the management of the national economy, but the same general principles apply.
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No, economists don't like the comparison. Households don't issue government bonds or have central banks. You can't print money. Your spending doesn't really impact the economy as a whole. You don't have the ability to literally shape the economy you're in. You Also if you spend money in a shop that's money gone for you and gained for them but government spending, at least that within the country, is money moving around the same system. That changes quite a bit about how you make decisions.
For what we're talking about the comparison with households work but really it would break down if went any further. It gets to what I said earlier that some economists don't see an issue with governments running managed deficits.