Economy poll

Following the election and subsequent three years the economy is likely to:

  • Recover drastically and the UK will prosper.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Slight upward trend.

    Votes: 7 25.0%

  • Stabalise.

    Votes: 6 21.4%

  • Dip slightly.

    Votes: 7 25.0%

  • Shock dip and long term spiral into economic DOOOOM.

    Votes: 8 28.6%
  • Total voters
    28
What we are experiencing now has never been encountered before, text book economics are of no use in these desperate times imho. We are still in a massive debt bubble that has been rapidly inflated since the early 1980's, it will pop sooner or later.
 
I'm no economic expert, but as I understand it, Europe has borrowed and spent it's way into a crisis - the crisis is one of debt and market confidence.

You can't spend your way out of debt. So there have to be cut backs to an extent. The question is, where?

(In that regard, I think the current government is taking some unfortunate flack for having to make some unpopular decisions. I'm no Tory by any stretch, but the Conservative party seem to have a history of being 'cruel to be kind' (not always getting it right, mind) and end up getting a popular kicking for it.)

But there also has to be stimulus in the other direction. Governments need to generate money. People tend to think you only do that through raising taxes or shifting tax brackets, which is always ideologically divisive in itself. However, it's a simple historical factor that the best economic recoveries in this country have been fueled by a cutting of indirect taxation to give people more disposable income. The last government putting up VAT genuinely flabbergasted me. Couldn't believe it!
 
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WeLuvIbiza said:
What we are experiencing now has never been encountered before, text book economics are of no use in these desperate times imho. We are still in a massive debt bubble that has been rapidly inflated since the early 1980's, it will pop sooner or later.
Click to expand...

Post great depression and WW II era was much worse. If you look at GDP to debt ratio. In the UK you had 2 years of austerity, what has it got you? The Keynesian theory has worked on every previous crisis. The debt is a problem but one that can be tackled at a later date.
 
Phil_Dicko said:
. The last government putting up VAT genuinely flabbergasted me. Couldn't believe it!
Click to expand...

It was this government that increased VAT to 20% from 17.5%.

The previous government reduced VAT temporarily to 15% in order to stimulate consumer spending at the height of the recession.
 
MARKB said:
It was this government that increased VAT to 20% from 17.5%.

The previous government reduced VAT temporarily to 15% in order to stimulate consumer spending at the height of the recession.
Click to expand...

I knew it had gone down and then up again. Could have sworn it was Brown's government. It feels like it's been at 20 for ages.

Either way, I was shocked by that move. Very counter-productive in my eyes. It shouldn't even be a Labour/Tory ideology issue. Robert Peel did that as a Conservative PM back in the 1840s. It's a basic freeing up of trade.
 
Robder said:
Yep.

Not voting next time, tactically or otherwise.
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Me too, Rob!

I have always voted and always made a song and dance about the importance of voting.

But when you just don't believe in any of the political parties, what are you supposed to do?

Don't want the Tories in, but don't want Labour in either. Absolute joke.

I'll save the soles of my shoes and abstain.
 
I think to do anything else would betray my principles massively.

I told everyone I wasn't going to vote last time around but then it's so easy to get drawn into the media slurs and mud slinging and everyone has such big opinions.

To stand on the fringe and say, "nah" from a place of resolute non-anger is kinda zen. :lol:

Just make sure you register your right not to vote...i.e. - scribble obscenities over paper and post in box.
 
He wasn't the first though was he?

I'm more ashamed that I'm stood here at 33 feigning surprise.
 
2 years in, and its obvious some members of the Govt are not up to the job, and there's also a glaring missing link in the role of Govt mouthpiece.

Time for a reshuffle, and time to hire a director of communications, what good 'news' is being drowned out by the doom ridden media. If confidence in the key to growth, then the media should just do one.

Anyone still wanting to join the Euro should also do one too.

Maybe the good which is coming from all this, it that we're all learning to be a bit more wiser in what we're spending on.

Bring on the summer and the big sporting spectacles that it brings. And if anyone moans about how much the Olympics are costing, you can go do one too. ;)
 
Best thing to do in voting booths is get in, zip it shut, then proudly take your trousers off, hold them outside and ask if they "have them in a 36?"
 
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