General Election 2017

[peterms]

58 minutes ago, Dr_Pangloss said:

I honestly don't see how it's massively different then IS-LM, outside of the strong belief in using identities and double entry bookkeeping.

Well, I won't link and quote partly because it's a bit of a pain on this device and partly because it's getting a bit far from the main thread, but if you're interested in that specific point, both Phil Pilkington and Lars Syll have some discussion on their respective blogs.  Bill mitchell also discusses IS-LM at some length in a series of posts.

[mjmooney]

Quote

One Person, One Vote.
But are all votes equal?

In the 2010 election, more than half of all voters voted against their winning MP.

Their votes simply didn't count.

In the UK, the only voters with any real power to choose the government are those who live in marginal constituencies.

Indeed, voters in the most powerful 10% of constituencies will wield more than 30 times as much power as the least influential.

The rest of us have little or no power to influence the outcome of the election.

In fact, statistical analysis by the NEF (the new economics foundation) shows that one person in the UK does not have one vote...

...it's more like 0.30 votes.

In some ultra safe constituencies the value of your vote falls to practically zero.

Find out how powerful your vote is in this general election. Search the Voter Power Index for your constituency.

Voter Power in your constituency

Edited June 5, 2017 by mjmooney

[blandy]

2 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

One Person, One Vote.
But are all votes equal?

Find out how powerful your vote is in this general election. Search the Voter Power Index for your constituency.

Voter Power in your constituency

"In Fylde, one person does not really have one vote, they have the equivalent of 0.072 votes."

 

[Chindie]

0.078 here. No shock there.

Had my first leaflet today. Saw 'support me and my candidate', glimpsed a part of a barely human face, noted the blue... It's now in the burning pile in an around a thousand pieces.

[blandy]

1 hour ago, peterms said:

there's an upper bound to what can be done without creating runaway inflation.  That limit is the available resources, including environmental alongside people, land etc.

Is the correct answer to my original point ("why would anyone talk about putting this or that Tax up? or cutting spending on this or that thing - why not just create the money to do it instead? ...No one needs to pay any tax, then....it's all just virtual numbers, right....)" In order not to reach that limit, alternative sources of financing government plans are required, and these include taxation and controlling expenditure so as to not reach the limit.

[peterms]

2 hours ago, blandy said:

The problem with the argument you promote is not that it doesn't contain some elements of truth, it very much does, it's that it makes its argument on a few areas of untruth and surrounds them with truth to make it look "honest". But it's not, it's wholly dishonest at its root. And it's why nowhere on earth, no system in any country of whatever politics, operates the way your proposal suggests.

I have to say I don't follow why you seem to feel so strongly about it.  It's a description of how the process of financing government expenditure actually works in the current system.  It applies to governments which have their own sovereign currency, and not others.

You can find many explanations online from central bankers and others, explaining the process of money creation by governments.  It's not something that is widely discussed, but I'm not aware that many people actually disagree that such governments create money at will, rather than going round collecting it.

The thing is, governments choose to act as though expenditure must be matched by taxation.  This is partly a self-limiting constraint, and partly a presentational device.

Do you accept the notion that private banks also create money, or do you think they lend what they have previously gathered in?

[StefanAVFC]

Try this guys...

Quote

In Lichfield, one person does not really have one vote, they have the equivalent of 0.043 votes.

 

[bickster]

2 hours ago, PaulC said:

I don't know if I am being ignorant here but why scrap tuitions fees for everybody instead of just families on medium/low incomes.  Just throwing money away. 

When you go to University you are an adult, you are entitled to vote, you are 18. You are no longer the responsibility of your parents you are legally responsible for yourself. Means test 18 year olds and with very few exceptions, they'll all get a full grant.

Your point is utterly irrelevant

[peterms]

3 minutes ago, blandy said:

Is the correct answer to my original point ("why would anyone talk about putting this or that Tax up? or cutting spending on this or that thing - why not just create the money to do it instead? ...No one needs to pay any tax, then....it's all just virtual numbers, right....)" In order not to reach that limit, alternative sources of financing government plans are required, and these include taxation and controlling expenditure so as to not reach the limit.

Let's say that the limit to housebuilding is that we have a set limit of people and materials with which to do it.  You can have the houses built for government, or for the private sector, or a combination.  You can build less than the maximum possible.  You can't build more.  That is the constraint.  If you try to build more when all capacity is being used, you will only push up prices.

How you finance the building programme is a separate question.  In the private sector, you finance it by loans, which involves banks creating credit (out of nothing).  In the public sector, you similarly create credit, ie pay contractors by crediting their accounts.  Choosing levels of taxation is a quite separate issue.  But if you create lots of new economic activity by running a housebuilding programme, and don't decide to levy taxes, you may find the economy overheating.

[PaulC]

7 minutes ago, bickster said:

When you go to University you are an adult, you are entitled to vote, you are 18. You are no longer the responsibility of your parents you are legally responsible for yourself. Means test 18 year olds and with very few exceptions, they'll all get a full grant.

Your point is utterly irrelevant

Ok I apologise 

[blandy]

16 minutes ago, peterms said:

I have to say I don't follow why you seem to feel so strongly about it.  It's a description of how the process of financing government expenditure actually works in the current system.  It applies to governments which have their own sovereign currency, and not others.

You can find many explanations online from central bankers and others, explaining the process of money creation by governments.  It's not something that is widely discussed, but I'm not aware that many people actually disagree that such governments create money at will, rather than going round collecting it.

The thing is, governments choose to act as though expenditure must be matched by taxation.  This is partly a self-limiting constraint, and partly a presentational device.

Do you accept the notion that private banks also create money, or do you think they lend what they have previously gathered in?

I think you've misunderstood what I've said (perhaps my fault). What  I object to is any claim that "taxation doesn't fund [any] government spending" - because it's a distortion of the truth, it's misleading. Taxation is used (as I keep saying in part) to fund the things government finances. It's not the only source of that funding, but it is a (the) major one. Redistribution is "taxing and spending" - taking revenue (taxing) from one sector or part of the populace and giving (spending) on another part. I understand how money is electronically created both by private or state run banks. I accept that is part of the way the economy is run. I've not argued otherwise. But they also levy taxation on various activities and funds etc. part of that is to influence behaviours and part of it is to raise revenue to redistribute (spend).

When you say "governments choose to act as though expenditure must be matched by taxation." they mostly don't act that way, they just talk that way - they've (the west, mostly) been acting in a way where they spend more than they tax. I agree that saying tax must equal spending (or be greater than..) is horribly misleading. Equally I dislike the claim that governments can forever create unlimited money supply without consequence. That was the point of my original "question" (not as in "I don't understand why" but as in "please think about why"). Pretending taxation is not used towards financing government expenditure is as daft as pretending every penny spent must come from tax revenues. Does that explain?

[sharkyvilla]

57 minutes ago, bobzy said:

Yeah, sounds wrong to me.  Pretty sure when I graduated I didn't have to pay back any of my student loan providing I didn't earn over £15k/year or something (c. 2007).

Yes I perhaps should have made that clearer (should have learnt by now), almost anyone in a full time job, even if it's stacking shelves would have had to start paying back their loan.

[blandy]

11 minutes ago, peterms said:

Let's say that the limit to housebuilding is that we have a set limit of people and materials with which to do it.  You can have the houses built for government, or for the private sector, or a combination.  You can build less than the maximum possible.  You can't build more.  That is the constraint.  If you try to build more when all capacity is being used, you will only push up prices.

If demand is greater than supply, prices rise. If builders buy up land and don't build houses, to manipulate the price per house upwards, then tax could be levied on that unused dormant land to encourage a change in builder's behaviour for the good of the country. And the revenue raised from this can be used to (say) pay for hospital building, or additional police officers, or whatever. this means that infrastructure (say) is built for the future, without pushing up inflation, without devaluing the pound and thus hurting people who are struggling...

[Xela]

26 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

Try this guys...

In Lichfield, one person does not really have one vote, they have the equivalent of 0.043 votes

Similar

In Sutton Coldfield, one person does not really have one vote, they have the equivalent of 0.045 vote

[peterms]

11 minutes ago, blandy said:

I dislike the claim that governments can forever create unlimited money supply without consequence

But nobody, literally nobody, has proposed such a thing.  The point is always made that economic activity is limited by the real resources available.  The point I am making is that it is the availability of real resources, and not money, that is the limiting factor.  So when governments claim something cannot be done because there is no money, they lie.

[peterms]

6 minutes ago, blandy said:

If demand is greater than supply, prices rise. If builders buy up land and don't build houses, to manipulate the price per house upwards, then tax could be levied on that unused dormant land to encourage a change in builder's behaviour for the good of the country. And the revenue raised from this can be used to (say) pay for hospital building, or additional police officers, or whatever. this means that infrastructure (say) is built for the future, without pushing up inflation, without devaluing the pound and thus hurting people who are struggling...

What is actually happening in such a set of transactions is that government is acting to take control of real resources away from the private sector.  By reducing the amount of spending power available to private firms, they prevent them recruiting for other jobs people who could possibly be recruited as police officers, for example.  I'm not sure we're disagreeing very much here...

[Davkaus]

17 minutes ago, sharkyvilla said:

Yes I perhaps should have made that clearer (should have learnt by now), almost anyone in a full time job, even if it's stacking shelves would have had to start paying back their loan.

The minimum wage in 2007 was £5.52. You had to earn £7.70 an hour (assuming a 37.5 hour week) to start paying back anything at all, and contributions slightly above that were pretty damn low.

I was earning about 20k a couple of years after that (and thought I was doing pretty well for myself :P), and paying back about £35 a month. 

 

 

Edited June 5, 2017 by Davkaus

[snowychap]

22 minutes ago, sharkyvilla said:

Yes I perhaps should have made that clearer (should have learnt by now), almost anyone in a full time job, even if it's stacking shelves would have had to start paying back their loan.

Again, are you sure?

Edit: For people on the old student loans (i.e. pre-1998), the threshold is now just under £26.5k, I think.

Edited June 5, 2017 by snowychap

[bobzy]

52 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

Voter Power in your constituency

So depressing

[Davkaus]

There are a few marginal seats in Merseyside. Whoops.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/liverpool-the-sun-quotes-conservative-party-leaflets-hillsborough-disaster-a7771176.html

 

Quote

 

Conservatives attacked for sending leaflets featuring quotes from The Sun to Merseyside homes

Mayor of Liverpool accuses Tories of being 'out of touch' after leaflets distributed in Wirral South feature headlines from paper widely reviled for its coverage Hillsborough disaster coverage

 

 

 

 

Edited June 5, 2017 by Davkaus