Friday, May 21, 2010
Oh noes, a double-dip recession!
The ONS has revised government borrowing figures downwards yet more, to £156bn (src). That's nearly £19bn below Treasury forecasts. At the risk, therefore, of sounding like a stuck gramophone record, why is the left getting its knickers in a twist about cutting by a comparatively trivial £6bn?Because if losing £6bn from public spending was going to send the economy into a tailspin, surely losing three times that much is three times as likely to cause the damage. Even by the left's own version of economics, cutting by £6bn cannot be too great a danger.
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3 comments:
What! You're expected logic from a lefty?
One lefty (me) has written that £6bn is no big deal:
http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2010/05/6bn-no-big-deal.html
Incidentally, that £156bn excludes financial interventions. Including them, borrowing was £145.4bn - even better than Treasury forecasts.
John: Chris Dillow is an admirable example of a lefty who is able to do logic and economics. Giles Wilkes, depending on your definition of lefty, is another. (Heck, if you're expansive enough about your definitions, I could be a lefty. I like to think I do logic.)
Chris: Thanks for that link. (And thanks for your links back here from time to time, as well.) I was perhaps over-general in brushing 'the left' with the same stripe, but it's definitely a meme that I've seen doing the rounds.
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