Twitter was my first port of call again today:
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Serious question; in your definition of what is and isn’t the national debt, no mention was made of borrowing by the government. I had always assumed (wrongly, as you pointed out) that the national debt was the amount of money the government owed to banks or other lenders (domestic and foreign, world bank, etc..) does this form part of what is called the national debt and, if so, what percentage?
Peter
The government owes nothing to banks etc
Other countries hold balances in gilts as part of their sterling deposits
The BoE holds central reserves accounts for banks and building societies of £400 billion + but they are not borrowing per se
I hope that helps
Richard
Well, I think it is perfect, although I would also say that we need to tax wealth otherwise the wealthy tend give their money to the Tory party to favour their needs rather than the larger general population or to undertake mad policies like BREXIT.
I hope full employment would be the aim of an independent Scotland (with its own currency).
Currently that is impossible, but the business community and opposition politicians in Scotland are today calling for the Scottish Government to spend AND cut taxes to jump start the Scottish economy.
The fiscal rules allow only minimal Scottish Government borrowing, and there are significant constraints on what it can be used for. Cutting taxes might be a short-term stimulus, but would further reduce the Scottish Government’s ability to spend on public services. Of course, the Scottish Tory mantra has always been to cut taxes. They don’t understand (or pretend not to understand) that even if that boosted the private sector economy, it would take a long time to filter through to boost the tax base.
I agree but there are a whole bunch of people out there who believe that the unemployed are simply too lazy/don’t try hard enough and the rich deserve every fugging penny they ‘earn’.
This is the inverted logic that says if you have a lot of money in the first place then you must have deserved it. And the obverse, of course, is that if you are poor then..join the dots.
I see (Sky News ticker tape) that the governor of the BoE has said that they saved Britain from insolvency…then the government would have struggled to fund itself! Kind of twisting the facts a bit I think?