This is depressing:
If measures are needed to be put in place to reduce the deficit, which best fits your view?
Mainly tax rises: 47% (+17)
Mainly spending cuts: 27% (-25)via @YouGov, Jun 2020
Chgs. w/ Dec 2009
h/t @timesradio pic.twitter.com/R41Gu8nkhs— Britain Elects (@BritainElects) June 29, 2020
What's depressing is that the wrong questions were asked.
It does not seem as if the option to 'spend to stimulate the economy to get us out of the crisis' was on the agenda.
And nor was 'The deficit does not matter: jobs do'.
That's what's really depressing: that as yet we have not even got the required narrative before the public so that they can choose it.
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[…] is why you get the question asked, for The Times I believe, as to whether the government deficit that the recession will give rise to […]
We’ve been lied to – now we’re fuzzy (Grant Lee Buffalo, 1990’s) – I hope the link works.
https://youtu.be/qAi9-LRtYSU
[…] friends A and the Tory party funders B, now who is C? That's all the people who can be persuaded via the media that they must suffer tax increases or spending cuts because of the cost of […]
And George Osborne is about to be given a slot on the inaugural day’s broadcasting of Times Radio at 11am this morning.
They’ll pretend they are an impartial news outlet, incidentally owned by Murdoch, and he’ll pretend he speaks as a caring former Chancellor, incidentally paid £650k p.a. by BlackRock.
Bang, bang shall come
The clang from the austerity drum
Quite – the ‘Don’t Knows’ are You Gov themselves – but then they are simply being true to their Conservative roots.
Even more depressing that the framing reinforces and reproduces the budget deficit narrative. A great theme for Foucauldian discourse analysis: what role do opinion polls plays in sustaining discourse and practice that sustain inequitable power relationships in society?
Even if we accept the premise of the question, it doesn’t take into account that sectoral balances show us that the government deficit is equal to the non-government surplus, so if we did want to reduce the deficit then the correct options would be mainly reduce household savings, mainly reduce business savings, or mainly reduce the trade deficit. Perhaps you could contact YouGov and explain sectoral balances to them, complete with graph, and why it means they should reframe their question.
I really don’t think they’d listen
Someone paid them to ask the question
Wake Up to Money on BBC radio 5 this morning had a Justin Urquhart Stewart of Seven Investment Management on, and he talked what sounded like MMT, even pointing out that the Government is paying over £15bn in interest to itself! He pointed out that the UK, since it has it’s own currency, can issue new money, and as long as everyone (in the World) is confident that interest will keep being paid, then there is no problem, as lots of people want to buy UK gilts, etc.
He was mainly making the case that money is needed now for local investment and the Government should setup regional hubs with the power to attract local investors to invest in local businesses now, since the likely Boris announcement tomorrow of Infrastructure investment is more long term than the likely immediate need for investment in small companies.
(https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000kh1x 35:26 minutes in)
Very good….
BBC Reel editor Dan John is promoting ‘The Deficit Myth’ and Stephanie Kelton on Twitter and here’s the piece on its website:
‘Why We Need to Debunk the Deficit Myth’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/reel/video/p08jbbry/why-we-need-to-debunk-the-deficit-myth-
Thanks
I will be sharing it
Richard
Nearly all problems are distributional. Some people have more assets than they can usefully deploy and some do not have enough to be useful.
An appropriate tax system would address these distributional imbalances and enable everyone to fulfil their potential. If people are thinking about tax rises in this way they could be correct. But I agree that was probably not the aim of the question.
I strongly argue for net redistribution now – but that overall cuts help achieve that