{"id":55813,"date":"2021-03-02T13:50:42","date_gmt":"2021-03-02T13:50:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=55813"},"modified":"2021-03-02T14:50:26","modified_gmt":"2021-03-02T14:50:26","slug":"what-is-the-debt-repayment-obsession-all-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2021\/03\/02\/what-is-the-debt-repayment-obsession-all-about\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the debt repayment obsession all about?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I just posted this on Twitter:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">From 1946 to 2021 is 75 years. In 63 of those years the UK government borrowed. In 12 it repaid debt. Total borrowing will have been \u00a32,174bn. Repayments have been \u00a338bn. So, for every \u00a31 borrowed 1.7p has been repaid. In that case what is the debt repayment obsession all about?<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Richard Murphy (@RichardJMurphy) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RichardJMurphy\/status\/1366746422872338434?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 2, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/obr.uk\/public-finances-databank-2020-21\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">data came from here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>So, why is there this paranoia with doing something that never really happens?<\/p>\n<p>There is an obsession with repaying debt, but we don't do it.<\/p>\n<p>There has to be another reason for the obsession in that case. And there is, of course. It is that the Tory narrative is intended to deliver an outsourcing state - which keeps the rentier economy that does not make money so much as extract it from the population at large via outsourced government contracts - and so want to feed the small state narrative.<\/p>\n<p>I find it hard to explain this otherwise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just posted this on Twitter: From 1946 to 2021 is 75 years. In 63 of those years the UK government borrowed. In 12 it<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2021\/03\/02\/what-is-the-debt-repayment-obsession-all-about\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127,35,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-budget","category-economics","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55813\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}