Cyprus-Forum.com

[Lordo]

The United Kingdom government austerity programme is a fiscal policy adopted in the early 21st century following the Great Recession. It is a deficit reduction programme consisting of sustained reductions in public spending and tax rises, intended to reduce the government budget deficit and the role of the welfare state in the United Kingdom. The National Health Service and education have been "ringfenced" and protected from direct spending cuts, but between 2010 and 2019 more than £30 billion in spending reductions have been made to welfare payments, housing subsidies and social services.

A UK government budget surplus in 2001–2 was followed by many years of budget deficit and after the financial crisis of 2007–2008 a period of economic recession began in the country. The first austerity measures were introduced in late 2008. In 2009, the term age of austerity, which had previously been used to describe the years immediately following World War II, was popularised by Conservative Party leader David Cameron. In his keynote speech to the Conservative Party forum in Cheltenham on 26 April 2009 he declared that "the age of irresponsibility is giving way to the age of austerity" and committed to end years of what he characterised as excessive government spending. Conservative Party leaders also promoted the idea of budget cuts bringing about the Big Society, a political ideology involving reduced government, with grass-roots organizations, charities and private companies delivering public services more efficiently.

The austerity programme was initiated in 2010 by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government. In his June 2010 budget speech, the Chancellor George Osborne identified two goals. The first was that the structural current budget deficit would be eliminated to "achieve cyclically-adjusted current balance by the end of the rolling, five-year forecast period". The second was that national debt as a percentage of GDP would be falling. The government intended to achieve both of its goals through substantial reductions in public expenditure. This was to be achieved by a combination of public spending reductions and tax increases amounting to £110 billion. The end of the forecast period was 2015–16. Between 2010 and 2013, the Coalition government said that it had reduced public spending by £14.3 billion compared with 2009–10. Growth remained low during this period, while unemployment rose. In a speech in 2013, David Cameron indicated that his government had no intention of increasing public spending once the structural deficit had been eliminated and proposed that the public spending reduction be made permanent.[15] In 2014, the Treasury extended the proposed austerity period until at least 2018. By 2015, the deficit, as a percentage of GDP, had been reduced to half of what it was in 2010, and the sale of government assets (mostly the shares of banks nationalised in the 2000s) had resulted in government debt as a proportion of GDP falling. By 2016, the Chancellor was aiming to deliver a budget surplus by 2020, but following the result of the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, he expressed the opinion that this goal was no longer achievable.

Osborne's successor as Chancellor, Philip Hammond, retained the aim of a balanced budget but abandoned plans to eliminate the deficit by 2020. In Hammond's first Autumn statement in 2016, there was no mention of austerity, and some commentators concluded that the austerity programme had ended. However, in February 2017, Hammond proposed departmental budget reductions of up to 6% for the year 2019–20, and Hammond's 2017 budget continued government policies of freezing working-age benefits. Following the 2017 snap general election, Hammond confirmed in a speech at Mansion House that the austerity programme would be continued and Michael Fallon, the Secretary of State for Defence, commented: "we all understand that austerity is never over until we've cleared the deficit". Government spending reductions planned for the period 2017–2020 are consistent with some departments, such as the Department for Work and Pensions and the Ministry of Justice, experiencing funding reductions of approximately 40% in real terms over the decade 2010–2020. During 2017 an overall budget surplus on day-to-day spending was achieved for the first time since 2001. This fulfilled one of the fiscal targets set by George Osborne in 2010, which he had hoped to achieve in 2015.

In 2018 the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) predicted that in 2018–19 public sector debt would fall as a share of national income for the first time since 2001–02, while tax revenues would exceed public spending. Hammond's 2018 Spring Statement suggested that austerity measures could be reduced in the Autumn Budget of that year. However, according to the Resolution Foundation and the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), the OBR's forecasts for borrowing and debt were based on the assumption that the government continued with the planned spending reductions that were announced after the 2015 general election. By 2018 only 25% of the proposed reductions in welfare spending had been implemented. The Resolution Foundation calculated that the proposed reduction in spending on working-age benefits amounted to £2.5 billion in 2018–19 and £2.7 billion in 2019–20, with the households most affected being the poorest 20%. The IFS calculated that the OBR's figures would require spending on public services per person in real terms to be 2% lower in 2022–23 than in 2019–20.

The deficit in the first quarter of the 2018–19 financial year was lower than at any time since 2007 and by August 2018 it had reached the lowest level since 2002–3. Hammond's aim at this time was to eliminate the deficit entirely by the mid-2020s. At the Conservative Party conference in October 2018 Prime Minister Theresa May indicated her intention to end the austerity programme following Brexit in 2019 and opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn said that austerity could not be ended without significant increases in public spending. The IFS calculated that funding an end to austerity would require an additional £19 billion per year raised through higher government borrowing or tax increases. Hammond's preference was to reduce the national debt with more years of austerity but in the October 2018 budget he agreed to defer the target date for eliminating the deficit, abandoning plans to achieve a surplus in 2022–23 to allow an increase in health spending and tax cuts. The Resolution Foundation described the step as a "significant easing of austerity". Hammond said that the "era of austerity is finally coming to an end" but that there would be no "real terms" increase in public spending apart from on the NHS.

[Robin Hood]

LORDO:

......... The IFS calculated that funding an end to austerity would require an additional £19 billion per year raised through higher government borrowing or tax increases.

Therein lays the solution! Simple .... as The State, why borrow when you can create what you need in exactly the same way the banks do when they lend the Government money? Good old capitalist principal ..... cut out the middle man! In 2018 alone the UK Tax Payer gave the banks £64bn in interest ...... for money the banks created out of nothing!

The Government only needs to create what it would borrow anyway, the difference being there is no interest to pay to anyone, and no debt to repay. When the State recovers most of the created money through direct and indirect taxes ..... it goes straight back into the economy instead of making the Bankers rich! The money truly circulates. The Government spending into the economy improves the economy .......... austerity strangles it!

For me it’s a no brainer. It’s called Modern Monetary Theory or MMT ..... check it out!

[Lordo]

LORDO:

......... The IFS calculated that funding an end to austerity would require an additional £19 billion per year raised through higher government borrowing or tax increases.

Therein lays the solution! Simple .... as The State, why borrow when you can create what you need in exactly the same way the banks do when they lend the Government money? Good old capitalist principal ..... cut out the middle man! In 2018 alone the UK Tax Payer gave the banks £64bn in interest ...... for money the banks created out of nothing!

The Government only needs to create what it would borrow anyway, the difference being there is no interest to pay to anyone, and no debt to repay. When the State recovers most of the created money through direct and indirect taxes ..... it goes straight back into the economy instead of making the Bankers rich! The money truly circulates. The Government spending into the economy improves the economy .......... austerity strangles it!

For me it’s a no brainer. It’s called Modern Monetary Theory or MMT ..... check it out!

i don't know which planet ypu live in but in this one labour gave the bankers 500billion and then conservatives took over in 2010 and gave the corporations another 250billion in 9 years whicls they cut payments to the unemployed and allowed companies to pay their staff sometimes less than minimum wages and on zero hour contrats when they have no way of knowing how much they will earn next week. at the same time they decided to spend 80billion on hs2 where for every 5 pound they spend they ill get 1 pound back.

and here you are saying we should have a surplus in deficit. with so many few years where we actually have had a surplus, never the less the debt of the country had gone up to 1,0000 billion by 2010 which included 500billion we gave the banks. then this government even after cutting billions for social care and everything else have pushed tje debt to 1800billion.

as to austerity of 19billion a year, this fakin government was planning to give corprations 6 billion and earners above 50k 9 billion. so they are borrowing to pay the rich but they cannot spend it on the poor. thats 15billion over an above the tax money they evade paying. i don't know where you learn your economics or politics but your money you spent was wasted.

[Robin Hood]

Lordo:

I don't know where you learn your economics or politics but your money you spent was wasted.

Hey ..... I'm on your side!

You just haven't thought it through properly and are dealing with the problem, metaphorically speaking, by trying to use the same grossly floored financial system that created the problem in the first place. You cannot treat the National Debt situation in the same way you organise your household expenses and debts. They are two very different animals!

The first thing you have to learn is HOW money/currency is created in the first place. Once you understand that, then you will understand the fraud that the current system perpetuates and because people do not understand the basics, they fall for the same old confidence trick that makes the Bankers richer! You will also nderstand the slight-of-hand that gets gullible people (and Governments) to keep paying them for NOTHING!.

I am quite happy to explain it to you ..... but if you don't want to listen, then it's a waste of time and you will have to find out the hard way!

Check out Modern Monetary Theory ......... it makes perfect sense ...... unless you are a Banker, then you will break out into a cold sweat! Why do you think the banks get richer and richer ...... but the people still have to face austerity?

[Londonrake]

I am quite happy to explain it to you ..... but if you don't want to listen, then it's a waste of time and you will have to find out the hard way!

Welcome to the magical world of Lordovia.

[Lordo]

what the hell does it mean the banks can create all the money they need. where have you been for the last 15 years. if that was the case how the hell did the banks run out of money and beg the government to give them 500billion in 2008. although i agree that there is no cash for everything we own but we can convert it to such if and when we wish. of course there wil lbe a problem if we all tried that, there is just not enough printed currency for that,

you people are cluless. where is that 500billion now, it is on the government debt of 1.8 trillion.

can anybody explain how the banks can create their own money and yet beg for 500 billion.

it is not true that we pay the banks for nothing. we pay them interest on the money we borrow and we buy a nice house in a nice area to live in and we recieve interest on the hard earned cash money we save. well at least we used to till the collapse of the financial system. and clearly the banks will not business unless there was difference in what they lend and what they recieve as depoists. no that different to currency conversion. again there is a difference between selling and buying price.

here is the real reason why the financiers were aginst joining the euro. there would be no more money to be made in conversions and we could borrow from the german banks at a much more stable rates.

[Robin Hood]

You are going to have to help me out here LR .......... do I explain to Lordo how he has got it all wrong and liven things up, or do I pass ..... and go for the quiet life?

[Londonrake]

You are going to have to help me out here LR .......... do I explain to Lordo how he has got it all wrong and liven things up, or do I pass ..... and go for the quiet life?

Hey, I’m sitting here popcorn in hand.

Trust me - it won’t make any difference though.

[miltiades]

Get that ...popcorn ready , there is a ...hot story coming soon !

[Lordo]

there are assholes in the world that cannot answer a very simple question. here it is.

if the banks can create mone for nothing, why the fak did they go to government in 2008 cap in hand to the tune of 500billion.

it really aint rocket science is it?

i d understand that the money the government gave them were just figures and there were no transfer of real cash but thats another story.

surely this means the government can create money. after all the days when they could only print money under the gold standard has not been applied for some time. it is a trick. they create bonds and sell them to whoever and it is bought in trust that the government will be able to pay interest on the one andcouldl buy them back if they should wish to sell them.

are you out of fakin popcorn yet. so now stop fakin stuffing your face.

why did banks get a loan from the government or ask the government to buy their shares.

now answer the fakin question. assholes.