The Conservative Party

[Gareth Barry Conlon]

This is brutal.

 

[mat]

Reid launched her inner Karen on him. Not as Journalist but as a mum.

 

[bluethrunthru]

This is brutal.

You only have to see Johnson answer at PMQ's to know why he is still in a job - they think Johnson is the gold standard so Williamson in their eyes is doing just fine

 

[Chris in London]

This is brutal.

Susannah Reid was even better. Started off by reeling off all those failures and more (eg the a level results fiasco) and then asked him “how do you think your job is going?”

 

[metalblue]

MMT for you. This just makes sense.

So I finally found an hour to listen to that, a lot of words were spoken but there was very little in the way of detail to explain how it would work but let’s just pick at this “government buying of labour concept”

Firstly we can estimate that, based on an average salary of £25,000 per year we can broadly say per 1m people employed would cost us £25bn per year or £2.08bn a month. Let’s assume in a recession our unemployment would stand at somewhere between 2 and 5million depending on severity. So anywhere between £4.16bn and £10.4bn a month (the later is more than we spend on the NHS).

To fund this the government would sell debt (gilts) to the central bank who will have printed the money and this would give the government the money to pay the available labour force. This additional money will have some short term benefits as all debt fuelled economic policies do. I’ve ignored the effect of the tax paid by this additional job and that would probably reduce the cost by around 10% overall based on our current tax.

However inflation is your elephant in the room wether you like it or not. These workers will want pay rises (because they’ll want that new car which is good for the economy as a whole) so the government would need to print ever increasing amounts of money. This will be reflected by other workers in the private sector also wanting more pay (why should they get one and not us right?) so companies will need to put their prices up or go bust. This inflationary cycle can very quickly overheat with ever increase frequency of pay rises and price rises. The only way to prevent this is to only have 1 type of car available and 1 type of house (you’d need to demolish all our great buildings and start again, would give this new found labour force something to do)

Interestingly the policy you are advocating is really what is happening with the furlough scheme so I’m sure you’re a big advocate of what the government are doing here. The BOE is buying the debt to pay for it and printing money like never before. Because this is a global crisis and everyone is broadly doing the same you won’t see currencies getting slammed for it like you would if it was done for ideological reasons. They’ve parked the risk of inflation as being a problem for another day but it’s still there.

 

[metalblue]

I love MB like a brother and i cant wait to hear him defend Priti Patel's car crash interview on GMTV this morning.

It could well be one of the best posts on BM ever if he manages to defend it.

The anticipation of it is making me salivate.

Had a chance to watch this on catch up now.
Death rates. It isn’t a scoreboard but we know Portugal for example who were second on that list (some random countries in there and some obvious absentees IMHO) have reported about half of their COVID related deaths so that would put them significantly ahead of us if that was extrapolated. Like she said, we record these differently. Excess deaths is the best metric IMHO.

The Christmas gatherings she is right in the sense that they made decisions based on evidence (which was fast moving) but she should have been contrite enough to acknowledge that based on where we are now we should have not allowed it.

Unfortunately she has missed an opportunity to be not only clear but also human as well and acknowledge that mistakes have been made as we try and balance a sense of normality with the need to protect health.

On police records. Piers Morgan is a self important prick, let the lady answer. I don’t get what he doesn’t understand when she says they are on other systems including paper records and they may need to collate them. She’s on record for that now. Hold her to account in the future. He should be asking what does that mean for current cases/investigations and pinned her down on that not trying to come across as Johnny big bollocks by talking over her. If I was HS I’d deport the ****.

 

[mat]

We now have the worst government in the world.

Top of the cunts. And at least 3 more years of them destroying everything without any guard rails. Yay....

 

[Rascal]

So I finally found an hour to listen to that, a lot of words were spoken but there was very little in the way of detail to explain how it would work but let’s just pick at this “government buying of labour concept”

Firstly we can estimate that, based on an average salary of £25,000 per year we can broadly say per 1m people employed would cost us £25bn per year or £2.08bn a month. Let’s assume in a recession our unemployment would stand at somewhere between 2 and 5million depending on severity. So anywhere between £4.16bn and £10.4bn a month (the later is more than we spend on the NHS).

To fund this the government would sell debt (gilts) to the central bank who will have printed the money and this would give the government the money to pay the available labour force. This additional money will have some short term benefits as all debt fuelled economic policies do. I’ve ignored the effect of the tax paid by this additional job and that would probably reduce the cost by around 10% overall based on our current tax.

However inflation is your elephant in the room wether you like it or not. These workers will want pay rises (because they’ll want that new car which is good for the economy as a whole) so the government would need to print ever increasing amounts of money. This will be reflected by other workers in the private sector also wanting more pay (why should they get one and not us right?) so companies will need to put their prices up or go bust. This inflationary cycle can very quickly overheat with ever increase frequency of pay rises and price rises. The only way to prevent this is to only have 1 type of car available and 1 type of house (you’d need to demolish all our great buildings and start again, would give this new found labour force something to do)

Interestingly the policy you are advocating is really what is happening with the furlough scheme so I’m sure you’re a big advocate of what the government are doing here. The BOE is buying the debt to pay for it and printing money like never before. Because this is a global crisis and everyone is broadly doing the same you won’t see currencies getting slammed for it like you would if it was done for ideological reasons. They’ve parked the risk of inflation as being a problem for another day but it’s still there.

Sorry mate, been busy.

Modern monetary theory and inflation – Part 1 – Bill Mitchell – Modern Monetary Theory (economicoutlook.net)

Bill Mitchell explains why Inflation is not as important as people think and is not the elephant in the room. It is well worth a read.

A lot if is still way above my head but i get the general jist of it, i just need more time to spend reading up on it.

 

[Rascal]

£500 covid payment for testing positive or having to self isolate.

Do they realise every druggie and drunk in the country will be doing their best to catch covid because £500 is a lot of drugs and booze.

Catch Covid, self isolate with £500s worth of goodies and maybe still have change to dial a pizza

Or hold a party with somebody who has tested positive, get 15 guests, each cough up £50 of the payment to pay the fine, self isolate with the other £450 and buy an Xbox


This has to be a joke, they cant be serious surely.

 

[Gareth Barry Conlon]

Sorry mate, been busy.

Modern monetary theory and inflation – Part 1 – Bill Mitchell – Modern Monetary Theory (economicoutlook.net)

Bill Mitchell explains why Inflation is not as important as people think and is not the elephant in the room. It is well worth a read.

A lot if is still way above my head but i get the general jist of it, i just need more time to spend reading up on it.

Inflation is every bit as important as peopel think. Bottom line is you cant just keep printing money without devaluing the currency. If you do it eventually collapses - no one wants it (see Argentina / Zimbabwe for real life examples of failed currencies). You end up using foreign currency (the US dollar) where you have no control over it.