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Samizdata idiotic quote of the day Even so, with eight months of the fiscal year still to go and often large revisions to early borrowing estimates, it is too soon to conclude that the Chancellor is meeting his fiscal plans with room to spare and could therefore reduce the scale of the austerity measures set to hit the economy.
– Samuel Tombs, economist at Capital Economics, quote here.
Listen up you ‘tard, it would be a very good thing indeed if even more ‘austerity’ measures were “set to hit the economy”. ‘Austerity’, as you Keynesian fuckwits like to call the state spending slightly less of other people’s confiscated money, means the money in question gets used in the economy under private economic direction, rather than malinvested by the damn state.
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Where’s a 16 ton weight when you need one?
Or pointed stick?
Whoever came up with the term ‘austerity’ should either be a rich a-hole living on his own private island or dead in an unmarked grave. It’s the perfect goverment word – a word that brings to an average person’s mind it’s opposite meaning.
Just to be clear, when I hear the word austerity I think ‘doing more with less’. In government practice it appears to mean ‘doing less with more’.
Why is it “austere” for me to be charged lower taxes and then spend my extra money on getting my lawn mowed instead of letting bureaucrats take that money and give it to their friends?
Because the bureaucrats don’t get their cut of the graft. Thus they have less to spend, So it’s austere for them, which is all they care about.
“When people say ‘austerity’, what they really mean is not being fiscally reckless fast enough.”
(David Angelo, here)
Austerity: the experience of flivvering in one of these.
Cheers
LOL
Austerity in Europe means cutting government spending whilst raising taxes.
This genius plan is supposed to pay off the creditor nations. Problem is, it sends the economy into a death spiral, less taxes are raised from a shrinking base (plus the growth of the black economy to avoid punitive tax hikes), more money needs to be borrowed to keep public services going, and ever more debt is accrued.
The end of the road for this type of austerity is bankruptcy. It’s a recipe for fiscal suicide. It’s not the spending cuts, it’s the tax rises, stupid!
Alternatively, you could cut government services sharply, cut, broaden (sorry Greek shipping billionaires – no peppercorn tax rates for you anymore) and simplify taxes just as sharply, compete with Ireland for the lowest company tax rate in Europe (this is the biggest no-brainer ever for a country like Greece), and remove barriers to entry throughout the economy particularly with regards to labour participation.
Install that kind of austerity, and come back and see me in five years to let me know how you’re doing.
A good point that needs to be made often, but why spice it up with ” ‘tard”. Mr Tombs does not have learning difficulties, his problems are much wider than that and likely to be more of his own making. There are many people with learning difficulties who are trying to lead independent, self directed lives inspite of the best efforts of social services. They don’t deserve to be used as casual insults.
Sermon over – love this blog
British government spending is vast, and the deficit (inspire of high taxes) is very high.
Keynesians claim that they support empirical information (“the facts”) over economic theory (reasoning) – yet, in reality, their “facts” are really nonsense.
They even cite wild government spending (and endless regulation) Greece as an example of the failure of the free market.
It is impossible to take the Keynesian establishment seriously as economic thinkers.
Sadly this does not just include the critics of the Chancellor – the Keynesian establishment also includes the Chancellor himself.
Calling politicians fuckwits is too good for them much like journalists who support them.
Actually, austerity usually means cutting the rate of increase in government spending, not actually cutting spending.
Whatever. Just cut, broaden and simplify taxes – HARD. Government spending decreases must inevitability follow. Allow for a painful transitionary period in which the private sector, with a great deal of creative destruction, reasserts the regulations of a free market over parts of the economy the government is no longer willing or able to manage. Things will soon be looking up.
I tend to disagree, James: government spending does not necessarily follow tax cuts, what does tend to follow in reality is money printing. That was more or less what happened under Reagan, no?