From The Daily Mail:
Osborne 'might fail to pay off deficit by election' because of difficulties delivering cuts: Chancellor George Osborne risks missing his target of eliminating Britain's national deficit by the next general election because of below-par growth and 'formidable' difficulties delivering cuts, a respected economic think tank warned today...
The Lib-Cons have no intention of 'paying off the deficit', their stated aim is to reduce the annual increase in the deficit, as I'm sure the IFS report would have made clear. And it looks as if they won't even achieve that.
Going on the dry
4 hours ago
5 comments:
If you try to fail at a task and don't accomplish said task, does that mean that you have succeeded?
VFTS, if they stay in government for five years, then by their standards, they have succeeded.
Osborne is reducing the rate of increase in total *spending* by spending a lower proportion of public spending on departments.
He also hopes that growth in the economy will increase tax receipts.
He also hopes that setting a framework for reducing the deficit will increase the markets' confidence in HMG's ability to repay debt in the longer term which hopefully reduces the rate of interest payable on HMG's debt.
This is entirely consistent with trying to reduce the deficit.
Saying that Osborne is not cutting the total nominal level of public spending = reducing the annual increase in the deficit makes no sense.
BE: "This is entirely consistent with trying to reduce the deficit."
Agreed, his plan is to overspend by £150 bn this year, by £120 bn the year after, by £90 bn the year after that. He is trying to reduce the 'annual deficit'.
But total government debt will have gone up from 70% of GDP to 90% of GDP by the time he's finished (or whatever the precise figures are).
Your last sentence contains too many double negatives for me to make head or tail of, I'm afraid. Is it a statement, a question, what?
That's a cunning piece of double-speak worthy of the climate change brigade. In Osborne-speak, "eliminating the deficit" means ending up spending what you earn. But does he correct those gentlemen of the press who think that "eliminating the deficit" means ending up owing nothing? Of course not.
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