Maybe stand up Alun Cochrane has a point when he says’ Maybe the problem is more and more of us are realising we’ve already got enough shit.’

I do believe more and more people are getting more savvy about money as it gets tighter, and not so much buying crap in ‘sales’ just because it says 50% off.

I do hope the global economy isn’t entirely based on us all constantly going into debt to fill our homes with stuff we don’t need, or we’re screwed as a race.

Maybe, and I’m being optimistic, people are thinking about the whole ‘recycling’ thing, and not replacing their cars, furniture, TVs and white goods, just because a new model came out that was listed as ‘in’ in the sunday supplements.

So growth is only 89% slower than it was a year ago. That’s not too bad, is it? That’s positive news. Could have been worse. Don’t know what these whining lefties are so worried about.

Conservative economic terrorists know that austerity wont eliminate the deficit but that was never the real goal, it was just a smokescreen. Conservative economic terrorist cult leaders are evil but they are not stupid, like their sun reading followers.

Their real mission is the complete destruction of the welfare state and the privatisation of everything to make the rich richer at the expense of the poor. They keep misdirecting everyone by saying “our plans will soon work to lower the deficit just be patient” so everyone thinks that is their real aim when in actual fact they couldn’t care less about the deficit they just want to destroy the last vestiges of the post war settlement. They just hope they can keep the smokescreen going long enough to complete their real mission.

The sooner people understand this the better.

You’re outright delusional to even mention that kind of nonsense.

As I understand it, the Tea Party types aren’t demanding that the government stop borrowing and spending. They’re threatening to engineer a situation in which the government *has* to stop borrowing and spending, with consequences they acknowledge would be undesirable, if Obama doesn’t agree to further spending cuts in place of proposed tax rises.

G.O.: “Well, part of the answer *is* borrow and spend! No-one denies that. Not one single right-wing kook…”

Eh? Have you not noticed that the Tea Party are attempting to stop the US government raising the debt ceiling?

Yes – they want to borrow and spend at the present level, not increase the spending. You do not need to increase borrowing to be borrowing and spending – the government is doing it even as they cut spending, because income is that much lower than expenditure.

Simple thought might help here you know – don’t just jump to conclusions.

“The right step for an economy like ours is to get on top of your debt and your deficit and then make it a better place for businesses to grow and expand and employ people.”

So remember – if we continue to see little or no growth over the coming months and years, it’s all part of the plan. We’re only going to worry about growth *after* we’ve got on top of our debt and deficit. Somehow.

Eh? Have you not noticed that the Tea Party are attempting to stop the US government raising the debt ceiling?

The big issue with the current government’s austerity plan – as pointed out by the article – is whether it will actually decrease the debt at all, since throwing loads of people out of work while slashing benefits for the unemployed to the extent that they can’t pay for both rent and food will tend to cause a sudden drop in consumer spending and hence taxes paid.

If they seriously want to decrease the deficit they’ll have to aim in other places where the boomerang effect won’t happen, like taxes on wealth and property. But the whole point of the Tories as a party is to resist such taxes, so that won’t happen.

It’s hardly pedantic to point out that the line you try to draw between loony lefties who think we should ‘borrow and spend’ our way out of recession and sensible right-wingers who think otherwise just doesn’t exist. Nor does the line between sensible right-wingers who accept that the deficit is to high and loony lefties who don’t. We can all agree that we need to close the deficit in the medium term, and we can all agree that doing so depends on our cutting spending and raising taxes neither so much that growth is weak, nor by so little that the deficit sticks around in spite of strong growth.

It useless to just labour the point that we can’t just keep on borrowing indefinitely. We all know that. The question is whether more borrowing now is going to mean less borrowing later (because it will promote growth and so boost tax revenues and reduce the need for spending on unemployment benefits etc.), or whether on the contrary less borrowing now will mean less borrowing later (because something like ‘expansionary fiscal contraction’ will promote all the growth that’s needed). One can consistently oppose Osbornomics *precisely because* we can’t just go on borrowing indefinitely; if his policies lead to weak growth, the deficit is going to remain higher for longer.