So rughly speaking, summarizing the five points above:

- Spend
- Spend
- Spend
- Spend
- Spend

How does he intend to pay for it? More borrowing I assume….

Worth checking out Martin Wolf in Wednesday’s FT: Britain’s austerity is indefensible

Look at the consequences of the Cameron/Osborne unrelenting austerity measures:

Construction industry slump despite the BoE setting its interest rate at ½ pc in March 2009 and putting £375 billion of QE into the finance markets.

As for Funding for Lending: “Just 13 banks used the Bank of England’s state-backed Funding for Lending cheap credit scheme in its first five months and, between them, have taken £1.88bn of credit out of the economy, official figures show.” [Telegraph 4 March 2013]

Government borrowing going up, not down: “The Office for National Statistics said that once special factors such as the transfer of the Royal Mail Pension fund and QE profits were excluded, the budget deficit for the first 10 months of the 2012-13 financial year was 6.6% higher than in the same period of 2011-12.” [Channel 4 News]

The competitiveness of Britain’s economy as indicated by the balance of overseas trade: “even though the pound has lost up to a third of its value against major currencies since the onset of the financial crisis, Britain this year will be the only developed economy in the world that will register a current account deficit that will be higher, at 3.1 percent of GDP, than it was in 2009.” [CNC]

What of business investment? “UK Business Investment Drops by £400m in Fourth Quarter”

Consumer spending? Try Saturday’s The Economist:

“Britain’s squeezed households largely explain the country’s flatlining economy”
http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21573132-britains-squeezed-households-largely-explain-countrys-flatlining-economy-dropping-shopping

The latest tealeaves from yesterday: “The pound fell against the dollar and euro after official figures showed UK manufacturing output fell in January from a month earlier. . . Output fell by 1.5%, following a 0.9% rise in December, adding to fears the UK will dip back into recession.” [BBC website Tuesday]

1. Tyler

Come on then – If Osborne can borrow loads why can’t Labour?

Why do rightwingers think they’re borrowing is any better than that of the left?

And no, rightwing economic performance is no better than that of the left.

How does he intend to pay for it? More borrowing I assume….

As ever, you didn’t bother reading the article then Tyler. Now you’re just becoming a regular mindless troll.

@1
At least 3 of those policies are funded, as Ed Balls describes.

Is Tyler back doing his impressions from Dad’s Army again? He alternates between channelling Jones – running around like a headless chicken – and Fraser – “we’re doomed”.

“Guaranteeing every young person out of work for a year or more a job — a job that they will have to take up or lose their benefits”

More forced workfare then…

#7

As I understand it, the Ed Milliband suggestion was a three days per week job that would allow the other two days to be used for regular job hunting. It’s not the most profoundly radical proposal ever – but it did at least indicate a level of real-world thought process somewhat lacking from the government’s various equivalent proposals and policies.

The headline news report in Wednesday’s FT: Spectre of stagflation haunts the UK

“The prospect of stagflation has returned to the UK as investors bet on a sharp jump in inflation to its highest level in almost five years. . . Investor fears that the UK could be simultaneously hit by stagnant growth and high inflation, as experienced in the 1970s, were exacerbated by poor economic data pointing to the probability of another economic contraction in the first quarter of this year. . . the National Institute of Economic and Social Research said the economy continued to flatline in the first two months of 2013.”

@ 3 BenM

The point is Balls is going to borrow *even more*. How much stimulus do you need to get the economy going?

Have a read of this:

http://www.cityam.com/article/those-who-want-big-boost-public-spending-are-wrong

Specifically

“Many obsess about lower demand caused by spending cuts – but appear uninterested in the demand destroyed by inflation, in the form of falling real wages and savings. Most believe our problems to be largely cyclical: there is lots of idle capacity waiting to be used, they claim. But what if such a concept is redundant and unmeasurable? What if there is not really much spare capacity, merely a structural mismatch, with lots of labour and capital no longer relevant to today’s needs, and a legacy of past malinvestment? What if activist monetary policies are merely delaying the necessary adjustment, while pushing up prices, as shown by the fact that inflation expectations are now at a multi-year high?”

@ 4 Sunny

I did read the article. It doesn’t explain how these things will be funded, bar a few vague tax hikes, and there is serious doubt about how much those taxes would actually raise, certainly in the long term. He also peddles the same old lies, such as:

“in just four weeks’ time millionaires will each be given an average £100,000 tax cut.”

He is being deliberately vague about how these things would be funded. Makes fine politics but in the real world the numbers won’t add up.

All the hard economic data quoted @2 and @9 above show that Cameron-Osbornomics isn’t working, which is also the conclusion of Martin Wolf’s analysis in Wednesday’s FT: Britain’s austerity is indefensible.

Not only that, but with Osbornomics, government borrowing is currently actually rising, not falling, so we have a flat-lining economy, teetering on the verge of a triple-dip recession, along with increased government borrowing.

The only sane conclusion is to change the course of the government’s policy because it is demonstrably failing. With Eurozone economies also focused on fiscal austerity – and with the Eurozone buying 40 pc of Britain’s exports – there is the high prospective risk of western European economies sinking into an extended period of embedded stagnation.

CityAM? Oh yeah, a source of balanced, reasoned, unbiased argument if ever there was one…

Seriously, Tyler? You’re basing your “argument” on an article that consists almost totally of self-serving “what if..?”s?

Here’s one for you: what if CityAM is talking out of its hat, and making a far bigger deal of inflationary risks than there’s any demonstrable case for in support of a blatantly transparent agenda?

Get some Balls Ed. I note that you do not promise to reverse the Osborn tax cut for millionaires, why not?

So can I rest assured that if Osborn doesn’t do it you wont?

@ 12 Keith

Right, attack the strawman that it is cityAM doing the writing rather than the actual question – why isn’t all this massive government spending producing growth? Why do Keynesian types think a bit more spending will suddenly create growth? Why are Keynesians ignoring the fact that inflation is actually destroying demand, and debt servicing costs are acting as a drag on growth?

“Why do Keynesian types think a bit more spending will suddenly create growth?”

As I’ve posted several times, it is crucial to decide whether economic growth is currently demand-side or supply-side constrained – with some saying that Britain’s flagging economy has been taking out supply capacity. This paper by Bill Martin and Bob Rowthorn is focused on just this issue:

Is the British economy supply constrained II?
http://www.cbr.cam.ac.uk/pdf/BM_Report3.pdf

If Britain’s economy is supply-constrained then what is the purpose of Quantitative Easing and Funding for Lending, which are intended to boost demand? On the evidence, the government believes that the economy is demand-constrained or Osborne would not be encouraging QE and Funding for Lending. Simple.

@ Bob B

Given that QE and large deficit spending hasn’t significantly encouraged growth, it would suggest that the UK is supply constrained, wouldn’t it?

i) Ed Balls is about 5 years late in proposing spending money on building affordable homes to provide a boost to employment as well as helping with the shortage of housing. I was arguing for this before Lehman crashed in 2008 but Ed and his pal Gordon weren’t listening.
ii) Ed Balls has failed to notice that under the Coalition government, small firms have already been taking on a lot of workers, more than half-a-million, while banks and the public sector have cut numbers employed. But hey!, what’s half-a-million or so jobs to “Newswire”?
iii) Cutting VAT leads to more imports and increases unemployment unless it is restricted solely to services that cannot be imported (i.e. excluding bathroom fittings, building materials etc)
iv) So if a physically disabled youngster is offered a job as a steel erector, he loses hos benefits?!?
v) A fair tax on bankers’ bonuses isn’t going very far towards paying for a job for every young person out of work for a year (wherein I define “fair” as less than 100%)
vi)State-run banks have almost universally been disastrous making RBS look like a star performer. The Spanish Caixa had boards appointed by local government, the worst-hit in 2008 were owned by German Lander, in the 1990s most East European banks found to be insolvent when new, democratic, governments had them audited. Even in non-communist countries like France and the USA state-owned banks like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Credit Agricole, have been found to be bankrupt.
vii) The 10% tax rate gives more to those above the 10% band than to those in it. A simple rise in the tax threshold gives more to anyone in that band. [See John Kay's article]. This is *so obvious* to anyone who can do mental arithmetic to the standard I met at six, that one asks what the 2 Eds are doing by proposing this
viii) Ed Balls talks about millionaires getting tax cuts while they are paying more than under New Labour and Ed Millionaireband was moaning about his (now wife) losing Child Benefit because they are (jointly) millionaires. I’d have no objection to a top rate of 60% (a la Geoffrey Howe) if I believed the Balls, Brown, Blair, Kinnock and Miliband families and their pals like Jimmy Carr and Nat Rothschild were going to pay it along with the guys who worked for a living.

VAT cut is important, but another thing that could happen in a Labour Budget is a net wealth tax on assets worth over £10m to fund a mortgage interest rate tax relief scheme worth up to £25,000 in allowance for homes worth up to £250,000. How would the VAT cut be paid for? Use £13bn from the pension tax relief budget to pay for it.