Quote Originally Posted by Furunculus View Post
i know what louis said, and i am aware of its existance.

but this spending increase is not only a function of GDP growth and inflation, it is also impacted by both an increased proportion of spending as a function of GDP, and massively increased deficit borrowing, at a time when you should be using surplus to decrease the deficit in respect of the cyclical nature of economies........................

except brown had the towering arrogance to assume that he had engineered boom-and-bust out of the economy, so he could borrow and spend a much as he damned well pleased.

it was colossal incompetance.
Tory spin.


1) Public expenditure, absolute amount, £ billion:

1980 - £ 98,2
1997 - £ 348,0
2008 - £ 525,0

The Tories increased public expenditure by 350%. Labour by 150%. We shall have to conclude Thatcher was a Marxist, responsible for the largest increase in the public sector in British history.
Or not, and look at the numbers in a more relevant way, as % of GDP:


2) Public spending as percentage of GDP:

Tory:
1990 - 35.23
1997 - 38.35

Labour
1997 - 38.35
2008 - 39.88


3)Public net debt as % of GDP:

1980 - 42,11%
1997 - 41,92
2008 - 36,38

That's right. The Tories are the party of public debt, Labour is the party of fiscal discipline. Not unlike the US*, blunt fact simply does not manage to overcome perception of a spendthrifty left, and a disciplined right.

Massive public debt is what you get for describing taxes as daylight robbery. It leads to a refusal to maintain taxes at a realistic level. Public debt is what you get for neo-liberalism and its demand that governments sell the geese with the golden eggs. That is, to privatise directly profitable government sectors so the profits are for the few, and maintaining non-profitable government sectors, so these costs are socialised.


* The UK has the problem of speaking a language closely related to American, so there is even more creeping in of American concepts in British public discourse than on the continent. It undermines traditional British values. In politics, the US lacking a European style social democracy, it is mostly the UK Conservatives that are prone to adopt concepts that are alien to traditional British values.