The defecit

[TheGreatSoprendo]

So, the deficit is £850 billion. Is this using the definition of a billion as a million million or as a thousand million?

In other words, is the defecit:

£850,000,000,000 or
£850,000,000,000,000?

[Plotloss]

We seem to have standardised on the US Billion i.e thousand mill.

[TheGreatSoprendo]

So to put it into perspective, the defecit is the equivalent of having spent over £1 million every single day since the birth of christ? Nice one Gordo!

[Slyjoe]

Who do we owe it to?
And if we are in debt, why do we still dole out aid to foreign countries?

[theironduke]

TheGreatSoprendo said:

So to put it into perspective, the defecit is the equivalent of having spent over £1 million every single day since the birth of christ? Nice one Gordo!

Nice one. Thats going on the lefty bashing list.

[johnfm]

TheGreatSoprendo said:

So to put it into perspective, the defecit is the equivalent of having spent over £1 million every single day since the birth of christ? Nice one Gordo!

[pedant]

No it isn't.

The deficit is the gap between money spent and tax receipts in - so, every day they've spent £1 million more that they have collected in tax.

[/pedant off]

[TheGreatSoprendo]

johnfm said:

TheGreatSoprendo said:

So to put it into perspective, the defecit is the equivalent of having spent over £1 million every single day since the birth of christ? Nice one Gordo!

[pedant]

No it isn't.

The deficit is the gap between money spent and tax receipts in - so, every day they've spent £1 million more that they have collected in tax.

[/pedant off]

Good point! So a subtle change to my original post will make it more accurate:

So to put it into perspective, the defecit is the equivalent of having overspent by £1 million every single day since the birth of christ? Nice one Gordo![/

[230TE]

TheGreatSoprendo said:

So a subtle change to my original post will make it more accurate:

So to put it into perspective, the defecit is the equivalent of having overspent by £1 million every single day since the birth of christ? Nice one Gordo!

Still not quite there. The £850 billion figure is the total debt, the total amount we owe. Equivalent as you say to overspending by £1m per day ever since the birth of Christ. The deficit is the difference between what the Govt has coming in and what it spends every year. This year it will be about £170 billion.

So when Winky talked about halving the deficit in four years, what he meant was that four years from now, the Govt will be spending £85 billion more than it earns every year, and the total debt will be around £1.2 trillion. Grasp that point and you will understand the true extent to which Winky has screwed the economy. It might be ten years before we can start actually paying back the debt, and if another recession comes along in the next 25 years or so (which it will, for sure) we are in deep trouble because our Sovereign Nation Mastercard is maxed out. The Chinese were happy to take Hong Kong off our hands: perhaps they'll give us a decent price for the UK as well.

[Phil1]

2009's deficit was £159.2Bn. The total debt pile that was added to, reached £950.4Bn. All according to the ONS.

I make the deficit £217k pounds for every day since the birth of christ. The total debt is £1.295M for every day.

[Fetchez la vache]

Phil1 said:

2009's deficit was £159.2Bn. The total debt pile that was added to, reached £950.4Bn. All according to the ONS.

I make the deficit £217k pounds for every day since the birth of christ. The total debt is £1.295M for every day.

SO... how big is our overdraft limit?

[Don]

Getting my wife to understand the difference between "deficit" and "debt"...lordy.

I explain it to her.

"deficit" - amount of government spending that is greater than tax receipts in any given period
"debt" - total amount owed by the government

i.e. £2 deficit each year means in year one you owe £2 but in year two you owe £4.

Then she explains it back to me - wrong. Every time so far...

She's an intelligent woman. There's something about the words that turns her fluffy.

[Yeast Lord]

and all the while the one eyed scotsman will be relaxing about his mansion receiving a big fat gold plated pension. What I want to know is why should winky get a gold plated pension when he sold all the gold, it's well unfair.

[stew-S160]

Despite this enormous debt, there will still be morons who think Brown and his chums did a great job and should have stayed in power.


MORONS.


utter utter morons.

[plasticpig]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

In many ways the amount dose not matter. The real measure is debt as a percentage of GDP. The UK has been in far worse situations before. Mainly during and after the Napoleonic wars and the two World Wars. From a historical point of view it's actually quite low.



The way to pay the debt off is to increase the revenue the government receives. The way to pay off the debt is not spending cuts or increasing taxes. The best way is to concentrate on encouraging growth in the economy.

[XJR40]

stew-S160 said:

Despite this enormous debt, there will still be morons who think Brown and his chums did a great job and should have stayed in power.


MORONS.


utter utter morons.

I think the only people that think that are those who are either genuinely to thick to understand the problem or liars with some sort of vested interest.

[cymtriks]

OK...

Debt is 1 trillion
Deficit is circa 150 billion a year

To avoid going deeper into debt and pay off the debt over fifty (YES fifty!!! ) years we need to cut or tax 170 billion every year.

These are the portions of the whole:

190 social protection
119 health
88 education
38 defence
36 law and order
30 debt interest
30 social housing
29 personal social services
23 transport
plus other stuff to a total of around 700 billion

note that personal social services and social protection added together are 219 billion and this total is roughly split between the elderly and everyone else.

One of the main problems is politicians utter cowardice in debating where to save money. Even on the sensitive issues like the NHS and eduction we could cut back to more basic systems with the more expensive options requiring a top up from the pocket of the user.

Perhaps a referendum, clearly giving the tax income and budget for each item and requiring the voter to allocate a new tax take and expenditure budget would be a way forwards in the debate. Then at least we all be consulted which might be a very handy thing to fall back on for the government.

The benefit system could be massively simplified, with vast savings in paperwork, if we could drop the pathetic adderence to means testing which just encourages people to hide their wealth and forms a trap to keep them in the benefit system. One flat rate could replace most, or even all, benefits without actually hurting most recipients but with a huge saving in paperwork.

Education could be slashed by ruthlessly cutting back on higher education. We only need half the country going to university to hide the youth unemployment figure, it puts the kids in debt and costs a lot so face the truth and cut it back to 3% going to university.

Public sector pensions could be changed to a properly funded one, PFI could be stopped.

The state pension age will have to go up to 70 very quickly.

The solution is simply that we have to concentrate on the most important issues, those which affect the most people in the biggest way, and just stop doing anything else.

[Plotloss]

plasticpig said:

anonymous said:

[redacted]

In many ways the amount dose not matter. The real measure is debt as a percentage of GDP. The UK has been in far worse situations before. Mainly during and after the Napoleonic wars and the two World Wars. From a historical point of view it's actually quite low.



The way to pay the debt off is to increase the revenue the government receives. The way to pay off the debt is not spending cuts or increasing taxes. The best way is to concentrate on encouraging growth in the economy.

Interesting graph that.

Seems to get cash in the door, exploitation wins and to eat up reserves like nothing else wars do pretty bloody well.

[Maxf]

plasticpig said:

The UK has been in far worse situations before. Mainly during and after the Napoleonic wars and the two World Wars.

They were actually pretty good reasons for economic difficulty and mass borrowing. The problem is we are in the position now, having only recently come out of a period of massive boom - no world wars or melting railings to stop the hun advancing towards our borders, just a huge spending fkup.

Its a bit like comparing a family who are in debt due to paying for some kind of operation or medical proceedure to a family who are equally in debt but due to sky tv, burberry hats and 50" plasma tvs.

[plasticpig]

Maxf said:

plasticpig said:

The UK has been in far worse situations before. Mainly during and after the Napoleonic wars and the two World Wars.

They were actually pretty good reasons for economic difficulty and mass borrowing. The problem is we are in the position now, having only recently come out of a period of massive boom - no world wars or melting railings to stop the hun advancing towards our borders, just a huge spending fkup.

Its a bit like comparing a family who are in debt due to paying for some kind of operation or medical proceedure to a family who are equally in debt but due to sky tv, burberry hats and 50" plasma tvs.

I understand that. I would still maintain the only way to significantly reduce the debt is through economic growth. An alternative I posted in another thread is:

plasticpig said:

So the nation currently owns a large portion of a couple of banks. Instead of using the tax revenue to pay off the national debt could it not use the trading arm of the banks and a portion of the tax revenue to play the markets? A sovereign deficit reduction fund rather than a wealth fund.

[XJR40]

What's the outlook for growth though? With all the belt tightening going on , not just by our own governemnt but in Europe as well, where is all the new spending going to come from for growth?