Sometimes commenters say it best, better than the blog can. Here is Steve, (and pace Alice who holds another view). Steve said,
'Unfunded pension liabilities of public sector employees amount to around GBP 800 billion according to a recent letter to the FT. As the author commented, these represent deferred remuneration and any attempt to welsh on them will come up with strong legal challenges from the unions. So much for GB keeping to the Golden Rule.
PFI and PPP liabilities are also a joke. Conveniently the ONS allows them to stay off balance sheet, to us to meet our Maastrict obligations, whereas the NAO thinks that they should be classified as state liabilities (which clearly they are) and should be accounted for as such.
Transfer payments to claimants of Job Seekers Allowance and Incapacity Benefit, as well as salaries of those who work in the public sector have to be paid by someone - either today's taxpayers, [or]to tomorrow's. An intellectual case can be made for lumbering our children and grandchildren with this burden, but unless I was on holiday at the time, I haven't heard Gordon make it.
After ten years of Finance Bills each of which run to thousands of pages we must now have the most complicated tax code in the developed world, complete with convenient features to keep private equity bosses paying lower marginal tax rates than their cleaners, and non-doms paying practically no tax at all.
You ask what is to be done. To me, it's obvious. The only way to get the government (i.e. future taxpayers) off the hook is to take back control of interest rates from the Bank of England and let inflation rip. It will be pretty grim for some (pensioners certainly, but also investors from the Far East and the Middle East who have bought gilts) but will be wonderful for the rest of us. It will also mean that those of us who are saddled with large mortgage liabilities will see them melt away.
So what if we have to run the printing presses a bit harder?
02 August 2008 23:40'.
We were in a similar position in the 70s with destructive conditions for the fixed income,fixed salary, pensioner and welfare brigade. You have all just experienced a wealth transfer from the salaried and secure to the poor, deserving and undeserving. No other category has been affected, least of all the well-to-do upwards. You will now return to Go, together with those who had a whale of a time for the last years of New Labour scam economics and kept voting them back. For those who paid real, hard-earned money to fund their housing, the education of their children and grandchildren, their retirement and any misfortune, you have been had - again - by Labour whose short term clients want your hard work attributed to their living standards. This time it was dressed up as 'prudence'and 'Brown's financial and economic skills and probity'. In the 70s it cavorted as redistribution in the interests of fairness and access.
If you can, get your money and run. Because you are required to share all you have with those who do not earn, do not save, do not tell the truth, and do not care.
UPDATE
Another commenter (Telegraph)
'the taxpayers have set a precedent; spend , spend, spend and don't worry about tomorrow for, if God helps those who help themselves, the Government helps those who don't.'
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4 comments:
Unfortunately, Steve is advocating a solution which will stuff the poor and elderly, since inflation adjustments lag behind inflation. It will also stuff savers, which given our pitiful savings rate is not a good idea. And it will stuff foreign holders of our national debt, who may seek their revenges. Remember Wilson and, ultimately, the IMF. The banks have ruined us, again. Perhaps loans above a certain ratio to income or valuation should be declared unenforceable, like gambling debts.
Yes, S.
Gambling debts, no. The client base was onto a sure winner.
We need to ask ourselves a question: do we like our New Labour-voting neighbour? Or even our New Labour policy forming colleague/acquaintance/once friend?
No? Goodness me, neither do I. And I am tired of courtesy.
The Labour Movement has a great deal to be ashamed about, as they formed the cheaply-bought client base for a deeply reactionary, authoritarian regime. Possibly they think they were all just doing their jobs - but we have been there before. Now, as they come to claim there promised riches they are going to get a boot in the teeth. Unfortunately, much better people than they are, who have coughed up honestly earned hard cash, rather than being paid for cheap votes, are going to get the teeth treatment too.
So, do you really like your New Labour voting client base neighbour? Because Brown and Blair and all the rest of the filth couldn't have done it without them.
The IEA puts the liability for Public Sector pensions at over £1 TRILLION. I know it's only another 200 billion or so, but ...
http://www.iea.org.uk/record.jsp?type=release&ID=136
Nor have you mentioned Quangos - now estimated at around £120 billion per annum.
Oh and another 3 billion pissed away into Northern Rock.
We'll ignore the fact that we are borrowing to pay interest on previous loans.
Fire sale!
Fire sale!
Fire sale!
Everything must go.
Gone all ready Elby, hence infuriated Angels.
What have we got, and with it, what can we do, to make a civilised United Kingdom?
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