Oversimplification of fiscal issues
Aug. 24th, 2005 12:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
narcasseI’ve just done a quiz that’s told me that Fiscal issue-wise I’m 100% Conservative. Now I know it’s an American quiz so the term ‘Conservative’ probably won’t mean the same that it does here and I know that being an internet quiz it probably isn’t going to hold the secret of my future political persuasion but one of the questions in particular caught my eyes as being a little odd. The question being: what’s more important? To reduce the deficit and national debt or to help the poor and helpless.
As if those two things are mutually exclusive.
Now granted, poor relief and such is important because at the end of the day, if the gap between wealth and poverty is ridiculously wide your economy has more problems than impact on shareholder index but to take an extreme example, if you keep churning out cash without reducing national debt all you’ll do is bankrupt your country fairly quickly. Besides, once you’ve done that if you want funds from the IMF you then need to adapt your public spending to their criteria which is going to have more to do with restoring the health of your markets and thus increasing your country’s capacity to trade on an equal basis with the rest of the world and generate revenue, than helping the domestic poor. It’s not that they want people lingering about the poverty line but isn’t not going to be the first thing they look at, because if your country can’t support itself and wield a bit of influence on the world stage, then your poor are pretty much fucked anyway because sooner, rather than later, the money that should be getting them job training or cuts in education fees for their children and so on, will just dry up. And then you’re back to square one, without your £200 for passing Go.
Looking at a long-term projection, if you can reduce the deficit then you know you’re going to have the funds to ‘help the poor and helpless’ but if you don’t and are just ineffectually throwing money at the problem, isn’t not going to solve anything.
Which reminds me of someone wanking on about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs a little while back and how everyone was apparently too concerned with satisfying their need for food and shelter to look to self-actualisation. Now, I don’t know about anyone else but really, if I’m lacking food, shelter, sanitation and so on, I don’t think it makes me such a terrible person to go after that before I start with the zazen.
*takes off his economist hat because really,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kaytoil is the economist, not me*
There was also something about inheritance tax that I meant to rant on about but I need to look up the details first...
As if those two things are mutually exclusive.
Now granted, poor relief and such is important because at the end of the day, if the gap between wealth and poverty is ridiculously wide your economy has more problems than impact on shareholder index but to take an extreme example, if you keep churning out cash without reducing national debt all you’ll do is bankrupt your country fairly quickly. Besides, once you’ve done that if you want funds from the IMF you then need to adapt your public spending to their criteria which is going to have more to do with restoring the health of your markets and thus increasing your country’s capacity to trade on an equal basis with the rest of the world and generate revenue, than helping the domestic poor. It’s not that they want people lingering about the poverty line but isn’t not going to be the first thing they look at, because if your country can’t support itself and wield a bit of influence on the world stage, then your poor are pretty much fucked anyway because sooner, rather than later, the money that should be getting them job training or cuts in education fees for their children and so on, will just dry up. And then you’re back to square one, without your £200 for passing Go.
Looking at a long-term projection, if you can reduce the deficit then you know you’re going to have the funds to ‘help the poor and helpless’ but if you don’t and are just ineffectually throwing money at the problem, isn’t not going to solve anything.
Which reminds me of someone wanking on about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs a little while back and how everyone was apparently too concerned with satisfying their need for food and shelter to look to self-actualisation. Now, I don’t know about anyone else but really, if I’m lacking food, shelter, sanitation and so on, I don’t think it makes me such a terrible person to go after that before I start with the zazen.
*takes off his economist hat because really,
kaytoil is the economist, not me*There was also something about inheritance tax that I meant to rant on about but I need to look up the details first...
