UK returns to budget surplus

I certainly did sleep easier when I’d paid my debt off, and knowing I wouldn’t have to keep paying off interest.

Misleading headline.

It doesn't include capital expenditure and it is two years after it was promised.

You also haven't provided any evidence that we would have grown slower had we adopted a Keynsian model like Portugal did, whose economy has grown far faster than out own.

I do like the fact that the media have barely touched this story.

LMFAO, Portugal has had terrible GDP growth so that's not true, and you're trying to compare a G7 country's growth to a medium income country.

The current surplus/deficit is the important one in that it is the running of the government functions. That overall deficit could be eliminated right now by cancelling all capital spending. Think of it in terms of household spending, your current surplus/deficit would be looking at household income and comparing it to things like bills, food, fuel, etc, overall would be considering things like getting an extension or a new car, TV, etc. Getting, say, a new car you might have an overall household deficit as a one off matter while retaining a current surplus and as such there is no issue here. The most important surplus/deficit figure is current. That does not mean that we should not try to have revenues to cover capital spending NOW as well though.

Can they stop cutting everything now then.

I certainly did sleep easier when I’d paid my debt off, and knowing I wouldn’t have to keep paying off interest.

Yeah, totally helping your case by calling people fascists rather than giving supporting evidence

Your post demonstrates the economic misunderstanding of not realising that a country's economy operates very differently to household income. A surplus somewhere in the system means a debt elsewhere in the system. Debt is being shifted onto household income.

People treat a country's economy like their own finances. Here's a wonderful explanation from Yanis Varoufakis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZNwdcESn90

Do you really think this country is a significantly better place to live than it was in 2010?
Are most people living 'reasonably well'?

https://www.ft.com/content/cd5642e2-1175-11e8-8cb6-b9ccc4c4dbbb

2.7%

Portugal has done rather well economically since adopting a Keynsian approach.

You are not a nation state.

I like Varoufakis and have seen that episode.

Obviously, it is different in some ways to household debt but in terms of costs of being in debt the comparison is relevant.

How is debt being shifted onto households?

Depends what you mean. I think 1950s Britain was on balance a better place to live in than today.

Essentially if we run a surplus it means that the government is taking more money out of the economy than it is putting into it. It shifts the debt from the government to the private sector and households.

A surplus somewhere in the system means a debt elsewhere.

It was toally worth the thousands of deaths it cuased. totoally fixed the economy.

Can they stop cutting everything now then.

I'm afraid that's not really how it works. A current budget balance is a good thing and important: we are not borrowing for day-to-day spending, but to invest. But it is not a total budget surplus: we are still borrowing more than we bring in and the national debt is still growing.

Once we get to a surplus in the actual budget, that's only the first step in actually paying down some of the considerable debt that we have built up and been building up for years. Fiscal constraint has to be a long term commitment that will avoid us getting into this position again.

Well Done. After 8 years of austerity and suffering finally something to celebrate, Not!

This changes absolutely nothing.

What a lot of bonkers nonsense. Perhaps you can clarify precisely what window of public spending next year will not make us murderers?

Yeh I get that, we did a quite a lot of economics at history a level (the making of modern Britain) although I'm by no means an economic expert, am quite crap at anything mathsy. But yeh was just wishful thinking.