The Student Room Group

Read this right now

If you are thinking of voting Conservative & are worried about the NHS crisis, kids turning up for school hungry, homeless people dying on our streets & the wealthy getting wealthier whilst your wages don't stretch as far, what on earth are you thinking!
Reply 1
Is this a question or a statement?

The reason that cuts had to be made was due to the reckless spending from the previous labour government! If you vote them back in, it will only get worse & the cuts will seem even worse the next time around 🤷🏼*♀️
Reply 2
Original post by rubybeachx
Then why has the national debt increased under the Tories?


The debt began to rise in 2008 under the LABOUR government following the 2008 recession...

Look at the graph on here:
https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/152515/economics/debt-under-conservatives-2010-19/

Tories havent caused as big an increase as Labour did...
(edited 4 years ago)
Original post by lia_r18
Is this a question or a statement?

The reason that cuts had to be made was due to the reckless spending from the previous labour government! If you vote them back in, it will only get worse & the cuts will seem even worse the next time around 🤷🏼*♀️

Spending that was implemented across developed economies in response to a global financial crisis.

Original post by rubybeachx
Then why has the national debt increased under the Tories?

Because the Conservatives were able to bring down the deficit but not eliminate it.
Original post by rubybeachx
Then why has the national debt increased under the Tories?

because debt isn't the same as deficit.

If you owe your mum £100. And every week you borrow £20 more pounds from her in addition to you own money.

£100 is your debt.
£20 a week is your deficit (the amount more that you spend than you earn)

If you start to become financially sensible, and each week you borrow £1 less from your mum. After 20 weeks, you are borrowing £0! great, welldone, you have cut down your borrowing, and are now relying on your self.

Do you know whats happeend to your debt though? In those 20 weeks, while you were cutting your spending, its gone from £100 to £310. Because while you were cutting back by a bit each week, you were still borowing, just a little less by a little less.

That's the simple answer for whats happened to our economy under the conservatives. Each year they borrowed a little less, but they were chipping away at a deficit, we were spending far more than we were earning. They still haven't got the deficit to 0 though, because after Cameron left office they somewhat gave up on it. but they did reduce it substantially. While reducing the deficit your still borrowing though, and that's why debt goes up, while deficit goes down.

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If they wanted to reduce the debt they would need to spend even less, radically less(or some how boost our economy and earn radically more) to gain a surplus, and then each year pay a bit of the debt back. (I like you spending £5 less than you earn each month, and giving it to your mum) the problem is that the nation already thinks they are at breaking point, and no one has the apitite for more cuts.
Original post by BasicMistake
Spending that was implemented across developed economies in response to a global financial crisis.

It wasn't helped by the fact that the Labour goverement were running a deficit through the boom years, already spending more than we had.. which hardly gave them a lot of room to maneuver when the crash hit. Were we actually living within our means during the good times, the hit during the bad times would have been less severe, and less of a shock to the system.
Reply 6
Original post by fallen_acorns
It wasn't helped by the fact that the Labour goverement were running a deficit through the boom years, already spending more than we had.. which hardly gave them a lot of room to maneuver when the crash hit. Were we actually living within our means during the good times, the hit during the bad times would have been less severe, and less of a shock to the system.

It would also have been a near first for pretty much any UK government, I have not checked but think I read somewhere that since 1979, including the 18 years under the Conservatives to 1997, there has only been one year when the total national debt actually reduced. Both Labour and Conservatives are addicted to debt as the public insists they spend and the public insists they do not raise taxes to cover the spending.

So the big question is, what spending is sensible and what is just bribes, with our own money, to win our votes?
Original post by DJKL
It would also have been a near first for pretty much any UK government, I have not checked but think I read somewhere that since 1979, including the 18 years under the Conservatives to 1997, there has only been one year when the total national debt actually reduced. Both Labour and Conservatives are addicted to debt as the public insists they spend and the public insists they do not raise taxes to cover the spending.

So the big question is, what spending is sensible and what is just bribes, with our own money, to win our votes?

Your right, that mostly we have been in deficit for the past 50 years (the graphs I'm seeing only go back so far).

The 2000s do stand out though because other than that we have a pretty clear cycle of boom/bust, growth and recession. We have a surplus in the late 60s/early 70s.. then we have the recession in the 70s, lots of borrowing.. but thatcher reduces is during her reign back to a surplus.. then we have the recession of the early 90s, back to borrowing.. but major and blair reduce it back to a surplus again. Its up and down (with more time down than up).

The 2000s stand out because the deficit goes back up, but not because of a recession. In 2002 it starst rising, and in 2003 it jumps up again to deficit, despite the economy still performing well, and still growing.

Blair in his first term was actually very fianncially sensible, it was in his second term that he spent far more than he should have. As far as I see the main cause was that the two wars in 2001, and then 2003 were expensive, and to fund them and keep the cash flowing into domestic services at the increasing rate that he had promised, meant that he had to borrow. But if you look at the deficit graphs, had we not.. had we kept within our means as we were in the year 2000, and not engaged in two wars we couldn't afford, and not promised spending we couldn't afford. When the fiancnial crash came, sure we would have taken a hit, and it wouldn't have been labours fault. But we would have been in a very strong possition to ride it out, and not take on the huge hit we had to do after.

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The problem for the tories though is that Blair + Labour have rightly pointed out that the conservatives backed both wars, and were at the time promising to spend just as much as Labour, so to say that they would have done it differently, is purely hypothetical, and probably not true.

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