Donny osmond wrote:From The Economist, via Twitter, showing discrepancies in figures from various places.
Also people seem to be amazed etc by Spanish Services PMI being announced this morning as a figure of 23. Can anyone enlighten me as to what PMI is and why a figure of 23 is so ultra.... something?
Cheers, altho I'm not really wiser other than seeing it as a measure of economic performance that suggests that whenever this is all over 'we' are all entirely fecked?
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It was so much easier to blame Them. It was bleakly depressing to think They were Us. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.
Donny osmond wrote:From The Economist, via Twitter, showing discrepancies in figures from various places.
Also people seem to be amazed etc by Spanish Services PMI being announced this morning as a figure of 23. Can anyone enlighten me as to what PMI is and why a figure of 23 is so ultra.... something?
Cheers, altho I'm not really wiser other than seeing it as a measure of economic performance that suggests that whenever this is all over 'we' are all entirely fecked?
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For those who understand these things, Italy's is 17.4, the worst ever recorded.
Saw an interesting take on these figures... they mean European countries are collapsing their economies to try and protect the vulnerable. Which is nice.
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It was so much easier to blame Them. It was bleakly depressing to think They were Us. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.
Mellsblue wrote:So.....what do we think will get scrapped due to the amount of debt we are taking on and that funding for the NHS will rocket.
HS2? Foreign Aid? Levelling up of school funding?
Free broadband and re-nationalisation?
Oh...as you were...
please God let it be HS2, surely the single shit-est multi-gazillion pound idea ever to be shat into reality?
It was so much easier to blame Them. It was bleakly depressing to think They were Us. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.
Mellsblue wrote:So.....what do we think will get scrapped due to the amount of debt we are taking on and that funding for the NHS will rocket.
HS2? Foreign Aid? Levelling up of school funding?
Free broadband and re-nationalisation?
Oh...as you were...
please God let it be HS2, surely the single shit-est multi-gazillion pound idea ever to be shat into reality?
it needs an upgrade so building a new line is sensible. not having it mandated as so fast would allow it to wobble more in trajectory and be much cheaper
the big question coming out of this will be do we revert to business as we're used to, or is working from home going to be far more standard. obviously not everyone is going to carry on working from home, but if even 10-15% did that would have profound consequences on our transport infrastructure requirements going forwards, and possibly mean we massively short from transport to broadband spending
Mellsblue wrote:So.....what do we think will get scrapped due to the amount of debt we are taking on and that funding for the NHS will rocket.
HS2? Foreign Aid? Levelling up of school funding?
Very good question. I've no doubt there will be years of austerity ahead (again) and government departments will be ordered to do more with less (although that hurdle has already been staggered over).
Not sure that any big infra projects in the pipeline will get scrapped, I suspect it will be operational budgets that will get hit.
Banquo wrote:
Free broadband and re-nationalisation?
Oh...as you were...
please God let it be HS2, surely the single shit-est multi-gazillion pound idea ever to be shat into reality?
it needs an upgrade so building a new line is sensible. not having it mandated as so fast would allow it to wobble more in trajectory and be much cheaper
the big question coming out of this will be do we revert to business as we're used to, or is working from home going to be far more standard. obviously not everyone is going to carry on working from home, but if even 10-15% did that would have profound consequences on our transport infrastructure requirements going forwards, and possibly mean we massively short from transport to broadband spending
I hope that this crisis encourages more home working. 5 days a week is a lot and I'm actually looking forward to going into the office to see people again, but I could do my job from home with no loss of capability (in fact I am now). So maybe its better to encourage home working by having better infrastructure and perhaps give green incentives to companies to support greater flexibility.
The big problem is there are huge savings and efficiencies to be gained if we guess right on which way the requirements go, working from home Vs expanded transport infrastructure and we've really no data to base the future requirements on. Luckily we've a self proclaimed super forecaster in Cummings, so we're bound to get what's a monumentally huge call correct
Son of Mathonwy wrote:How about increasing tax rates?
Could do. Alternatively we can keep taxes low and encourage businesses to recover and expand.
No! We should increase tax to 100%!
Or, seriously, small business tax should be cut to the smallest possible to aid growth and spending
I’ve no doubt taxes will rise, but when you look at the income from different income groups, the rise needs to be carefully calibrated to ensure we don’t lose money.
Business tax needs to be low to aid recovery. And bring all the self employed consultants into IR35 ASAP as that will increase receipts.
Son of Mathonwy wrote:How about increasing tax rates?
How much do you want to put it up by to cover the cost of this?
It's not going to cover the cost of this, obviously. Nor is scrapping HS2.
But I'd put the top rate up to 50% at least, and consider 55% or 60%.
Tax take will obviously go up in the long term, nobody thinks otherwise - it wasn’t really a question worth asking. However, there needs to be targeted cuts in the short term.
It was more a point as to which big ticket items will get the chop due to the huge levels of borrowing we’ll be saddled with when this ends.
Good job we didn’t go on a borrowing splurge in the last couple of years.
Mellsblue wrote:
How much do you want to put it up by to cover the cost of this?
It's not going to cover the cost of this, obviously. Nor is scrapping HS2.
But I'd put the top rate up to 50% at least, and consider 55% or 60%.
Tax take will obviously go up in the long term, nobody thinks otherwise - it wasn’t really a question worth asking. However, there needs to be targeted cuts in the short term.
It was more a point as to which big ticket items will get the chop due to the huge levels of borrowing we’ll be saddled with when this ends.
Good job we didn’t go on a borrowing splurge in the last couple of years.
Obviously. Like how tax went up so much to cover the cost of the £435,000,000,000 of quantitative easing over the last decade.
Son of Mathonwy wrote:
It's not going to cover the cost of this, obviously. Nor is scrapping HS2.
But I'd put the top rate up to 50% at least, and consider 55% or 60%.
Tax take will obviously go up in the long term, nobody thinks otherwise - it wasn’t really a question worth asking. However, there needs to be targeted cuts in the short term.
It was more a point as to which big ticket items will get the chop due to the huge levels of borrowing we’ll be saddled with when this ends.
Good job we didn’t go on a borrowing splurge in the last couple of years.
Obviously. Like how tax went up so much to cover the cost of the £435,000,000,000 of quantitative easing over the last decade.
Sunak has already said tax take, and borrowing, will need to go up. Also, QE isn’t borrowing from/on the markets.
