• yermaw@sh.itjust.works
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    7 days ago

    I’ll still never quite understand the concept of money at a national scale.

    We have shitload of unemployed people. We have showrooms full of tractors and diggers sitting doing nothing. We have space for what we need. We have supermarkets full of food and houses sitting empty.

    We have all the stuff that we need to get all the stuff that we need but we got no money to let any of it happen.

    Bizarre.

    • Hanrahan@slrpnk.net
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      7 days ago

      I’ll still never quite understand the concept of money at a national scale.

      One thing the UK Government can never run out of is £'s.

    • Mjb@feddit.uk
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      7 days ago

      We have shitload of unemployed people.

      In part because we’ve made employing and training people prohibitively expensive/risky, and not working increasingly worthwhile.

      We have showrooms full of tractors and diggers sitting doing nothing

      Private companies have showrooms full of tractors and diggers. The UK would have to borrow more money (seen the yields lately?) or tax people more to buy them and employ people to actually use them.

      (As an aside, he’s how to tell when ANY prime minister is going to fail a housing target: always. Why? The UK government doesn’t own a housebuilding company. You don’t own the asset, you don’t decide how it’s used without £££.)

      We have supermarkets full of food and houses sitting empty.

      Private companies have supermarkets full of food, and private owners have houses sitting empty. Both cost money, which as above, the UK government would have to borrow more of and/or raise taxes to pay for. To really labour the point, how to tell when ANY prime minister will fail on bringing down the cost of asylum: always. Why? The UK government doesn’t own enough dwellings to house them. You don’t own the asset, you don’t decide how it’s used without £££.


      Long story short. Government broke as fuck. People who don’t understand economics will now tell me that government debt is not like household debt, and as long as they don’t look at rising bond yields, rising and increasingly unsustainable debt interest payments, and rising government debt as a percentage of GDP they can pretend their world view is accurate.