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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Worries about the economy at highest level since 2013
The January Ipsos-MORI economic optimism index is out and shows the lowest figure since 2013. This has been a regular tracker from the firm for decades and is calculated by taking the percentage of those saying they are optimistic about the economy and deducting those who are negative.
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The distortions, inaccuracies, lazy arrogance and plain stupidities in Blanchflower's piece are almost too numerous to count and yet even he despairs of the Labour leaderships understanding of economics: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/economy/2016/01/opposing-austerity-not-enough-labour-s-leaders-need-lessons-economics-fast
I fear that this economics panel is going to prove an embarrassment for Labour.
Also, a lot of people where I work now 'rule out' summer holidays to anywhere like Tunisia, Egypt, Morroco, many of the Greek islands, and even Turkey.
That doesn't help contribute to people feeling optimistic.
@OECD chart https://t.co/Hwj1o5BUa9
What I find surprising is how the international economy is doing. Historically a crash in the oil price such as we have seen has been very good for western economies boosting spending on other things and cooling inflation allowing lower interest rates. Of course in the brave new world post 2008 interest rates are already on the floor and we are more worried about deflation than inflation but the spending boost is still there.
The major concern seems to be the Chinese economy and yet if one economy should benefit from the fall in oil and other commodities it is them. There are of course a number of other inbalances which threaten their economy.
There is no doubt the economy is more fragile than it was and the risk of things going off track in various places is higher than it has been. As I mentioned yesterday Greece is worth keeping an eye on. Any repeat of the way they were treated last year just might give Leave a boost.
Unless of course the people see the EU, with its hamstrung economies, migrant crisis and inward looking inability to make decisions, as being part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
This is the opportunity for those making a positive case for leaving the EU (the Hannans and Carswells, rather than the Farages) to make their pitch to the electorate of the UK being an international power in its own right.
France and Italy are much nicer and closer anyway. Plus more stay cations!
Time to fix the roof before the rain starts to fall.
Mind you, Blanchflower also claims that work makes people happy. That was never my experience of it.
The new 'enemy within'...will the government act? I'm not holding my breath
Brighton school children asked to choose from list of 23 terms to describe their gender - https://t.co/4x7kdtKrxL https://t.co/m6oFgYzNjo
System doing well, please send more money.
The EU has failed us, we buy more than we sell, on top of that we pay £billions in membership fees. To Remain is to throw good money after bad, if Osborne says we have to stay because of economic security he must be mad.
I sense panic at Tory HQ, win or lose this really wasn't the plan.
I suppose all conmen and fraudsters live in fear that one day their scams will become redundant and the knackers yard will beckon
I'm not convinced either. My take would be at that at a time of uncertainty, voters will gravitate towards that entity - political party, institution etc. - which is most economically trusted. Often, that will be the status quo but not always.
In this case, is the EU more trusted on the economy than the UK government? I suspect not. As such, it's probably a marginal gain for Leave. The converse would have been true in 1975 when the UK was a basket case and Germany, as the core of the EEC, was seen as a major success (of the original EEC-6, only Italy was clearly not a model in the mid-1970s but then no-one was suggesting that it was).
The economic arguments will be made both ways - gaining back the contributions is the clearest gain but the loss of guaranteed unhindered free trade goes the other way, particularly in places near actual or potential borders - and overall I think the net effect will be minimal.
NHS Wales: Waiting times worse than in England https://t.co/kOayXRzEyg https://t.co/259gdG3gTC
https://twitter.com/SamCoatesTimes/status/692473977055383552
The man is supposed to be a labour economist who famously predicted mass unemployment as a result of austerity. Of course we got the exact opposite with a huge increase in employment, especially amongst the young and the low paid. This was very welcome but it changed the nature of the employment market reducing the average wage (since a couple of million came in at the bottom).
He says: "Since the start of the Great Recession nearly eight years ago, ordinary working people have experienced big falls in their living standards. Real wages are still down by 9 per cent since 2008 and 2.5 per cent since the coalition was formed in May 2010."
This is dishonest. As he knows very well this is not comparing like with like because the labour force has changed and become more inclusive. Those that remained in employment (the vast majority) are in fact better off and of course paying less tax. It also ignores, even on his figures, that 6.5% of that fall occurred under Labour. He then goes on to claim that:
"Too many people are constrained by not being able to get enough hours, or are stuck in temporary jobs, and that is especially true of the young whom the Tories have abandoned."
Presumably he is aware that both FT employment and youth employment are at record levels. That is supposed to be his job after all.
His viewpoint is distorted by an irrational hatred of the Tories and past mistakes. But even he despairs of the Labour leadership's beliefs and understandings.
Media Guardian
Daily Mail website's ad revenues surge as paper prepares for price hike https://t.co/U7opmIHb2Z https://t.co/3M6EGqp6nh
BoJo EU-turn: Double blow to Brexit fight as Johnson and Gove opt to stay
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/6891299/Boris-Johnson-Michael-Gove-back-EU-Remain-campaign.html
Of course it's possible to be that. Perhaps the greatest UK economist of all time was. (It's a close-run thing between Keynes and Adam Smith as to who was the greater and a largely pointless discussion as their contributions were so immense but in such different contexts that you might as well argue as to whether Newton or Shakespeare was the greater).
Blanchflower, however, is not credible. His apocalyptic predictions for the consequences of austerity as set against the reality, combined with his overt partisanship and easily contradicted assertions e.g. the Tories want to make the poor poorer - how about the living wage, the rise in employment, the funding of schools in deprived areas etc?. But the specific cannot be used to define a generality (unless you are Blanchflower).
I'm unconvinced by the article's argument.
The biggest advantage Remain has is fear of the unknown. But if the known becomes less attractive (migrant crisis, economic woe etc) then the unknown becomes less fearful.
The State clearly has far better ways of managing austerity than it did 100 years ago. When you factor in the decline in family support (compared to then) it is no small achievement. And one that Peebie libertarians might do well to ponder.
Before GE2015 while the Tories were 'better' than Miliband, a Miliband administration, while possibly a bit fraught wouldn't have been the end of the world...
Now....it may appear we're stuck with the Tories, with few outside the Corbynists remotely believing they'll form the next government - or the prospect that in a fit of absent mindedness they might, leading to further lack of confidence....
I think all of us are prisoners of our preconceptions. Blanchflower, as a left wing economist, will tend to see things enacted by Labour governments as good, and those enacted by Conservative governments as bad. Cognitive dissonance is strong with most of us, and we all have a tendency to assume the next crisis will be exactly like the last one.
The fact that he is in the news at all speaks volumes for the modern media, where sensational cr*p is at a premium, and people can turn themselves into instant stars by behaving like idiots.
It would also mean I'm subject to a 69%marginal tax rate (42% tax and NI, 9% student loan and George's 18% additional 'child benefit' tax rate too.
This is far worse than anything Brown ever did to pensions.
I wonder if there will be a big increase in the higher rate threshold in the budget as a sop?
Osborne most certainly did not follow Labour's spending plans and was opposed at each and every turn by Miliband and Balls. While Darling had a nominal objective of halving the deficit by the end of the parliament (which is what I presume you refer to), he never laid out plans to get there, and nor did his successors.
In any case, even if there was a deviation between what Osborne said he'd do and what he actually did, it doesn't go anywhere near far enough to explain the discrepancy between on the one hand Blanchflower's predictions of unemployment much worse than the 1980s, and on the other, the reality of the highest employment of all time.
It's incredibly hard to see how Spain avoids another set of elections. PP + C is short of a majority, and C won't support the PP without the head of Rajoy. Podemos has managed to lose a couple of its MPs for no entirely obvious reason, and even if they hadn't PSOE + P would still require pretty much all the nationalist parties to support it.
The only stable coalition would be PP + PSOE, but the PSOE is scared it will lose votes to Podemos if it gets into bed with the PP.
Opinion polls show the PP and Podemos up on the last election, with both Citizen's and the PSOE down. Another election would probably (and it's only probably) show a slight swing towards the PP + C grouping, but almost certainly not enough to get it over the 50% mark.
A grand coalition is possible (20% possibility), as is a PP (propped up by Citizen's) minority government (15%), but I'd reckon the most likely outcome (65%) is new elections in March or April.
People generally talk in more circumspect and cautious language about the economy nowadays, including the government. 2007-2008 remains firmly etched on the psyche of all bar the young.
Mood readings like Mori's are probably reflective of that.
Money and the economy have been toxic topics for Labour, though they are diversifying in that respect under the Dear Leader.
Opens tonight, and getting rave reviews - focused on "hardworking citizens" rather than the Pharaohs as we thought that a nice angle
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/new-exhibition-transforming-the-body-in-ancient-egypt-looks-beyond-the-pharaohs-and-shines-a-light-a6828166.html
We should be now in the pre-budget phase, with ideas being floated and discussed as to what might be the way forward for the country's finances. Instead all we have heard so far is an obscure-to-most discussion of higher rate relief for pensions, which is being attacked only from the right.
Miss Plato, I think outragephilia is the most bizarre fetish since I discovered some people are aroused by blinking.
Mr. Charles, can you reassure us this is a serious event, and not just a pyramid scheme?
Yesterday a new corruption scandal involving PP came to light in Valencia. It's not a party that's going to get close to a majority any time soon.
For what it's worth, I asked my wife what she thought about Cameron using the term. In general, Jenny is well to the left of me but not particularly party political. Instinctively I think she'd be a Green although at local elections she'll vote on the merits of the individual and at national ones, competence also comes fairly strongly into play. Her thoughts were that it depended on the context in which the PM used it (she didn't see or hear PMQs), that of itself the term isn't offensive, that whether it is or not depends on the context in which it's used but that 'group' or 'collection' would have been better. So if someone with natural sympathies for the left-of-centre and for refugees in general isn't offended by the term in general, it's unlikely that Labour will gain any traction with swing voters.
I'm a big fan of Gove generally, I said the other day he'd get my vote in a Tory leadership election
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/01/danish-mps-vote-seizing-valuables-refugees-160126055035636.html
If only the peoples of MENA valued and took inspiration from their rich cultural heritage as much as we in the West did, the world would be a better place.
Her predecessor was lovely and quiet.
But click on the link - the picture is one of my favourite pieces: a fat Roman civil servant pretending to be a pharaoh
The more I hear SNP politicians recycle the arguments used against Scottish independence the more sympathetic I become to the advocates of Brexit. Do we seriously believe that Britain would be too poor, too wee and too stupid to survive on its own outside this discredited union with its dysfunctional currency union and democratic deficit?
http://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/14234969.Iain_Macwhirter__Risk_of_a_rebound_for_SNP_by_embracing_negative_pro_EU_campaign/
https://twitter.com/mailonline/status/692477518453063680
I can't deny I'm disappointed about his position on Remain although, in his case, I understand why whereas Boris has no excuse.
The US space program never really recovered.
But we should also address what the collective noun for Corbynites are. An 'insanity' of Corynites? A 'clueless' of Corbynites? A 'loathing' of Corbynites?
I am not surprised many on the left have expressed dismay and anger at the words and how they were used. I think they are absolutely genuine in doing so. This looks to me to be a case of very different world views. We are all sensitive to different things.
Basically, job-centres doing exactly what they are supposed to have been doing according to the law for the last sixty plus years. IDS really did play a blinder.
Remember Poundland Slave Labour woman? There were thousands of people like her wanting the right to be picky whilst claiming for an eternity, and many others whose incapacity for work had been significantly exaggerated.
Morale among DWP staff was rising fastest at one point under IDS, if memory serves me right. He was simply telling them to apply the rules that they had soft-pedalled on for years.
Well I don't. Issues of such crucial importance to the UK should not be decided on the basis of personal friendships. That is just cronyism.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/financialservices/legal-and-tax-advice/12126786/HMRC-sweetheart-tax-deal-with-Google-set-to-be-investigated-by-the-EU-to-see-if-it-broke-state-aid-rules.html
Until Labour move on from their obsession with the identity politics of the mid 60s to mid 90s, they will never regain power. The trouble is that they move in social circles of media, arts, charities, think tanks, and political researchers who all think as they do.
Cameron has asked ministers not to campaign until the deal is agreed.
I can't see any minister campaigning for in or out yet.
Gove and Boris are awaiting the deal - good discipline.
But fundamentally it always felt like a step back from Apollo. I mean that got to the moon !
RIP Challenger crew