This is the toll of Covid-19 on just my close friends and family, so far:
One friend lost her job at the beginning of lockdown One friend was laid off a few weeks ago One friend has just been told his job is going at the end of furlough One friend is a freelance and her work has dried up with no more coming One friend is seriously, possibly terminally ill from covid-related disease One friend has had covid very badly, and now has a cancer that her doctors suspect was triggered by the virus (this is a medical grey area)
That's just people I know very well.
The economic and medical depradations of covid-19 are already significant, if my case is representative
There seem to be some people (only on this website tho) disappointed that telling people to cover their mouth and nose while going round Tescos hasn't started a revolution, and that instead people are wearing masks.
I suppose most people are actually willing to follow a rule that causes them a minor inconvenience when the aim of the rule is to make a resurgence of a deadly epidemic less likely. Who would've guessed?
I guess that the UK has a lower Karen & Joel quotient than the US.
Just returned from my weekly trip to Morrisons. 100% mask wearing amongst customers and all the mobile staff too.
Similar experience - went into John Lewis Home (100%), Pets at Home (100%) Boots ( 1 couple without a mask)
Encouraging early signs, I really expected it to be 50/50 at best.
I have just witnessed why wearing masks for shopping will be detrimental. People were putting on their masks at the door of the shop and then removing them as soon as they left. Hands all over their faces after touching loads of surfaces and products in the shop. This mask wearing for shopping will lead to an increase in cases.
I agree that not treating the mask properly limits its effectiveness but the answer is to try to educate people to do it properly not say f*ck it, let's not bother.
In the UK we have bought Covid under control with the use of hand washing and social distancing,not by the use of masks. Why introduce them now? There is no evidence that they work in the settings that they are now going to be used in and until political pressure the WHO said they could well be detrimental.
To use Surgeons as an example is just ridiculous as that is a completly different setting and a completly different type of mask. (face fitted).
We have been told all the way along to not touch our faces and now we are being instructed to do something which means that peeple will touch their face all the time.
Just stand outside a Tesco Express and watch what people do.
Why introduce them now? Because there will be less social distancing now that half the population isn't cooped up at home.
Sorry are there new rules on Social Distancing released today?
No, but if you think people are going to be stay as far apart as they were during the lockdown you have another thing coming. A large fraction of the population stayed at home all the time, that's not the case any more.
The 1 meter rule was introduced 3 weeks ago and has not led to an increase in cases.
Your claim was that the virus was bought under control with hand washing and social distancing. I was trying to make the point that the social distancing was quite extreme, with people simply staying at home and not interacting. That is no longer the case, so it seems sensible to bring in additional precautions to keep the transmission low.
I would agree with that, but i don't think that mask wearing by the general public whilst shopping will work. There will be so much face touching going on that any potential and yet unproven benefits of masks in that environment will be outweighed by the face touching.
So defeatist. You just said that we got it under control through hand washing. Are they going to stop doing that now?
I am extremely positive normally, I just can't understand this change. I truly hope Im wrong and that the wearing of masks ensures that cases continue their slight decline.
Just wait until his chancellor sends tory middle England the bill for all this
He won't he will mainly borrow despite a few tweaks to capital gains tax
How are we planning to pay off this mountain of debt we have accumulated over the last 18 years?
We have a sluggish economy, where growth is going to be at best stagnant. We have low productivity. We seem to have a number of sacred cows that must be paid for. We refuse to consider higher taxes.
You don’t have to be batshit crazy like Corbyn to see that borrowing passim ad nauseam is a model that won’t work for ever.
You are STILL throwing in these gratuitous Corbyn riders, I see, despite my pleas of a while ago.
But otherwise a strong point. You DO have to be batshit crazy like ... a batshit crazy person ... to think that the model WILL work for ever.
You’re talking about a man who’s just decided to further slander a lot of people whom his own lawyers had just settled with.
I’ll stick with ‘batshit crazy.’
The point was however that Corbyn was standing on an unabashed claim that neoliberalism and capitalism had both completely failed and needed replacing with cronyism, er, socialism.
My analysis is you didn’t need to agree with the second part to see that there is a genuine problem and that reform is required.
Just wait until his chancellor sends tory middle England the bill for all this
He won't he will mainly borrow despite a few tweaks to capital gains tax
How are we planning to pay off this mountain of debt we have accumulated over the last 18 years?
We have a sluggish economy, where growth is going to be at best stagnant. We have low productivity. We seem to have a number of sacred cows that must be paid for. We refuse to consider higher taxes.
You don’t have to be batshit crazy like Corbyn to see that borrowing passim ad nauseam is a model that won’t work for ever.
Boris is a populist, Corbyn was a populist, neither were or are that bothered about the deficit.
Cameron, May and Starmer were or are, however if Starmer got in that would mean higher taxes more than spending cuts as Cameron pushed or the combination of both that May pushed and cost her her majority in 2017
Just wait until his chancellor sends tory middle England the bill for all this
He won't he will mainly borrow despite a few tweaks to capital gains tax
How are we planning to pay off this mountain of debt we have accumulated over the last 18 years?
We have a sluggish economy, where growth is going to be at best stagnant. We have low productivity. We seem to have a number of sacred cows that must be paid for. We refuse to consider higher taxes.
You don’t have to be batshit crazy like Corbyn to see that borrowing passim ad nauseam is a model that won’t work for ever.
Boris is a populist, Corbyn was a populist, neither were or are that bothered about the deficit.
Cameron, May and Starmer are, however if Starmer got in that would mean higher taxes more than spending cuts as Cameron pushed or the combination of both that May pushed and cost her her majority in 2017
Just returned from my weekly trip to Morrisons. 100% mask wearing amongst customers and all the mobile staff too.
Similar experience - went into John Lewis Home (100%), Pets at Home (100%) Boots ( 1 couple without a mask)
Encouraging early signs, I really expected it to be 50/50 at best.
I have just witnessed why wearing masks for shopping will be detrimental. People were putting on their masks at the door of the shop and then removing them as soon as they left. Hands all over their faces after touching loads of surfaces and products in the shop. This mask wearing for shopping will lead to an increase in cases.
I agree that not treating the mask properly limits its effectiveness but the answer is to try to educate people to do it properly not say f*ck it, let's not bother.
In the UK we have bought Covid under control with the use of hand washing and social distancing,not by the use of masks. Why introduce them now? There is no evidence that they work in the settings that they are now going to be used in and until political pressure the WHO said they could well be detrimental.
To use Surgeons as an example is just ridiculous as that is a completly different setting and a completly different type of mask. (face fitted).
We have been told all the way along to not touch our faces and now we are being instructed to do something which means that peeple will touch their face all the time.
Just stand outside a Tesco Express and watch what people do.
Maybe you should focus on trying to sell more Big Issues instead of wasting your time outside Tescos looking at masks.
According to the RCP, Biden's lead looks to have come down - this plus the last couple of polls have his lead at c. +6% to +8% (ex-Rasmussen who has it at +2%). From an optical standpoint, assuming new polls show the same expect Biden's polling average to come down as the leads from NBC / Quinnipac drop off the average list
Just wait until his chancellor sends tory middle England the bill for all this
He won't he will mainly borrow despite a few tweaks to capital gains tax
How are we planning to pay off this mountain of debt we have accumulated over the last 18 years?
We have a sluggish economy, where growth is going to be at best stagnant. We have low productivity. We seem to have a number of sacred cows that must be paid for. We refuse to consider higher taxes.
You don’t have to be batshit crazy like Corbyn to see that borrowing passim ad nauseam is a model that won’t work for ever.
You are STILL throwing in these gratuitous Corbyn riders, I see, despite my pleas of a while ago.
But otherwise a strong point. You DO have to be batshit crazy like ... a batshit crazy person ... to think that the model WILL work for ever.
You’re talking about a man who’s just decided to further slander a lot of people whom his own lawyers had just settled with.
I’ll stick with ‘batshit crazy.’
The point was however that Corbyn was standing on an unabashed claim that neoliberalism and capitalism had both completely failed and needed replacing with cronyism, er, socialism.
My analysis is you didn’t need to agree with the second part to see that there is a genuine problem and that reform is required.
Which you seem to agree with.
I do. You cannot live on tick. You must earn a living. I've never equated left wing politics with the magic money tree. It's a trope.
Just wait until his chancellor sends tory middle England the bill for all this
He won't he will mainly borrow despite a few tweaks to capital gains tax
How are we planning to pay off this mountain of debt we have accumulated over the last 18 years?
We have a sluggish economy, where growth is going to be at best stagnant. We have low productivity. We seem to have a number of sacred cows that must be paid for. We refuse to consider higher taxes.
You don’t have to be batshit crazy like Corbyn to see that borrowing passim ad nauseam is a model that won’t work for ever.
The mountain of debt? In the short run, no plan to pay it back at all, just a plan to keep interest rates as close to zero as possible and pay up. If (keeping it simple) your debt is 2 tn and your GDP 2 tn then if(!!) you can borrow at 1% then your annual payments are 1% of GDP, leaving 99% to spend on sweets, PPE and pensioners.
In the long run there are three things that can happen without default to pay back: Inflate, spend a lot less, tax a lot more. Pick any two. If interest rates rise out of control, pick all three and you still may default.
I think, very amateurishly, that there may be a global effort to keep interest rates near zero more or less for ever as the option which best hides the hard choices from the voter.
The other thing is that if you can borrow at 1% or less the temptation to just carry on borrowing (as we have despite promises since the crash of 2008) is very great as the immediate impact of the extra is in fact small, at this moment.
Normal interest rates - like 4 % say, SFAICS would collapse the entire edifice.
That something (a black swan of some sort) will collapse it seems to me almost certain.
This is the toll of Covid-19 on just my close friends and family, so far:
One friend lost her job at the beginning of lockdown One friend was laid off a few weeks ago One friend has just been told his job is going at the end of furlough One friend is a freelance and her work has dried up with no more coming One friend is seriously, possibly terminally ill from covid-related disease One friend has had covid very badly, and now has a cancer that her doctors suspect was triggered by the virus (this is a medical grey area)
That's just people I know very well.
The economic and medical depradations of covid-19 are already significant, if my case is representative
Hmm I know 2 people who have had Covid, one of whom was hospitalised and seems to have some sequelae with his breathing and stamina. Most of my friends are self employed and have suffered a real financial hit but on the whole are optimistic that things will pick up again. Many of the others are in the public sector and completely unaffected, indeed somewhat better off in reality although they find that embarrassing to admit. One friend who owns a reasonably sized restaurant/hotel business has suffered severe financial damage, not helped by the idiot policies and attitude of the Scottish government.
Let me know if you are planning to attend any PB get together will you?
Just wait until his chancellor sends tory middle England the bill for all this
He won't he will mainly borrow despite a few tweaks to capital gains tax
How are we planning to pay off this mountain of debt we have accumulated over the last 18 years?
We have a sluggish economy, where growth is going to be at best stagnant. We have low productivity. We seem to have a number of sacred cows that must be paid for. We refuse to consider higher taxes.
You don’t have to be batshit crazy like Corbyn to see that borrowing passim ad nauseam is a model that won’t work for ever.
The mountain of debt? In the short run, no plan to pay it back at all, just a plan to keep interest rates as close to zero as possible and pay up. If (keeping it simple) your debt is 2 tn and your GDP 2 tn then if(!!) you can borrow at 1% then your annual payments are 1% of GDP, leaving 99% to spend on sweets, PPE and pensioners.
In the long run there are three things that can happen without default to pay back: Inflate, spend a lot less, tax a lot more. Pick any two. If interest rates rise out of control, pick all three and you still may default.
I think, very amateurishly, that there may be a global effort to keep interest rates near zero more or less for ever as the option which best hides the hard choices from the voter.
The other thing is that if you can borrow at 1% or less the temptation to just carry on borrowing (as we have despite promises since the crash of 2008) is very great as the immediate impact of the extra is in fact small, at this moment.
Normal interest rates - like 4 % say, SFAICS would collapse the entire edifice.
That something (a black swan of some sort) will collapse it seems to me almost certain.
Well, this is what’s bothering me.
We maxed out after the GFC to keep the plates spinning.
Then, this came along so we borrowed even more.
But there seems to be no meaningful consideration of any of the three options you correctly identify as the ways out, and which we will need to take.
It’s going to be hard work cutting spending further. Indeed, Cummings’ daft plans will probably increase our costs.
Inflating always debt is always a cretinous idea.
That leaves higher taxes, which Starmer will almost certainly put forward - but the Tories will not, and hat will make it harder for him to beat them.
That means we might end up with a default by default, or with rampaging inflation.
This is the toll of Covid-19 on just my close friends and family, so far:
One friend lost her job at the beginning of lockdown One friend was laid off a few weeks ago One friend has just been told his job is going at the end of furlough One friend is a freelance and her work has dried up with no more coming One friend is seriously, possibly terminally ill from covid-related disease One friend has had covid very badly, and now has a cancer that her doctors suspect was triggered by the virus (this is a medical grey area)
That's just people I know very well.
The economic and medical depradations of covid-19 are already significant, if my case is representative
Hmm I know 2 people who have had Covid, one of whom was hospitalised and seems to have some sequelae with his breathing and stamina. Most of my friends are self employed and have suffered a real financial hit but on the whole are optimistic that things will pick up again. Many of the others are in the public sector and completely unaffected, indeed somewhat better off in reality although they find that embarrassing to admit. One friend who owns a reasonably sized restaurant/hotel business has suffered severe financial damage, not helped by the idiot policies and attitude of the Scottish government.
Let me know if you are planning to attend any PB get together will you?
OGH will have to know as well on account of booking the innumerable extra places.
Just wait until his chancellor sends tory middle England the bill for all this
He won't he will mainly borrow despite a few tweaks to capital gains tax
How are we planning to pay off this mountain of debt we have accumulated over the last 18 years?
We have a sluggish economy, where growth is going to be at best stagnant. We have low productivity. We seem to have a number of sacred cows that must be paid for. We refuse to consider higher taxes.
You don’t have to be batshit crazy like Corbyn to see that borrowing passim ad nauseam is a model that won’t work for ever.
The mountain of debt? In the short run, no plan to pay it back at all, just a plan to keep interest rates as close to zero as possible and pay up. If (keeping it simple) your debt is 2 tn and your GDP 2 tn then if(!!) you can borrow at 1% then your annual payments are 1% of GDP, leaving 99% to spend on sweets, PPE and pensioners.
In the long run there are three things that can happen without default to pay back: Inflate, spend a lot less, tax a lot more. Pick any two. If interest rates rise out of control, pick all three and you still may default.
I think, very amateurishly, that there may be a global effort to keep interest rates near zero more or less for ever as the option which best hides the hard choices from the voter.
The other thing is that if you can borrow at 1% or less the temptation to just carry on borrowing (as we have despite promises since the crash of 2008) is very great as the immediate impact of the extra is in fact small, at this moment.
Normal interest rates - like 4 % say, SFAICS would collapse the entire edifice.
That something (a black swan of some sort) will collapse it seems to me almost certain.
Invest in Renewables which will reduce recurring costs long term (and provide some jobs)?
Just wait until his chancellor sends tory middle England the bill for all this
He won't he will mainly borrow despite a few tweaks to capital gains tax
How are we planning to pay off this mountain of debt we have accumulated over the last 18 years?
We have a sluggish economy, where growth is going to be at best stagnant. We have low productivity. We seem to have a number of sacred cows that must be paid for. We refuse to consider higher taxes.
You don’t have to be batshit crazy like Corbyn to see that borrowing passim ad nauseam is a model that won’t work for ever.
The mountain of debt? In the short run, no plan to pay it back at all, just a plan to keep interest rates as close to zero as possible and pay up. If (keeping it simple) your debt is 2 tn and your GDP 2 tn then if(!!) you can borrow at 1% then your annual payments are 1% of GDP, leaving 99% to spend on sweets, PPE and pensioners.
In the long run there are three things that can happen without default to pay back: Inflate, spend a lot less, tax a lot more. Pick any two. If interest rates rise out of control, pick all three and you still may default.
I think, very amateurishly, that there may be a global effort to keep interest rates near zero more or less for ever as the option which best hides the hard choices from the voter.
The other thing is that if you can borrow at 1% or less the temptation to just carry on borrowing (as we have despite promises since the crash of 2008) is very great as the immediate impact of the extra is in fact small, at this moment.
Normal interest rates - like 4 % say, SFAICS would collapse the entire edifice.
That something (a black swan of some sort) will collapse it seems to me almost certain.
Well, this is what’s bothering me.
We maxed out after the GFC to keep the plates spinning.
Then, this came along so we borrowed even more.
But there seems to be no meaningful consideration of any of the three options you correctly identify as the ways out, and which we will need to take.
It’s going to be hard work cutting spending further. Indeed, Cummings’ daft plans will probably increase our costs.
Inflating always debt is always a cretinous idea.
That leaves higher taxes, which Starmer will almost certainly put forward - but the Tories will not, and hat will make it harder for him to beat them.
That means we might end up with a default by default, or with rampaging inflation.
This is the toll of Covid-19 on just my close friends and family, so far:
One friend lost her job at the beginning of lockdown One friend was laid off a few weeks ago One friend has just been told his job is going at the end of furlough One friend is a freelance and her work has dried up with no more coming One friend is seriously, possibly terminally ill from covid-related disease One friend has had covid very badly, and now has a cancer that her doctors suspect was triggered by the virus (this is a medical grey area)
That's just people I know very well.
The economic and medical depradations of covid-19 are already significant, if my case is representative
Hmm I know 2 people who have had Covid, one of whom was hospitalised and seems to have some sequelae with his breathing and stamina. Most of my friends are self employed and have suffered a real financial hit but on the whole are optimistic that things will pick up again. Many of the others are in the public sector and completely unaffected, indeed somewhat better off in reality although they find that embarrassing to admit. One friend who owns a reasonably sized restaurant/hotel business has suffered severe financial damage, not helped by the idiot policies and attitude of the Scottish government.
Let me know if you are planning to attend any PB get together will you?
lol
I am middle aged, involved in arts and media, and live in London, so that may skew my personal experience to the downside. The arts have been hit terribly.
You're in Scotland, in business, so it is bound to be different?
Mr. L, I'd guess the self-employed are pretty starkly divided.
If you can work from home, the impact might be next to nothing. If you can't (say, as an electrician) then you've been screwed for a long time.
Hospitality's going to find things rough, alas. And that'll affect other businesses.
Advocates are somewhat in the middle. We can work from home to some extent but we kinda need courts to open up and resolve disputes. Scottish Courts have been appallingly slow in doing so. I was told yesterday that a proof (trial) that is part heard cannot proceed using webex as the court can't get it to work. It's pathetic.
According to the RCP, Biden's lead looks to have come down - this plus the last couple of polls have his lead at c. +6% to +8% (ex-Rasmussen who has it at +2%). From an optical standpoint, assuming new polls show the same expect Biden's polling average to come down as the leads from NBC / Quinnipac drop off the average list
2.9.
I see your man is now making an effort to appear at least a little bit sober and presidential. I'm not overly worried - since I doubt he can keep it up for long - but it was my hypothetical advice to him and I would rather he hadn't taken it. I think it's his best and only chance of turning things around by November. It's not Covid, stupid and it's not the economy, stupid - it's Trump, stupid. He has to stop making it next to impossible for those who dislike his antics and persona but would quite like to vote for him again to do so.
This is the toll of Covid-19 on just my close friends and family, so far:
One friend lost her job at the beginning of lockdown One friend was laid off a few weeks ago One friend has just been told his job is going at the end of furlough One friend is a freelance and her work has dried up with no more coming One friend is seriously, possibly terminally ill from covid-related disease One friend has had covid very badly, and now has a cancer that her doctors suspect was triggered by the virus (this is a medical grey area)
That's just people I know very well.
The economic and medical depradations of covid-19 are already significant, if my case is representative
For me (n=7) of family (all adults under 35):
2 public sector have kept their jobs working from home, are saving more than normal. 1 working the same, another working longer hours. 1 private sector salaried, he is bored because there isn't much work to do, but happily saving and seemingly not at risk of redundancy. 1 private sector salaried, busy, company offered 80% pay for 80% hours for a while and are now offering targeted voluntary redundancy. He is job searching just in case and is saving more than normal. 1 junior doc, has worked out well because she just continued her favourite rotation. 1 just graduated, she is working at supermarket and having a hard time finding anything else.
Overall - most are fitter and healthier because have prioritized exercise during lockdown and have more time. 1 has gone the other way and put on weight.
Does anyone have a good data source about the motivation for voting specifically is the primary motivator benefit for the voter or the benefit to broader society? My son is writing a piece and needs some objective data.
This is the toll of Covid-19 on just my close friends and family, so far:
One friend lost her job at the beginning of lockdown One friend was laid off a few weeks ago One friend has just been told his job is going at the end of furlough One friend is a freelance and her work has dried up with no more coming One friend is seriously, possibly terminally ill from covid-related disease One friend has had covid very badly, and now has a cancer that her doctors suspect was triggered by the virus (this is a medical grey area)
That's just people I know very well.
The economic and medical depradations of covid-19 are already significant, if my case is representative
Hmm I know 2 people who have had Covid, one of whom was hospitalised and seems to have some sequelae with his breathing and stamina. Most of my friends are self employed and have suffered a real financial hit but on the whole are optimistic that things will pick up again. Many of the others are in the public sector and completely unaffected, indeed somewhat better off in reality although they find that embarrassing to admit. One friend who owns a reasonably sized restaurant/hotel business has suffered severe financial damage, not helped by the idiot policies and attitude of the Scottish government.
Let me know if you are planning to attend any PB get together will you?
PS for balance I do know people who have emotionally benefited from Covid: got closer to their partners, or children, been less stressed by WFH.
I also know two close friends who are very definitely better off, financially.
One is a noted designer who does up big posh houses: the ultra-rich are spending big on their homes so he is in clover
The other is a photographer who was almost bankrupt BEFORE the Bug, but he is now loaded with work, and future commissions, as he has been documenting lockdown Britain from the start, whereas many photographers hid away, and now all the papers and magazines (here and abroad) want his material.
He has cleared all his debts.
So there are winners.
I had lunch with him the other day and told him he was like munitions manufacturers who became millionaires in World War One.
Just wait until his chancellor sends tory middle England the bill for all this
He won't he will mainly borrow despite a few tweaks to capital gains tax
How are we planning to pay off this mountain of debt we have accumulated over the last 18 years?
We have a sluggish economy, where growth is going to be at best stagnant. We have low productivity. We seem to have a number of sacred cows that must be paid for. We refuse to consider higher taxes.
You don’t have to be batshit crazy like Corbyn to see that borrowing passim ad nauseam is a model that won’t work for ever.
The mountain of debt? In the short run, no plan to pay it back at all, just a plan to keep interest rates as close to zero as possible and pay up. If (keeping it simple) your debt is 2 tn and your GDP 2 tn then if(!!) you can borrow at 1% then your annual payments are 1% of GDP, leaving 99% to spend on sweets, PPE and pensioners.
In the long run there are three things that can happen without default to pay back: Inflate, spend a lot less, tax a lot more. Pick any two. If interest rates rise out of control, pick all three and you still may default.
I think, very amateurishly, that there may be a global effort to keep interest rates near zero more or less for ever as the option which best hides the hard choices from the voter.
The other thing is that if you can borrow at 1% or less the temptation to just carry on borrowing (as we have despite promises since the crash of 2008) is very great as the immediate impact of the extra is in fact small, at this moment.
Normal interest rates - like 4 % say, SFAICS would collapse the entire edifice.
That something (a black swan of some sort) will collapse it seems to me almost certain.
My sense too. Don't know quite when or exactly how but I am close to certain the whole thing is going to collapse. My hunch is that China will be instrumental in whatever it is that triggers this.
Does anyone have a good data source about the motivation for voting specifically is the primary motivator benefit for the voter or the benefit to broader society? My son is writing a piece and needs some objective data.
David, I've not got the exact link, but it should be somewhere here.
Just wait until his chancellor sends tory middle England the bill for all this
He won't he will mainly borrow despite a few tweaks to capital gains tax
How are we planning to pay off this mountain of debt we have accumulated over the last 18 years?
We have a sluggish economy, where growth is going to be at best stagnant. We have low productivity. We seem to have a number of sacred cows that must be paid for. We refuse to consider higher taxes.
You don’t have to be batshit crazy like Corbyn to see that borrowing passim ad nauseam is a model that won’t work for ever.
The mountain of debt? In the short run, no plan to pay it back at all, just a plan to keep interest rates as close to zero as possible and pay up. If (keeping it simple) your debt is 2 tn and your GDP 2 tn then if(!!) you can borrow at 1% then your annual payments are 1% of GDP, leaving 99% to spend on sweets, PPE and pensioners.
In the long run there are three things that can happen without default to pay back: Inflate, spend a lot less, tax a lot more. Pick any two. If interest rates rise out of control, pick all three and you still may default.
I think, very amateurishly, that there may be a global effort to keep interest rates near zero more or less for ever as the option which best hides the hard choices from the voter.
The other thing is that if you can borrow at 1% or less the temptation to just carry on borrowing (as we have despite promises since the crash of 2008) is very great as the immediate impact of the extra is in fact small, at this moment.
Normal interest rates - like 4 % say, SFAICS would collapse the entire edifice.
That something (a black swan of some sort) will collapse it seems to me almost certain.
Well, this is what’s bothering me.
We maxed out after the GFC to keep the plates spinning.
Then, this came along so we borrowed even more.
But there seems to be no meaningful consideration of any of the three options you correctly identify as the ways out, and which we will need to take.
It’s going to be hard work cutting spending further. Indeed, Cummings’ daft plans will probably increase our costs.
Inflating always debt is always a cretinous idea.
That leaves higher taxes, which Starmer will almost certainly put forward - but the Tories will not, and hat will make it harder for him to beat them.
That means we might end up with a default by default, or with rampaging inflation.
I'll need to look at the Economist more carefully, but on a quick read I note quite a bit of hand waving, permanent negative (ie very low) interest rates and a bit of redistribution. I think any really new ideas that the voter can understand may be wanting.
Again, amateurishly, I can't help thinking that permanently low/negative interest rates will do something or other a bit existential to the pensions industry. Can Mr Meeks help me here?
Just wait until his chancellor sends tory middle England the bill for all this
He won't he will mainly borrow despite a few tweaks to capital gains tax
How are we planning to pay off this mountain of debt we have accumulated over the last 18 years?
We have a sluggish economy, where growth is going to be at best stagnant. We have low productivity. We seem to have a number of sacred cows that must be paid for. We refuse to consider higher taxes.
You don’t have to be batshit crazy like Corbyn to see that borrowing passim ad nauseam is a model that won’t work for ever.
The mountain of debt? In the short run, no plan to pay it back at all, just a plan to keep interest rates as close to zero as possible and pay up. If (keeping it simple) your debt is 2 tn and your GDP 2 tn then if(!!) you can borrow at 1% then your annual payments are 1% of GDP, leaving 99% to spend on sweets, PPE and pensioners.
In the long run there are three things that can happen without default to pay back: Inflate, spend a lot less, tax a lot more. Pick any two. If interest rates rise out of control, pick all three and you still may default.
I think, very amateurishly, that there may be a global effort to keep interest rates near zero more or less for ever as the option which best hides the hard choices from the voter.
The other thing is that if you can borrow at 1% or less the temptation to just carry on borrowing (as we have despite promises since the crash of 2008) is very great as the immediate impact of the extra is in fact small, at this moment.
Normal interest rates - like 4 % say, SFAICS would collapse the entire edifice.
That something (a black swan of some sort) will collapse it seems to me almost certain.
Well, this is what’s bothering me.
We maxed out after the GFC to keep the plates spinning.
Then, this came along so we borrowed even more.
But there seems to be no meaningful consideration of any of the three options you correctly identify as the ways out, and which we will need to take.
It’s going to be hard work cutting spending further. Indeed, Cummings’ daft plans will probably increase our costs.
Inflating always debt is always a cretinous idea.
That leaves higher taxes, which Starmer will almost certainly put forward - but the Tories will not, and hat will make it harder for him to beat them.
That means we might end up with a default by default, or with rampaging inflation.
I'll need to look at the Economist more carefully, but on a quick read I note quite a bit of hand waving, permanent negative (ie very low) interest rates and a bit of redistribution. I think any really new ideas that the voter can understand may be wanting.
Again, amateurishly, I can't help thinking that permanently low/negative interest rates will do something or other a bit existential to the pensions industry. Can Mr Meeks help me here?
Isn’t that linked to the stock market, not interest rates?
(I do have a private sector pension, btw, which I do monitor despite being a fortunate bastard with a public sector pension.)
Just wait until his chancellor sends tory middle England the bill for all this
He won't he will mainly borrow despite a few tweaks to capital gains tax
How are we planning to pay off this mountain of debt we have accumulated over the last 18 years?
We have a sluggish economy, where growth is going to be at best stagnant. We have low productivity. We seem to have a number of sacred cows that must be paid for. We refuse to consider higher taxes.
You don’t have to be batshit crazy like Corbyn to see that borrowing passim ad nauseam is a model that won’t work for ever.
The mountain of debt? In the short run, no plan to pay it back at all, just a plan to keep interest rates as close to zero as possible and pay up. If (keeping it simple) your debt is 2 tn and your GDP 2 tn then if(!!) you can borrow at 1% then your annual payments are 1% of GDP, leaving 99% to spend on sweets, PPE and pensioners.
In the long run there are three things that can happen without default to pay back: Inflate, spend a lot less, tax a lot more. Pick any two. If interest rates rise out of control, pick all three and you still may default.
I think, very amateurishly, that there may be a global effort to keep interest rates near zero more or less for ever as the option which best hides the hard choices from the voter.
The other thing is that if you can borrow at 1% or less the temptation to just carry on borrowing (as we have despite promises since the crash of 2008) is very great as the immediate impact of the extra is in fact small, at this moment.
Normal interest rates - like 4 % say, SFAICS would collapse the entire edifice.
That something (a black swan of some sort) will collapse it seems to me almost certain.
Well, this is what’s bothering me.
We maxed out after the GFC to keep the plates spinning.
Then, this came along so we borrowed even more.
But there seems to be no meaningful consideration of any of the three options you correctly identify as the ways out, and which we will need to take.
It’s going to be hard work cutting spending further. Indeed, Cummings’ daft plans will probably increase our costs.
Inflating always debt is always a cretinous idea.
That leaves higher taxes, which Starmer will almost certainly put forward - but the Tories will not, and hat will make it harder for him to beat them.
That means we might end up with a default by default, or with rampaging inflation.
I'll need to look at the Economist more carefully, but on a quick read I note quite a bit of hand waving, permanent negative (ie very low) interest rates and a bit of redistribution. I think any really new ideas that the voter can understand may be wanting.
Again, amateurishly, I can't help thinking that permanently low/negative interest rates will do something or other a bit existential to the pensions industry. Can Mr Meeks help me here?
Isn’t that linked to the stock market, not interest rates?
(I do have a private sector pension, btw, which I do monitor despite being a fortunate bastard with a public sector pension.)
Pensions are heavily invested in government bonds which correlate to interest rates.
This is the toll of Covid-19 on just my close friends and family, so far:
One friend lost her job at the beginning of lockdown One friend was laid off a few weeks ago One friend has just been told his job is going at the end of furlough One friend is a freelance and her work has dried up with no more coming One friend is seriously, possibly terminally ill from covid-related disease One friend has had covid very badly, and now has a cancer that her doctors suspect was triggered by the virus (this is a medical grey area)
That's just people I know very well.
The economic and medical depradations of covid-19 are already significant, if my case is representative
Hmm I know 2 people who have had Covid, one of whom was hospitalised and seems to have some sequelae with his breathing and stamina. Most of my friends are self employed and have suffered a real financial hit but on the whole are optimistic that things will pick up again. Many of the others are in the public sector and completely unaffected, indeed somewhat better off in reality although they find that embarrassing to admit. One friend who owns a reasonably sized restaurant/hotel business has suffered severe financial damage, not helped by the idiot policies and attitude of the Scottish government.
Let me know if you are planning to attend any PB get together will you?
lol
I am middle aged, involved in arts and media, and live in London, so that may skew my personal experience to the downside. The arts have been hit terribly.
You're in Scotland, in business, so it is bound to be different?
The cancellation of the Festival and Fringe has undoubtedly hurt the arts badly in Scotland but I have to say that as someone who works in Edinburgh it has been fantastic. You can walk, down the pavements, without pushing through pond life aside. You can get a table in the restaurants that are open. It can get unbearable in late July and August.
Just wait until his chancellor sends tory middle England the bill for all this
He won't he will mainly borrow despite a few tweaks to capital gains tax
How are we planning to pay off this mountain of debt we have accumulated over the last 18 years?
We have a sluggish economy, where growth is going to be at best stagnant. We have low productivity. We seem to have a number of sacred cows that must be paid for. We refuse to consider higher taxes.
You don’t have to be batshit crazy like Corbyn to see that borrowing passim ad nauseam is a model that won’t work for ever.
The mountain of debt? In the short run, no plan to pay it back at all, just a plan to keep interest rates as close to zero as possible and pay up. If (keeping it simple) your debt is 2 tn and your GDP 2 tn then if(!!) you can borrow at 1% then your annual payments are 1% of GDP, leaving 99% to spend on sweets, PPE and pensioners.
In the long run there are three things that can happen without default to pay back: Inflate, spend a lot less, tax a lot more. Pick any two. If interest rates rise out of control, pick all three and you still may default.
I think, very amateurishly, that there may be a global effort to keep interest rates near zero more or less for ever as the option which best hides the hard choices from the voter.
The other thing is that if you can borrow at 1% or less the temptation to just carry on borrowing (as we have despite promises since the crash of 2008) is very great as the immediate impact of the extra is in fact small, at this moment.
Normal interest rates - like 4 % say, SFAICS would collapse the entire edifice.
That something (a black swan of some sort) will collapse it seems to me almost certain.
My sense too. Don't know quite when or exactly how but I am close to certain the whole thing is going to collapse. My hunch is that China will be instrumental in whatever it is that triggers this.
This is my great fear as well. The whole house of capitalist cards will come crashing down.
Perhaps a major country will default. Italy. The UK. Brazil. Mexico. Spain. America. All of them?
According to the RCP, Biden's lead looks to have come down - this plus the last couple of polls have his lead at c. +6% to +8% (ex-Rasmussen who has it at +2%). From an optical standpoint, assuming new polls show the same expect Biden's polling average to come down as the leads from NBC / Quinnipac drop off the average list
2.9.
I see your man is now making an effort to appear at least a little bit sober and presidential. I'm not overly worried - since I doubt he can keep it up for long - but it was my hypothetical advice to him and I would rather he hadn't taken it. I think it's his best and only chance of turning things around by November. It's not Covid, stupid and it's not the economy, stupid - it's Trump, stupid. He has to stop making it next to impossible for those who dislike his antics and persona but would quite like to vote for him again to do so.
Yes, I would agree on the sober bit and I think that should get the Democrats a bit worried. He has a new adviser for the overall campaign who is more "traditional" than Pascale. He looks to have told Trump to rein it in on the Coronavirus stuff and Trump has taken his advice hence the shift on masks and cancelling the convention. Unlike you, I think he will keep it up. If you look at his niece's book, he fears humiliation above all else. That alone will keep him on the straight and narrow.
I think the strategy going into November now looks set. Focus on the law and order issue to portray the Democrats as lawless and that only he can protect the suburbs (helped by Democrat Mayors who get wound up every time he sends in the Feds and Biden who can't criticise them for fear of being seen as too centrist); play on his relative strength on the economy and benefit from improving trend lines; ramp up the rhetoric on China (where China is helping him with their actions) putting Biden in a tight spot; and rein back the wild theory stuff on CV, which he realised was probably hitting him disproportionately in the suburban areas. The one area he hasn't got under his control is when the Durham report gets released but it looks like it will be around the end of summer, just in time for the run-in to the election.
Does anyone have a good data source about the motivation for voting specifically is the primary motivator benefit for the voter or the benefit to broader society? My son is writing a piece and needs some objective data.
David, I've not got the exact link, but it should be somewhere here.
This is the toll of Covid-19 on just my close friends and family, so far:
One friend lost her job at the beginning of lockdown One friend was laid off a few weeks ago One friend has just been told his job is going at the end of furlough One friend is a freelance and her work has dried up with no more coming One friend is seriously, possibly terminally ill from covid-related disease One friend has had covid very badly, and now has a cancer that her doctors suspect was triggered by the virus (this is a medical grey area)
That's just people I know very well.
The economic and medical depradations of covid-19 are already significant, if my case is representative
Hmm I know 2 people who have had Covid, one of whom was hospitalised and seems to have some sequelae with his breathing and stamina. Most of my friends are self employed and have suffered a real financial hit but on the whole are optimistic that things will pick up again. Many of the others are in the public sector and completely unaffected, indeed somewhat better off in reality although they find that embarrassing to admit. One friend who owns a reasonably sized restaurant/hotel business has suffered severe financial damage, not helped by the idiot policies and attitude of the Scottish government.
Let me know if you are planning to attend any PB get together will you?
lol
I am middle aged, involved in arts and media, and live in London, so that may skew my personal experience to the downside. The arts have been hit terribly.
You're in Scotland, in business, so it is bound to be different?
The cancellation of the Festival and Fringe has undoubtedly hurt the arts badly in Scotland but I have to say that as someone who works in Edinburgh it has been fantastic. You can walk, down the pavements, without pushing through pond life aside. You can get a table in the restaurants that are open. It can get unbearable in late July and August.
I was in Soho for drinks with a friend last night. The atmosphere was very pleasant. They've converted all the streets to al fresco dining, so there is an agreeable hubbub, no cars fuming up the place.
I asked the lady behind the bar at the club about business. She said evenings were modestly bustling - not like before the virus but certainly not terrible. Then I asked about daytime biz - breakfast, coffee, lunch (which used to be a major earner). She shook her head and said "terrible" and looked very depressed.
I fear we are in a false, summery haze and reality will hit us about mid-September
There seem to be some people (only on this website tho) disappointed that telling people to cover their mouth and nose while going round Tescos hasn't started a revolution, and that instead people are wearing masks.
I suppose most people are actually willing to follow a rule that causes them a minor inconvenience when the aim of the rule is to make a resurgence of a deadly epidemic less likely. Who would've guessed?
My observation is that the 95% of the population who weren't wearing masks are now wearing them (mostly badly), because they don't want the hassle, whilst observing that it's a stupid and pointless rule, especially somewhere like round here (I don't think we've any CV19 in my local community, my local council gets about 2 positive tests a week, which is about the rate of false positives I'd expect given they are running hundreds of tests a week.
I know exactly one person who is keen on everyone wearing one, and she is Chinese so culturally conditioned to think it's a good idea. Everywhere I've gone this week I kept overhearing people moaning about them. I'd imagine this is going to destroy discretionary spend - I'm not going to be browsing in bookshops or the like all the while I've got to have my head in a bag to do so - I'll just do a fortnightly food shop and buy everything else from Amazon.
Just wait until his chancellor sends tory middle England the bill for all this
He won't he will mainly borrow despite a few tweaks to capital gains tax
How are we planning to pay off this mountain of debt we have accumulated over the last 18 years?
We have a sluggish economy, where growth is going to be at best stagnant. We have low productivity. We seem to have a number of sacred cows that must be paid for. We refuse to consider higher taxes.
You don’t have to be batshit crazy like Corbyn to see that borrowing passim ad nauseam is a model that won’t work for ever.
The mountain of debt? In the short run, no plan to pay it back at all, just a plan to keep interest rates as close to zero as possible and pay up. If (keeping it simple) your debt is 2 tn and your GDP 2 tn then if(!!) you can borrow at 1% then your annual payments are 1% of GDP, leaving 99% to spend on sweets, PPE and pensioners.
In the long run there are three things that can happen without default to pay back: Inflate, spend a lot less, tax a lot more. Pick any two. If interest rates rise out of control, pick all three and you still may default.
I think, very amateurishly, that there may be a global effort to keep interest rates near zero more or less for ever as the option which best hides the hard choices from the voter.
The other thing is that if you can borrow at 1% or less the temptation to just carry on borrowing (as we have despite promises since the crash of 2008) is very great as the immediate impact of the extra is in fact small, at this moment.
Normal interest rates - like 4 % say, SFAICS would collapse the entire edifice.
That something (a black swan of some sort) will collapse it seems to me almost certain.
Well, this is what’s bothering me.
We maxed out after the GFC to keep the plates spinning.
Then, this came along so we borrowed even more.
But there seems to be no meaningful consideration of any of the three options you correctly identify as the ways out, and which we will need to take.
It’s going to be hard work cutting spending further. Indeed, Cummings’ daft plans will probably increase our costs.
Inflating always debt is always a cretinous idea.
That leaves higher taxes, which Starmer will almost certainly put forward - but the Tories will not, and hat will make it harder for him to beat them.
That means we might end up with a default by default, or with rampaging inflation.
I'll need to look at the Economist more carefully, but on a quick read I note quite a bit of hand waving, permanent negative (ie very low) interest rates and a bit of redistribution. I think any really new ideas that the voter can understand may be wanting.
Again, amateurishly, I can't help thinking that permanently low/negative interest rates will do something or other a bit existential to the pensions industry. Can Mr Meeks help me here?
As a trustee of a pension fund that was very much in my mind. Trying to work out what the fund would need to be with negative interest rates was one issue!
This is the toll of Covid-19 on just my close friends and family, so far:
One friend lost her job at the beginning of lockdown One friend was laid off a few weeks ago One friend has just been told his job is going at the end of furlough One friend is a freelance and her work has dried up with no more coming One friend is seriously, possibly terminally ill from covid-related disease One friend has had covid very badly, and now has a cancer that her doctors suspect was triggered by the virus (this is a medical grey area)
That's just people I know very well.
The economic and medical depradations of covid-19 are already significant, if my case is representative
Hmm I know 2 people who have had Covid, one of whom was hospitalised and seems to have some sequelae with his breathing and stamina. Most of my friends are self employed and have suffered a real financial hit but on the whole are optimistic that things will pick up again. Many of the others are in the public sector and completely unaffected, indeed somewhat better off in reality although they find that embarrassing to admit. One friend who owns a reasonably sized restaurant/hotel business has suffered severe financial damage, not helped by the idiot policies and attitude of the Scottish government.
Let me know if you are planning to attend any PB get together will you?
lol
I am middle aged, involved in arts and media, and live in London, so that may skew my personal experience to the downside. The arts have been hit terribly.
You're in Scotland, in business, so it is bound to be different?
I'm hearing from people that you are a famous journalist and best-selling author. And despite best efforts not as yet coming close to being cancelled. I don't know if this is a relief or a disappointment. Bit of both, I suppose.
Just wait until his chancellor sends tory middle England the bill for all this
He won't he will mainly borrow despite a few tweaks to capital gains tax
How are we planning to pay off this mountain of debt we have accumulated over the last 18 years?
We have a sluggish economy, where growth is going to be at best stagnant. We have low productivity. We seem to have a number of sacred cows that must be paid for. We refuse to consider higher taxes.
You don’t have to be batshit crazy like Corbyn to see that borrowing passim ad nauseam is a model that won’t work for ever.
The mountain of debt? In the short run, no plan to pay it back at all, just a plan to keep interest rates as close to zero as possible and pay up. If (keeping it simple) your debt is 2 tn and your GDP 2 tn then if(!!) you can borrow at 1% then your annual payments are 1% of GDP, leaving 99% to spend on sweets, PPE and pensioners.
In the long run there are three things that can happen without default to pay back: Inflate, spend a lot less, tax a lot more. Pick any two. If interest rates rise out of control, pick all three and you still may default.
I think, very amateurishly, that there may be a global effort to keep interest rates near zero more or less for ever as the option which best hides the hard choices from the voter.
The other thing is that if you can borrow at 1% or less the temptation to just carry on borrowing (as we have despite promises since the crash of 2008) is very great as the immediate impact of the extra is in fact small, at this moment.
Normal interest rates - like 4 % say, SFAICS would collapse the entire edifice.
That something (a black swan of some sort) will collapse it seems to me almost certain.
Well, this is what’s bothering me.
We maxed out after the GFC to keep the plates spinning.
Then, this came along so we borrowed even more.
But there seems to be no meaningful consideration of any of the three options you correctly identify as the ways out, and which we will need to take.
It’s going to be hard work cutting spending further. Indeed, Cummings’ daft plans will probably increase our costs.
Inflating always debt is always a cretinous idea.
That leaves higher taxes, which Starmer will almost certainly put forward - but the Tories will not, and hat will make it harder for him to beat them.
That means we might end up with a default by default, or with rampaging inflation.
I'll need to look at the Economist more carefully, but on a quick read I note quite a bit of hand waving, permanent negative (ie very low) interest rates and a bit of redistribution. I think any really new ideas that the voter can understand may be wanting.
Again, amateurishly, I can't help thinking that permanently low/negative interest rates will do something or other a bit existential to the pensions industry. Can Mr Meeks help me here?
Isn’t that linked to the stock market, not interest rates?
(I do have a private sector pension, btw, which I do monitor despite being a fortunate bastard with a public sector pension.)
Pensions are heavily invested in government bonds which correlate to interest rates.
Are there really that many people on a baseball team?!
That's both teams
I know, but even just on one side it looked like a long line.
Squad size is 25. Pitchers don't pitch every day. There are usually 5 starters who rotate every 4 to 5 days. But they very rarely complete a full 9 innings. So there is a bullpen of relievers who come on as and when needed. 8 position players plus subs for injuries etc. So 9 on the field. Remember they play 162 3 hour plus games a season normally.
Baseball is a great game to watch. The best of American Stadium sports, and so much better than cricket.
Moderators for goodness sake. Is there no limits on the outrageousness of opinions on this site anymore?
@Foxy is normally such a polite and sensible chap, so I think they gave him a pass this time.
A sensible chap who doesn't like cricket? I am going to need to think about that, its a 3 patch problem as Sherlock used to say.
Yes, I am not a cricket fan. Perhaps it is my teenage years in the USA that meant I never played either cricket or rugby at school, so never developed the taste. Baseball was the sport that I enjoyed most at school, and even at Little League level it is a good game to play and watch.
If I lived in the States and had to pick a US sport to get into it would be that one - baseball. It seems to have more to it than the other two.
From American sports it'd be that or NASCAR for me. Followed by watching paint dry.
whaat? Gotta be hockey.
And not the limey hockey either.
Good point. I associate hockey more with Canada than the USA.
According to the RCP, Biden's lead looks to have come down - this plus the last couple of polls have his lead at c. +6% to +8% (ex-Rasmussen who has it at +2%). From an optical standpoint, assuming new polls show the same expect Biden's polling average to come down as the leads from NBC / Quinnipac drop off the average list
2.9.
I see your man is now making an effort to appear at least a little bit sober and presidential. I'm not overly worried - since I doubt he can keep it up for long - but it was my hypothetical advice to him and I would rather he hadn't taken it. I think it's his best and only chance of turning things around by November. It's not Covid, stupid and it's not the economy, stupid - it's Trump, stupid. He has to stop making it next to impossible for those who dislike his antics and persona but would quite like to vote for him again to do so.
Don't forget that there are certain well-established dials that GOP-supporting media can turn. For example after the "grab them by the pussy" recording last time around, there was a very clear push to win wavering religious right types with an argument of "Yes he's odious and yes I'll have to hold my breath to vote for him, but he's our only protection against the baby-genociding democrats. Think of the supreme court!"
Just wait until his chancellor sends tory middle England the bill for all this
He won't he will mainly borrow despite a few tweaks to capital gains tax
How are we planning to pay off this mountain of debt we have accumulated over the last 18 years?
We have a sluggish economy, where growth is going to be at best stagnant. We have low productivity. We seem to have a number of sacred cows that must be paid for. We refuse to consider higher taxes.
You don’t have to be batshit crazy like Corbyn to see that borrowing passim ad nauseam is a model that won’t work for ever.
The mountain of debt? In the short run, no plan to pay it back at all, just a plan to keep interest rates as close to zero as possible and pay up. If (keeping it simple) your debt is 2 tn and your GDP 2 tn then if(!!) you can borrow at 1% then your annual payments are 1% of GDP, leaving 99% to spend on sweets, PPE and pensioners.
In the long run there are three things that can happen without default to pay back: Inflate, spend a lot less, tax a lot more. Pick any two. If interest rates rise out of control, pick all three and you still may default.
I think, very amateurishly, that there may be a global effort to keep interest rates near zero more or less for ever as the option which best hides the hard choices from the voter.
The other thing is that if you can borrow at 1% or less the temptation to just carry on borrowing (as we have despite promises since the crash of 2008) is very great as the immediate impact of the extra is in fact small, at this moment.
Normal interest rates - like 4 % say, SFAICS would collapse the entire edifice.
That something (a black swan of some sort) will collapse it seems to me almost certain.
Well, this is what’s bothering me.
We maxed out after the GFC to keep the plates spinning.
Then, this came along so we borrowed even more.
But there seems to be no meaningful consideration of any of the three options you correctly identify as the ways out, and which we will need to take.
It’s going to be hard work cutting spending further. Indeed, Cummings’ daft plans will probably increase our costs.
Inflating always debt is always a cretinous idea.
That leaves higher taxes, which Starmer will almost certainly put forward - but the Tories will not, and hat will make it harder for him to beat them.
That means we might end up with a default by default, or with rampaging inflation.
I'll need to look at the Economist more carefully, but on a quick read I note quite a bit of hand waving, permanent negative (ie very low) interest rates and a bit of redistribution. I think any really new ideas that the voter can understand may be wanting.
Again, amateurishly, I can't help thinking that permanently low/negative interest rates will do something or other a bit existential to the pensions industry. Can Mr Meeks help me here?
Isn’t that linked to the stock market, not interest rates?
(I do have a private sector pension, btw, which I do monitor despite being a fortunate bastard with a public sector pension.)
Both (probably).
If you have shares in your pension scheme portfolio then clearly stock markets matter, but interest rates probably matter more.
Why? Well most pension portfolios For money purchase schemes have corporate and Govt bonds in them and as interest rates fall their price rises and vice versa. So falling interest rates lead to higher bond prices, so if you’ve got bonds that’s good isn’t it? Well, only to an extent, because the kicker is when you come to cash your pension in, so to speak, and you want to buy an annuity to pay an income for life, low gilt yields ( ie rates on Govt bonds) have been driven to three century lows by those rising gilt prices- so very poor income per Pound of fund value results.
A million quid twenty years ago at 65 with a half pension for a spouse the same age, would probably got you close to 40k ( something like that). Now just over 23k per annum.
If you think he's unpopular now wait until the winter.
I think you greatly overestimate what change is coming.
Furlough through lockdown has worked to avoid the worst of what could have happened.
Doesn’t that depend on the Brexit deal?
No probably not. The significance of a Brexit deal is greatly overestimated too.
And in answer to your question about Stormont. Yes they do get a vote in 4yrs. But as has been pointed out to you repeatedly, it is a fiction to think that something, anything, will come out of that vote that is not the same as the several options we have now.
Either a border between NI & GB as we have now (and which Boris Johnson said...oh well you know what he said).
Or the entire UK in a customs union with the EU.
The idea that a reject vote will somehow allow the UK to cut free of the EU and have done with it is, I'm afraid to say, exactly what Boris wanted the idiots to think could happen. But it can't.
It doesn't matter what you consider likely. People didn't consider it likely people would vote to leave the EU but we were sovereign because we could. They are sovereign for the same logic.
Either drop the idea we were always sovereign (which I always agreed with) or acknowledge the fact that Johnson's deal gave Stormont sovereignty. Your choice.
Does anyone have a good data source about the motivation for voting specifically is the primary motivator benefit for the voter or the benefit to broader society? My son is writing a piece and needs some objective data.
Perhaps turnout at local, even parish, elections versus national elections could be a discriminator. The former more likely to have a personal impact, the latter more general.
There seem to be some people (only on this website tho) disappointed that telling people to cover their mouth and nose while going round Tescos hasn't started a revolution, and that instead people are wearing masks.
I suppose most people are actually willing to follow a rule that causes them a minor inconvenience when the aim of the rule is to make a resurgence of a deadly epidemic less likely. Who would've guessed?
My observation is that the 95% of the population who weren't wearing masks are now wearing them (mostly badly), because they don't want the hassle, whilst observing that it's a stupid and pointless rule, especially somewhere like round here (I don't think we've any CV19 in my local community, my local council gets about 2 positive tests a week, which is about the rate of false positives I'd expect given they are running hundreds of tests a week.
I know exactly one person who is keen on everyone wearing one, and she is Chinese so culturally conditioned to think it's a good idea. Everywhere I've gone this week I kept overhearing people moaning about them. I'd imagine this is going to destroy discretionary spend - I'm not going to be browsing in bookshops or the like all the while I've got to have my head in a bag to do so - I'll just do a fortnightly food shop and buy everything else from Amazon.
All because you won’t put up with the minor inconvenience of wearing a mask, more fool ypu
This is the toll of Covid-19 on just my close friends and family, so far:
One friend lost her job at the beginning of lockdown One friend was laid off a few weeks ago One friend has just been told his job is going at the end of furlough One friend is a freelance and her work has dried up with no more coming One friend is seriously, possibly terminally ill from covid-related disease One friend has had covid very badly, and now has a cancer that her doctors suspect was triggered by the virus (this is a medical grey area)
That's just people I know very well.
The economic and medical depradations of covid-19 are already significant, if my case is representative
Hmm I know 2 people who have had Covid, one of whom was hospitalised and seems to have some sequelae with his breathing and stamina. Most of my friends are self employed and have suffered a real financial hit but on the whole are optimistic that things will pick up again. Many of the others are in the public sector and completely unaffected, indeed somewhat better off in reality although they find that embarrassing to admit. One friend who owns a reasonably sized restaurant/hotel business has suffered severe financial damage, not helped by the idiot policies and attitude of the Scottish government.
Let me know if you are planning to attend any PB get together will you?
lol
I am middle aged, involved in arts and media, and live in London, so that may skew my personal experience to the downside. The arts have been hit terribly.
You're in Scotland, in business, so it is bound to be different?
I'm hearing from people that you are a famous journalist and best-selling author. And despite best efforts not as yet coming close to being cancelled. I don't know if this is a relief or a disappointment. Bit of both, I suppose.
I will take this opportunity to, ahem, plug my latest portraits of my favourite salamander
Does anyone have a good data source about the motivation for voting specifically is the primary motivator benefit for the voter or the benefit to broader society? My son is writing a piece and needs some objective data.
Perhaps turnout at local, even parish, elections versus national elections could be a discriminator. The former more likely to have a personal impact, the latter more general.
That's an induction for consideration, right enough.
A question for the PB Brains Trust. Does "general taxation" technically or otherwise mean anything specific in the UK? Is there any reason not to refer to the revenues of NI as part of general taxation?
Furthermore is it reasonable or unreasonable to refer to state levied charges like the NHS health service surcharge that migrants have to pay as a tax?
In my head NI is part of general taxation not a hypothecated tax and the surcharge is a tax levied on migrants regardless of what it's called. But is there any pedantic, technical or otherwise reason to disagree?
This is the toll of Covid-19 on just my close friends and family, so far:
One friend lost her job at the beginning of lockdown One friend was laid off a few weeks ago One friend has just been told his job is going at the end of furlough One friend is a freelance and her work has dried up with no more coming One friend is seriously, possibly terminally ill from covid-related disease One friend has had covid very badly, and now has a cancer that her doctors suspect was triggered by the virus (this is a medical grey area)
That's just people I know very well.
The economic and medical depradations of covid-19 are already significant, if my case is representative
Hmm I know 2 people who have had Covid, one of whom was hospitalised and seems to have some sequelae with his breathing and stamina. Most of my friends are self employed and have suffered a real financial hit but on the whole are optimistic that things will pick up again. Many of the others are in the public sector and completely unaffected, indeed somewhat better off in reality although they find that embarrassing to admit. One friend who owns a reasonably sized restaurant/hotel business has suffered severe financial damage, not helped by the idiot policies and attitude of the Scottish government.
Let me know if you are planning to attend any PB get together will you?
lol
I am middle aged, involved in arts and media, and live in London, so that may skew my personal experience to the downside. The arts have been hit terribly.
You're in Scotland, in business, so it is bound to be different?
I'm hearing from people that you are a famous journalist and best-selling author. And despite best efforts not as yet coming close to being cancelled. I don't know if this is a relief or a disappointment. Bit of both, I suppose.
I will take this opportunity to, ahem, plug my latest portraits of my favourite salamander
Are there really that many people on a baseball team?!
That's both teams
I know, but even just on one side it looked like a long line.
Squad size is 25. Pitchers don't pitch every day. There are usually 5 starters who rotate every 4 to 5 days. But they very rarely complete a full 9 innings. So there is a bullpen of relievers who come on as and when needed. 8 position players plus subs for injuries etc. So 9 on the field. Remember they play 162 3 hour plus games a season normally.
Baseball is a great game to watch. The best of American Stadium sports, and so much better than cricket.
Moderators for goodness sake. Is there no limits on the outrageousness of opinions on this site anymore?
@Foxy is normally such a polite and sensible chap, so I think they gave him a pass this time.
A sensible chap who doesn't like cricket? I am going to need to think about that, its a 3 patch problem as Sherlock used to say.
Yes, I am not a cricket fan. Perhaps it is my teenage years in the USA that meant I never played either cricket or rugby at school, so never developed the taste. Baseball was the sport that I enjoyed most at school, and even at Little League level it is a good game to play and watch.
If I lived in the States and had to pick a US sport to get into it would be that one - baseball. It seems to have more to it than the other two.
From American sports it'd be that or NASCAR for me. Followed by watching paint dry.
whaat? Gotta be hockey.
And not the limey hockey either.
Good point. I associate hockey more with Canada than the USA.
A question for the PB Brains Trust. Does "general taxation" technically or otherwise mean anything specific in the UK? Is there any reason not to refer to the revenues of NI as part of general taxation?
Furthermore is it reasonable or unreasonable to refer to state levied charges like the NHS health service surcharge that migrants have to pay as a tax?
In my head NI is part of general taxation not a hypothecated tax and the surcharge is a tax levied on migrants regardless of what it's called. But is there any pedantic, technical or otherwise reason to disagree?
I think technically the distinction is from the Middle Ages, where you had ‘general taxation’ which affected everybody and everything, and specific taxes levied on individuals or estates.
Really not good news. Crossrail's opening delayed yet again, with no new date announced. I sometimes wonder if it will ever open.
Every night I see entirely empty buses trundle past my house. At some point TfL will just have to stop running them, and wasting all that money it doesn't have.
This is how the Great Shrinkage will begin. Fewer buses and trains means even less reason to go into town, which means fewer people will bother, which means they will have to shrink the transport network further.... creating a terrible death spiral, and I do not know how we get out of it.
One does find the panic expressed at the possible inability to afford Crossrail 2 somewhat risible, given that the article later informs us that Crossrail 1 has been delayed. Again.
A question for the PB Brains Trust. Does "general taxation" technically or otherwise mean anything specific in the UK? Is there any reason not to refer to the revenues of NI as part of general taxation?
Furthermore is it reasonable or unreasonable to refer to state levied charges like the NHS health service surcharge that migrants have to pay as a tax?
In my head NI is part of general taxation not a hypothecated tax and the surcharge is a tax levied on migrants regardless of what it's called. But is there any pedantic, technical or otherwise reason to disagree?
NI used to be hypothecated to fund state pensions. Labour made it into a general tax and funded the state pension out of general taxation.
Biden leads Trump by wide margins in both Michigan and Pennsylvania, according to a Fox News poll released on Thursday evening.
Fifty percent of voters in Pennsylvania said they would vote for Biden, compared with 39 percent for Trump. That represents a drop for the president from April, when 42 percent of voters said they would choose Trump, compared with Biden’s consistent 50 percent.
Michigan saw similar, though slightly narrower, results, with 49 percent of voters favoring Biden, compared with 40 percent supporting Trump. That figure has changed only slightly since April, when 41 percent of respondents in the state supported Trump.
In both states, Trump is ahead among white voters without a college degree, whereas Biden attracts voters of color, suburban voters and women.
Comments
He looked like a man who is trying too hard.
This is the toll of Covid-19 on just my close friends and family, so far:
One friend lost her job at the beginning of lockdown
One friend was laid off a few weeks ago
One friend has just been told his job is going at the end of furlough
One friend is a freelance and her work has dried up with no more coming
One friend is seriously, possibly terminally ill from covid-related disease
One friend has had covid very badly, and now has a cancer that her doctors suspect was triggered by the virus (this is a medical grey area)
That's just people I know very well.
The economic and medical depradations of covid-19 are already significant, if my case is representative
I’ll stick with ‘batshit crazy.’
The point was however that Corbyn was standing on an unabashed claim that neoliberalism and capitalism had both completely failed and needed replacing with cronyism, er, socialism.
My analysis is you didn’t need to agree with the second part to see that there is a genuine problem and that reform is required.
Which you seem to agree with.
Cameron, May and Starmer were or are, however if Starmer got in that would mean higher taxes more than spending cuts as Cameron pushed or the combination of both that May pushed and cost her her majority in 2017
I get the feeling Kemar Roach is pissed off.
The story seems to be substitution - we are spending our money on different things...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53523682
Another reason we need more fine grained data....
In the long run there are three things that can happen without default to pay back: Inflate, spend a lot less, tax a lot more. Pick any two. If interest rates rise out of control, pick all three and you still may default.
I think, very amateurishly, that there may be a global effort to keep interest rates near zero more or less for ever as the option which best hides the hard choices from the voter.
The other thing is that if you can borrow at 1% or less the temptation to just carry on borrowing (as we have despite promises since the crash of 2008) is very great as the immediate impact of the extra is in fact small, at this moment.
Normal interest rates - like 4 % say, SFAICS would collapse the entire edifice.
That something (a black swan of some sort) will collapse it seems to me almost certain.
I know 2 people who have had Covid, one of whom was hospitalised and seems to have some sequelae with his breathing and stamina.
Most of my friends are self employed and have suffered a real financial hit but on the whole are optimistic that things will pick up again.
Many of the others are in the public sector and completely unaffected, indeed somewhat better off in reality although they find that embarrassing to admit.
One friend who owns a reasonably sized restaurant/hotel business has suffered severe financial damage, not helped by the idiot policies and attitude of the Scottish government.
Let me know if you are planning to attend any PB get together will you?
We maxed out after the GFC to keep the plates spinning.
Then, this came along so we borrowed even more.
But there seems to be no meaningful consideration of any of the three options you correctly identify as the ways out, and which we will need to take.
It’s going to be hard work cutting spending further. Indeed, Cummings’ daft plans will probably increase our costs.
Inflating always debt is always a cretinous idea.
That leaves higher taxes, which Starmer will almost certainly put forward - but the Tories will not, and hat will make it harder for him to beat them.
That means we might end up with a default by default, or with rampaging inflation.
If you can work from home, the impact might be next to nothing. If you can't (say, as an electrician) then you've been screwed for a long time.
Hospitality's going to find things rough, alas. And that'll affect other businesses.
It has not been a positive experience.
Ah, my coat...
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2020/07/25/the-covid-19-pandemic-is-forcing-a-rethink-in-macroeconomics?fsrc=newsletter&utm_campaign=the-economist-today&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=salesforce-marketing-cloud&utm_term=2020-07-23&utm_content=article-link-1
I am middle aged, involved in arts and media, and live in London, so that may skew my personal experience to the downside. The arts have been hit terribly.
You're in Scotland, in business, so it is bound to be different?
I'm calling it WattsApp.
I see your man is now making an effort to appear at least a little bit sober and presidential. I'm not overly worried - since I doubt he can keep it up for long - but it was my hypothetical advice to him and I would rather he hadn't taken it. I think it's his best and only chance of turning things around by November. It's not Covid, stupid and it's not the economy, stupid - it's Trump, stupid. He has to stop making it next to impossible for those who dislike his antics and persona but would quite like to vote for him again to do so.
2 public sector have kept their jobs working from home, are saving more than normal. 1 working the same, another working longer hours.
1 private sector salaried, he is bored because there isn't much work to do, but happily saving and seemingly not at risk of redundancy.
1 private sector salaried, busy, company offered 80% pay for 80% hours for a while and are now offering targeted voluntary redundancy. He is job searching just in case and is saving more than normal.
1 junior doc, has worked out well because she just continued her favourite rotation.
1 just graduated, she is working at supermarket and having a hard time finding anything else.
Overall - most are fitter and healthier because have prioritized exercise during lockdown and have more time. 1 has gone the other way and put on weight.
I also know two close friends who are very definitely better off, financially.
One is a noted designer who does up big posh houses: the ultra-rich are spending big on their homes so he is in clover
The other is a photographer who was almost bankrupt BEFORE the Bug, but he is now loaded with work, and future commissions, as he has been documenting lockdown Britain from the start, whereas many photographers hid away, and now all the papers and magazines (here and abroad) want his material.
He has cleared all his debts.
So there are winners.
I had lunch with him the other day and told him he was like munitions manufacturers who became millionaires in World War One.
You should have addressed that comment to me personally so you finished, ‘I’m calling it WattsApp, Doc.’
https://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/
Something like this?
https://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/media/39285/bsa35_key-findings.pdf
I'll need to look at the Economist more carefully, but on a quick read I note quite a bit of hand waving, permanent negative (ie very low) interest rates and a bit of redistribution. I think any really new ideas that the voter can understand may be wanting.
Again, amateurishly, I can't help thinking that permanently low/negative interest rates will do something or other a bit existential to the pensions industry. Can Mr Meeks help me here?
(I do have a private sector pension, btw, which I do monitor despite being a fortunate bastard with a public sector pension.)
Perhaps a major country will default. Italy. The UK. Brazil. Mexico. Spain. America. All of them?
I think the strategy going into November now looks set. Focus on the law and order issue to portray the Democrats as lawless and that only he can protect the suburbs (helped by Democrat Mayors who get wound up every time he sends in the Feds and Biden who can't criticise them for fear of being seen as too centrist); play on his relative strength on the economy and benefit from improving trend lines; ramp up the rhetoric on China (where China is helping him with their actions) putting Biden in a tight spot; and rein back the wild theory stuff on CV, which he realised was probably hitting him disproportionately in the suburban areas. The one area he hasn't got under his control is when the Durham report gets released but it looks like it will be around the end of summer, just in time for the run-in to the election.
I asked the lady behind the bar at the club about business. She said evenings were modestly bustling - not like before the virus but certainly not terrible. Then I asked about daytime biz - breakfast, coffee, lunch (which used to be a major earner). She shook her head and said "terrible" and looked very depressed.
I fear we are in a false, summery haze and reality will hit us about mid-September
I know exactly one person who is keen on everyone wearing one, and she is Chinese so culturally conditioned to think it's a good idea. Everywhere I've gone this week I kept overhearing people moaning about them. I'd imagine this is going to destroy discretionary spend - I'm not going to be browsing in bookshops or the like all the while I've got to have my head in a bag to do so - I'll just do a fortnightly food shop and buy everything else from Amazon.
And we’re into the tail...
If you have shares in your pension scheme portfolio then clearly stock markets matter, but interest rates probably matter more.
Why? Well most pension portfolios For money purchase schemes have corporate and Govt bonds in them and as interest rates fall their price rises and vice versa. So falling interest rates lead to higher bond prices, so if you’ve got bonds that’s good isn’t it? Well, only to an extent, because the kicker is when you come to cash your pension in, so to speak, and you want to buy an annuity to pay an income for life, low gilt yields ( ie rates on Govt bonds) have been driven to three century lows by those rising gilt prices- so very poor income per Pound of fund value results.
A million quid twenty years ago at 65 with a half pension for a spouse the same age, would probably got you close to 40k ( something like that). Now just over 23k per annum.
Low interests rates suck!
Either drop the idea we were always sovereign (which I always agreed with) or acknowledge the fact that Johnson's deal gave Stormont sovereignty. Your choice.
https://thaddeusthesixth.blogspot.com/2020/07/review-book-of-jhereg-by-steven-brust.html
Furthermore is it reasonable or unreasonable to refer to state levied charges like the NHS health service surcharge that migrants have to pay as a tax?
In my head NI is part of general taxation not a hypothecated tax and the surcharge is a tax levied on migrants regardless of what it's called. But is there any pedantic, technical or otherwise reason to disagree?
But I could easily be wrong.
Can't do them.
Happier as a result.
Every night I see entirely empty buses trundle past my house. At some point TfL will just have to stop running them, and wasting all that money it doesn't have.
This is how the Great Shrinkage will begin. Fewer buses and trains means even less reason to go into town, which means fewer people will bother, which means they will have to shrink the transport network further.... creating a terrible death spiral, and I do not know how we get out of it.
Have to report a really high mask usage.
Edit - Apologies to NerysHughes if you're triggered by this post.
It looked like Buttler played a forward defensive.
It won’t last. He just isn’t a red ball batsman.
Biden leads Trump by wide margins in both Michigan and Pennsylvania, according to a Fox News poll released on Thursday evening.
Fifty percent of voters in Pennsylvania said they would vote for Biden, compared with 39 percent for Trump. That represents a drop for the president from April, when 42 percent of voters said they would choose Trump, compared with Biden’s consistent 50 percent.
Michigan saw similar, though slightly narrower, results, with 49 percent of voters favoring Biden, compared with 40 percent supporting Trump. That figure has changed only slightly since April, when 41 percent of respondents in the state supported Trump.
In both states, Trump is ahead among white voters without a college degree, whereas Biden attracts voters of color, suburban voters and women.
You are right though.