AIBU to not understand government debt?

[elprup]

Can anyone help?

I understand the UK’s national debt is something like £1.8 trillion. There’s also the budget deficit (is that the difference between borrowing and spending?) which is something like £22 billion (I think).

Is it right that the government needs to get the deficit down to zero before it can start paying off the £1.8 trillion itself? How close are we to achieving this?

If somebody could explain this in layman’s terms I’d be very grateful!

Basically, yes, and this is where people get confused.

Unless the annual deficit is eliminated, the total debt will continue to increase, although gross debt is arguably less important than debt relative to GDP, which has started to come down marginally.

So people say, "well the debt is going up despite austerity", while not realising that the annual deficit has fallen. Last year the deficit was GBP43bn, which is lowest since 2002.

It's similar to household finances. If you're regularly spending more than you earn, your debt will increase. In order to start paying back what you owe, you need to cut back your expenditure (austerity) or earn more money (increase taxes).

There are some interesting infographics which set out how the central government budget is spent and where the income comes from.

Thank you! When is the budget deficit predicted to reach £0?

It isn't.

At a total spending of about 700bn that 43bn represents about 6%