Austerity part 2? Will people fall for it a second time?

[Endlesssummer2022]

Austerity part 1 , which Hunt was a massive supporter of, was completely unnecessary and ideologically driven.

During the original austerity, Hunt was hellbent on trying to give away large bits of the NHS to American private care companies and largely failed.

Now he’s back and in charge of the till. He claims we need Austerity 2. However, recently we’ve managed to find billions for Track and Trace, billions for HS2, billions for failed PPE, billions in furlough and business payments, billions to buy weapons for Ukraine and won’t even entertain the idea of a windfall tax on energy companies.

So why is Austerity 2 necessary? I don’t think it is. I think they’ve brought in Hunt in as he sounds reasonable but he’s as ideological as the others and is hellbent on completing his mission on giving the NHS to American private care companies.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist but it almost feels like this whole thing has been a set up to sell off more of our assets on the cheap to donors and chums.

Who the fuck knows whether any of this was planned...I don't actually have the confidence that any of them are clever enough to do anything that Machiavellian.

What is now evident is that Jeremy Hunt is now the de facto PM without having been elected by anyone. And his previous record as Health Secretary fills me with absolute dread about what the Tories are going to do to this country next.

The whole thing is awful.

I do not agree that the government has just "found billions", the money was borrowed. As we all know, if you borrow money you have to pay it back with interest.
In that sense the government is like any other household or organisation and needs to look at areas where it can cut its costs.

Austerity Mark 2 will be spun as needed to be done because of the

Ukrainian War
Energy crisis bailouts
Pandemic and lockdowns/ furlough

Although I agree that debts always have to be paid back , the fact is that most of these things were handled badly, they wrote off many fraudulent claims for bounce back loans / furlough. Eat out to help out wasn't needed , money to their friends for ppe / test and trace.
Lots of people disagree with funding the war too.
Maybe trying a different way with the energy crisis too? Although I know that isn't as easy to sort out and a lot is down to Russia.
However, the latest fiscal budget also didn't help matters and lots of money wasted there too.
Now we have the prospect of having to make savings in defense and education and goodness knows where else to plug a huge deficit of 78 billion or something?
It is depressing.

They are having to do this again, but only three weeks ago they wanted to cut taxes and borrow even more money ! Obviously this isn't happening now, but it was part of the fiscal event and caused the pound to crash and all the other fallout. What was the thinking behind this ? Why wasn't it costed out first ?
How do you square a circle ?

No, government debt is not like household debt. There is a magic money tree but only for the few.

Austerity is ideological

Government accounts are not analogous to household accounts because government can print money (via the Bank) and take on far more debt than householders. Mrs T was fond of the comparison in order to mislead voters about 'affordability'.

It depends on your definition of necessary. Whether it was a result of austerity, the budget deficit did decrease between 2010 and 2019 (austerity 1). It has then increased from 2020 to 2022, and is reducing. The two look to be fairly well linked, although this does not mean that other ways of reducing the budget deficit are not available.

IMHO there are several factors, but the main two are how much money the government raise, and how effectively they spend it. Austerity helps them either raise more or spend less (or both), but it doesn't necessarily ensure that spending is as efficient as it could be.

As others have said, there are economic forces (covid, brexit, Ukraine war etc) that have had significant impact on the deficit.

Ultimately, if anyone spends more than they earn, something has to give somewhere.

Printing money increases inflation though, so that's not viable at the moment. And, yes, governments can take on far more debt, but there are still limits, so the principle is the same as for householders, just on a larger scale.

The Trussterfuck last year caused the UK credit rating to be downgraded with the deficit causing further reduction in confidence in the UK, so now it is costing the government more to service its borrowing. That borrowing must be reduced as it is at one of the highest levels it ever has been.

I think so.
Im not sure that anyone is presenting an alternative clearly enough.