“the coalition has set out the goal of driving *away* £250 billion worth of investment ”

They’ve lost at least 3 billion in my sector alone…

Nope, the people you’re depriving of jobs can’t spend cash they don’t have. This is a crisis of confidence as much as anything.

And I see, you want MORE unemployed to save the economy. Fits.

It is 7 tn. If you don’t believe me that means you have alternative figures.

I’ve listed the categories of debt, so put the present values to them. I suspect you won’t.

Now the government can drive debt by stopping consume so much money and spending it. Currently the major reason for the lack of loans is that government has forced banks to invest in gilts. It’s borrowing, and it spend it.

Next the government spends 750 bn a year. What percentage of that is investments? A trivial percentage. The government doesn’t do investment. You need investment to drive growth.

Hence the sad part about the lib dems raising of the tax threshold is that it won’t drive investment, it will drive spending. In spite of it being morally correct, its the wrong thing to do.

What is needed is more people saving and investing, and that needs lower taxation. To get lower taxation the government has to be cut back. Or its just more tax later, and lots of it.

Let me challenge you to on the ‘growth is the solution’ that comes from all politicians.

What’s the government spend on one unemployed person? Around 13K per year in direct spending ignoring other costs.

So if you get a million back to work, most will be on low wages. That saves you 13K plus any taxes. Min wage is 2.5K in tax a year, so round it up and say 15K is the extent to which the government is better off.

15K * 1 million = 15 billion.

The deficit is 150 bn.

It’s not going to work, is it?

Chicken and egg.

You can’t cut the deficit to anything without growth. And government needs to drive growth.

And a mad rush to pay off debt would be economic suicide.

Especially the wildly exaggerated £7trn figure you keep harping on about.