From thread on Guardian, following news that Cameron is not ruling out cutting child benefit, my comments:
What a great idea: make children hungry so that 'the deficit' can be got rid of. Why do we need to get rid of the deficit? So that the bond markets can remain 'confident'. But is there any evidence that the bond markets have lost confidence? Nope. And who or what are 'the bond markets' anyway? They're very rich people shuffling moolah. So what's going on is that the children need to be made hungry in case some rich people stop being 'confident' that they can go on doing stuff that makes them very rich.
But in fact, they're not unconfident. What happens is that the politicians make up stories about 'loss of confidence' in order to make us scared. When we're scared, they can pose as people who know what they're doing to make us less scared. They're going to 'balance the books' they say. In fact, they won't and can't. And plenty of people think it's undesirable to do so anyway. Why not borrow to invest in order to stimulate growth? Isn't that what all capitalists do anyway?
But 'balancing the books' sounds grown-up. Years ago it was the 'balance of payments'. That was the big bogeyman. oh my how we all worried about the balance of payments. It was a great way to bully workers into accepting pay freezes and pay cuts. Then they forgot about the balance of payments bogeyman and came up with 'The Deficit'. Now everyone talks about 'The Deficit. Especially news interviewers on the BBC. This is their trump card. What about 'The Deficit'? they say to all politicians. In a few years time, they'll have stopped doing that and started talking about something else: the money supply or productivity. And that'll be the killer bogeyman.
It's all about which gang of economists get the ear of the top politicians in the US. And we tag along behind.
In the meantime, the rich people in the bond markets are very 'confident' that the Bank of England can always print some more money (er…do some 'quantitative easing') if things get a bit sticky. That's the problem about being Greek. You can't print money. So you get screwed by people who can.
Oh yes, and the other great advantage about going on and on about 'The Deficit' is that it gives you an excuse to demolish and destroy the welfare state. That's because the Welfare State is 'socialism' and 'socialism' must be destroyed. Only the market can satisfy all our needs: as with housing in London for example. Oh…well, not actually housing. Yes, forget about housing. How about chocolate. Yes, chocolate. The market is brilliant at satisfying our need for chocolate. Thank you.
[reference: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/01/cameron-avoids-ruling-out-child-benefit-cuts-question-time ]
