Not a fan of free enterprise, then John? I’d be interested in how the Glorious People’s Free Republic of Britannia is going to get by without it.

Essentially the logic of that statement is that the net return on entering business in the UK is, on average, negative – like gambling at a bookies. So are you suggesting we all give up and go spoon whittling in the woods?

Can’t have it both ways.

You are right, I hadn’t read the ‘filling the gap’ bit properly. It might be the ‘patient, longer term’ bit that’s different, rather than anything being riskier?

I don’t know whether the plan is to have a high-street arm? That would be interesting too.

People start banks. Why not?

If you mean money – it comes from the Royal Mint. If you mean the value behind the money, it comes from what we produce.

The rest is an elaborate construct. It’s real and it works, but I wanted to answer the question as straightforwardly as possible.

Where do you think the German economic miracle came from? American money, yes. But not just thrown in – given to manufacturers and innovators schooled, trained and given experience of achieving extreme productivity all at state ‘expense’. Think Volkswagen, and the people who worked there. It was a different state that benefitted, and got the credit, and there’s a funny sort of justice in that – but it’s worth bearing in mind. Those people did not come from nowhere, they were Germans who had been invested in heavily by the state.

I am not advocating fascism – I shouldn’t have to say that but I do. Just introducing an interesting example of one longer-term benefit of heavy state investment – probably the only one to survive the destruction of the state. And by the way, the state has carried on spending ever since, and they are doing pretty well, thank you very much. It helps that they are a net exporter.

In what I hope is the right order:

Example: Australia -. There are many others – though a Google search produces a lot of right wing think-tanks and fake universities saying there are none. Even better are the claims that the effect is negative through ‘inefficient use of money’ (in the case of most of these think tanks, that means not giving it to the particular corporation sponsoring it).

Of course, the thing about a fiscal stimulus is even if the result is neutral (and it may well be unless the investment is in technology and innovation – a better axe, see my earlier rantings) we get new infrastructure out of it.

It’s the Government – well the treasury – who owes money, not us. We don’t owe a penny. We have already paid our taxes (well, I have) so nothing is owed. That this is the case is demonstrated by the fact that one of the entities the treasury owes is us. Yes, I get the argument that it would be good if the treasury got back from the taxpayer what it needs to pay back, as it has interest to cover – but we don’t actually owe £70,000 each. We can go for the rest of our lives or until the earth falls into the sun before we are confronted with a bloke with a baseball bat and an unmarked van. The tax take will be whatever it is, and if we manage to survive the break with Europe as an industrial nation then it will be more in the good times than it is now.

Oh, and those institutions the government is paying interest to? The same ones that the capitalist argument says should be making lots of money in interest, as a sign of a healthy economy!

I would be interested in your evidence that Hitler woke up one morning and said in his best Spike Milligan German “Ach, I have zer answer to zer debtungspiralen! I vill invade zer Poland! Zat will pay zer taxes unt das costs gercutten!”

Meanwhile our glorious leader is keeping the NHS defecit a state secret until after the election.

Strong and stable.

CD, who said I was advocating any of that list, or Hitler. Read what I wrote. Just that however it was done, his populist government had a functioning, if nasty, model. It happened. Isn’t the onus on you to demonstrate that it would have gone
bankrupt?

Hitler was indeed a populist. He managed to make the long view a popular thing, thousand year reich, monumental architecture, autobahns and what-have-you. The surprising thing to many (it has not been a popular field of study) is that he did NOT bankrupt Germany doing it. Quite the opposite.

Other ‘popular’ waves that he worked up and then rode included xenophobia, book burning and ultimately genocide. This is why comparing this to the agenda of the Labour party is a bit off. The cons have embraced the first bit nicely, though. Some, like John, would be keen to see the second.

What is more, if JC were a populist he would now be saying very different things about Europe and Immigration to his natural constituencies – and would aleady have risen and fallen with Mr. Blair.