Improving Economic Growth

[Delbow]

Can anyone explain why economic growth is so important? Why does the economy have to keep 'growing ', especially when periodic economic contraction is hardwired into the capitalist model? 

[GabrielC]

9 minutes ago, Delbow said:

Can anyone explain why economic growth is so important? Why does the economy have to keep 'growing ', especially when periodic economic contraction is hardwired into the capitalist model? 

Every country lives growth then politicians can say we are growing the economy and increasing spending it creates the feel good factor especially important during elections. Recessions are not a good look but are part and parcel of system and politicians try to down play them - it will be a shallow recession because we are good at making figures what ever we want them to be. 

[geared]

2 hours ago, ECCOnoob said:

The OEC says our biggest ones are gold, cars, petroleum and medicine.

 

How have we managed that?  We don't actually produce any do we?

[El Cid]

3 hours ago, GabrielC said:

Not sure we're you got that  figure from but we had a pandemic and we are still are recovering from it also the Tory underfunding of the NHS has not helped with their desire to privatise the health service. You want more in work then we need a good strong fully funded health service the Tories are not going to do that.

The NHS waiting list for elective treatment in England has been growing since 2013 – almost tripling in size over the decade to 7.7 million.  I did not mean exactly 7 million 

Some may be working as normal, some may be retired, but a large number of those people on the waiting list will be workers unable to work.

 

https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/charts-and-infographics/waiting-list

[GabrielC]

2 minutes ago, El Cid said:

The NHS waiting list for elective treatment in England has been growing since 2013 – almost tripling in size over the decade to 7.7 million.  I did not mean exactly 7 million 

Some may be working as normal, some may be retired, but a large number of those people on the waiting list will be workers unable to work.

 

https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/charts-and-infographics/waiting-list

All that the Tories talk about is cutting benefits for the sick well if you want to reduce the bill fund the NHS fully but that goes against the Tory mindset. Think back when Labour were in power did we have such huge waiting lists like now then? 

[ECCOnoob]

27 minutes ago, geared said:

 

How have we managed that?  We don't actually produce any do we?

Because we massively trade bullion I have several large commercial vaults.

[ECCOnoob]

1 minute ago, ECCOnoob said:

Because we massively trade bullion and have several large commercial vaults.

^^ edit.   

[El Cid]

10 minutes ago, GabrielC said:

All that the Tories talk about is cutting benefits for the sick well if you want to reduce the bill fund the NHS fully but that goes against the Tory mindset. Think back when Labour were in power did we have such huge waiting lists like now then? 

They were discussing our NHS dentistry on the radio, saying its failing and could collapse completly.

We would then all need to go private.

[Longcol]

9 hours ago, Anna B said:

Interesting that the government seems to be placing all its bets on future economic growth, which is currently in recession and has been pretty much dormant for a long time. What I want to know is how do they expect it to happen?

We've closed down most of our major industries and seem to make very little we can sell these days other than weapons. We don't even make much in the way of our own cars anymore, even though Nissan provides jobs, all the profits go to the  foreign company as is the case with many other industries.  

 

Giant companies, like the pharmaceutical industry, Amazon, etc also keep their vast profits for themselves and find inenious ways to avoid paying their tax here, and the government seems unable to do very little about it. 

 

What services do we 'sell' to other countries which they can't do just as well themselves?

So I ask again, how do we improve 'Economic Growth?'

We make a huge deficit in goods and a decent surplus in services - but £37 billion less than goods.

 

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn02815/#:~:text=A deficit of £189,billion with non-EU countries.

 

I'd assume many  more people are employed in producing goods than providing "services" - which are largely of the financial variety,  concentrated in London.

[Al Bundy]

5 hours ago, GabrielC said:

All that the Tories talk about is cutting benefits for the sick well if you want to reduce the bill fund the NHS fully but that goes against the Tory mindset. Think back when Labour were in power did we have such huge waiting lists like now then? 

The NHS gets the biggest funding it's ever had to the tune of about 190 billion per year, with an increase I believe of about 3% per year since the Tories being in office.

Edited March 14 by Al Bundy