Doctor Glyndwr wrote:
Bobbyaro wrote:
While I don't dispute this, I can't, I am not an economist, how relevant is it to compare to the US? How linked are the factors that allow growth in terms of the EU, their control of the Euro and the rest of Europe's general collapse into which we sell a lot?
The article covers this; the US was almost as exposed to the financial sector, and hence to the after effects of the meltdown.
Nor is the EU a factor in why our growth lags behind the US. Across Europe, our growth is a long way behind France and Germany. Germany has experienced growth as good as the US's in the face of significant concerns about the Euro. The UK is even fractionally behind Spain, and Spain has 20% unemployment:
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I don't know the answers to these questions, but I don't think you can claim austerity as fruitless because everything is connected, then not connect the other aspects of the factors which may/may not lead to economic growth.
I'm not, but the article I linked to -- from which I extracted merely a taster -- does cover this in some detail.
Meh, can't resist a quick punt on this.
I'd make the following quick observations:
1. That graph only encompasses the period Jan 2008 - Jan 2012, so only the last year or so was actually as under the ConLib period, most of it relates to Labour.
2. Contrary to your notes, the graph clearly shows that the UK economy fell harder (magnitude) and faster than any of the others, most notably the US (approx. 2.5% less contraction, slightly shallower and much less prolonged decline). So in fact, the UK economy was the worst affected in terms of initial hit, as the graph clearly shows.
3. It can hardly be expected that any policies implemented by the ConLib government would've had an immediate effect; there is clearly inertia within the economy, likely to be at least 12 months at minimum. So basically, only the last 6 months' time-history of the entire graph is likely to be relevant to any criticism of the ConLib govt, the rest will be down to Labour?
So really, Doc, according to any sensible, dispassionate and objective analysis of your own data, I really don't think this is telling us what you think it is telling us?
I'd also mention, of course, that we know very shortly after the point this graph is truncated, things rapidly improved for the UK to the extent that we were the fastest growing western economy in 2014, whereas the Eurozone in particular has tanked. So again, very much at odds with your narrative, I'd have to say.
To be entirely fair, though, I will state that it's at least inferred that the initial austerity-max Conservative measures don't look to have been effective short term at least, and perhaps the more austerity-lite Vince Cable influenced approach subsequently yielded better performance? That all seems just fine and dandy to a wet, liberal, pale-blue Tory such as myself