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You can extrapolate this to why governments all over the world are effectively bankrupt, if you have no assets and instead rent them back from the rich it's ext

You can extrapolate this to why governments all over the world are effectively bankrupt, if you have no assets and instead rent them back from the rich it's extremely difficult to balance your books and the tax burden will go up forever. No amount of cost cutting will restore all public assets being owned by someone else and rented back at ever increasing costs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II1GOhoNpms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II1GOhoNpms

threeseed 2y ago
In that video Brexit was not mentioned once. Even though the UK will be £311bn worse off by 2035 because of it [1]. A decision that can't be blamed on the rich but instead is owned by the ordinary voter. Who then demands the same quality of life they had previously with the same taxation levels. It's delusional thinking and unfortunately no one has the political capital nor guts to correct them on it. And it's a very different story here in Australia where none of what you/Gary said is true. The state governments are under financial strain because of huge investments in public transport infrastructure owned by the people. [1] https://news.sky.com/story/brexit-new-report-suggests-uk-311bn-worse-off-by-2035-due-to-leaving-eu-13046256 https://news.sky.com/story/brexit-new-report-suggests-uk-311...
- andy_ppp 2y ago
  So several problems with infrastructure - the developers always underquote and then once there are overruns the government is locked in and doesn't want to bankrupt the companies making these public infrastructure projects otherwise nobody would ever build anything. Additionally borrowing for infrastructure is often done through public/private partnerships which ends up with private companies owning the infrastructure and payments being made by the government for all sort of things in addition to rent i.e. changing a lightbulb costs £2000 etc. Government tend to get all the downside and the rich (who own the debt and the companies involved in building these projects) tend to see all the upside, look at the utility and train companies in the UK for example, and hospitals under PFI. The money for these projects is provided by the wealthy through the purchase of government bonds. Brexit is a problem sure, nobody denies that, but QE of around £1tn since COVID, most of which ended up with the richest (see asset price increases and cash holdings and world stock markets at all time record levels) is even more of a problem as it makes normal people and tax income relatively even smaller so borrowing and taxes need to be increased. And of course we don't tax the people whose assets have gone up enormously until they sell those assets. Quite often rich people borrow money against those assets instead of realising a capital gains tax event or various other loopholes. I don't know too much about the specific case of transport infrastructure in Australia, but if the government owned them outright without attached debts clearly they would be assets rather than liabilities.
- Chris2048 2y ago
  Who "demand[ed] the same quality of life they had"?
  - DrillShopper 2y ago
    The majority of Brits who voted for this on the promise that the UK would be richer and better instead of poorer and even more bigoted/fascist. We can argue about the reasoning behind that, but that seems to be what most Brits who voted for Brexit wanted
Der_Einzige 2y ago
The only governments which are not "bankrupt" are shitholes like Russia (and they only did it to prevent sanctions from harming their economy). A healthy debt to GDP ratio (like what the USA has) is integral for a growing economy. Choke on it Austrians.
- HPsquared 2y ago
  There's also Norway, China etc, countries with productive SOEs. Those governments have debt but also significant assets.

threeseed 2y ago

In that video Brexit was not mentioned once. Even though the UK will be £311bn worse off by 2035 because of it [1]. A decision that can't be blamed on the rich but instead is owned by the ordinary voter. Who then demands the same quality of life they had previously with the same taxation levels. It's delusional thinking and unfortunately no one has the political capital nor guts to correct them on it. And it's a very different story here in Australia where none of what you/Gary said is true. The state governments are under financial strain because of huge investments in public transport infrastructure owned by the people. [1] https://news.sky.com/story/brexit-new-report-suggests-uk-311bn-worse-off-by-2035-due-to-leaving-eu-13046256 https://news.sky.com/story/brexit-new-report-suggests-uk-311...

andy_ppp 2y ago
So several problems with infrastructure - the developers always underquote and then once there are overruns the government is locked in and doesn't want to bankrupt the companies making these public infrastructure projects otherwise nobody would ever build anything. Additionally borrowing for infrastructure is often done through public/private partnerships which ends up with private companies owning the infrastructure and payments being made by the government for all sort of things in addition to rent i.e. changing a lightbulb costs £2000 etc. Government tend to get all the downside and the rich (who own the debt and the companies involved in building these projects) tend to see all the upside, look at the utility and train companies in the UK for example, and hospitals under PFI. The money for these projects is provided by the wealthy through the purchase of government bonds. Brexit is a problem sure, nobody denies that, but QE of around £1tn since COVID, most of which ended up with the richest (see asset price increases and cash holdings and world stock markets at all time record levels) is even more of a problem as it makes normal people and tax income relatively even smaller so borrowing and taxes need to be increased. And of course we don't tax the people whose assets have gone up enormously until they sell those assets. Quite often rich people borrow money against those assets instead of realising a capital gains tax event or various other loopholes. I don't know too much about the specific case of transport infrastructure in Australia, but if the government owned them outright without attached debts clearly they would be assets rather than liabilities.
Chris2048 2y ago
Who "demand[ed] the same quality of life they had"?
- DrillShopper 2y ago
  The majority of Brits who voted for this on the promise that the UK would be richer and better instead of poorer and even more bigoted/fascist. We can argue about the reasoning behind that, but that seems to be what most Brits who voted for Brexit wanted

Der_Einzige 2y ago

The only governments which are not "bankrupt" are shitholes like Russia (and they only did it to prevent sanctions from harming their economy). A healthy debt to GDP ratio (like what the USA has) is integral for a growing economy. Choke on it Austrians.

HPsquared 2y ago
There's also Norway, China etc, countries with productive SOEs. Those governments have debt but also significant assets.