another opportunity for economists and good government types to explain that this is much better than the bad old days, when Britain was cursed with overinvestment and goldplated public services because Chancellors were allowed to make their own inaccurate forecasts. - ThreadSky

dsquareddigest.bsky.social • 42 days ago

another opportunity for economists and good government types to explain that this is much better than the bad old days, when Britain was cursed with overinvestment and goldplated public services because Chancellors were allowed to make their own inaccurate forecasts.

Reposted from Chaminda Jayanetti

Last-minute spreadsheet wars between the Treasury and the OBR are ludicrous way to run a country, a ludicrous way to run an economy, a ludicrous way to fund public services and a ludicrous way to run the welfare system www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...

Comments

dsquareddigest.bsky.social•42 days ago

"it's better than just letting HMT do what they like" is it though? is it? Have we had better fiscal governance since 2011, or worse?

"but but Liz Truss" - who was forced out of office extremely quickly by the much more efficient safeguards of the market.

stephenkb.bsky.social•42 days ago

Number of years the UK government has run a surplus since the introduction of the OBR: zero. Number of years pre the OBR since 1971 that it has: five. Which you know, it's not a lot, but it is five more than the glorious era of watchdogs.

benansell.bsky.social•42 days ago

It reminds me , very parochially, of academic journals that do their own replication of data submitted (massive transaction costs and pointless back and forth) versus those that ask for the data and then let market (ie other scholars) decide (do their own replication).

dsquareddigest.bsky.social•42 days ago

"but but budget responsibility! the public finances!" say the most gullible people in the world. Whatever crap is being randomly cut now in a panic, I guarantee it will be more expensive to sort out the problems created down the line.

dsquareddigest.bsky.social•42 days ago

once more with feeling - failing to repair a roof is more expensive than repairing it, but only one of these costs appears in the accounts and is scored by the five year forecast.

darksatanicmills.bsky.social•42 days ago

It's not so far removed from the age-old stopping construction on the aircraft career after 6 months to stay within the annual budget.

davidrafferty.bsky.social•42 days ago

The constant struggle between accounting and economics to see which discipline is further removed from reality.

umbrarchist.bsky.social•39 days ago

Accounting only works on the supply side because the Depreciation of durable consumer goods can be, and has been, ignored on the Demand Side since the end of World War Two.

Look at the NET Domestic Product equation. PhD economists do not need to do algebra.

policysketch.bsky.social•42 days ago

Evidence Based Policy strikes again.

randomvariable.co.uk•42 days ago

What if we just never fix them?

dsquareddigest.bsky.social•42 days ago

I bet people would still be complaining even then

kevinmarks.com•42 days ago

It is odd that the continual failure to account for the long term benefits of infrastructure spending means that the effective life of the existing infrastructure (and so it's discount rate) keeps growing.
Failing to build the new TransPennine link makes the 1888 Totley tunnel a better investment.

bengbeng.bsky.social•42 days ago

this is the basic tragedy of the public sector

paulgriffiths77.bsky.social•42 days ago

So surely the problem isn't budgetary responsibility per se but the fact it doesn't consider long term costs of cuts!

dsquareddigest.bsky.social•42 days ago

unfortunately that means it *is* "budgetary responsibility per se" - you can't actually draw up a budget that is 99% made up of long term projections of secondary effects. There is no useful way to make a five year projection a constraint when revenues are annual and costs go out in decades.

paulgriffiths77.bsky.social•42 days ago

Thanks for clarifying.

Does that mean they we would be better off without the office for budgetary responsibility?

Or could the remit of the OBR be changed in some useful way in your opinion?

halcyonsong.bsky.social•42 days ago

❤️
HMT is comfortable with failing to repair. But the people who work there are very young…and don’t appreciate the boring everyday nitty gritty of we must repair now or it won’t exist in any useful way in 10 years time.
Prove me wrong…please do…

theangelofhistory.bsky.social•42 days ago

Ultimately the gilt market will have a “view”, any government worth its salt will take the temperature of that but that process didn’t involve George Osborne’s handcuffs. As Harrison insisting such handcuffs are necessary…he would say that wouldn’t he?

stephenkb.bsky.social•42 days ago

Where I am slightly more sympathetic to the mess the current government has got itself in is that I think the double whammy of 'oh, that's the country that shot itself in the head with Brexit - and now they have a mad moron PM' means that maybe there *would* be an unnecessary panic if...

stephenkb.bsky.social•42 days ago

...the UK did go 'this thing is shit, we should get rid of it' *tomorrow*. But where I become unsympathetic is that they aren't doing any of the things that would mean you could do that without markets panicking, i.e. they aren't raising taxes for a good few years.

nevereverdave.bsky.social•42 days ago

It's all panto with little substance now. Catcalling, shit throwing and victimising. Spending our money & stealing more through backdoor taxation & unnecessary austerity. Time to throw this shabby bunch of truly desperate actors into the furnace and restart anew. Different system transparency.

sjwrenlewis.bsky.social•42 days ago

Isn't the problem here that, just because the OBR does a forecast, the Chancellor feels she has to meet her fiscal rules in that forecast (rather than waiting for a Budget). Why? Because of how the Truss episode has been interpreted. So I'd say this is a market driven problem, not an OBR problem.

pompoustakes.bsky.social•42 days ago

Think the problem is people who've never run bond portfolios trying to come up with simple rules they guess people who run bond portfolios want them to follow.
Or at least, that they think they can convince bachbenchers & journos that that's what people who run bond portfolios want.
But nobody asks.

marypcbuk.bsky.social•42 days ago

love the people suggesting that budget responsibility is a bad idea

kenndonagasaki.bsky.social•41 days ago

The pretend economist reeves...proven liar

kenndonagasaki.bsky.social•41 days ago

economistS are well off...poverty doesn't affect them. Gary Stevenson pointed this out.....it's a class war. Everyone will be poorer because of it.

indiecornwall.bsky.social•42 days ago

thousands must die because we've decided to not register the cost of it.

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