Ben's Talk3G Blog

I saw a FT headline earlier saying that George Osborne was sticking to Plan A despite warning lights in the economy.

I'm sorry, but what is it that critics would like the government to do, exactly? Continue running a huge deficit? For what purpose? To finance our current lifestyles? To what end? A bankrupt nation for our children to inherit?

We're already spending more every day on interest repayments for our national debt than we are on schools.

Governments have no money of their own. They can get it via one of two core ways; taxation, and borrowing.

The former is the proper way of going about things. The government taxes us, and redistributes that money to pay for public services and public infrastructure. Things we all need that it's difficult or impossible for the private sector to reliably provide. It can also do other useful things like regulate private enterprise to ensure competition and fairness for consumers.

The latter is outrageous. If our government has to borrow just to finance the day to day running of the country then clearly our government is far too large. The only circumstance I can see where borrowing by a government would be acceptable is war. A full-out war where the country needs to defend its sovereignty. For what other reason would we want our elected representatives to take out mountains of debt in our names that we will all have to repay, with interest?