Andy_W
Well-known member
Yeah, I know that, but it's still debt, which is costing nearly 100bn a year to service (by the taxpayer), which is about 5% of total spending. That money goes straight into the pockets of the old and wealthy, investment funds and foreign investors. It's not being spent back in the economy, it's being held as the people who own the debt don't need to spend it (hence why they hold investments), or it goes straight out the door abroad.National debt isn't debt like you might have a loan debt in real life. Its the money supply. Our system can't have a point where we suddenly have £0 national debt.
Policies like nationalising utilities, scrapping tuition fees, increasing pay for nurses, building houses are all things that will stimulate the economy. It's not like deciding whether you can afford tickets for the match.
Some countries can get near 0%, but it's impossible for us of course. The long-term target will be to get that below 50% I expect (which would be ok), but that's probably decades away. Like I said, it used to be around 35% before the recession.
Nationalising things doesn't guarantee you make money from them or that the services would become cheaper for the end user, far from it. You've still got to buy them, and then have to maintain the efficiency and profit that the private companies do, to even think about it being worthwhile.
Nationalising things can be good if you can run them well, but we don't really have a great record of doing that. If we did, I would be all for it, but I'd want to see some proof that we can turn around the poorly ran nationalised aspects first.