Britain said on Wednesday it would cut half a million public sector jobs, raise the retirement age and slash the welfare state as part of the biggest spending cuts in a generation.
After months of bitter negotiations, Conservative finance minister George Osborne confirmed he would press ahead with almost all the spending cuts he had outlined in a June budget.
Capital spending, however, he said would be 2 billion pounds higher per year than originally planned because of the difficulty of getting out of contractual obligations.
"Tackling this budget deficit is unavoidable. The decisions about how we do it are not. There are choices. And today we make them. Investment in the future rather than the bills of past failure. That is our choice," Osborne told parliament.
"Well we'd cut even more, but we actually have contracts, so as soon as those are up, we'll cut back on that spending too." Oh, and that would be the equivalent of cutting 2.5 million government jobs here in the US. I sure hope Britain's private sector feels like hiring, because otherwise their unemployment rate just shot through the roof.
What Britain is doing now is what the Tea Party wants for the United States, make no mistake about it. Neo-Hooverism for all!
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5 comments:
If our Congress had the courage to get rid of 2.5 million useless government jobs and then eliminate corporate taxes we would create multiple times that many jobs.
Cheer up. I'm sure very soon some village will need to upgrade their idiot and would be willing to take a look at your resume.
Oh wow, not just enough to spam "Moron" like a dumbshit, you need to be a corporate shill too?
Dude, give it up. They don't give out endorsement contracts for trolling blogs. Go to NASCAR or something.
Yes, that'll send their unemployment rate through the roof. Here, private hiring has been growing a little, but is swamped by the layoffs in local and state governments. The school district where my parents live swept in a Republican slate of school board members last year, and their first big move was to fire all the janitors. I was around in the Reagan years, so I figure this means a "friend" of a board member will get the cleaning contract, rehire the janitors for less money and no benefits, and spend the profits on an extended winter vacation in a tropical climate.
Sully should go home for a few years and report back to us on how well it's going.
It's true - the cuts are awful; they've been forecasting them ever since the British election in May, saying they were going to be even more dire, so that we'll all heave a sigh of relief that they're not as bad as predicted. The impact will be awful, and will be truly manifest a year down the line. The one silver lining is that we still have a National Health Service; it's not great, but compared to what happens to uninsured people in the US, it's bloody miraculous, and is one reason why I live, work and pay taxes in the UK rather than my native US, where I would be utterly uninsured due to low income and preconditions.
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