Not just the West, imo
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DYwOdCIWAAI2_86.jpg:large
Not just the West, imo
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DYwOdCIWAAI2_86.jpg:large
True. Perhaps I should just sit on here and use these examples every time you pour scorn on people for expressing views that are slightly less silly than those we are presented with by our politicians.
In a sense, by the way, it IS how economies work. When you have a taxation ceiling, precipitated by a post THatcher consensus on the basic rate of income tax and an unwillingness to enforce corporation tax, public spending has a ceiling as well. With finite resources each area of expenditure constitutes a choice- a pound spent here is a pound less available there.
Guns and butter, b. Was always thus.
Of course there's a ceiling. If there weren't, socialist economic policies would actually work. ;-) However, the point is that in a complex economy, spending a million here does not mean that there is not a million elsewhere. Indeed, by spending that million on a missile whose design and manufacture involves the employment of thousands (who then provide tax revenue with their wages) by a company that is also contributing to the public purse, that is a much wiser investment of public money than p1ssing it up the wall by keeping a bunch of winos in hostels for a week, which achieves nothing other than to make a few people feel better about themselves.
Possibly. The alternative is that the missile is being built anyway, the people employed anyway and if we didnt buy it the company would sell it abroad thus helping with exports. We could then spend the money we saved on hostels for winos, or crystal healing centres for gypsies- or to replace Britain's ageing collection of traffic cones, some of which have been in service since the 80s.