Major flaws in the video "The Fall of the United kingdom"

[Barry_diller]

In the start of the video Stefan points out the ever increasing total spending of the UK Government by the source below http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/ He says it's adjusted for inflation, which is simply not true, The chart is not accounting inflation or economic growth or population boom and in so provides a wrong overall picture of the overall size of the UK Government spending THIS chart below would better reflect spending http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/total_spending_chart

As you can see here the Government spending has not yet reached mid 70's.. Stefan then points out that in the last 44 years the UK has only had a surplus in 6 years for a total of 46 billion and in 36 years a deficit of over a trillion £ And then he show a public net debt chart that shows ever increasing debt since 1965. That is not that important, it's more important to see the national debt compared to GDP and as you can see by this chart (from 1692 to 2015) http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/debt_history The UK have been in far worse debt after WW2 and in the mid 1820's

Stefan then shows this chart that shows the cost of the interest on the debt from 1985 to 2015 but AGAIN then you look at the bigger picture http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/debt_history You can see the interest as a percent of GDP is low compared to the past. This is what the video stars out with, and it's very misleading with conformation bias.  Also the sources I provide is on the SAME site that Stefan was taking his sources from, so stefan has deliberately ignored facts that would make the severness of the UK economy seem more moderate. Why? Anyone interresting in that I debunk the whole video and check the others in the series of "There will be no economic recovery"?

[Sumeet]

I'm not entirely clear on your larger point... are you saying that the UK government is actually in good financial shape, or only that they are in somewhat less poor shape than the video suggests? Also, I admittedly don't have time at the moment to thoroughly re-view video, so perhaps there are other points made there to which you object?

 

Also, I'd like to know more about why debt vs GDP is the statistic you find to be of primary importance. GDP itself is a measurement fraught with potential inaccuracies and potentially misleading data. For example, GDP includes most types of government spending. If government spending were to skyrocket over a given time period, then debt relative to GDP could appear to remain low as a result (at least for a while), while in fact the state's financial situation was going from bad to worse as a result of both debt and overspending (which itself will likely lead to accrual of future debt, since it's unlikely they'll be immediately paying for that increased spending).

 

Also, we must consider how the state also plays an inflationary role here by printing ever larger amounts of fiat currency. Because of this, even if you attempt to mitigate this by using real GDP instead of just GDP, looking at nominal debt over a given period of time can still be an informative statistic.

[Barry_diller]

I'm not entirely clear on your larger point... are you saying that the UK government is actually in good financial shape, or only that they are in somewhat less poor shape than the video suggests? Also, I admittedly don't have time at the moment to thoroughly re-view video, so perhaps there are other points made there to which you object? Also, I'd like to know more about why debt vs GDP is the statistic you find to be of primary importance. GDP itself is a measurement fraught with potential inaccuracies and potentially misleading data. For example, GDP includes most types of government spending. If government spending were to skyrocket over a given time period, then debt relative to GDP could appear to remain low as a result (at least for a while), while in fact the state's financial situation was going from bad to worse as a result of both debt and overspending (which itself will likely lead to accrual of future debt, since it's unlikely they'll be immediately paying for that increased spending). Also, we must consider how the state also plays an inflationary role here by printing ever larger amounts of fiat currency. Because of this, even if you attempt to mitigate this by using real GDP instead of just GDP, looking at nominal debt over a given period of time can still be an informative statistic.

I'm not trying to make a specific stand on how good the economy is. You are true about the critic of the GDP but that is what economic tends to be measured in so that it the best we have here. The problem with nominal debt is just like with nominal prices in the economy. If nominal prices was the only thing we used to measure the wealth of Americans we would think that they had lost 97% of their wealth since 1913. So a Government could still have the same taxes,same spending of the total economy in %, but if the population increases, and inflation increases and real wealth increases, you could look at an annual government spending chart and think the government is expanding like crazy compared to everything else.