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Britain Has No Austerity. Blame its Current Recession on Last Year's Tax Hikes
American Thinker ^ | 04/26/2012 | Yossi Gestetner

Posted on 04/26/2012 6:30:20 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

Robert Reich has written an article headlined "Britain's Austerity Recession." In it he laments his own created fact that the reason for Britain slipping into a recession recently is due to their austerity; better known as Budget Cuts.

But his claim is a blatant lie. Here are the numbers:

The 2008 U.K. national (excluding local) Budget was £426 billion. It rose to £496 billion in 2010, and the new and current 2012 budget is £527 billion. This is a total increase of 24% within four years.

Increasing your budget six percent in each of four years back-to-back is only austerity when placed against Obama Budgets.

The 2008 U.K. Budget was 26% larger than the one of four years earlier. In other words, England's budget rose on a similar pace from 2005 through 2012.

Hardly "austerity."

When comparing by category the 2012 budget to the 2008 budget, Welfare spending increased 29%; Education 'Investments' as Obama would call it, is up by 20%; and spending on Health Care increased by 21%.

Place U.K.'s budget size against the size of the Country's GDP, and spending is also on the rise: In 2000 the budget was 26% of GDP; it rose to 27.8% four years later; increased to 29% of the GDP by 2008, and is 32.9% of GDP as of 2012.

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; News/Current Events; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: britain; recession; taxhikes; uk

1 posted on 04/26/2012 6:30:28 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

Nothing a good round of stimulus and quantitative easing can’t fix /krug-bernak-obamtard


2 posted on 04/26/2012 8:42:03 AM PDT by douginthearmy (Obamagebra: 1 job + 1 hope + 1 change = 0 jobs + 0 hope)
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To: SeekAndFind

When in doubt, raise taxes.


3 posted on 04/26/2012 9:55:58 AM PDT by TexasRepublic (Socialism is the gospel of envy and the religion of thieves)
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To: SeekAndFind

Inflation might account for a lot of it. Officially, it is 3.5%, but I suspect that real inflation is significantly higher, as I have noticed price rises considerably more than 3.5%


4 posted on 04/27/2012 3:09:18 AM PDT by sinsofsolarempirefan
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