Ruth Strachan, who strikes me as a pretty thorough journalist, has written a review of the economics of Scottish independence in the Investment Monitor, available here.
The oddity about the article is how many times the word Murphy appears. I couldn't help noting a few 'Murphy believes' as well, which is true: he does.
I can't complain about getting a word in, but so did other views. I did however get all the conclusion:
Murphy adds: “The reality is, Scotland has competitive advantages that right now the UK is missing, and England is missing. The lack of confidence that there is in England, in government, in the state and everything else compared with the belief that people have in Scotland in their ability to actually deliver something different, is inestimable in value.”
It is this emotional side to the economic argument that has power to harness potentially undecided voters on the topic of independence, whether Scotland can afford it or not. At the time of writing the outcome of the May election is unknown, but the SNP is expected to hold a majority at Holyrood once the votes are counted. The party must then look to answer, as definitively as possible, what the economic plan for an independent Scotland would be.
If it can shed some light on the shadows of the Scottish economy, the SNP could potentially harness not only Murphy's perceived goodwill of the people, but very serious and educated support for independence.
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What the voters in Scotland need isn’t an ’emotional side to the economic argument’ but to be treated as adults and provided with solid information that can be backed up. The UK Leave group is properly slated for not having provided an economic analysis of Brexit. Likewise after the vote and Brexit was being pushed through, the UK Government also refused to publish the likely economic outcomes of various versions of Brexit. What reigned from 2016 to 2021 was an ’emotional’ argument. Look at where that has led the UK to.
The SNP have had since 2014 the opportunity to establish an economic case for independence, but after so many years it’s still a case of ‘soon’. It looks like Alba will be the ones to lead the drive for independence. Definitely a case of better late than never.
I thoroughly disagree with Ian when he say that people should be “treated as adults and provided with solid information that can be backed up”.
People should be treated as adults and provided with sound economic argument and understanding. The unionists are expert at creating diversions, distractions and confusion by bombarding the independence movement with economic statistics – such as the interminable debate about the size of Scotland’s fiscal deficit, for example. The FACT is that deficits are a good thing provided (a) they don’t stoke inflation – which would occur once all available resources are fully employed (b) they are providing the money to produce goods and services of real value, which meet the needs of all citizens to live well and in harmony with nature (c) the money is spent effectively and efficiently (“value for money”).
People do not need to be overwhelmed by “statistics wars” – they need to understand a few fundamental truths about what money actually is and how a modern monetary system and economy actually works.
Project Fear uses this sort of number crunching warfare to cow the Scottish public into fear of independence. We should not fall into their trap.
Trying to explain MMT when so many don’t understand how a fiat currency works would be pointless. Besides, whatever it’s merits, MMT is not widely accepted and to base an argument on it would leave it wide open to claims of it being wrong.
The GERS deficit argument firstly needs to be kept simple before moving onto the more complex issues with it as it stands. How many people are even aware that 40% of the expenditure in GERS is controlled by ‘UK Government Bodies’. Damn few I’d bet. What about what this 40% consists of? Is it reasonable to allocate all of these costs to Scotland? HS2 etc.
If you’re in a supermarket and find at the checkout that you are being charged for items in the basket of the person behind you, would you just accept this? GERS is no different.
The solution to addressing the misleading GERS figures is to systematically prove them to be misleading. Remove costs that are currently being allocated to Scotland when they unquestionably shouldn’t be. This proof of the use of misleading figures in GERS would then leave the door open to do so with more complex issues, such as the allocation of UK debt.
GERS is about trust and the first step is to expose it as being grossly misleading. To do this needs arithmetic not a complex economic theory.
You miss the point
MMT is not a policy
MMT just describes what happens
So it can’t be policy
Policy is about what happens
Policy is choice
But there is no choice about MMT. It’s the way fiat currencies work.
Richard I did not state that MMT was a policy.
MMT is most definitely not how fiat currencies work at the moment. MMT assumes that the expansion of the money supply will be focused on productive investment. At the moment fiat currencies use monetary expansion to boost asset prices, the opposite of productive investment.
Sorry
MMT does that too
Deciding to put the power to create money into productive investment is policy, not econonomic theory
There is a T in MMT
I believe the citizens of England, Wales and Northern Ireland completed their respective census questionnaires recently (correct me if I’m wrong).
Yet the citizens of Scotland have had their census postponed until 2022.
As per Ms. Murrell this is due to ‘health and safety concerns due to the impact of the coronavirus epidemic’ despite the whole process being completed online.
Call me a cynic if you like but until proved otherwise I remain convinced that this delay had nothing to do with ‘health and safety’ but more to do with the machiavellian antics of Mr Murrell desperate to hold the census over until after the election lest the Scottish people discover the massive influx of people from south of the border and beyond (my estimate of between 500,000 and 1 million) .
Time will tell but in the meantime Nicola, barring a miracle, will coast to power on the back of her Twitter army who collectively regard anyone over the age of 40 as a dinosaur whose time is up.
The census asked no relevant or useful questions and was short in the extreme. I don’t quite get what it was for.
The Scottish Parliamentary Elections and the council elections in the rest of the UK were due to be held in May 2020, but were all postponed for a year due to the dangerous Covid situation which developed rapidly in March & April 2020. The decision to postpone the census in Scotland was taken on 17th July 2020 partly as a result of the longer-term unpredictability of the battle against the virus and partly because of the strain on resources at National Records of Scotland which would result from processing census results while producing daily virus updates.
https://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk/news-release-scotland%E2%80%99s-census-be-moved-march-2022
There were no vaccines available in July 2020 and their impact on incidence of the virus could not have been foreseen. Maybe Scotland was too cautious in postponing the census when in it did, but in truth all the UK nations were flying by the seat of their pants last July. Construing this caution as resulting from “…the machiavellian antics of Mr Murrell…” might in itself be construed as being a bit machiavellian.
Amid all the talk of emotion and goodwill around the future of Scotland I keep remembering the quote from de Gaulle – “A nation-state worthy of the name does not have friends. It merely has objectives”.
At first glance the cost/benefit analysis quoted does make compelling reading.
However when you dig down into the nitty gritty perhaps less so.
I’m definitely no statistician but to me the negative impacts on display will still be the same negative impacts for March 2022.
Regardless I believe the recognised dictionary definition of machiavellianism
is ‘devious, cunning, scheming and unscrupulous, especially in politics.
I’ll leave it to others or perhaps history to decide if any/all of these attributes apply to the Murrells.
It doesn’t mention extreme cynicism to which I would definitely plead guilty.