Britain’s debt – a historical perspective

If you are at all interested in public finances (and if you’re not, you should be) you could do worse than visit Christopher Chantrill’s site UK Public Spending. It’s packed with useful data and some tools for manipulating the data yourself. I have used it on a number of occasions, especially if I’m writing a data-heavy post on public spending or something similar.

Although Christopher is a conservative and, from his comments about Hayek, I’d guess a fairly right-wing libertarian conservative, his articles and commentary are balanced and non-partisan. This piece on the UK’s debt puts our financial woes into a longer term perspective.

The real risk from government debt is the burden of interest payments. Experts say that when interest payments reach about 12% of GDP then a government will likely default on its debt. Chart 5 shows that the UK is a long way from that risk.

And this from a conservative too. So, one more time, for the numpties who still don’t get it, Britain is nowhere near going bankrupt!

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2 Responses to Britain’s debt – a historical perspective

  1. Pingback: Britain’s debt – a historical perspective - Rick - Member Blogs - HR Blogs - HR Space from Personnel Today and Xpert HR

  2. Charlie Fowler says:

    Isn’t the problem that if spending is not cut back UK debt will grow much larger? Combine that with possible increases in interest rates leading to even larger total debt and as a numpty I can imagine the 12% is not completely impossible.

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