Ireland elected six new socialist TDs (the Irish Dail's equivalent of MPs) at the February 2016 election. The vote reflected continuing resistance to austerity and in particular the powerful campaign against water charges, as reported in socialistworker.co.uk.
Showing posts with label debt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label debt. Show all posts
21 Apr 2013
economics: UK debt, deficit, GDP, etc, in 2012
I tried to get on to the nef and Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW) ‘economic mythbusters’
online course in May/June but there wasn’t room. QPSW is now working with nef
to make some resources available in due course: maybe course briefings
and questions and edited clips of lectures. QPSW also recommended
the Earth
and Economy newsletter and Quakernomics blog.
So, in the meantime, the marvellous CIA World Factbook and False
Economy continue to be my favourite sources of information on economics.
According to the latest (2012) data in the CIA World Factbook, the UK
is the ninth largest economy in the world but 36th in GDP per capita.
GDP
(purchasing power parity): £1.53 trillion; GDP per
capita per year: £24,100. This has barely changed since 2010. But there was a huge drop between 2008 (£28,330) and 2009 (£23,200) due to the banking crash.
Budget:
revenues: £654bn less public spending £780bn = budget deficit £126bn. (This tallies with the other way that the budget
deficit is expressed, ie as 7.7% of GDP.)
Public debt
is 88.7% of GDP (2012 est.) which is £1.35 trillion.
Other key stats are
- GDP - composition by sector: agriculture 0.7%; industry 21.1%; services 78.2% (2012 est.)
- Unemployment rate: 7.8%
- Population below poverty line: 14% (2006 est.)
- Household income or consumption by percentage share: lowest 10%: 2.1%; highest 10%: 28.5% (1999).
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