In fact, Adam Smith was fully aware that the notion of a fully, privatised individual is a nonsense He subscribed to the social theory that humans are fundamentally ‘sympathetic’ creatures – in the technical, philosophical sense of the word. In that sense, and to bowdlerise Thatcher, there actually is no such thing as the (private) individual – there are only various forms of social interaction.

The political and policy question is not that of how much (or how little) individuals ‘privately’ benefit from government policies but, rather, whether public benefits are optimised through the actions of governments and, more significantly, what are, in fact, the public benefits that matter.

Ultimately, however as others have commented, this is a simple matter of priorities and National have clearly indicated there’s are elsewhere and they’ll be judged accordingly.

The point is the Opposition has yet to get any sort of traction on these topics. If the Government was such easy meat as so laughably claimed by the sprout why hasn’t this happened?

What was the size of the Government sector as a percentage of GDP prior to 1990 and what was it in 1999?

I think you will find that not many economists would agree with you that it was higher at the end of that decade than at the beginning.

I suppose you have some facts and figures to back that claim up?

When the Conservative party gets back into power in the UK they too will be cutting Government spending. They will be forced to do so because of the huge deficit built up under Labour.

Why do you guy’s have trouble understanding this?

And herein lies the difficulty.

The essential disconnect between Left and Right comes because the Right choose to believe that budget deficits are a problem – thanks largely to the work of the Chicago School economists – despite all the real-world evidence that government deficits are a normal and necessary part of a modern economy.

If deficits were an actual – rather than theoretical – problem, then the United States would have gone broke more than 100 years ago. The evidence that this has not occurred tends to rather undermine the economists on the Right who think that deficits are somehow bad, but that has not stopped this particularly dangerous meme that “deficits must be repaid at all costs!” from spreading.

So the simple version:

- Governments are not households. The economics that drive households bear no resemblance to the economics of countries, and the analogies that the Right draws between the two are worse than useless.
- Where a government has a fiat non-convertible currency with a floating exchange rate (like New Zealand), running a deficit is a normal part of effective monetary policy.
- Governments are not primarily funded by taxation or by selling bonds to the private sector; rather, their spending is primarily based on how much fiat currency is required to operate the government sector, which is then created by the central bank.
- Where the government decides not to run a deficit (i.e. a surplus) due to capture by delusional economists, a recession inevitably results. Likewise, tightening monetary policy in a recession will always make it worse.

So your contention that a government is forced to cut back any form of expenditure due to the deficit is completely incorrect. The government of the day may well decide to cut expenditure for political reasons, but this should never be confused with economic necessity.

It is designed to second chance people for whom the education system FAILED miserably.

You have people without limited money or assets getting into education on what is almost a casual basis. There are few barriers to entry. There is no expectation that it will lead to a career. It is done at their local school. There isn’t a bureaucracy. You don’t have to do much more than turn up and enjoy learning new things. It is done as part of your local community, which means that you’ll have people around you with similar background and learning difficulties – so it isn’t competitive.

The idea is to get people to understand that learning is fun. Then they’ll teach that to their kids and are more likely to go on to do the types of vocational training that you’re thinking about.

It has been quietly working away as second chance education for over a hundred years delivering vast benefits both to people, their kids, and generally to society. Then you have a moron minister coming along and destroying it because she clearly didn’t understand what it was for… Mind you it isn’t surprising – she doesn’t appear to understand much.

Now as for you….

Personally I’d suggest that you don’t have the faintest idea about what the intent of the program was. In fact I’d say that you are a MISERABLE FAILURE because you clearly haven’t bothered to examine it yourself.