Government spending and debt in the Age of Austerity…

…is scary, isn’t it?

(NB. This is the crudely cropped Make Do and Mend version; the full-size version can be found here.)

The infographic, by fellow Yorkshire blogger Paul Carpenter, piles up pound coins (3.15 mm each) against the biggest mountain of them all (Everest: 8848m).

Paul notes:

To hear some people speak, we can ignore the lines ‘debt interest’ and ‘shortfall’ and carry on spending until some unspecified point in the future when we’ll be able to afford it.

Now I’m no economist but I call BS on that notion. If you don’t pay off the shortfall as quickly as possible, then the debt interest is going to keep going up. And before you know it, you’re on the phone to Ocean Finance, begging for them to leave the TV while your wife sobs in the background…

Perhaps today’s announcement about higher income families no longer being eligible for Child Benefit payments – dismissed in some quarters as saving a “modest” £1 billion, is the Government’s take on Dave Ramsey-style snowballing.