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Britain is Slowly Going Bust

4 months ago
Britain's net public debt has climbed from 35% of GDP in 2005 to 95% today. The government is borrowing over 4% of GDP annually despite no emergency comparable to the financial crisis or pandemic that drove much of the earlier increase. The belt-tightening needed to stabilize debt levels amounts to about 2% of GDP. The Labour government holds a 157-seat majority in Parliament and has four years until the next election. Britain spends about 6% of GDP supporting pensioners, an increase of over a third this century. Some 15% of the working-age population now claims jobless allowances following a surge in disability claims since the pandemic. Labour attempted to reduce spending on pensioners and welfare this year but reversed both reform plans after political outcry from within the party. Tax revenue is already on course to reach 38% of GDP, a historical high for Britain. Labour promised before the election not to raise broad-based taxes on income and consumption. Four in five Britons say the government is mismanaging the economy. Yields on long-term government debt exceed those in any other major rich economy. The economy grew faster than any other G7 country in the first half of 2025, but the fiscal adjustment that would bring Britain to a primary surplus of less than 0.5% remains politically elusive.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

msmash

Microsoft Raises Xbox Game Pass Top Subscription 50% To $30 Monthly

4 months ago
Microsoft has announced that Xbox Game Pass Ultimate will cost $29.99 per month, up from $19.99. The company restructured its subscription service into three tiers ahead of the October 16 launch of two Xbox ROG Ally handheld consoles. The new Essential tier offers 50-plus games for $9.99 monthly. Premium includes 200-plus games for $14.99. Ultimate subscribers gain access to more than 400 games, day-one releases, improved cloud streaming quality, and services including EA Play, Ubisoft+ Classics, and Fortnite Crew. Game Pass generated nearly $5 billion in fiscal 2025 revenue with 34 million subscribers in 2024. Console hardware prices are also increasing, with the Xbox Series X rising $50 to $649.99 starting October 3.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Hundreds of orgs urge Microsoft: don’t kill off free Windows 10 updates

4 months ago
Petitions pile up on Satya’s desk while Windows 7 mysteriously surges back from the grave

With Windows 10 support set to expire on October 14, hundreds of repair shops, nonprofits, and advocacy groups are urging Microsoft to extend free and automatic security updates instead of stranding hundreds of millions of PCs.…

Brandon Vigliarolo

What Is Cerebras Going To Do With That $1.1 Billion In New Funding?

4 months ago

What does Cerebras Systems, the first successful waferscale computing commercializer and a contender in the race to provide compute for the world’s burgeoning AI inference workload, do for an encore? …

What Is Cerebras Going To Do With That $1.1 Billion In New Funding? was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Timothy Prickett Morgan