if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
If they earn extra then they pay extra, via both tax and NI.
But why should high earning graduates like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all be on a 9% lower income tax rate than their younger compatriots?
If you are arguing that older graduates should be surcharged thats fine. I just disagree that a non graduate shelf stacker in tesco's should have to pay more tax so people who are going to personally benefit several hundred thousand in pay over a working lifetime so you can have a free legup. I also suggested that i agree with you the interest is far to high. But it is clear the major financial benefit goes to the graduate not the state
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
Yes, it was shockingly bad arithmetic and logic about increased earnings but didn't George Osborne come after Tony Blair had left office?
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
But you're assuming the only difference between the two populations are whether they went to university. Whereas the university-going group are likely to be a) cleverer than the non-university-going group, and b) from a more privileged background. Both of which will impact their ability to earn far more than three years studying history.
Also, is their salary improvement because:
a) They learned lots of things at University that turned out to be useful and couldn't have been learned elsewhere. or b) The company they work for has an arbitrary filter on employment
If the answer is b), what would happen to the filter if there were fewer graduates?
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
Indeed, why should someone on minimum wage or below average or even average earnings pay the tuition fees of a law student who becomes or corporate lawyer or QC, or a medical student who becomes a consultant or doctor or an economics student who works for a hedge fund or bank or an IT student who works for Apple or Google or Microsoft and will earn multiple times their salary? Those students, especially at top universities, should pay fees and have the highest course fees
These successful graduates on high earnings will pay more income tax anyway, even without a graduate tax, and even without our income tax rates being more progressive.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
But you're assuming the only difference between the two populations are whether they went to university. Whereas the university-going group are likely to be a) cleverer than the non-university-going group, and b) from a more privileged background. Both of which will impact their ability to earn far more than three years studying history.
Also, is their salary improvement because:
a) The learnt lots of things at University that turn out to be useful or b) The company they work for has an arbitrary filter on employment
If b), what would happen to the filter if there were fewer graduates?
This is the other issue with graduates. Many jobs that don't need a degree to do now have that filter so the number of decently paid jobs open to non graduates have fallen. Take me I have no degree, I taught myself coding and managed to get a job back in the 80's doing it. Try doing now as I did and your cv will get filed in the bin unless you have a degree on your cv if its your first job as a coder. I have the advantage of many years doing it but as a neophyte junior coder...pretty much forget it.
"He said scientists used radiocarbon dating to gather DNA evidence and X-rays had shown one to have 'eggs' inside."
Not sure whether that's Sky mangling, the original source, translation or whatever, but if they think they've used radiocarbon dating to gather DNA evidence then it's hard to have any confidence in anything else they say!
Though C14 dating is about right for that time frame, at least! But can you spot the howling fallacy of using radiocarbon - or indeed radioisotope - dating at all?
PS Not to mention that 2/3 of their DNA is not "unknown", so they must be terrestrial ...
Indeed, assumes prolonged contact with earth atmosphere (for expected initial C14/other isotope concentrations) which would reasonably not be the case for an alien species. Possibly other issues with the mine location, too, depending on the detail of that.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
But you're assuming the only difference between the two populations are whether they went to university. Whereas the university-going group are likely to be a) cleverer than the non-university-going group, and b) from a more privileged background. Both of which will impact their ability to earn far more than three years studying history.
Also, is their salary improvement because:
a) The learnt lots of things at University that turn out to be useful or b) The company they work for has an arbitrary filter on employment
If b), what would happen to the filter if there were fewer graduates?
This is the other issue with graduates. Many jobs that don't need a degree to do now have that filter so the number of decently paid jobs open to non graduates have fallen. Take me I have no degree, I taught myself coding and managed to get a job back in the 80's doing it. Try doing now as I did and your cv will get filed in the bin unless you have a degree on your cv if its your first job as a coder. I have the advantage of many years doing it but as a neophyte junior coder...pretty much forget it.
There's a lot in that, but there are some other options for coders, e.g. track record of open source contributions - I know of people without degrees who have been hired through that route (mainly from countries outwith UK, to be fair).
The basic point stands though and is probably even more of a problem in many other fields.
Fucking hell, has Elon Musk been taking history lessons from Morris Dancer?
As any child knows the Pearl Harbour attack happened after the US invaded Japan.
Elon Musk on the request from the Ukrainian Government to turn on Starlink in Crimea: “We figured out that this was kind of like a Pearl Harbor like attack...So they really asked us to proactively take part in a major act of war”
An attack on occupiers of your own territory is hardly a 'major act of war'.
It's not even as though the daft tw@t has factories in Russia.
There are a lot of people who cannot conceive of a Russian defeat and so are determined to prevent it.
We've now seen a major attack on the Russian Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol harbour using British-supplied weapons. Where are the consequences Musk was worried about? I'm glad that the British government is braver than that self-important billionaire.
Of interest is that something changed - the drone boats used in the attack yesterday use Starlink to communicate.
There was a bit of a fuss at some point about who was going to pay for providing the starlink service. I believe initially they were provided for free, but then as time passed Musk decided he'd rather be paid (itself not unreasonable).
It's possible that, with the Department of Defence (or whoever) paying the bill, Musk now has less discretion over where to activate the service.
The Starshield project is about providing military services by Starlink satellites and derived chassis.
One interesting issue is that use for military purposes actually breaks the original user contract with Starlink. The reason that is there, is to do with legal issues around export of controlled systems. Without the clause, a lawyer could argue that a Starlink terminal is potentially part of a weapon and should be export controlled.
"He said scientists used radiocarbon dating to gather DNA evidence and X-rays had shown one to have 'eggs' inside."
Not sure whether that's Sky mangling, the original source, translation or whatever, but if they think they've used radiocarbon dating to gather DNA evidence then it's hard to have any confidence in anything else they say!
Though C14 dating is about right for that time frame, at least! But can you spot the howling fallacy of using radiocarbon - or indeed radioisotope - dating at all?
PS Not to mention that 2/3 of their DNA is not "unknown", so they must be terrestrial ...
There is no reason that aliens grew up in a world with the same proportion of C-14 in the atmosphere, so with no baseline for aliens, you can't use this method for dating.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
But you're assuming the only difference between the two populations are whether they went to university. Whereas the university-going group are likely to be a) cleverer than the non-university-going group, and b) from a more privileged background. Both of which will impact their ability to earn far more than three years studying history.
Also, is their salary improvement because:
a) The learnt lots of things at University that turn out to be useful or b) The company they work for has an arbitrary filter on employment
If b), what would happen to the filter if there were fewer graduates?
This is the other issue with graduates. Many jobs that don't need a degree to do now have that filter so the number of decently paid jobs open to non graduates have fallen. Take me I have no degree, I taught myself coding and managed to get a job back in the 80's doing it. Try doing now as I did and your cv will get filed in the bin unless you have a degree on your cv if its your first job as a coder. I have the advantage of many years doing it but as a neophyte junior coder...pretty much forget it.
There's a lot in that, but there are some other options for coders, e.g. track record of open source contributions - I know of people without degrees who have been hired through that route (mainly from countries outwith UK, to be fair).
The basic point stands though and is probably even more of a problem in many other fields.
Yes that is true and more companies are beginning to create apprenticeships for coders as well which is a good thing indeed my team recently got an apprentice engineer
I had an op at Moorfields today, and sitting next to me in the recovery room was a retired economic adviser to the government - not this one he hastened to add. He was telling this to the nurse. Was it anyone on here? I went to ask his name but didn’t get the chance
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
But you're assuming the only difference between the two populations are whether they went to university. Whereas the university-going group are likely to be a) cleverer than the non-university-going group, and b) from a more privileged background. Both of which will impact their ability to earn far more than three years studying history.
Also, is their salary improvement because:
a) They learned lots of things at University that turned out to be useful and couldn't have been learned elsewhere. or b) The company they work for has an arbitrary filter on employment
If the answer is b), what would happen to the filter if there were fewer graduates?
As well as employment filters, there is also the benefit of networking at some institutions, most famously but not limited to comedy via the Cambridge Footlights, or politics and the media via the Oxford Union.
Pandering to ranty motorists on twitter. next they will demanding we all pay "road tax"
I only know of one case, recently, where a cyclist (using a non road legal bike) hit someone and they died. He went inside for "wanton and furious pedalling" (or something like that).
What bemused me about the case was although he was at fault for riding a bike that had no brakes she was looking at her phone when she walked into the road and not paying attention. So, as sad as the outcome was, she was surely in part responsible for what happened ?
As with many of these things, what is probably needed is better enforcement of existing laws.
Are there any cyclists causing death by dangerous cycling that are not being pursued for manslaughter? Even if there is a need for such a law (manslaughter hard to prove, say) very few cyclists kill people so it's unlikely to be a deterrent for bad behaviours - no one is going to go out on a bike thinking, "sure I might kill someone today but I'll probably get away with it", surely? Getting caught and fined etc for bread and butter offences would be much more of a deterrent.
Of course, actually catching people is not trivial (requires stopping them as hard to ID otherwise).
ETA: Offtopic, but on the (by car) school run this morning I saw a boy about the age of my son, maybe slightly older (so, 5-6, perhaps 7) come flying out of a side road on a housing estate on a bike, no checking of the joining road (that I could see) no helmet, no high vis. Had he been 2-3 seconds later I'd have been braking hard (I was only doing 20, I'd guess, limit 30 - visibility is not great, so I was well under speed limit - I'm sure I'd have been able to stop) but I had to wonder what the parents - who were nowhere to be seen - were thinking.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
If they earn extra then they pay extra, via both tax and NI.
But why should high earning graduates like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all be on a 9% lower income tax rate than their younger compatriots?
If you are arguing that older graduates should be surcharged thats fine. I just disagree that a non graduate shelf stacker in tesco's should have to pay more tax so people who are going to personally benefit several hundred thousand in pay over a working lifetime so you can have a free legup. I also suggested that i agree with you the interest is far to high. But it is clear the major financial benefit goes to the graduate not the state
But my proposal is to replace the 9% discriminatory income tax currently levied with an extra 1% income tax paid by everyone.
If your hypothesis that graduates earn more is correct, then they'll pay more, even under my proposal. But it'd be consistently applied.
A non graduate shelf stacker is net a beneficiary from the state anyway and not a high income tax payer anyway.
As with many of these things, what is probably needed is better enforcement of existing laws.
Are there any cyclists causing death by dangerous cycling that are not being pursued for manslaughter? Even if there is a need for such a law (manslaughter hard to prove, say) very few cyclists kill people so it's unlikely to be a deterrent for bad behaviours - no one is going to go out on a bike thinking, "sure I might kill someone today but I'll probably get away with it", surely? Getting caught and fined etc for bread and butter offences would be much more of a deterrent.
Of course, actually catching people is not trivial (requires stopping them as hard to ID otherwise).
One of the issues with cyclists is yes they rarely kill people and when they do the police pursue the investigation....however for the more common items such as a cyclist slamming into a pedestrian who ends up with a broken wrist, arm, ankle etc...how much investigation do you think the police bother with to find the perpetrator? My suspicion is largely it will be "heres a crime number"
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
If they earn extra then they pay extra, via both tax and NI.
But why should high earning graduates like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all be on a 9% lower income tax rate than their younger compatriots?
If you are arguing that older graduates should be surcharged thats fine. I just disagree that a non graduate shelf stacker in tesco's should have to pay more tax so people who are going to personally benefit several hundred thousand in pay over a working lifetime so you can have a free legup. I also suggested that i agree with you the interest is far to high. But it is clear the major financial benefit goes to the graduate not the state
But my proposal is to replace the 9% discriminatory income tax currently levied with an extra 1% income tax paid by everyone.
If your hypothesis that graduates earn more is correct, then they'll pay more, even under my proposal. But it'd be consistently applied.
A non graduate shelf stacker is net a beneficiary from the state anyway and not a high income tax payer anyway.
Why should I have to pay for your extra earnings? You will benefit far more than the state.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
But you're assuming the only difference between the two populations are whether they went to university. Whereas the university-going group are likely to be a) cleverer than the non-university-going group, and b) from a more privileged background. Both of which will impact their ability to earn far more than three years studying history.
Also, is their salary improvement because:
a) The learnt lots of things at University that turn out to be useful or b) The company they work for has an arbitrary filter on employment
If b), what would happen to the filter if there were fewer graduates?
This is the other issue with graduates. Many jobs that don't need a degree to do now have that filter so the number of decently paid jobs open to non graduates have fallen. Take me I have no degree, I taught myself coding and managed to get a job back in the 80's doing it. Try doing now as I did and your cv will get filed in the bin unless you have a degree on your cv if its your first job as a coder. I have the advantage of many years doing it but as a neophyte junior coder...pretty much forget it.
I have a now-retired friend in a similar position. He says that there’s no way he’d get anywhere near where he did ‘then’ nowadays. Similar job to your good self!
Pandering to ranty motorists on twitter. next they will demanding we all pay "road tax"
I only know of one case, recently, where a cyclist (using a non road legal bike) hit someone and they died. He went inside for "wanton and furious pedalling" (or something like that).
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
Yes, it was shockingly bad arithmetic and logic about increased earnings but didn't George Osborne come after Tony Blair had left office?
Indeed and it's not a party political point. I named already Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak not just Blair and Brown. I hadn't mentioned Osborne or Clegg etc (also graduates, also not paying the 9% graduate income tax) as was only mentioning past and present Prime Ministers but it applies to him too.
As with many of these things, what is probably needed is better enforcement of existing laws.
Are there any cyclists causing death by dangerous cycling that are not being pursued for manslaughter? Even if there is a need for such a law (manslaughter hard to prove, say) very few cyclists kill people so it's unlikely to be a deterrent for bad behaviours - no one is going to go out on a bike thinking, "sure I might kill someone today but I'll probably get away with it", surely? Getting caught and fined etc for bread and butter offences would be much more of a deterrent.
Of course, actually catching people is not trivial (requires stopping them as hard to ID otherwise).
One of the issues with cyclists is yes they rarely kill people and when they do the police pursue the investigation....however for the more common items such as a cyclist slamming into a pedestrian who ends up with a broken wrist, arm, ankle etc...how much investigation do you think the police bother with to find the perpetrator? My suspicion is largely it will be "heres a crime number"
a few years back, a rather furious cyclist took a swing at me, after I blocked him charging through a a group of pedestrian (including myself) crossing the road at a green light. A swing with his U lock, no less.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
But you're assuming the only difference between the two populations are whether they went to university. Whereas the university-going group are likely to be a) cleverer than the non-university-going group, and b) from a more privileged background. Both of which will impact their ability to earn far more than three years studying history.
Also, is their salary improvement because:
a) The learnt lots of things at University that turn out to be useful or b) The company they work for has an arbitrary filter on employment
If b), what would happen to the filter if there were fewer graduates?
This is the other issue with graduates. Many jobs that don't need a degree to do now have that filter so the number of decently paid jobs open to non graduates have fallen. Take me I have no degree, I taught myself coding and managed to get a job back in the 80's doing it. Try doing now as I did and your cv will get filed in the bin unless you have a degree on your cv if its your first job as a coder. I have the advantage of many years doing it but as a neophyte junior coder...pretty much forget it.
I have a now-retired friend in a similar position. He says that there’s no way he’d get anywhere near where he did ‘then’ nowadays. Similar job to your good self!
Nods but its not just jobs like mine. Last firm I worked for there was an insurance company on the floor below and chatted to a few of them that hung out in the common areas. They all had degrees and it was a prerequisite for applying for a job there....there job was to ring up people and fill out an on screen form....now back in the 80's that would have been asking for a few o levels, maybe a couple of a levels....now you need a degree
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
If they earn extra then they pay extra, via both tax and NI.
But why should high earning graduates like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all be on a 9% lower income tax rate than their younger compatriots?
If you are arguing that older graduates should be surcharged thats fine. I just disagree that a non graduate shelf stacker in tesco's should have to pay more tax so people who are going to personally benefit several hundred thousand in pay over a working lifetime so you can have a free legup. I also suggested that i agree with you the interest is far to high. But it is clear the major financial benefit goes to the graduate not the state
But my proposal is to replace the 9% discriminatory income tax currently levied with an extra 1% income tax paid by everyone.
If your hypothesis that graduates earn more is correct, then they'll pay more, even under my proposal. But it'd be consistently applied.
A non graduate shelf stacker is net a beneficiary from the state anyway and not a high income tax payer anyway.
Why should I have to pay for your extra earnings? You will benefit far more than the state.
You don't. The earner pays more.
Education should be universally available to everyone so that they can be the best version of themselves.
If they succeed in education, then they pay income tax and that more than repays their education.
The problem is past generations of graduates who themselves benefited from free education but decided to welch on paying taxes to support the next generation in turn.
Pandering to ranty motorists on twitter. next they will demanding we all pay "road tax"
I only know of one case, recently, where a cyclist (using a non road legal bike) hit someone and they died. He went inside for "wanton and furious pedalling" (or something like that).
What bemused me about the case was although he was at fault for riding a bike that had no brakes she was looking at her phone when she walked into the road and not paying attention. So, as sad as the outcome was, she was surely in part responsible for what happened ?
You're not really suggesting it's OK to knock someone down provided the victim survives, are you?
I was knocked down by a bike (on the pavement) a few years ago. If I'd been elderly or frail I could easily have had broken bones or worse. As it was, I thought initially I'd cracked a rib. I find quite often bikes come from behind on the pavement at speed, without any attempt at warning pedestrians. That shouldn't be defended on the basis of some stupid tribal cyclists versus motorists feud.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
If they earn extra then they pay extra, via both tax and NI.
But why should high earning graduates like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all be on a 9% lower income tax rate than their younger compatriots?
If you are arguing that older graduates should be surcharged thats fine. I just disagree that a non graduate shelf stacker in tesco's should have to pay more tax so people who are going to personally benefit several hundred thousand in pay over a working lifetime so you can have a free legup. I also suggested that i agree with you the interest is far to high. But it is clear the major financial benefit goes to the graduate not the state
But my proposal is to replace the 9% discriminatory income tax currently levied with an extra 1% income tax paid by everyone.
If your hypothesis that graduates earn more is correct, then they'll pay more, even under my proposal. But it'd be consistently applied.
A non graduate shelf stacker is net a beneficiary from the state anyway and not a high income tax payer anyway.
Why should I have to pay for your extra earnings? You will benefit far more than the state.
You don't. The earner pays more.
Education should be universally available to everyone so that they can be the best version of themselves.
If they succeed in education, then they pay income tax and that more than repays their education.
The problem is past generations of graduates who themselves benefited from free education but decided to welch on paying taxes to support the next generation in turn.
Then suggest a graduate tax levied on all graduates. I dont see why those of us that didn't goto university should fund you. The degree makes more for you than the state by a good margin
Pandering to ranty motorists on twitter. next they will demanding we all pay "road tax"
I only know of one case, recently, where a cyclist (using a non road legal bike) hit someone and they died. He went inside for "wanton and furious pedalling" (or something like that).
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
If they earn extra then they pay extra, via both tax and NI.
But why should high earning graduates like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all be on a 9% lower income tax rate than their younger compatriots?
If you are arguing that older graduates should be surcharged thats fine. I just disagree that a non graduate shelf stacker in tesco's should have to pay more tax so people who are going to personally benefit several hundred thousand in pay over a working lifetime so you can have a free legup. I also suggested that i agree with you the interest is far to high. But it is clear the major financial benefit goes to the graduate not the state
But my proposal is to replace the 9% discriminatory income tax currently levied with an extra 1% income tax paid by everyone.
If your hypothesis that graduates earn more is correct, then they'll pay more, even under my proposal. But it'd be consistently applied.
A non graduate shelf stacker is net a beneficiary from the state anyway and not a high income tax payer anyway.
Why should I have to pay for your extra earnings? You will benefit far more than the state.
You don't. The earner pays more.
Education should be universally available to everyone so that they can be the best version of themselves.
If they succeed in education, then they pay income tax and that more than repays their education.
The problem is past generations of graduates who themselves benefited from free education but decided to welch on paying taxes to support the next generation in turn.
Then suggest a graduate tax levied on all graduates. I dont see why those of us that didn't goto university should fund you. The degree makes more for you than the state by a good margin
Because everyone has education and opportunities for it. You were educated yourself too I assume, if you were illiterate and innumerate I doubt you could do your job?
If you're a high earner, then pay income tax. If being a graduate facilitates high earning, that is already met in income tax. No need for double taxation.
Pandering to ranty motorists on twitter. next they will demanding we all pay "road tax"
I only know of one case, recently, where a cyclist (using a non road legal bike) hit someone and they died. He went inside for "wanton and furious pedalling" (or something like that).
What bemused me about the case was although he was at fault for riding a bike that had no brakes she was looking at her phone when she walked into the road and not paying attention. So, as sad as the outcome was, she was surely in part responsible for what happened ?
Perhaps the recent changes to the Highway Code have not helped, as pedestrians and cyclists often act as if having right of way confers invulnerability from harm. From casual observation, pedestrians do sometimes step into the road while distracted, and cyclists do jump the lights and ride into danger.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
If they earn extra then they pay extra, via both tax and NI.
But why should high earning graduates like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all be on a 9% lower income tax rate than their younger compatriots?
If you are arguing that older graduates should be surcharged thats fine. I just disagree that a non graduate shelf stacker in tesco's should have to pay more tax so people who are going to personally benefit several hundred thousand in pay over a working lifetime so you can have a free legup. I also suggested that i agree with you the interest is far to high. But it is clear the major financial benefit goes to the graduate not the state
But my proposal is to replace the 9% discriminatory income tax currently levied with an extra 1% income tax paid by everyone.
If your hypothesis that graduates earn more is correct, then they'll pay more, even under my proposal. But it'd be consistently applied.
A non graduate shelf stacker is net a beneficiary from the state anyway and not a high income tax payer anyway.
Why should I have to pay for your extra earnings? You will benefit far more than the state.
You don't. The earner pays more.
Education should be universally available to everyone so that they can be the best version of themselves.
If they succeed in education, then they pay income tax and that more than repays their education.
The problem is past generations of graduates who themselves benefited from free education but decided to welch on paying taxes to support the next generation in turn.
Then suggest a graduate tax levied on all graduates. I dont see why those of us that didn't goto university should fund you. The degree makes more for you than the state by a good margin
Because everyone has education and opportunities for it. You were educated yourself too I assume, if you were illiterate and innumerate I doubt you could do your job?
If you're a high earner, then pay income tax. If being a graduate facilitates high earning, that is already met in income tax. No need for double taxation.
Total bollocks, not everyone has opportunity for university. For a start average iq is 110. Half the people are less intelligent than that. You think university is for them. Then there are people like me that could of gone to university intellectualy but couldn't because of rl reasons. It is idiotic to think everyone has that opportunity therefore
"He said scientists used radiocarbon dating to gather DNA evidence and X-rays had shown one to have 'eggs' inside."
Not sure whether that's Sky mangling, the original source, translation or whatever, but if they think they've used radiocarbon dating to gather DNA evidence then it's hard to have any confidence in anything else they say!
Though C14 dating is about right for that time frame, at least! But can you spot the howling fallacy of using radiocarbon - or indeed radioisotope - dating at all?
PS Not to mention that 2/3 of their DNA is not "unknown", so they must be terrestrial ...
There is no reason that aliens grew up in a world with the same proportion of C-14 in the atmosphere, so with no baseline for aliens, you can't use this method for dating.
Exactly. The test result could have come out as 'born in 5560 AD'
Same applies for almost anything else (not sure about some of the more cosmic isotopes, but can't see why not unless they decay to a different isotope of the same element, but I'm not sure if that is possible).
Keir Starmer meeting with Macron apparently. And Hunt/Sunak helping him on his way by pissing off the pensioners.
It would be absolutely *delicious* for Starmer to lose this election after the establishment has so clearly decided the job's already his. Almost worth re-electing Sunak, if the Tories haven't had the good sense to sling him before the GE.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
If they earn extra then they pay extra, via both tax and NI.
But why should high earning graduates like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all be on a 9% lower income tax rate than their younger compatriots?
If you are arguing that older graduates should be surcharged thats fine. I just disagree that a non graduate shelf stacker in tesco's should have to pay more tax so people who are going to personally benefit several hundred thousand in pay over a working lifetime so you can have a free legup. I also suggested that i agree with you the interest is far to high. But it is clear the major financial benefit goes to the graduate not the state
But my proposal is to replace the 9% discriminatory income tax currently levied with an extra 1% income tax paid by everyone.
If your hypothesis that graduates earn more is correct, then they'll pay more, even under my proposal. But it'd be consistently applied.
A non graduate shelf stacker is net a beneficiary from the state anyway and not a high income tax payer anyway.
Why should I have to pay for your extra earnings? You will benefit far more than the state.
You don't. The earner pays more.
Education should be universally available to everyone so that they can be the best version of themselves.
If they succeed in education, then they pay income tax and that more than repays their education.
The problem is past generations of graduates who themselves benefited from free education but decided to welch on paying taxes to support the next generation in turn.
Then suggest a graduate tax levied on all graduates. I dont see why those of us that didn't goto university should fund you. The degree makes more for you than the state by a good margin
Because everyone has education and opportunities for it. You were educated yourself too I assume, if you were illiterate and innumerate I doubt you could do your job?
If you're a high earner, then pay income tax. If being a graduate facilitates high earning, that is already met in income tax. No need for double taxation.
Total bollocks, not everyone has opportunity for university. For a start average iq is 110. Half the people are less intelligent than that. You think university is for them. Then there are people like me that could of gone to university intellectualy but couldn't because of rl reasons. It is idiotic to think everyone has that opportunity therefore
Try reading. I said education, not university.
Maybe if you were better educated, you would have noticed that and understood the point? 😜
Pandering to ranty motorists on twitter. next they will demanding we all pay "road tax"
I only know of one case, recently, where a cyclist (using a non road legal bike) hit someone and they died. He went inside for "wanton and furious pedalling" (or something like that).
What bemused me about the case was although he was at fault for riding a bike that had no brakes she was looking at her phone when she walked into the road and not paying attention. So, as sad as the outcome was, she was surely in part responsible for what happened ?
You're not really suggesting it's OK to knock someone down provided the victim survives, are you?
I was knocked down by a bike (on the pavement) a few years ago. If I'd been elderly or frail I could easily have had broken bones or worse. As it was, I thought initially I'd cracked a rib. I find quite often bikes come from behind on the pavement at speed, without any attempt at warning pedestrians. That shouldn't be defended on the basis of some stupid tribal cyclists versus motorists feud.
Agreed entirely, but the government proposal as described in that article seems unlikely to help. They want laws that will address the highly unlikely case of causing death or injury by dangerous driving, which won't be likely to affect the kind of behaviour that's much more common but doesn't reach that level of consequences.
I wonder if you could do anything useful with some sort of semi mandatory training course for offenders in exchange for not actually prosecuting them, analogous to those courses for speeding drivers? You'd still need to be able to trust the police to (a) care about the problem and (b) apply the tools available to them in a reasonable and non heavy handed manner, though, which I am rather dubious about...
I had an op at Moorfields today, and sitting next to me in the recovery room was a retired economic adviser to the government - not this one he hastened to add. He was telling this to the nurse. Was it anyone on here? I went to ask his name but didn’t get the chance
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
If they earn extra then they pay extra, via both tax and NI.
But why should high earning graduates like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all be on a 9% lower income tax rate than their younger compatriots?
If you are arguing that older graduates should be surcharged thats fine. I just disagree that a non graduate shelf stacker in tesco's should have to pay more tax so people who are going to personally benefit several hundred thousand in pay over a working lifetime so you can have a free legup. I also suggested that i agree with you the interest is far to high. But it is clear the major financial benefit goes to the graduate not the state
But my proposal is to replace the 9% discriminatory income tax currently levied with an extra 1% income tax paid by everyone.
If your hypothesis that graduates earn more is correct, then they'll pay more, even under my proposal. But it'd be consistently applied.
A non graduate shelf stacker is net a beneficiary from the state anyway and not a high income tax payer anyway.
Why should I have to pay for your extra earnings? You will benefit far more than the state.
You don't. The earner pays more.
Education should be universally available to everyone so that they can be the best version of themselves.
If they succeed in education, then they pay income tax and that more than repays their education.
The problem is past generations of graduates who themselves benefited from free education but decided to welch on paying taxes to support the next generation in turn.
Then suggest a graduate tax levied on all graduates. I dont see why those of us that didn't goto university should fund you. The degree makes more for you than the state by a good margin
Because everyone has education and opportunities for it. You were educated yourself too I assume, if you were illiterate and innumerate I doubt you could do your job?
If you're a high earner, then pay income tax. If being a graduate facilitates high earning, that is already met in income tax. No need for double taxation.
Total bollocks, not everyone has opportunity for university. For a start average iq is 110. Half the people are less intelligent than that. You think university is for them. Then there are people like me that could of gone to university intellectualy but couldn't because of rl reasons. It is idiotic to think everyone has that opportunity therefore
Try reading. I said education, not university.
Maybe if you were better educated, you would have noticed that and understood the point? 😜
The only education you are arguing for is free university
Keir Starmer meeting with Macron apparently. And Hunt/Sunak helping him on his way by pissing off the pensioners.
It would be absolutely *delicious* for Starmer to lose this election after the establishment has so clearly decided the job's already his. Almost worth re-electing Sunak, if the Tories haven't had the good sense to sling him before the GE.
Lol, I see autocorrect put 'delicious' in instead of 'disastrous' there; it does come up with some perverse 'corrections'.
I had an op at Moorfields today, and sitting next to me in the recovery room was a retired economic adviser to the government - not this one he hastened to add. He was telling this to the nurse. Was it anyone on here? I went to ask his name but didn’t get the chance
For those who do not know, Moorfields, Britain's main eye hospital, is on the City Road, just off what used to be called Silicon Roundabout. It must be the most congested road immediately outside a hospital anywhere, and the hospital opens directly onto the road, it is not shielded by 100 yards of car park as most hospitals are. The bus queues outside were full of people with one eye patched.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
If they earn extra then they pay extra, via both tax and NI.
But why should high earning graduates like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all be on a 9% lower income tax rate than their younger compatriots?
If you are arguing that older graduates should be surcharged thats fine. I just disagree that a non graduate shelf stacker in tesco's should have to pay more tax so people who are going to personally benefit several hundred thousand in pay over a working lifetime so you can have a free legup. I also suggested that i agree with you the interest is far to high. But it is clear the major financial benefit goes to the graduate not the state
But my proposal is to replace the 9% discriminatory income tax currently levied with an extra 1% income tax paid by everyone.
If your hypothesis that graduates earn more is correct, then they'll pay more, even under my proposal. But it'd be consistently applied.
A non graduate shelf stacker is net a beneficiary from the state anyway and not a high income tax payer anyway.
Why should I have to pay for your extra earnings? You will benefit far more than the state.
You don't. The earner pays more.
Education should be universally available to everyone so that they can be the best version of themselves.
If they succeed in education, then they pay income tax and that more than repays their education.
The problem is past generations of graduates who themselves benefited from free education but decided to welch on paying taxes to support the next generation in turn.
Then suggest a graduate tax levied on all graduates. I dont see why those of us that didn't goto university should fund you. The degree makes more for you than the state by a good margin
Because everyone has education and opportunities for it. You were educated yourself too I assume, if you were illiterate and innumerate I doubt you could do your job?
If you're a high earner, then pay income tax. If being a graduate facilitates high earning, that is already met in income tax. No need for double taxation.
Total bollocks, not everyone has opportunity for university. For a start average iq is 110. Half the people are less intelligent than that. You think university is for them. Then there are people like me that could of gone to university intellectualy but couldn't because of rl reasons. It is idiotic to think everyone has that opportunity therefore
Er, given your basic misunderstanding of IQ, I think maybe a University education would have done you some good, broaden your knowledge and improve your critical thinking etc. ;-)
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
But you're assuming the only difference between the two populations are whether they went to university. Whereas the university-going group are likely to be a) cleverer than the non-university-going group, and b) from a more privileged background. Both of which will impact their ability to earn far more than three years studying history.
Also, is their salary improvement because:
a) The learnt lots of things at University that turn out to be useful or b) The company they work for has an arbitrary filter on employment
If b), what would happen to the filter if there were fewer graduates?
This is the other issue with graduates. Many jobs that don't need a degree to do now have that filter so the number of decently paid jobs open to non graduates have fallen. Take me I have no degree, I taught myself coding and managed to get a job back in the 80's doing it. Try doing now as I did and your cv will get filed in the bin unless you have a degree on your cv if its your first job as a coder. I have the advantage of many years doing it but as a neophyte junior coder...pretty much forget it.
This is very true. Lots of professional careers used to have pathways for non-graduates, things like journalism. An inevitable result of more people going to university is that not going is seen as more of a negative signal. I've always thought that educational qualifications are about 2/3 signalling your inate ability vs 1/3 showing that you've learned something.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
If they earn extra then they pay extra, via both tax and NI.
But why should high earning graduates like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all be on a 9% lower income tax rate than their younger compatriots?
If you are arguing that older graduates should be surcharged thats fine. I just disagree that a non graduate shelf stacker in tesco's should have to pay more tax so people who are going to personally benefit several hundred thousand in pay over a working lifetime so you can have a free legup. I also suggested that i agree with you the interest is far to high. But it is clear the major financial benefit goes to the graduate not the state
But my proposal is to replace the 9% discriminatory income tax currently levied with an extra 1% income tax paid by everyone.
If your hypothesis that graduates earn more is correct, then they'll pay more, even under my proposal. But it'd be consistently applied.
A non graduate shelf stacker is net a beneficiary from the state anyway and not a high income tax payer anyway.
Why should I have to pay for your extra earnings? You will benefit far more than the state.
You don't. The earner pays more.
Education should be universally available to everyone so that they can be the best version of themselves.
If they succeed in education, then they pay income tax and that more than repays their education.
The problem is past generations of graduates who themselves benefited from free education but decided to welch on paying taxes to support the next generation in turn.
Then suggest a graduate tax levied on all graduates. I dont see why those of us that didn't goto university should fund you. The degree makes more for you than the state by a good margin
Because everyone has education and opportunities for it. You were educated yourself too I assume, if you were illiterate and innumerate I doubt you could do your job?
If you're a high earner, then pay income tax. If being a graduate facilitates high earning, that is already met in income tax. No need for double taxation.
Total bollocks, not everyone has opportunity for university. For a start average iq is 110. Half the people are less intelligent than that. You think university is for them. Then there are people like me that could of gone to university intellectualy but couldn't because of rl reasons. It is idiotic to think everyone has that opportunity therefore
Er, given your basic misunderstanding of IQ, I think maybe a University education would have done you some good, broaden your knowledge and improve your critical thinking etc. ;-)
What basic misunderstanding.....i am aware IQ is not a good measure it is what we have....sorry but its true a lot of people will never be able to get a degree was my point. Either because they lack the intellect or as I said because rl prohibits them from doing a degree.
Do you believe 100% of people are capable of attaining a degree? If not give me a ball park figure for the percentage capable? I went with the iq thing as its all we have
Pandering to ranty motorists on twitter. next they will demanding we all pay "road tax"
I only know of one case, recently, where a cyclist (using a non road legal bike) hit someone and they died. He went inside for "wanton and furious pedalling" (or something like that).
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
But you're assuming the only difference between the two populations are whether they went to university. Whereas the university-going group are likely to be a) cleverer than the non-university-going group, and b) from a more privileged background. Both of which will impact their ability to earn far more than three years studying history.
Also, is their salary improvement because:
a) The learnt lots of things at University that turn out to be useful or b) The company they work for has an arbitrary filter on employment
If b), what would happen to the filter if there were fewer graduates?
This is the other issue with graduates. Many jobs that don't need a degree to do now have that filter so the number of decently paid jobs open to non graduates have fallen. Take me I have no degree, I taught myself coding and managed to get a job back in the 80's doing it. Try doing now as I did and your cv will get filed in the bin unless you have a degree on your cv if its your first job as a coder. I have the advantage of many years doing it but as a neophyte junior coder...pretty much forget it.
This is very true. Lots of professional careers used to have pathways for non-graduates, things like journalism. An inevitable result of more people going to university is that not going is seen as more of a negative signal. I've always thought that educational qualifications are about 2/3 signalling your inate ability vs 1/3 showing that you've learned something.
It is a shame in my view. Nowadays it seems more and more don't goto uni and you are on the scrapheap condemned to low paid jobs unless you find an apprenticeship for a trade and they are few and far between. Pretty much from what I see now any office job is asking for a degree
I/T but a crap photo of the Patrouille de France flying over practising for tomorrow. Red Arrows on same bill so will report back who was best so we know if Brexit has ruined the Red Arrows or that like their food, the French can’t deliver.
Team meeting today. Who is that bored-looking person opposite? She must be new. She's not saying anything. Maybe she'll introduce herself. [AOB comes along] Person opposite announces that this will be her last day in the office and is leaving the organisation on Friday. Team leader thanks her for 20 months of work.
Who is she? Have I just got very poor facial recognition? The team isn't that big - there's only 20-odd of us.
I've now found out who she is by the name on her leaver's card. It isn't a name I recognise. But what function she fulfilled remains a mystery. I daren't really ask what she does.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
If they earn extra then they pay extra, via both tax and NI.
But why should high earning graduates like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all be on a 9% lower income tax rate than their younger compatriots?
If you are arguing that older graduates should be surcharged thats fine. I just disagree that a non graduate shelf stacker in tesco's should have to pay more tax so people who are going to personally benefit several hundred thousand in pay over a working lifetime so you can have a free legup. I also suggested that i agree with you the interest is far to high. But it is clear the major financial benefit goes to the graduate not the state
But my proposal is to replace the 9% discriminatory income tax currently levied with an extra 1% income tax paid by everyone.
If your hypothesis that graduates earn more is correct, then they'll pay more, even under my proposal. But it'd be consistently applied.
A non graduate shelf stacker is net a beneficiary from the state anyway and not a high income tax payer anyway.
Why should I have to pay for your extra earnings? You will benefit far more than the state.
You don't. The earner pays more.
Education should be universally available to everyone so that they can be the best version of themselves.
If they succeed in education, then they pay income tax and that more than repays their education.
The problem is past generations of graduates who themselves benefited from free education but decided to welch on paying taxes to support the next generation in turn.
Then suggest a graduate tax levied on all graduates. I dont see why those of us that didn't goto university should fund you. The degree makes more for you than the state by a good margin
Because everyone has education and opportunities for it. You were educated yourself too I assume, if you were illiterate and innumerate I doubt you could do your job?
If you're a high earner, then pay income tax. If being a graduate facilitates high earning, that is already met in income tax. No need for double taxation.
Total bollocks, not everyone has opportunity for university. For a start average iq is 110. Half the people are less intelligent than that. You think university is for them. Then there are people like me that could of gone to university intellectualy but couldn't because of rl reasons. It is idiotic to think everyone has that opportunity therefore
Er, given your basic misunderstanding of IQ, I think maybe a University education would have done you some good, broaden your knowledge and improve your critical thinking etc. ;-)
What basic misunderstanding.....i am aware IQ is not a good measure it is what we have....sorry but its true a lot of people will never be able to get a degree was my point. Either because they lack the intellect or as I said because rl prohibits them from doing a degree.
Do you believe 100% of people are capable of attaining a degree? If not give me a ball park figure for the percentage capable? I went with the iq thing as its all we have
My response was of course slightly tongue-in-cheek - hence the ;-) But regarding IQ as a measure:
1. You said: 'For a start average iq is 110. No, the whole point about IQ is that it aims to be a quotient, centred around 100. Average (mean) IQ is, or should be, very close to 100, not 110.
2. IQ is not a complete, nor necessity accurate measure of intelligence. For example, creativity and social intelligence are not captured well by IQ tests.
I made no comments regarding what percentage of people could obtain a degree. Since you ask I would suggest, that with sufficient educational support, the large majority of people could obtain a degree if they so wanted. Clearly there are some people with learning difficulties who could not and many who have no desire or motivation.
As an anecdotal example, I offer my neighbour's daughter who is, by my neighbour's own admission 'not terribly bright'. In fact, I would say she is rather dim; lovely person, but dim.
However... she went to a top private school, obtained three A levels and subsequently a degree in Estate Management from the Royal Agricultural University.
If she can do it, I'd say 70% of the population could. Whether we'd want to fund that is a different matter.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
If they earn extra then they pay extra, via both tax and NI.
But why should high earning graduates like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all be on a 9% lower income tax rate than their younger compatriots?
If you are arguing that older graduates should be surcharged thats fine. I just disagree that a non graduate shelf stacker in tesco's should have to pay more tax so people who are going to personally benefit several hundred thousand in pay over a working lifetime so you can have a free legup. I also suggested that i agree with you the interest is far to high. But it is clear the major financial benefit goes to the graduate not the state
But my proposal is to replace the 9% discriminatory income tax currently levied with an extra 1% income tax paid by everyone.
If your hypothesis that graduates earn more is correct, then they'll pay more, even under my proposal. But it'd be consistently applied.
A non graduate shelf stacker is net a beneficiary from the state anyway and not a high income tax payer anyway.
Why should I have to pay for your extra earnings? You will benefit far more than the state.
You don't. The earner pays more.
Education should be universally available to everyone so that they can be the best version of themselves.
If they succeed in education, then they pay income tax and that more than repays their education.
The problem is past generations of graduates who themselves benefited from free education but decided to welch on paying taxes to support the next generation in turn.
Then suggest a graduate tax levied on all graduates. I dont see why those of us that didn't goto university should fund you. The degree makes more for you than the state by a good margin
Because everyone has education and opportunities for it. You were educated yourself too I assume, if you were illiterate and innumerate I doubt you could do your job?
If you're a high earner, then pay income tax. If being a graduate facilitates high earning, that is already met in income tax. No need for double taxation.
Total bollocks, not everyone has opportunity for university. For a start average iq is 110. Half the people are less intelligent than that. You think university is for them. Then there are people like me that could of gone to university intellectualy but couldn't because of rl reasons. It is idiotic to think everyone has that opportunity therefore
Er, given your basic misunderstanding of IQ, I think maybe a University education would have done you some good, broaden your knowledge and improve your critical thinking etc. ;-)
What basic misunderstanding.....i am aware IQ is not a good measure it is what we have....sorry but its true a lot of people will never be able to get a degree was my point. Either because they lack the intellect or as I said because rl prohibits them from doing a degree.
Do you believe 100% of people are capable of attaining a degree? If not give me a ball park figure for the percentage capable? I went with the iq thing as its all we have
My response was of course slightly tongue-in-cheek - hence the ;-) But regarding IQ as a measure:
1. You said: 'For a start average iq is 110. No, the whole point about IQ is that it aims to be a quotient, centred around 100. Average (mean) IQ is, or should be, very close to 100, not 110.
2. IQ is not a complete, nor necessity accurate measure of intelligence. For example, creativity and social intelligence are not captured well by IQ tests.
I made no comments regarding what percentage of people could obtain a degree. Since you ask I would suggest, that with sufficient educational support, the large majority of people could obtain a degree if they so wanted. Clearly there are some people with learning difficulties who could not and many who have no desire or motivation.
As an anecdotal example, I offer my neighbour's daughter who is, by my neighbour's own admission 'not terribly bright'. In fact, I would say she is rather dim; lovely person, but dim.
However... she went to a top private school, obtained three A levels and subsequently a degree in Estate Management from the Royal Agricultural University.
If she can do it, I'd say 70% of the population could. Whether we'd want to fund that is a different matter.
Shrugs I made a mistake quoting from memory the 110 so accept what you say as to 100. I would however query how much standards for degrees have been lowered because part of getting 50% to go from 10% I cannot believe there has not been a lowering of standards. I have worked with plenty of graduates in the 80's , 90's and forward. All I can say is back in the 80's and 90's you could tell why people had degrees. Nowadays they seem a little underpowered on average.....yes you still get the bright ones you just seem to have more mediocre ones that you wouldn't trust to run a whelk stall
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
If they earn extra then they pay extra, via both tax and NI.
But why should high earning graduates like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all be on a 9% lower income tax rate than their younger compatriots?
If you are arguing that older graduates should be surcharged thats fine. I just disagree that a non graduate shelf stacker in tesco's should have to pay more tax so people who are going to personally benefit several hundred thousand in pay over a working lifetime so you can have a free legup. I also suggested that i agree with you the interest is far to high. But it is clear the major financial benefit goes to the graduate not the state
But my proposal is to replace the 9% discriminatory income tax currently levied with an extra 1% income tax paid by everyone.
If your hypothesis that graduates earn more is correct, then they'll pay more, even under my proposal. But it'd be consistently applied.
A non graduate shelf stacker is net a beneficiary from the state anyway and not a high income tax payer anyway.
Why should I have to pay for your extra earnings? You will benefit far more than the state.
You don't. The earner pays more.
Education should be universally available to everyone so that they can be the best version of themselves.
If they succeed in education, then they pay income tax and that more than repays their education.
The problem is past generations of graduates who themselves benefited from free education but decided to welch on paying taxes to support the next generation in turn.
Then suggest a graduate tax levied on all graduates. I dont see why those of us that didn't goto university should fund you. The degree makes more for you than the state by a good margin
Because everyone has education and opportunities for it. You were educated yourself too I assume, if you were illiterate and innumerate I doubt you could do your job?
If you're a high earner, then pay income tax. If being a graduate facilitates high earning, that is already met in income tax. No need for double taxation.
Total bollocks, not everyone has opportunity for university. For a start average iq is 110. Half the people are less intelligent than that. You think university is for them. Then there are people like me that could of gone to university intellectualy but couldn't because of rl reasons. It is idiotic to think everyone has that opportunity therefore
Er, given your basic misunderstanding of IQ, I think maybe a University education would have done you some good, broaden your knowledge and improve your critical thinking etc. ;-)
What basic misunderstanding.....i am aware IQ is not a good measure it is what we have....sorry but its true a lot of people will never be able to get a degree was my point. Either because they lack the intellect or as I said because rl prohibits them from doing a degree.
Do you believe 100% of people are capable of attaining a degree? If not give me a ball park figure for the percentage capable? I went with the iq thing as its all we have
My response was of course slightly tongue-in-cheek - hence the ;-) But regarding IQ as a measure:
1. You said: 'For a start average iq is 110. No, the whole point about IQ is that it aims to be a quotient, centred around 100. Average (mean) IQ is, or should be, very close to 100, not 110.
2. IQ is not a complete, nor necessity accurate measure of intelligence. For example, creativity and social intelligence are not captured well by IQ tests.
I made no comments regarding what percentage of people could obtain a degree. Since you ask I would suggest, that with sufficient educational support, the large majority of people could obtain a degree if they so wanted. Clearly there are some people with learning difficulties who could not and many who have no desire or motivation.
As an anecdotal example, I offer my neighbour's daughter who is, by my neighbour's own admission 'not terribly bright'. In fact, I would say she is rather dim; lovely person, but dim.
However... she went to a top private school, obtained three A levels and subsequently a degree in Estate Management from the Royal Agricultural University.
If she can do it, I'd say 70% of the population could. Whether we'd want to fund that is a different matter.
Shrugs I made a mistake quoting from memory the 110 so accept what you say as to 100. I would however query how much standards for degrees have been lowered because part of getting 50% to go from 10% I cannot believe there has not been a lowering of standards. I have worked with plenty of graduates in the 80's , 90's and forward. All I can say is back in the 80's and 90's you could tell why people had degrees. Nowadays they seem a little underpowered on average.....yes you still get the bright ones you just seem to have more mediocre ones that you wouldn't trust to run a whelk stall
Well yes, but now you are making a partly self-fulfilling argument: when university degrees were restricted to only a few, they tended to have a greater proportion of very bright people. Of course.
It'll be a disaster if they want to bring in a driving licence for cyclists. A lot of people who currently cycle will probably decide they can't be bothered and the roads will become even more congested by cars.
I/T but a crap photo of the Patrouille de France flying over practising for tomorrow. Red Arrows on same bill so will report back who was best so we know if Brexit has ruined the Red Arrows or that like their food, the French can’t deliver.
Looks like they need a bit of practice - they are all over the place!
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
If they earn extra then they pay extra, via both tax and NI.
But why should high earning graduates like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all be on a 9% lower income tax rate than their younger compatriots?
If you are arguing that older graduates should be surcharged thats fine. I just disagree that a non graduate shelf stacker in tesco's should have to pay more tax so people who are going to personally benefit several hundred thousand in pay over a working lifetime so you can have a free legup. I also suggested that i agree with you the interest is far to high. But it is clear the major financial benefit goes to the graduate not the state
But my proposal is to replace the 9% discriminatory income tax currently levied with an extra 1% income tax paid by everyone.
If your hypothesis that graduates earn more is correct, then they'll pay more, even under my proposal. But it'd be consistently applied.
A non graduate shelf stacker is net a beneficiary from the state anyway and not a high income tax payer anyway.
Why should I have to pay for your extra earnings? You will benefit far more than the state.
You don't. The earner pays more.
Education should be universally available to everyone so that they can be the best version of themselves.
If they succeed in education, then they pay income tax and that more than repays their education.
The problem is past generations of graduates who themselves benefited from free education but decided to welch on paying taxes to support the next generation in turn.
Then suggest a graduate tax levied on all graduates. I dont see why those of us that didn't goto university should fund you. The degree makes more for you than the state by a good margin
Because everyone has education and opportunities for it. You were educated yourself too I assume, if you were illiterate and innumerate I doubt you could do your job?
If you're a high earner, then pay income tax. If being a graduate facilitates high earning, that is already met in income tax. No need for double taxation.
Total bollocks, not everyone has opportunity for university. For a start average iq is 110. Half the people are less intelligent than that. You think university is for them. Then there are people like me that could of gone to university intellectualy but couldn't because of rl reasons. It is idiotic to think everyone has that opportunity therefore
Er, given your basic misunderstanding of IQ, I think maybe a University education would have done you some good, broaden your knowledge and improve your critical thinking etc. ;-)
What basic misunderstanding.....i am aware IQ is not a good measure it is what we have....sorry but its true a lot of people will never be able to get a degree was my point. Either because they lack the intellect or as I said because rl prohibits them from doing a degree.
Do you believe 100% of people are capable of attaining a degree? If not give me a ball park figure for the percentage capable? I went with the iq thing as its all we have
My response was of course slightly tongue-in-cheek - hence the ;-) But regarding IQ as a measure:
1. You said: 'For a start average iq is 110. No, the whole point about IQ is that it aims to be a quotient, centred around 100. Average (mean) IQ is, or should be, very close to 100, not 110.
2. IQ is not a complete, nor necessity accurate measure of intelligence. For example, creativity and social intelligence are not captured well by IQ tests.
I made no comments regarding what percentage of people could obtain a degree. Since you ask I would suggest, that with sufficient educational support, the large majority of people could obtain a degree if they so wanted. Clearly there are some people with learning difficulties who could not and many who have no desire or motivation.
As an anecdotal example, I offer my neighbour's daughter who is, by my neighbour's own admission 'not terribly bright'. In fact, I would say she is rather dim; lovely person, but dim.
However... she went to a top private school, obtained three A levels and subsequently a degree in Estate Management from the Royal Agricultural University.
If she can do it, I'd say 70% of the population could. Whether we'd want to fund that is a different matter.
Shrugs I made a mistake quoting from memory the 110 so accept what you say as to 100. I would however query how much standards for degrees have been lowered because part of getting 50% to go from 10% I cannot believe there has not been a lowering of standards. I have worked with plenty of graduates in the 80's , 90's and forward. All I can say is back in the 80's and 90's you could tell why people had degrees. Nowadays they seem a little underpowered on average.....yes you still get the bright ones you just seem to have more mediocre ones that you wouldn't trust to run a whelk stall
Well yes, but now you are making a partly self-fulfilling argument: when university degrees were restricted to only a few, they tended to have a greater proportion of very bright people. Of course.
Which is surely the point of educational attainments. If you have a degree that a person with an iq of 80 can pass what is the point? It just devalues the purpose of the degree filter. Now there are jobs that require a degree. As I have said before I wouldn't want to cross a bridge that had been designed by someone without a qualification in structural engineering.
However the purpose of all educational attainments is surely to show what you are capable of in terms of critical thought. If you lower the standards what is the point of it?
Keir Starmer meeting with Macron apparently. And Hunt/Sunak helping him on his way by pissing off the pensioners.
It would be absolutely *delicious* for Starmer to lose this election after the establishment has so clearly decided the job's already his. Almost worth re-electing Sunak, if the Tories haven't had the good sense to sling him before the GE.
Lol, I see autocorrect put 'delicious' in instead of 'disastrous' there; it does come up with some perverse 'corrections'.
I am not sure how anyone intelligent could possibly find enough that Starmer will actually do differently to make failing to elect him any kind of disaster. Both he and Sunk are fully signed up to £50bn on net zero, appropriating a vast portion of the nations' wealth in tax, large scale immigration, the same foreign policy etc. The so called 'debates' between them massively exaggerate tiny differences. Either of them getting to form a Government is a disaster frankly, but at least Starmer failing to get his slathering chops on the job would provide some amusing schadenfreude.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
If they earn extra then they pay extra, via both tax and NI.
But why should high earning graduates like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all be on a 9% lower income tax rate than their younger compatriots?
If you are arguing that older graduates should be surcharged thats fine. I just disagree that a non graduate shelf stacker in tesco's should have to pay more tax so people who are going to personally benefit several hundred thousand in pay over a working lifetime so you can have a free legup. I also suggested that i agree with you the interest is far to high. But it is clear the major financial benefit goes to the graduate not the state
But my proposal is to replace the 9% discriminatory income tax currently levied with an extra 1% income tax paid by everyone.
If your hypothesis that graduates earn more is correct, then they'll pay more, even under my proposal. But it'd be consistently applied.
A non graduate shelf stacker is net a beneficiary from the state anyway and not a high income tax payer anyway.
Why should I have to pay for your extra earnings? You will benefit far more than the state.
You don't. The earner pays more.
Education should be universally available to everyone so that they can be the best version of themselves.
If they succeed in education, then they pay income tax and that more than repays their education.
The problem is past generations of graduates who themselves benefited from free education but decided to welch on paying taxes to support the next generation in turn.
Then suggest a graduate tax levied on all graduates. I dont see why those of us that didn't goto university should fund you. The degree makes more for you than the state by a good margin
Because everyone has education and opportunities for it. You were educated yourself too I assume, if you were illiterate and innumerate I doubt you could do your job?
If you're a high earner, then pay income tax. If being a graduate facilitates high earning, that is already met in income tax. No need for double taxation.
Total bollocks, not everyone has opportunity for university. For a start average iq is 110. Half the people are less intelligent than that. You think university is for them. Then there are people like me that could of gone to university intellectualy but couldn't because of rl reasons. It is idiotic to think everyone has that opportunity therefore
Er, given your basic misunderstanding of IQ, I think maybe a University education would have done you some good, broaden your knowledge and improve your critical thinking etc. ;-)
What basic misunderstanding.....i am aware IQ is not a good measure it is what we have....sorry but its true a lot of people will never be able to get a degree was my point. Either because they lack the intellect or as I said because rl prohibits them from doing a degree.
Do you believe 100% of people are capable of attaining a degree? If not give me a ball park figure for the percentage capable? I went with the iq thing as its all we have
My response was of course slightly tongue-in-cheek - hence the ;-) But regarding IQ as a measure:
1. You said: 'For a start average iq is 110. No, the whole point about IQ is that it aims to be a quotient, centred around 100. Average (mean) IQ is, or should be, very close to 100, not 110.
2. IQ is not a complete, nor necessity accurate measure of intelligence. For example, creativity and social intelligence are not captured well by IQ tests.
I made no comments regarding what percentage of people could obtain a degree. Since you ask I would suggest, that with sufficient educational support, the large majority of people could obtain a degree if they so wanted. Clearly there are some people with learning difficulties who could not and many who have no desire or motivation.
As an anecdotal example, I offer my neighbour's daughter who is, by my neighbour's own admission 'not terribly bright'. In fact, I would say she is rather dim; lovely person, but dim.
However... she went to a top private school, obtained three A levels and subsequently a degree in Estate Management from the Royal Agricultural University.
If she can do it, I'd say 70% of the population could. Whether we'd want to fund that is a different matter.
Shrugs I made a mistake quoting from memory the 110 so accept what you say as to 100. I would however query how much standards for degrees have been lowered because part of getting 50% to go from 10% I cannot believe there has not been a lowering of standards. I have worked with plenty of graduates in the 80's , 90's and forward. All I can say is back in the 80's and 90's you could tell why people had degrees. Nowadays they seem a little underpowered on average.....yes you still get the bright ones you just seem to have more mediocre ones that you wouldn't trust to run a whelk stall
Well yes, but now you are making a partly self-fulfilling argument: when university degrees were restricted to only a few, they tended to have a greater proportion of very bright people. Of course.
Not just that but the number of firsts given out now is obscene around 30 to 40% of the total i believe. (Used to be 1 or 2 firsts in a year out of 150). How can a truly intelligent person stand out in such a system. So then it all comes back to connections and contacts where the upper middle class have a massive advantage.
Pandering to ranty motorists on twitter. next they will demanding we all pay "road tax"
I only know of one case, recently, where a cyclist (using a non road legal bike) hit someone and they died. He went inside for "wanton and furious pedalling" (or something like that).
What bemused me about the case was although he was at fault for riding a bike that had no brakes she was looking at her phone when she walked into the road and not paying attention. So, as sad as the outcome was, she was surely in part responsible for what happened ?
You're not really suggesting it's OK to knock someone down provided the victim survives, are you?
I was knocked down by a bike (on the pavement) a few years ago. If I'd been elderly or frail I could easily have had broken bones or worse. As it was, I thought initially I'd cracked a rib. I find quite often bikes come from behind on the pavement at speed, without any attempt at warning pedestrians. That shouldn't be defended on the basis of some stupid tribal cyclists versus motorists feud.
My only experience of this is the cyclist who ploughed into me as I crossed a road. He shouted at me for not looking where I was going, and I was so taken aback that it took me a moment to respond that I was crossing a pedestrian crossing on a green man, by which time he was away. He was pedalling up one of Sheffield's steeper A roads at the time so the incident was at low speed. Would have been a different matter had he been going the other way.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
If they earn extra then they pay extra, via both tax and NI.
But why should high earning graduates like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all be on a 9% lower income tax rate than their younger compatriots?
If you are arguing that older graduates should be surcharged thats fine. I just disagree that a non graduate shelf stacker in tesco's should have to pay more tax so people who are going to personally benefit several hundred thousand in pay over a working lifetime so you can have a free legup. I also suggested that i agree with you the interest is far to high. But it is clear the major financial benefit goes to the graduate not the state
But my proposal is to replace the 9% discriminatory income tax currently levied with an extra 1% income tax paid by everyone.
If your hypothesis that graduates earn more is correct, then they'll pay more, even under my proposal. But it'd be consistently applied.
A non graduate shelf stacker is net a beneficiary from the state anyway and not a high income tax payer anyway.
Why should I have to pay for your extra earnings? You will benefit far more than the state.
You don't. The earner pays more.
Education should be universally available to everyone so that they can be the best version of themselves.
If they succeed in education, then they pay income tax and that more than repays their education.
The problem is past generations of graduates who themselves benefited from free education but decided to welch on paying taxes to support the next generation in turn.
Then suggest a graduate tax levied on all graduates. I dont see why those of us that didn't goto university should fund you. The degree makes more for you than the state by a good margin
Because everyone has education and opportunities for it. You were educated yourself too I assume, if you were illiterate and innumerate I doubt you could do your job?
If you're a high earner, then pay income tax. If being a graduate facilitates high earning, that is already met in income tax. No need for double taxation.
Total bollocks, not everyone has opportunity for university. For a start average iq is 110. Half the people are less intelligent than that. You think university is for them. Then there are people like me that could of gone to university intellectualy but couldn't because of rl reasons. It is idiotic to think everyone has that opportunity therefore
Er, given your basic misunderstanding of IQ, I think maybe a University education would have done you some good, broaden your knowledge and improve your critical thinking etc. ;-)
What basic misunderstanding.....i am aware IQ is not a good measure it is what we have....sorry but its true a lot of people will never be able to get a degree was my point. Either because they lack the intellect or as I said because rl prohibits them from doing a degree.
Do you believe 100% of people are capable of attaining a degree? If not give me a ball park figure for the percentage capable? I went with the iq thing as its all we have
My response was of course slightly tongue-in-cheek - hence the ;-) But regarding IQ as a measure:
1. You said: 'For a start average iq is 110. No, the whole point about IQ is that it aims to be a quotient, centred around 100. Average (mean) IQ is, or should be, very close to 100, not 110.
2. IQ is not a complete, nor necessity accurate measure of intelligence. For example, creativity and social intelligence are not captured well by IQ tests.
I made no comments regarding what percentage of people could obtain a degree. Since you ask I would suggest, that with sufficient educational support, the large majority of people could obtain a degree if they so wanted. Clearly there are some people with learning difficulties who could not and many who have no desire or motivation.
As an anecdotal example, I offer my neighbour's daughter who is, by my neighbour's own admission 'not terribly bright'. In fact, I would say she is rather dim; lovely person, but dim.
However... she went to a top private school, obtained three A levels and subsequently a degree in Estate Management from the Royal Agricultural University.
If she can do it, I'd say 70% of the population could. Whether we'd want to fund that is a different matter.
Shrugs I made a mistake quoting from memory the 110 so accept what you say as to 100. I would however query how much standards for degrees have been lowered because part of getting 50% to go from 10% I cannot believe there has not been a lowering of standards. I have worked with plenty of graduates in the 80's , 90's and forward. All I can say is back in the 80's and 90's you could tell why people had degrees. Nowadays they seem a little underpowered on average.....yes you still get the bright ones you just seem to have more mediocre ones that you wouldn't trust to run a whelk stall
Well yes, but now you are making a partly self-fulfilling argument: when university degrees were restricted to only a few, they tended to have a greater proportion of very bright people. Of course.
Not just that but the number of firsts given out now is obscene around 30 to 40% of the total i believe. (Used to be 1 or 2 firsts in a year out of 150). How can a truly intelligent person stand out in such a system. So then it all comes back to connections and contacts where the upper middle class have a massive advantage.
It'll be a disaster if they want to bring in a driving licence for cyclists. A lot of people who currently cycle will probably decide they can't be bothered and the roads will become even more congested by cars.
What happened to the cycling proficiency training they used to have in schools?
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
If they earn extra then they pay extra, via both tax and NI.
But why should high earning graduates like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all be on a 9% lower income tax rate than their younger compatriots?
If you are arguing that older graduates should be surcharged thats fine. I just disagree that a non graduate shelf stacker in tesco's should have to pay more tax so people who are going to personally benefit several hundred thousand in pay over a working lifetime so you can have a free legup. I also suggested that i agree with you the interest is far to high. But it is clear the major financial benefit goes to the graduate not the state
But my proposal is to replace the 9% discriminatory income tax currently levied with an extra 1% income tax paid by everyone.
If your hypothesis that graduates earn more is correct, then they'll pay more, even under my proposal. But it'd be consistently applied.
A non graduate shelf stacker is net a beneficiary from the state anyway and not a high income tax payer anyway.
Why should I have to pay for your extra earnings? You will benefit far more than the state.
You don't. The earner pays more.
Education should be universally available to everyone so that they can be the best version of themselves.
If they succeed in education, then they pay income tax and that more than repays their education.
The problem is past generations of graduates who themselves benefited from free education but decided to welch on paying taxes to support the next generation in turn.
Then suggest a graduate tax levied on all graduates. I dont see why those of us that didn't goto university should fund you. The degree makes more for you than the state by a good margin
Because everyone has education and opportunities for it. You were educated yourself too I assume, if you were illiterate and innumerate I doubt you could do your job?
If you're a high earner, then pay income tax. If being a graduate facilitates high earning, that is already met in income tax. No need for double taxation.
Total bollocks, not everyone has opportunity for university. For a start average iq is 110. Half the people are less intelligent than that. You think university is for them. Then there are people like me that could of gone to university intellectualy but couldn't because of rl reasons. It is idiotic to think everyone has that opportunity therefore
Er, given your basic misunderstanding of IQ, I think maybe a University education would have done you some good, broaden your knowledge and improve your critical thinking etc. ;-)
What basic misunderstanding.....i am aware IQ is not a good measure it is what we have....sorry but its true a lot of people will never be able to get a degree was my point. Either because they lack the intellect or as I said because rl prohibits them from doing a degree.
Do you believe 100% of people are capable of attaining a degree? If not give me a ball park figure for the percentage capable? I went with the iq thing as its all we have
My response was of course slightly tongue-in-cheek - hence the ;-) But regarding IQ as a measure:
1. You said: 'For a start average iq is 110. No, the whole point about IQ is that it aims to be a quotient, centred around 100. Average (mean) IQ is, or should be, very close to 100, not 110.
2. IQ is not a complete, nor necessity accurate measure of intelligence. For example, creativity and social intelligence are not captured well by IQ tests.
I made no comments regarding what percentage of people could obtain a degree. Since you ask I would suggest, that with sufficient educational support, the large majority of people could obtain a degree if they so wanted. Clearly there are some people with learning difficulties who could not and many who have no desire or motivation.
As an anecdotal example, I offer my neighbour's daughter who is, by my neighbour's own admission 'not terribly bright'. In fact, I would say she is rather dim; lovely person, but dim.
However... she went to a top private school, obtained three A levels and subsequently a degree in Estate Management from the Royal Agricultural University.
If she can do it, I'd say 70% of the population could. Whether we'd want to fund that is a different matter.
Shrugs I made a mistake quoting from memory the 110 so accept what you say as to 100. I would however query how much standards for degrees have been lowered because part of getting 50% to go from 10% I cannot believe there has not been a lowering of standards. I have worked with plenty of graduates in the 80's , 90's and forward. All I can say is back in the 80's and 90's you could tell why people had degrees. Nowadays they seem a little underpowered on average.....yes you still get the bright ones you just seem to have more mediocre ones that you wouldn't trust to run a whelk stall
This would be an "and your point is?” situation.
I have no doubt young people are collectively better educated then their equivalents in the 80s and 90s simply because five times as many of them have had tertiary education and more have higher school certifications.
You might argue we don't need collectively need to be so well educated, that so much education is bad at some level. But that isn't the point you are making, I believe.
Not just that but the number of firsts given out now is obscene around 30 to 40% of the total i believe. (Used to be 1 or 2 firsts in a year out of 150). How can a truly intelligent person stand out in such a system. So then it all comes back to connections and contacts where the upper middle class have a massive advantage.
I stood out because my modest self effacing personality.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
If they earn extra then they pay extra, via both tax and NI.
But why should high earning graduates like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all be on a 9% lower income tax rate than their younger compatriots?
If you are arguing that older graduates should be surcharged thats fine. I just disagree that a non graduate shelf stacker in tesco's should have to pay more tax so people who are going to personally benefit several hundred thousand in pay over a working lifetime so you can have a free legup. I also suggested that i agree with you the interest is far to high. But it is clear the major financial benefit goes to the graduate not the state
But my proposal is to replace the 9% discriminatory income tax currently levied with an extra 1% income tax paid by everyone.
If your hypothesis that graduates earn more is correct, then they'll pay more, even under my proposal. But it'd be consistently applied.
A non graduate shelf stacker is net a beneficiary from the state anyway and not a high income tax payer anyway.
Why should I have to pay for your extra earnings? You will benefit far more than the state.
You don't. The earner pays more.
Education should be universally available to everyone so that they can be the best version of themselves.
If they succeed in education, then they pay income tax and that more than repays their education.
The problem is past generations of graduates who themselves benefited from free education but decided to welch on paying taxes to support the next generation in turn.
Then suggest a graduate tax levied on all graduates. I dont see why those of us that didn't goto university should fund you. The degree makes more for you than the state by a good margin
Because everyone has education and opportunities for it. You were educated yourself too I assume, if you were illiterate and innumerate I doubt you could do your job?
If you're a high earner, then pay income tax. If being a graduate facilitates high earning, that is already met in income tax. No need for double taxation.
Total bollocks, not everyone has opportunity for university. For a start average iq is 110. Half the people are less intelligent than that. You think university is for them. Then there are people like me that could of gone to university intellectualy but couldn't because of rl reasons. It is idiotic to think everyone has that opportunity therefore
Er, given your basic misunderstanding of IQ, I think maybe a University education would have done you some good, broaden your knowledge and improve your critical thinking etc. ;-)
What basic misunderstanding.....i am aware IQ is not a good measure it is what we have....sorry but its true a lot of people will never be able to get a degree was my point. Either because they lack the intellect or as I said because rl prohibits them from doing a degree.
Do you believe 100% of people are capable of attaining a degree? If not give me a ball park figure for the percentage capable? I went with the iq thing as its all we have
My response was of course slightly tongue-in-cheek - hence the ;-) But regarding IQ as a measure:
1. You said: 'For a start average iq is 110. No, the whole point about IQ is that it aims to be a quotient, centred around 100. Average (mean) IQ is, or should be, very close to 100, not 110.
2. IQ is not a complete, nor necessity accurate measure of intelligence. For example, creativity and social intelligence are not captured well by IQ tests.
I made no comments regarding what percentage of people could obtain a degree. Since you ask I would suggest, that with sufficient educational support, the large majority of people could obtain a degree if they so wanted. Clearly there are some people with learning difficulties who could not and many who have no desire or motivation.
As an anecdotal example, I offer my neighbour's daughter who is, by my neighbour's own admission 'not terribly bright'. In fact, I would say she is rather dim; lovely person, but dim.
However... she went to a top private school, obtained three A levels and subsequently a degree in Estate Management from the Royal Agricultural University.
If she can do it, I'd say 70% of the population could. Whether we'd want to fund that is a different matter.
Shrugs I made a mistake quoting from memory the 110 so accept what you say as to 100. I would however query how much standards for degrees have been lowered because part of getting 50% to go from 10% I cannot believe there has not been a lowering of standards. I have worked with plenty of graduates in the 80's , 90's and forward. All I can say is back in the 80's and 90's you could tell why people had degrees. Nowadays they seem a little underpowered on average.....yes you still get the bright ones you just seem to have more mediocre ones that you wouldn't trust to run a whelk stall
Well yes, but now you are making a partly self-fulfilling argument: when university degrees were restricted to only a few, they tended to have a greater proportion of very bright people. Of course.
Not just that but the number of firsts given out now is obscene around 30 to 40% of the total i believe. (Used to be 1 or 2 firsts in a year out of 150). How can a truly intelligent person stand out in such a system. So then it all comes back to connections and contacts where the upper middle class have a massive advantage.
Yes, I posted the figures here a year or two back showing 95 per cent of Oxford graduates had firsts or upper seconds. More mysteriously, Oxford seems to have changed its official abbreviation from Oxon to Oxf.
Keir Starmer meeting with Macron apparently. And Hunt/Sunak helping him on his way by pissing off the pensioners.
It would be absolutely *delicious* for Starmer to lose this election after the establishment has so clearly decided the job's already his. Almost worth re-electing Sunak, if the Tories haven't had the good sense to sling him before the GE.
Lol, I see autocorrect put 'delicious' in instead of 'disastrous' there; it does come up with some perverse 'corrections'.
I am not sure how anyone intelligent could possibly find enough that Starmer will actually do differently to make failing to elect him any kind of disaster. Both he and Sunk are fully signed up to £50bn on net zero, appropriating a vast portion of the nations' wealth in tax, large scale immigration, the same foreign policy etc. The so called 'debates' between them massively exaggerate tiny differences. Either of them getting to form a Government is a disaster frankly, but at least Starmer failing to get his slathering chops on the job would provide some amusing schadenfreude.
"slathering chops"?
I am likening the heir apparent to a dog being teased by a delicious but elusive bone.
Keir Starmer meeting with Macron apparently. And Hunt/Sunak helping him on his way by pissing off the pensioners.
It would be absolutely *delicious* for Starmer to lose this election after the establishment has so clearly decided the job's already his. Almost worth re-electing Sunak, if the Tories haven't had the good sense to sling him before the GE.
Lol, I see autocorrect put 'delicious' in instead of 'disastrous' there; it does come up with some perverse 'corrections'.
I am not sure how anyone intelligent could possibly find enough that Starmer will actually do differently to make failing to elect him any kind of disaster. Both he and Sunk are fully signed up to £50bn on net zero, appropriating a vast portion of the nations' wealth in tax, large scale immigration, the same foreign policy etc. The so called 'debates' between them massively exaggerate tiny differences. Either of them getting to form a Government is a disaster frankly, but at least Starmer failing to get his slathering chops on the job would provide some amusing schadenfreude.
"slathering chops"?
Slavering chops is intended, I think.
Slathering chops is the sort of thing another PM would do, I suspect.
The world’s first confirmed dog-fox hybrid has been found in the Brazilian wilderness.
The animal was hit by a car in the area of Vacaria in 2021 and taken to a veterinary hospital for treatment but staff were unable to conclude whether it was a fox or dog they were taking care of.
Unusual physical characteristics, including some dog-like and some fox-like traits, piqued the interest of scientists from local universities who subsequently analysed her genes.
A recently published study revealed the animal’s mother was a pampas fox and her father a domestic dog of an unknown breed. It is the first recorded instance of a fox and dog breeding, experts believe.
It has the same build as a medium-sized dog, large, pointy ears, a long snout with a jet black nose and bulging brown eyes set into a thick, wiry black-brown coat with specks of white and grey throughout.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
If they earn extra then they pay extra, via both tax and NI.
But why should high earning graduates like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all be on a 9% lower income tax rate than their younger compatriots?
If you are arguing that older graduates should be surcharged thats fine. I just disagree that a non graduate shelf stacker in tesco's should have to pay more tax so people who are going to personally benefit several hundred thousand in pay over a working lifetime so you can have a free legup. I also suggested that i agree with you the interest is far to high. But it is clear the major financial benefit goes to the graduate not the state
But my proposal is to replace the 9% discriminatory income tax currently levied with an extra 1% income tax paid by everyone.
If your hypothesis that graduates earn more is correct, then they'll pay more, even under my proposal. But it'd be consistently applied.
A non graduate shelf stacker is net a beneficiary from the state anyway and not a high income tax payer anyway.
Why should I have to pay for your extra earnings? You will benefit far more than the state.
You don't. The earner pays more.
Education should be universally available to everyone so that they can be the best version of themselves.
If they succeed in education, then they pay income tax and that more than repays their education.
The problem is past generations of graduates who themselves benefited from free education but decided to welch on paying taxes to support the next generation in turn.
Then suggest a graduate tax levied on all graduates. I dont see why those of us that didn't goto university should fund you. The degree makes more for you than the state by a good margin
Because everyone has education and opportunities for it. You were educated yourself too I assume, if you were illiterate and innumerate I doubt you could do your job?
If you're a high earner, then pay income tax. If being a graduate facilitates high earning, that is already met in income tax. No need for double taxation.
Total bollocks, not everyone has opportunity for university. For a start average iq is 110. Half the people are less intelligent than that. You think university is for them. Then there are people like me that could of gone to university intellectualy but couldn't because of rl reasons. It is idiotic to think everyone has that opportunity therefore
Er, given your basic misunderstanding of IQ, I think maybe a University education would have done you some good, broaden your knowledge and improve your critical thinking etc. ;-)
What basic misunderstanding.....i am aware IQ is not a good measure it is what we have....sorry but its true a lot of people will never be able to get a degree was my point. Either because they lack the intellect or as I said because rl prohibits them from doing a degree.
Do you believe 100% of people are capable of attaining a degree? If not give me a ball park figure for the percentage capable? I went with the iq thing as its all we have
My response was of course slightly tongue-in-cheek - hence the ;-) But regarding IQ as a measure:
1. You said: 'For a start average iq is 110. No, the whole point about IQ is that it aims to be a quotient, centred around 100. Average (mean) IQ is, or should be, very close to 100, not 110.
2. IQ is not a complete, nor necessity accurate measure of intelligence. For example, creativity and social intelligence are not captured well by IQ tests.
I made no comments regarding what percentage of people could obtain a degree. Since you ask I would suggest, that with sufficient educational support, the large majority of people could obtain a degree if they so wanted. Clearly there are some people with learning difficulties who could not and many who have no desire or motivation.
As an anecdotal example, I offer my neighbour's daughter who is, by my neighbour's own admission 'not terribly bright'. In fact, I would say she is rather dim; lovely person, but dim.
However... she went to a top private school, obtained three A levels and subsequently a degree in Estate Management from the Royal Agricultural University.
If she can do it, I'd say 70% of the population could. Whether we'd want to fund that is a different matter.
Shrugs I made a mistake quoting from memory the 110 so accept what you say as to 100. I would however query how much standards for degrees have been lowered because part of getting 50% to go from 10% I cannot believe there has not been a lowering of standards. I have worked with plenty of graduates in the 80's , 90's and forward. All I can say is back in the 80's and 90's you could tell why people had degrees. Nowadays they seem a little underpowered on average.....yes you still get the bright ones you just seem to have more mediocre ones that you wouldn't trust to run a whelk stall
Well yes, but now you are making a partly self-fulfilling argument: when university degrees were restricted to only a few, they tended to have a greater proportion of very bright people. Of course.
Not just that but the number of firsts given out now is obscene around 30 to 40% of the total i believe. (Used to be 1 or 2 firsts in a year out of 150). How can a truly intelligent person stand out in such a system. So then it all comes back to connections and contacts where the upper middle class have a massive advantage.
I would honestly say a "truly intelligent" person - unfortunate phrasing aside, since it means 99.99% of us aren't intelligent - should not need a degree grade to stand out.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
If they earn extra then they pay extra, via both tax and NI.
But why should high earning graduates like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all be on a 9% lower income tax rate than their younger compatriots?
If you are arguing that older graduates should be surcharged thats fine. I just disagree that a non graduate shelf stacker in tesco's should have to pay more tax so people who are going to personally benefit several hundred thousand in pay over a working lifetime so you can have a free legup. I also suggested that i agree with you the interest is far to high. But it is clear the major financial benefit goes to the graduate not the state
But my proposal is to replace the 9% discriminatory income tax currently levied with an extra 1% income tax paid by everyone.
If your hypothesis that graduates earn more is correct, then they'll pay more, even under my proposal. But it'd be consistently applied.
A non graduate shelf stacker is net a beneficiary from the state anyway and not a high income tax payer anyway.
Why should I have to pay for your extra earnings? You will benefit far more than the state.
You don't. The earner pays more.
Education should be universally available to everyone so that they can be the best version of themselves.
If they succeed in education, then they pay income tax and that more than repays their education.
The problem is past generations of graduates who themselves benefited from free education but decided to welch on paying taxes to support the next generation in turn.
Then suggest a graduate tax levied on all graduates. I dont see why those of us that didn't goto university should fund you. The degree makes more for you than the state by a good margin
Because everyone has education and opportunities for it. You were educated yourself too I assume, if you were illiterate and innumerate I doubt you could do your job?
If you're a high earner, then pay income tax. If being a graduate facilitates high earning, that is already met in income tax. No need for double taxation.
Total bollocks, not everyone has opportunity for university. For a start average iq is 110. Half the people are less intelligent than that. You think university is for them. Then there are people like me that could of gone to university intellectualy but couldn't because of rl reasons. It is idiotic to think everyone has that opportunity therefore
Try reading. I said education, not university.
Maybe if you were better educated, you would have noticed that and understood the point? 😜
The only education you are arguing for is free university
No, I'm not. I believe in free schooling too. I believe in free college education too.
I think schools, colleges and university should be treated the same and funded the same. And those who benefit the most from education and earn the most as a result, repay that via income tax which funds the next generation.
A perhaps underrated reason for the growth of university attendance is that it is a pleasant way of life for most people, at least at undergraduate level, involving a light workload and the opportunity to meet a lot of people, typically while young, receptive to new experiences and ideas, and on average, in relatively good health to take advantage of those opportunities.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
If they earn extra then they pay extra, via both tax and NI.
But why should high earning graduates like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all be on a 9% lower income tax rate than their younger compatriots?
If you are arguing that older graduates should be surcharged thats fine. I just disagree that a non graduate shelf stacker in tesco's should have to pay more tax so people who are going to personally benefit several hundred thousand in pay over a working lifetime so you can have a free legup. I also suggested that i agree with you the interest is far to high. But it is clear the major financial benefit goes to the graduate not the state
But my proposal is to replace the 9% discriminatory income tax currently levied with an extra 1% income tax paid by everyone.
If your hypothesis that graduates earn more is correct, then they'll pay more, even under my proposal. But it'd be consistently applied.
A non graduate shelf stacker is net a beneficiary from the state anyway and not a high income tax payer anyway.
Why should I have to pay for your extra earnings? You will benefit far more than the state.
You don't. The earner pays more.
Education should be universally available to everyone so that they can be the best version of themselves.
If they succeed in education, then they pay income tax and that more than repays their education.
The problem is past generations of graduates who themselves benefited from free education but decided to welch on paying taxes to support the next generation in turn.
Then suggest a graduate tax levied on all graduates. I dont see why those of us that didn't goto university should fund you. The degree makes more for you than the state by a good margin
Because everyone has education and opportunities for it. You were educated yourself too I assume, if you were illiterate and innumerate I doubt you could do your job?
If you're a high earner, then pay income tax. If being a graduate facilitates high earning, that is already met in income tax. No need for double taxation.
Total bollocks, not everyone has opportunity for university. For a start average iq is 110. Half the people are less intelligent than that. You think university is for them. Then there are people like me that could of gone to university intellectualy but couldn't because of rl reasons. It is idiotic to think everyone has that opportunity therefore
Try reading. I said education, not university.
Maybe if you were better educated, you would have noticed that and understood the point? 😜
The only education you are arguing for is free university
No, I'm not. I believe in free schooling too. I believe in free college education too.
I think schools, colleges and university should be treated the same and funded the same. And those who benefit the most from education and earn the most as a result, repay that via income tax which funds the next generation.
Well, yes, but - are any of those institutions doing the jobs we need them to do? Primary school, probably yes. Colleges - probably yes. Secondary schools - a bit, though major room for a rethink on what we want from them. University - almost certainly not. Well, some are. But there is an awful lot of effort being put into educating an awful lot of people with things they don't really need to know. Granted they put out graduates in engineering and medicine, but they also put out graduates in sociology and English literature. Funding more than a smattering of the latter doesn't strike me as a good use of public money (or indeed anybody's money).
The world’s first confirmed dog-fox hybrid has been found in the Brazilian wilderness.
The animal was hit by a car in the area of Vacaria in 2021 and taken to a veterinary hospital for treatment but staff were unable to conclude whether it was a fox or dog they were taking care of.
Unusual physical characteristics, including some dog-like and some fox-like traits, piqued the interest of scientists from local universities who subsequently analysed her genes.
A recently published study revealed the animal’s mother was a pampas fox and her father a domestic dog of an unknown breed. It is the first recorded instance of a fox and dog breeding, experts believe.
It has the same build as a medium-sized dog, large, pointy ears, a long snout with a jet black nose and bulging brown eyes set into a thick, wiry black-brown coat with specks of white and grey throughout.
On topic: There appear to be parallels in the US. From the WaPo's principal fact checker, Glenn Kessler: "Which president has contributed the most to the nation’s long-term fiscal imbalance? That would be Lyndon B. Johnson, according to a 2021 study by Charles Blahous, a former economic adviser to George W. Bush and a public trustee for Social Security and Medicare from 2010 through 2015. Through an exhaustive study of Congressional Budget Office and Office of Management and Budget reports, Blahous estimated LBJ’s share of the fiscal imbalance is 29.7 percent. Close behind is Richard M. Nixon, with 29.2 percent.
Johnson enacted Medicare and Medicaid in the mid-1960s, and then Nixon in the early 1970s expanded both programs and also enhanced Social Security so that benefits were indexed to inflation. Social Security and Medicare are now so popular that both Biden and Republicans have pledged not to touch them as they haggle over other types of government spending. But in effect, according to this analysis, almost two-thirds of the nation’s long-term fiscal imbalance is a result of policy choices made more than 50 years ago." source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/05/16/president-most-blame-spiraling-national-debt-is/
The baby bust which followed these two presidents has made the fiscal imbalance worse, of course.
George W. Bush proposed saving social security by setting up individual savings accounts, with subsidies for low earners. Even after his win in 2004, the subject was too sensitive to even get a real hearing from Congress.
(Full disclosure: I am, like nearly every other American my age, a beneficiary of those programs.)
Hahaha, someone's going mad with the "troll" button
I presume the Mods know who.
Edit: I was going to say that I don't believe you can flag your own posts to we need to see whose posts have not been flagged to home in on the offender. But then I realised none of my posts have been flagged so I think I'll keep quiet on that point.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
If they earn extra then they pay extra, via both tax and NI.
But why should high earning graduates like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all be on a 9% lower income tax rate than their younger compatriots?
If you are arguing that older graduates should be surcharged thats fine. I just disagree that a non graduate shelf stacker in tesco's should have to pay more tax so people who are going to personally benefit several hundred thousand in pay over a working lifetime so you can have a free legup. I also suggested that i agree with you the interest is far to high. But it is clear the major financial benefit goes to the graduate not the state
But my proposal is to replace the 9% discriminatory income tax currently levied with an extra 1% income tax paid by everyone.
If your hypothesis that graduates earn more is correct, then they'll pay more, even under my proposal. But it'd be consistently applied.
A non graduate shelf stacker is net a beneficiary from the state anyway and not a high income tax payer anyway.
Why should I have to pay for your extra earnings? You will benefit far more than the state.
You don't. The earner pays more.
Education should be universally available to everyone so that they can be the best version of themselves.
If they succeed in education, then they pay income tax and that more than repays their education.
The problem is past generations of graduates who themselves benefited from free education but decided to welch on paying taxes to support the next generation in turn.
Then suggest a graduate tax levied on all graduates. I dont see why those of us that didn't goto university should fund you. The degree makes more for you than the state by a good margin
Because everyone has education and opportunities for it. You were educated yourself too I assume, if you were illiterate and innumerate I doubt you could do your job?
If you're a high earner, then pay income tax. If being a graduate facilitates high earning, that is already met in income tax. No need for double taxation.
Total bollocks, not everyone has opportunity for university. For a start average iq is 110. Half the people are less intelligent than that. You think university is for them. Then there are people like me that could of gone to university intellectualy but couldn't because of rl reasons. It is idiotic to think everyone has that opportunity therefore
Er, given your basic misunderstanding of IQ, I think maybe a University education would have done you some good, broaden your knowledge and improve your critical thinking etc. ;-)
What basic misunderstanding.....i am aware IQ is not a good measure it is what we have....sorry but its true a lot of people will never be able to get a degree was my point. Either because they lack the intellect or as I said because rl prohibits them from doing a degree.
Do you believe 100% of people are capable of attaining a degree? If not give me a ball park figure for the percentage capable? I went with the iq thing as its all we have
My response was of course slightly tongue-in-cheek - hence the ;-) But regarding IQ as a measure:
1. You said: 'For a start average iq is 110. No, the whole point about IQ is that it aims to be a quotient, centred around 100. Average (mean) IQ is, or should be, very close to 100, not 110.
2. IQ is not a complete, nor necessity accurate measure of intelligence. For example, creativity and social intelligence are not captured well by IQ tests.
I made no comments regarding what percentage of people could obtain a degree. Since you ask I would suggest, that with sufficient educational support, the large majority of people could obtain a degree if they so wanted. Clearly there are some people with learning difficulties who could not and many who have no desire or motivation.
As an anecdotal example, I offer my neighbour's daughter who is, by my neighbour's own admission 'not terribly bright'. In fact, I would say she is rather dim; lovely person, but dim.
However... she went to a top private school, obtained three A levels and subsequently a degree in Estate Management from the Royal Agricultural University.
If she can do it, I'd say 70% of the population could. Whether we'd want to fund that is a different matter.
Shrugs I made a mistake quoting from memory the 110 so accept what you say as to 100. I would however query how much standards for degrees have been lowered because part of getting 50% to go from 10% I cannot believe there has not been a lowering of standards. I have worked with plenty of graduates in the 80's , 90's and forward. All I can say is back in the 80's and 90's you could tell why people had degrees. Nowadays they seem a little underpowered on average.....yes you still get the bright ones you just seem to have more mediocre ones that you wouldn't trust to run a whelk stall
Well yes, but now you are making a partly self-fulfilling argument: when university degrees were restricted to only a few, they tended to have a greater proportion of very bright people. Of course.
Not just that but the number of firsts given out now is obscene around 30 to 40% of the total i believe. (Used to be 1 or 2 firsts in a year out of 150). How can a truly intelligent person stand out in such a system. So then it all comes back to connections and contacts where the upper middle class have a massive advantage.
Speaking of George W. Bush, to its credit, the WaPo is running a column by him on PEPFAR: "We are on the verge of ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic. To abandon our commitment now would forfeit two decades of unimaginable progress and raise further questions about the worth of America’s word.
The reauthorization is stalled because of questions about whether PEPFAR’s implementation under the current administration is sufficiently pro-life. But there is no program more pro-life than one which has saved more than 25 million lives. I urge Congress to reauthorize PEPFAR for another five years without delay." source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/09/13/george-bush-pepfar-michael-gerson-words/
A perhaps underrated reason for the growth of university attendance is that it is a pleasant way of life for most people, at least at undergraduate level, involving a light workload and the opportunity to meet a lot of people, typically while young, receptive to new experiences and ideas, and on average, in relatively good health to take advantage of those opportunities.
You're talking about sex
Jyst call it tantric yoga when mum and dad ask you what you are doing away at uni.
Is there something in the makeup of Tory councillors that makes them desperate to speculate recklessly with other people's money?
Will there be any comeback against said councillors? (That's a rhetorical question - we all know the answer.)
I do think this needs serious investigation. Quite a few councils went absolutely nuts with commercial property in a way that was reckless at best and potentially fishy in some cases.
At the very least it needs close examination so it isn't repeated, and there may be a case for surcharges along the lines of Shirley Porter (although she was seriously loaded of course and I doubt the key movers in these latest cases are).
Fucking hell, has Elon Musk been taking history lessons from Morris Dancer?
As any child knows the Pearl Harbour attack happened after the US invaded Japan.
Elon Musk on the request from the Ukrainian Government to turn on Starlink in Crimea: “We figured out that this was kind of like a Pearl Harbor like attack...So they really asked us to proactively take part in a major act of war”
An attack on occupiers of your own territory is hardly a 'major act of war'.
It's not even as though the daft tw@t has factories in Russia.
There are a lot of people who cannot conceive of a Russian defeat and so are determined to prevent it.
We've now seen a major attack on the Russian Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol harbour using British-supplied weapons. Where are the consequences Musk was worried about?
Fuck knows, given Ukraine repeated much the same attack and succeeded.
"I'm sorry, I was wrong" would be the honest, non narcissistic response from Musk.
Pandering to ranty motorists on twitter. next they will demanding we all pay "road tax"
I only know of one case, recently, where a cyclist (using a non road legal bike) hit someone and they died. He went inside for "wanton and furious pedalling" (or something like that).
What bemused me about the case was although he was at fault for riding a bike that had no brakes she was looking at her phone when she walked into the road and not paying attention. So, as sad as the outcome was, she was surely in part responsible for what happened ?
You're not really suggesting it's OK to knock someone down provided the victim survives, are you?
I was knocked down by a bike (on the pavement) a few years ago. If I'd been elderly or frail I could easily have had broken bones or worse. As it was, I thought initially I'd cracked a rib. I find quite often bikes come from behind on the pavement at speed, without any attempt at warning pedestrians. That shouldn't be defended on the basis of some stupid tribal cyclists versus motorists feud.
I agree about the tribal nature of it. it’s tedious. what I was saying in that specific case was the pedestrian contributed to the outcome by mucking around on her phone while walking. It was harsh he took all the blame. He certainly deserved some.
Tobias Ellwood resigns from Defence Committee chair.
To focus his time on being the MP for Kabul North.
I don't think what he said was entirely incorrect and it was Biden who decided to withdraw western troops and hand Afghanistan back to the Taliban not Ellwood
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
If they earn extra then they pay extra, via both tax and NI.
But why should high earning graduates like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all be on a 9% lower income tax rate than their younger compatriots?
If you are arguing that older graduates should be surcharged thats fine. I just disagree that a non graduate shelf stacker in tesco's should have to pay more tax so people who are going to personally benefit several hundred thousand in pay over a working lifetime so you can have a free legup. I also suggested that i agree with you the interest is far to high. But it is clear the major financial benefit goes to the graduate not the state
But my proposal is to replace the 9% discriminatory income tax currently levied with an extra 1% income tax paid by everyone.
If your hypothesis that graduates earn more is correct, then they'll pay more, even under my proposal. But it'd be consistently applied.
A non graduate shelf stacker is net a beneficiary from the state anyway and not a high income tax payer anyway.
Why should I have to pay for your extra earnings? You will benefit far more than the state.
You don't. The earner pays more.
Education should be universally available to everyone so that they can be the best version of themselves.
If they succeed in education, then they pay income tax and that more than repays their education.
The problem is past generations of graduates who themselves benefited from free education but decided to welch on paying taxes to support the next generation in turn.
Then suggest a graduate tax levied on all graduates. I dont see why those of us that didn't goto university should fund you. The degree makes more for you than the state by a good margin
Because everyone has education and opportunities for it. You were educated yourself too I assume, if you were illiterate and innumerate I doubt you could do your job?
If you're a high earner, then pay income tax. If being a graduate facilitates high earning, that is already met in income tax. No need for double taxation.
Total bollocks, not everyone has opportunity for university. For a start average iq is 110. Half the people are less intelligent than that. You think university is for them. Then there are people like me that could of gone to university intellectualy but couldn't because of rl reasons. It is idiotic to think everyone has that opportunity therefore
Try reading. I said education, not university.
Maybe if you were better educated, you would have noticed that and understood the point? 😜
The only education you are arguing for is free university
No, I'm not. I believe in free schooling too. I believe in free college education too.
I think schools, colleges and university should be treated the same and funded the same. And those who benefit the most from education and earn the most as a result, repay that via income tax which funds the next generation.
Well, yes, but - are any of those institutions doing the jobs we need them to do? Primary school, probably yes. Colleges - probably yes. Secondary schools - a bit, though major room for a rethink on what we want from them. University - almost certainly not. Well, some are. But there is an awful lot of effort being put into educating an awful lot of people with things they don't really need to know. Granted they put out graduates in engineering and medicine, but they also put out graduates in sociology and English literature. Funding more than a smattering of the latter doesn't strike me as a good use of public money (or indeed anybody's money).
Mandatory schooling until the age of 21, perhaps?
When I become unDictator, apprenticeships will be merged with degrees. Lawyers will be forced to learn to weld. Plumbers will be forced to appreciate Wordsworth.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
If they earn extra then they pay extra, via both tax and NI.
But why should high earning graduates like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all be on a 9% lower income tax rate than their younger compatriots?
If you are arguing that older graduates should be surcharged thats fine. I just disagree that a non graduate shelf stacker in tesco's should have to pay more tax so people who are going to personally benefit several hundred thousand in pay over a working lifetime so you can have a free legup. I also suggested that i agree with you the interest is far to high. But it is clear the major financial benefit goes to the graduate not the state
But my proposal is to replace the 9% discriminatory income tax currently levied with an extra 1% income tax paid by everyone.
If your hypothesis that graduates earn more is correct, then they'll pay more, even under my proposal. But it'd be consistently applied.
A non graduate shelf stacker is net a beneficiary from the state anyway and not a high income tax payer anyway.
Why should I have to pay for your extra earnings? You will benefit far more than the state.
Because the state will benefit in taxation by a fad larger amount than you will contribute towards anyone's extra earnings. You aren't paying for anything more than a minute fraction of that. And you will receive more than your contribution back from the state in various ways.
Fucking hell, has Elon Musk been taking history lessons from Morris Dancer?
As any child knows the Pearl Harbour attack happened after the US invaded Japan.
Elon Musk on the request from the Ukrainian Government to turn on Starlink in Crimea: “We figured out that this was kind of like a Pearl Harbor like attack...So they really asked us to proactively take part in a major act of war”
An attack on occupiers of your own territory is hardly a 'major act of war'.
It's not even as though the daft tw@t has factories in Russia.
There are a lot of people who cannot conceive of a Russian defeat and so are determined to prevent it.
We've now seen a major attack on the Russian Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol harbour using British-supplied weapons. Where are the consequences Musk was worried about?
Fuck knows, given Ukraine repeated much the same attack and succeeded.
"I'm sorry, I was wrong" would be the honest, non narcissistic response from Musk.
The attack yesterday used, in part, drone boats with Starlink connections.
if you are currently in your 30s, don't have a defined benefit occupational pension and are not able to save 20% of your post-tax income, cutting the indexation of the state pension is about the worst thing the government could do to you.
What naïve claptrap.
Our generation have been screwed with the ladder pulled up every step of the way it seems.
Tuition fees imposed by people who were graduates themselves but wouldn't pay a graduate tax, only young people pay it.
Housing market absolutely FUBAR'd with minimal construction and rent expected to fund other people's untaxed income.
Pension age rising with young people who are demographically not the issue, who are a smaller cohort and life expectancy has plateaued rather than the boomers who had much longer life expectancy than their forebears and were demographically a larger cohort.
I fully expect to be taxed for pensions of the past, but not to get one myself. Indeed we are all advised to act that way and save for one on that assumption, despite the fact we also need to pay rent to landlords, and pensions of boomers, and graduate tax and everything else ... saving for a contributory pension while paying out for non contribution ones we won't get ourselves is fully expected on top.
The tuition fees was to allow the vast expansion of University education from 5-10% to 50% of people attending. It is also already a graduate tax (albeit not retrospective), but a at least you can pay off the debt. A standard tax on all graduates would never end, even if you paid many times over what the cost had been.
Let's look at the Prime Minister's who have imposed the tax and whether they're graduates.
Tony Blair, graduate of Oxford University. Gordon Brown, graduate of Edinburgh University. David Cameron, graduate of Oxford University. Liz Truss, graduate of Oxford University. Rishi Sunak, graduate of Oxford University.
Which of these have been paying 9% of their income as a Graduate Tax?
Instead it's been levied by them as taxes for us, but not for them.
Education expanded to cover all and was paid for out of general taxation. Continuing that with 1% on income tax if needed would have been far fairer than 9% on income tax for some but not others.
Younger generations than me have it even worse. Our fees weren't too steep, younger ones can face 9% higher taxes for life and will never repay it. That's obscene, to charge 9% extra income tax on some but not others.
You forgot Mr Johnson. And Ms May. No point in doing down your argumen t unnecessarily ...
Danger of typing on a mobile, I meant to include them and thought I had!
Both Oxford University too.
I got my tuition and fees paid, plus maintenance (mostly - rest from parents and some vac work, but not enough to get in the way of the study). Never forgotten it, and never been happy with their pulling up the ladder. Still less with the usurious interest rates charged.
The ladder has certainly not been pulled up. You can compare the number of admissions when you went to today.
That's an apple and coconuts comparison though.
Many universities today existed in the past, they were just called something else like a polytechnic and got renamed to universities, but a rose by any other name ...
Also many jobs today need degrees which didn't in the past.
If you get a fantastic job out of a degree, great, and you should be paying the appropriate level of income tax accordingly.
If you don't, but you're lumbered with a 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
And if you do, but you're lucky enough to be old enough that you're not paying for that 9% additional rate of income tax, then how is that reasonable?
A 60 year old graduate earning £95k not from salaried income pays a lower rate of tax than a 24 year old graduate earning £30k from salaried income. Is that truly reasonable?
No, I agree with you that the current setup needs to be reformed, but the underlying principle of those that benefit pay should be maintained.
As for old graduates not paying anything, probably too difficult (and perhaps legally so, too) to retroactively charge them. That problem will go away eventually on its own though.
Education benefits everyone, that's why its universally available. Keep the principles of universal education, and simply tax it out of income tax funded by everyone. Proportionately that will be graduates, and the graduates of the past too, not just young graduates at the start of their career.
And its not like university is something that you do at 18 or never. If its kept open as an option then many people can and do go to university later on in life as mature students and often with better success doing that as they by then have experience of working for years and know better what they want to do with their lives, like become a midwife or a teacher etc, rather than doing a sociology degree "just because" and not knowing what they want to do with it.
Isn’t it proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings, quite considerably in some cases? Why should the poorest in society that did not go to university pay for someone else to have the opportunity to earn more money. No. If you benefited from it, you should bear much of the burden to pay for it.
No, its not proven that going to university increases your lifetime earnings.
Going to university may increase your earnings, hence "in some cases" but ironically many of those studies are based on when fewer people were going to university and those people who did . . . *drumroll please* do not pay the graduate tax today.
So the people who benefited the most, by people an 'elite' few who were graduates when not many were, are the ones who don't pay taxes, whereas people who go to university because its expected and to not do so marks you out more than having done so, do pay. Utterly insane.
If you benefit, if you get high incomes - like Oxford University graduate Tony Blair has for instance, then you should be paying Income Tax.
But for some reason Oxford University graduate and multimillionaire Tony Blair felt it was a good idea if he didn't have to pay the tax, but others did instead.
There is no moral, ethical or economic justification for that.
So over a 40 year working life they will earn 460k more than a non graduate.
If you make university out of general taxation you would therefore reduce the extra 158k tax they pay (which exlcudes the loan repayment just using normal tax and ni) to a mere 98k over those 40 years,
So the average graduate would benefit to the tune of 360k over a 40 year working life. Seems fair to me they pay the cost and not the non graduate. Now where we agree is the interest on the loans is too high and in my opinion should be set at the base rate
If they earn extra then they pay extra, via both tax and NI.
But why should high earning graduates like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all be on a 9% lower income tax rate than their younger compatriots?
If you are arguing that older graduates should be surcharged thats fine. I just disagree that a non graduate shelf stacker in tesco's should have to pay more tax so people who are going to personally benefit several hundred thousand in pay over a working lifetime so you can have a free legup. I also suggested that i agree with you the interest is far to high. But it is clear the major financial benefit goes to the graduate not the state
But my proposal is to replace the 9% discriminatory income tax currently levied with an extra 1% income tax paid by everyone.
If your hypothesis that graduates earn more is correct, then they'll pay more, even under my proposal. But it'd be consistently applied.
A non graduate shelf stacker is net a beneficiary from the state anyway and not a high income tax payer anyway.
Why should I have to pay for your extra earnings? You will benefit far more than the state.
You don't. The earner pays more.
Education should be universally available to everyone so that they can be the best version of themselves.
If they succeed in education, then they pay income tax and that more than repays their education.
The problem is past generations of graduates who themselves benefited from free education but decided to welch on paying taxes to support the next generation in turn.
Then suggest a graduate tax levied on all graduates. I dont see why those of us that didn't goto university should fund you. The degree makes more for you than the state by a good margin
Because everyone has education and opportunities for it. You were educated yourself too I assume, if you were illiterate and innumerate I doubt you could do your job?
If you're a high earner, then pay income tax. If being a graduate facilitates high earning, that is already met in income tax. No need for double taxation.
Total bollocks, not everyone has opportunity for university. For a start average iq is 110. Half the people are less intelligent than that. You think university is for them. Then there are people like me that could of gone to university intellectualy but couldn't because of rl reasons. It is idiotic to think everyone has that opportunity therefore
Er, given your basic misunderstanding of IQ, I think maybe a University education would have done you some good, broaden your knowledge and improve your critical thinking etc. ;-)
What basic misunderstanding.....i am aware IQ is not a good measure it is what we have....sorry but its true a lot of people will never be able to get a degree was my point. Either because they lack the intellect or as I said because rl prohibits them from doing a degree.
Do you believe 100% of people are capable of attaining a degree? If not give me a ball park figure for the percentage capable? I went with the iq thing as its all we have
But its not all we have. There's a reason people who study these things no longer take IQ seriously and instead it tends to be quoted by people like Leon.
The difference between people who can make it to university and those who can not is not primarily intelligence they're born with, its the issues of mindset and support primarily.
Intelligence is developed, its not innate.
If a child isn't supported, if they're not read to as a child, if they have poor parents or teachers, then yes they might struggle to thrive.
But if they have good parents, good teachers and the right mindset, then there's little reason why they can't succeed.
Mindset is the biggest difference. Too many people have a fixed mindset of thinking "I can't do this".
But if you have a growth mindset then you can add the word "yet". "I can't do this, yet" is completely different to I can't do this.
With a growth mindset people think that they have potential to do well, so they put in the effort, which leads to successful actions, which leads to good results, which reinforces their self-confidence, which means they believe in their own potential and it creates a virtuous circle.
To answer what percentage of people are capable of attaining a degree, then at 21 that'll be not everyone. But with the right support, and the right mindset, then I'd estimate well over 90% "could" do it.
Is there something in the makeup of Tory councillors that makes them desperate to speculate recklessly with other people's money?
Will there be any comeback against said councillors? (That's a rhetorical question - we all know the answer.)
I do think this needs serious investigation. Quite a few councils went absolutely nuts with commercial property in a way that was reckless at best and potentially fishy in some cases.
At the very least it needs close examination so it isn't repeated, and there may be a case for surcharges along the lines of Shirley Porter (although she was seriously loaded of course and I doubt the key movers in these latest cases are).
Striking graphs here - startled to see Spelthortne at 94x income, and others in trouble. Basildon at 23x, and Epping, for instance, on the hook as well, admittedly for only 22x its income.
Is there something in the makeup of Tory councillors that makes them desperate to speculate recklessly with other people's money?
Will there be any comeback against said councillors? (That's a rhetorical question - we all know the answer.)
I do think this needs serious investigation. Quite a few councils went absolutely nuts with commercial property in a way that was reckless at best and potentially fishy in some cases.
At the very least it needs close examination so it isn't repeated, and there may be a case for surcharges along the lines of Shirley Porter (although she was seriously loaded of course and I doubt the key movers in these latest cases are).
This is just a new administration trying to score political points by blaming the last one for its financial woes. In reality the situation is just much the same across local government, they have been catastrophically underfunded and cut beyond the bone for over a decade.
Is there something in the makeup of Tory councillors that makes them desperate to speculate recklessly with other people's money?
Will there be any comeback against said councillors? (That's a rhetorical question - we all know the answer.)
I do think this needs serious investigation. Quite a few councils went absolutely nuts with commercial property in a way that was reckless at best and potentially fishy in some cases.
At the very least it needs close examination so it isn't repeated, and there may be a case for surcharges along the lines of Shirley Porter (although she was seriously loaded of course and I doubt the key movers in these latest cases are).
This is just a new administration trying to score political points by blaming the last one for its financial woes. In reality the situation is just much the same across local government, they have been catastrophically underfunded and cut beyond the bone for over a decade.
Have a look at the variance in indebtedness. Sure, there is a pack in one part of the graph, but there is a looong tail of dodgy councils.
Comments
a) They learned lots of things at University that turned out to be useful and couldn't have been learned elsewhere.
or
b) The company they work for has an arbitrary filter on employment
If the answer is b), what would happen to the filter if there were fewer graduates?
The basic point stands though and is probably even more of a problem in many other fields.
One interesting issue is that use for military purposes actually breaks the original user contract with Starlink. The reason that is there, is to do with legal issues around export of controlled systems. Without the clause, a lawyer could argue that a Starlink terminal is potentially part of a weapon and should be export controlled.
Pandering to ranty motorists on twitter. next they will demanding we all pay "road tax"
I only know of one case, recently, where a cyclist (using a non road legal bike) hit someone and they died. He went inside for "wanton and furious pedalling" (or something like that).
What bemused me about the case was although he was at fault for riding a bike that had no brakes she was looking at her phone when she walked into the road and not paying attention. So, as sad as the outcome was, she was surely in part responsible for what happened ?
Are there any cyclists causing death by dangerous cycling that are not being pursued for manslaughter? Even if there is a need for such a law (manslaughter hard to prove, say) very few cyclists kill people so it's unlikely to be a deterrent for bad behaviours - no one is going to go out on a bike thinking, "sure I might kill someone today but I'll probably get away with it", surely? Getting caught and fined etc for bread and butter offences would be much more of a deterrent.
Of course, actually catching people is not trivial (requires stopping them as hard to ID otherwise).
ETA: Offtopic, but on the (by car) school run this morning I saw a boy about the age of my son, maybe slightly older (so, 5-6, perhaps 7) come flying out of a side road on a housing estate on a bike, no checking of the joining road (that I could see) no helmet, no high vis. Had he been 2-3 seconds later I'd have been braking hard (I was only doing 20, I'd guess, limit 30 - visibility is not great, so I was well under speed limit - I'm sure I'd have been able to stop) but I had to wonder what the parents - who were nowhere to be seen - were thinking.
If your hypothesis that graduates earn more is correct, then they'll pay more, even under my proposal. But it'd be consistently applied.
A non graduate shelf stacker is net a beneficiary from the state anyway and not a high income tax payer anyway.
or this:
https://www.edinburghlive.co.uk/news/edinburgh-news/west-lothian-pedestrian-killed-horror-26146703
etc.
Education should be universally available to everyone so that they can be the best version of themselves.
If they succeed in education, then they pay income tax and that more than repays their education.
The problem is past generations of graduates who themselves benefited from free education but decided to welch on paying taxes to support the next generation in turn.
I was knocked down by a bike (on the pavement) a few years ago. If I'd been elderly or frail I could easily have had broken bones or worse. As it was, I thought initially I'd cracked a rib. I find quite often bikes come from behind on the pavement at speed, without any attempt at warning pedestrians. That shouldn't be defended on the basis of some stupid tribal cyclists versus motorists feud.
He was cycling on the pavement and killed someone. If a driver did that he’d surely get more than 2 years
That’s manslaughter
If you're a high earner, then pay income tax. If being a graduate facilitates high earning, that is already met in income tax. No need for double taxation.
Same applies for almost anything else (not sure about some of the more cosmic isotopes, but can't see why not unless they decay to a different isotope of the same element, but I'm not sure if that is possible).
Edit: and Selebian too!
It would be absolutely *delicious* for Starmer to lose this election after the establishment has so clearly decided the job's already his. Almost worth re-electing Sunak, if the Tories haven't had the good sense to sling him before the GE.
Maybe if you were better educated, you would have noticed that and understood the point? 😜
I wonder if you could do anything useful with some sort of semi mandatory training course for offenders in exchange for not actually prosecuting them, analogous to those courses for speeding drivers? You'd still need to be able to trust the police to (a) care about the problem and (b) apply the tools available to them in a reasonable and non heavy handed manner, though, which I am rather dubious about...
"Mexico could declare the existence of alien life as controversial ufologist shows Congress 'bodies'"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAW1l5Q1e9c
What basic misunderstanding.....i am aware IQ is not a good measure it is what we have....sorry but its true a lot of people will never be able to get a degree was my point. Either because they lack the intellect or as I said because rl prohibits them from doing a degree.
Do you believe 100% of people are capable of attaining a degree? If not give me a ball park figure for the percentage capable? I went with the iq thing as its all we have
[AOB comes along]
Person opposite announces that this will be her last day in the office and is leaving the organisation on Friday.
Team leader thanks her for 20 months of work.
Who is she? Have I just got very poor facial recognition? The team isn't that big - there's only 20-odd of us.
I've now found out who she is by the name on her leaver's card. It isn't a name I recognise. But what function she fulfilled remains a mystery. I daren't really ask what she does.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg6NUbA65XQ
NSFW.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siyRjkJmPHU
(I can quite imagine that at some point in future we excitedly discover alien life and then realise we've just killed the last surviving specimen(s)!)
1. You said: 'For a start average iq is 110. No, the whole point about IQ is that it aims to be a quotient, centred around 100. Average (mean) IQ is, or should be, very close to 100, not 110.
2. IQ is not a complete, nor necessity accurate measure of intelligence. For example, creativity and social intelligence are not captured well by IQ tests.
I made no comments regarding what percentage of people could obtain a degree. Since you ask I would suggest, that with sufficient educational support, the large majority of people could obtain a degree if they so wanted. Clearly there are some people with learning difficulties who could not and many who have no desire or motivation.
As an anecdotal example, I offer my neighbour's daughter who is, by my neighbour's own admission 'not terribly bright'. In fact, I would say she is rather dim; lovely person, but dim.
However... she went to a top private school, obtained three A levels and subsequently a degree in Estate Management from the Royal Agricultural University.
If she can do it, I'd say 70% of the population could. Whether we'd want to fund that is a different matter.
However the purpose of all educational attainments is surely to show what you are capable of in terms of critical thought. If you lower the standards what is the point of it?
He was pedalling up one of Sheffield's steeper A roads at the time so the incident was at low speed. Would have been a different matter had he been going the other way.
"Up to 1000 carers could launch claims as Sunderland becomes next council to face equal pay scandal"
https://www.itv.com/news/2023-09-12/up-to-1000-female-carers-may-launch-equal-pay-claims-against-sunderland-council
I have no doubt young people are collectively better educated then their equivalents in the 80s and 90s simply because five times as many of them have had tertiary education and more have higher school certifications.
You might argue we don't need collectively need to be so well educated, that so much education is bad at some level. But that isn't the point you are making, I believe.
No connections or contacts for me.
Slathering chops is the sort of thing another PM would do, I suspect.
The world’s first confirmed dog-fox hybrid has been found in the Brazilian wilderness.
The animal was hit by a car in the area of Vacaria in 2021 and taken to a veterinary hospital for treatment but staff were unable to conclude whether it was a fox or dog they were taking care of.
Unusual physical characteristics, including some dog-like and some fox-like traits, piqued the interest of scientists from local universities who subsequently analysed her genes.
A recently published study revealed the animal’s mother was a pampas fox and her father a domestic dog of an unknown breed. It is the first recorded instance of a fox and dog breeding, experts believe.
It has the same build as a medium-sized dog, large, pointy ears, a long snout with a jet black nose and bulging brown eyes set into a thick, wiry black-brown coat with specks of white and grey throughout.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/13/first-dog-fox-hybrid-discovered-in-wild-brazil/
I think schools, colleges and university should be treated the same and funded the same. And those who benefit the most from education and earn the most as a result, repay that via income tax which funds the next generation.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/sep/13/michael-goves-local-council-warns-of-bankruptcy-risk-after-failed-tory-investments
Is there something in the makeup of Tory councillors that makes them desperate to speculate recklessly with other people's money?
Will there be any comeback against said councillors? (That's a rhetorical question - we all know the answer.)
Primary school, probably yes.
Colleges - probably yes.
Secondary schools - a bit, though major room for a rethink on what we want from them.
University - almost certainly not. Well, some are. But there is an awful lot of effort being put into educating an awful lot of people with things they don't really need to know. Granted they put out graduates in engineering and medicine, but they also put out graduates in sociology and English literature. Funding more than a smattering of the latter doesn't strike me as a good use of public money (or indeed anybody's money).
There's no mention of foxes in the Book of Revelation.
"Which president has contributed the most to the nation’s long-term fiscal imbalance? That would be Lyndon B. Johnson, according to a 2021 study by Charles Blahous, a former economic adviser to George W. Bush and a public trustee for Social Security and Medicare from 2010 through 2015. Through an exhaustive study of Congressional Budget Office and Office of Management and Budget reports, Blahous estimated LBJ’s share of the fiscal imbalance is 29.7 percent. Close behind is Richard M. Nixon, with 29.2 percent.
Johnson enacted Medicare and Medicaid in the mid-1960s, and then Nixon in the early 1970s expanded both programs and also enhanced Social Security so that benefits were indexed to inflation. Social Security and Medicare are now so popular that both Biden and Republicans have pledged not to touch them as they haggle over other types of government spending. But in effect, according to this analysis, almost two-thirds of the nation’s long-term fiscal imbalance is a result of policy choices made more than 50 years ago."
source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/05/16/president-most-blame-spiraling-national-debt-is/
The baby bust which followed these two presidents has made the fiscal imbalance worse, of course.
George W. Bush proposed saving social security by setting up individual savings accounts, with subsidies for low earners. Even after his win in 2004, the subject was too sensitive to even get a real hearing from Congress.
(Full disclosure: I am, like nearly every other American my age, a beneficiary of those programs.)
Edit: Too late, already banned!
"We are on the verge of ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic. To abandon our commitment now would forfeit two decades of unimaginable progress and raise further questions about the worth of America’s word.
The reauthorization is stalled because of questions about whether PEPFAR’s implementation under the current administration is sufficiently pro-life. But there is no program more pro-life than one which has saved more than 25 million lives. I urge Congress to reauthorize PEPFAR for another five years without delay."
source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/09/13/george-bush-pepfar-michael-gerson-words/
At the very least it needs close examination so it isn't repeated, and there may be a case for surcharges along the lines of Shirley Porter (although she was seriously loaded of course and I doubt the key movers in these latest cases are).
"Pro-Kremlin populist tipped to win Slovak elections"
https://www.euractiv.com/section/elections/news/pro-kremlin-populist-tipped-to-win-slovak-elections/
Back in the good old days, only the top people got to do it. Now they just let anyone have a go, and most of them are just wasting their time.
"I'm sorry, I was wrong" would be the honest, non narcissistic response from Musk.
When I become unDictator, apprenticeships will be merged with degrees. Lawyers will be forced to learn to weld. Plumbers will be forced to appreciate Wordsworth.
You aren't paying for anything more than a minute fraction of that.
And you will receive more than your contribution back from the state in various ways.
The difference between people who can make it to university and those who can not is not primarily intelligence they're born with, its the issues of mindset and support primarily.
Intelligence is developed, its not innate.
If a child isn't supported, if they're not read to as a child, if they have poor parents or teachers, then yes they might struggle to thrive.
But if they have good parents, good teachers and the right mindset, then there's little reason why they can't succeed.
Mindset is the biggest difference. Too many people have a fixed mindset of thinking "I can't do this".
But if you have a growth mindset then you can add the word "yet". "I can't do this, yet" is completely different to I can't do this.
With a growth mindset people think that they have potential to do well, so they put in the effort, which leads to successful actions, which leads to good results, which reinforces their self-confidence, which means they believe in their own potential and it creates a virtuous circle.
To answer what percentage of people are capable of attaining a degree, then at 21 that'll be not everyone. But with the right support, and the right mindset, then I'd estimate well over 90% "could" do it.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/bankrupt-birmingham-council-far-worst-30928463
Edit: not sure why the ranking is so different.