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Will the panickers stop panicking when their tanks are full? – politicalbetting.com

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  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362
    Sandpit said:

    Selebian said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Selebian said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    gealbhan said:

    Labour pledging to scrap business tax? A couple of weeks ago the Tories invented a new tax?

    Anyway, another policy reason to keep Labour out of power, they shouldn’t promise what they can’t deliver. This policy promise is undeliverable. Miles behind the Tories on economic credibility because of big brush strokes fantasy policy like this.

    Labour are focussing on old battles relating to high business rates on the high street.

    In reality it means they now need to find another £15bn to fill alongside the existing holes. Which shows how stupid they are as they are re-opening new battle fronts without paying attention to the existing battle fronts where they could easily win votes.

    I'm getting less and less impressed with the Labour party leadership ever single day.
    I don't agree with you. The aim of Labour's proposals today is to shift the burden of taxation from SMEs that occupy the nation's high streets to digital companies that occupy the nation's phones and computers. One of the major problems in the Red Wall, and elsewhere, is that town centres are dying on their feet, making towns less appealing to live in, and destroying the sense of community. If getting rid of business rates can reverse this trend, this would be 'levelling-up' in action. The playing field between Amazon and high-street retailers needs to be levelled. It's a good policy.
    OK, so where is the £15bn as it won't be coming from Amazon and co as Labour hasn't yet devised a means of collecting £15bn in tax from them.
    I'm sure you and others will be listening to Rachel Reeves shortly. At this stage of the electoral cycle, it wouldn't be sensible to say precisely where the money's coming from, because things change. It will be in the manifesto in time for the next GE campaign.
    I listened to Rachel a couple of times this weekend and her interview with Nick Robinson is worth watching on catch up

    At school she won a British under 14 girls chess championship and her cv dwarfs the shadow cabinet with time at the Bank of England, British Embassy in Washington and HBOS

    Labour should be falling over backwards to promote her to leader, she may even attract me to her policies but labour have to divest themselves of a lot of nonsense first
    I haven't listened, but will - thank you.

    Did she spend a lot of time going on about how awful the Tories are or did she set out the problems facing the country and broad ideas on how to address them and/or a vision for where to get to? If it's worth listening to, then I suspect the latter.

    She's incredibly boring and lacks revolutionary zeal. She's exactly the type of person a never-labour voter would think would make a good leader of the Labour Party.
    Sounds much like Starmer!

    I must admit I can't remember ever having heard her, although I suspect I must have done.

    Edit: And BigG has in fact voted Labour in the past, hasn't he? Or doesn't Blair count?
    Blair? Tory scum....
    2019 Tory Scum
    2017 Tory Scum
    2015 Tory Scum
    2010 Tory Scum
    2005 Tony Blair
    2001 Tony Blair
    1997 Tony Blair
    1992 Tory Scum
    1987 Tory Scum
    1983 Tory Scum
    1979 Tory Scum
    1974 Labour!!!!
    Blair continuity Thatcherism so Big G did stick to principles more than HY gives him credit for.

    Rachel Reeves speech wrecked by nerves. She is far too nervous for politics, should take up a different job. Something to do with collecting taxes or head of a financial think tank.

    Good speech possible chancellor, no chance! She mangled more than half the words.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    Phil said:

    Phil said:

    One way to raise revenues from online would be to ensure that all transactions on platforms like Amazon must be subject to VAT. Currently a plethora of tiny companies can crop up on Amazon and are VAT-exempt which isn't possible inside regular shops.

    I believe you can go to Amazon and buy a dress and not have VAT on it, but if you went to Debenhams and bought a dress it must have always had VAT on it.

    If someone wishes to open their own website then fair enough to be VAT-exempt until the threshold is met, just as if they'd opened their own physical store, but to suggest Amazon haven't hit the VAT threshold is insane.

    That's not a level playing field.

    The simplest way to do that would be to eliminate the VAT threshold of course. (as is the case on most of the continent).

    TBH eliminating most of the get out clauses from VAT would get rid of a lot of ludicrous shenanigans & put many accountants out of work which could only be a good thing.
    The threshold is sensible at some levels, if someone is setting up a small business then it doesn't make much sense to be fiddling about with VAT. Plus they'll be paying VAT when they buy supplies and not be able to reclaim it as a result of not being registered so its not much of a difference.

    But all online platforms have met the threshold. If I buy from Debenhams then Debenhams charge me VAT and reclaim any VAT they've paid their suppliers - if their suppliers aren't VAT registered then there'll be no VAT to reclaim for them but still a full charge for the consumer.

    Online platforms should operate exactly the same as retail ones. Amazon, eBay etc should be liable to pay VAT on every transaction they sell to us, and then be on their responsibility to reclaim VAT they pay to their suppliers. Just as physical retailers have to do.
    I assumed from the OP’s comment that there was some way for small sellers to avoid charging VAT through Amazon, so some were exploiting this by setting up a rolling sequence of small companies.

    But maybe this is not a plausible exploit of the tax system? It would depend on whether Amazon was acting as seller or merely as third party payment handler for non-Amazon sales on the Amazon platform.
    If they're sales on their platform then they're not merely a third party payment handler. They're the retailer too.

    If the results are coming up on their website, using their search engine, and going through their till then how have they not retailed it to me? Its a trick bricks and mortar don't use, that I've ever seen.
    If Amazon never take ownership or physical possession at best they are acting as an agent
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    MattW said:

    eek said:

    Nigelb said:

    gealbhan said:

    Labour pledging to scrap business tax? A couple of weeks ago the Tories invented a new tax?

    Anyway, another policy reason to keep Labour out of power, they shouldn’t promise what they can’t deliver. This policy promise is undeliverable. Miles behind the Tories on economic credibility because of big brush strokes fantasy policy like this.

    A £30 billion promise, where is it coming from if not business rates
    No, the promise is to freeze rates at their current level, to be paid for by an increased levy on the large internet companies:
    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/26/labour-to-scrap-business-rates-if-elected-says-shadow-chancellor

    No detail whatsoever on what might replace rates - but they are quite correct in recognising that rates valuations now bear little or no reaction to either the value of properties, or the ability of businesses to pay.
    Again clueless > attack relief on income from buy-to-let properties but no mention of the ability to expense interest on buy to let properties held within a limited company.

    Yep it's niche but they shouldn't be looking at relief you need to look at a sector / asset and work out how best can we extract tax from it....

    Also high street shops can't and won't up sticks and move to France or Ireland but all manufacturing and all invisible firms such as internet firms can.
    What you you take tax relief off on rental properties? And how much would it raise?

    Do they really want to prevent tax relief on things like improved kitchens, central heating, and double glazed windows?

    Even now, you don't get it on eg insulation, rather you have to claim it against CGT when you sell the property in 10-20 years time.

    The relief they are talking about is (I suspect) S21 interest relief but to do that they will need to treat properties owned within limited companies the same way.

    As I've said for years, we have issues where we tax the ownership method rather than the asset itself.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,145
    HYUFD said:

    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    More bottler news.

    "Don't mention the Sturgeon war! Tory ministers 'are ordered not to talk about Scottish independence' amid fears it just fuels separatist drive
    Ministers told not to engage with SNP or even make a positive case for the union
    They admit it would be 'very hard' for unionists to win new referendum currently
    They want to focus on Sturgeon and SNP's record amid NHS and drug crises"

    https://tinyurl.com/3zjw52ck

    They've certainly maintained an iron discipline on the not making a positive case for the union thing.

    2014 was a once in a generation referendum, they don't need to until a generation has elapsed since then.

    Union matters are reserved to Westminster so as long as this Tory government is in power it can refuse indyref2 and nothing Sturgeon can do about it
    So why do Scottish Tories talk about nothing else? If they don’t need to talk about independence, they could talk about their policies. Oh, wait!
    As opposing indyref 2 and independence has got the Scottish Tories to their highest voteshare since 1979, the independence and Union question is as much a vote winner for them as the SNP, even if a disaster for Scottish Labour as they get squeezed
    Oh, so 50% or so is the same as 25% or so?

    But I see it's time to change the topic of discussion to Deltic diesels or toy buying for Christmas.
    In terms of the Union the UK government gets the final say so who is the UK government is all that matters.

    I am just saying it boosted the vote for the Scottish Tories both at Westminster and the subsidiary Holyrood parliament
    You said it was "as much a vote winner for them as the SNP" which is blatant nonsense.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    eek said:

    gealbhan said:

    MaxPB said:

    F1: to win in Turkey:
    Bottas 17
    Norris 21
    Perez 21

    Highlights what an outstanding season Norris is having.

    If McLaren can deliver the car, then Norris and Ricciardo are a formidable lineup. Similar for Leclerc and Sainz, actually.

    If Riccardo can start to bring it on Saturdays as well as he has done on Sundays the last two races McLaren have got the best driver line up on the grid IMO. A race winning car next season would completely shake up the sport, for the better as Mercedes vs RBR has become dull.
    Norris is remarkably consistent. So why do the Sky F1 team make so much more fuss over the gobby shunter Russell? 🤔
    Because Russell is potentially a better driver (he won F2, Norris came second).

    Either way the next few years should be interesting, we have 4 top notch 21 year old F1 drivers all at different top teams.
    The next few years are going to be great, the top four teams with Russell, Norris, Leclerc and Verstappen.

    I can see Lewis’s 100 wins (plus probably a few more) record staying for a long time indeed, especially as those in charge of the sport seek to make each season more competitive between different teams. We’ll end up with what looks much more like a spec series than a prototype series, as the rules get more and more restrictive over time.
  • RattersRatters Posts: 756

    eek said:

    Sandpit said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    One way to raise revenues from online would be to ensure that all transactions on platforms like Amazon must be subject to VAT. Currently a plethora of tiny companies can crop up on Amazon and are VAT-exempt which isn't possible inside regular shops.

    I believe you can go to Amazon and buy a dress and not have VAT on it, but if you went to Debenhams and bought a dress it must have always had VAT on it.

    If someone wishes to open their own website then fair enough to be VAT-exempt until the threshold is met, just as if they'd opened their own physical store, but to suggest Amazon haven't hit the VAT threshold is insane.

    That's not a level playing field.

    Unless the company is a startup UK company that issue has already been fixed - as part of the new VAT rules that were introduced back in January.

    And in the cases that remain, Amazon is just a combination of payment and market stall provider to a very small UK business.
    Amazon are not a stall provider, they're a retailer. They should be liable to every bit as much tax for anything they retail every bit as much as any transaction that went through the tills at Debenhams would.

    When Debenhams were trading they'd have clothes divided by brand etc in little 'stalls' but none of them would be VAT exempt since Debenhams were retailer for all of them. Just as Amazon are for everything I buy from them.
    No Amazon are both a retailer (anything amazon sells direct) and a market stall provider (everything that is not sold by Amazon directly).

    The fact you haven't noticed that fact means you haven't paid much attention to how Amazon actually works...
    If they’re simply providing a market stall, then there won’t be a direct financial relationship with the consumer, who will pay the stall holder directly for whatever they are selling.
    And if they're merely providing a market stall then that market stall should have its own search engine etc and not be a part of the retailers own search engine.
    Let's try this a different way then.

    The Amazon website is a market stall on which the largest single stallholder is a (for historic reasons) a company called Amazon.
    And Amazon have met the tax threshold so they should be liable for all goods sold via their stall. Which is all goods that come up on their engine etc.

    If they offer up other stalls with their own firewalled search engine, their own products, their own payment processing etc that'd be different. But that's not the case, all goods are mingled together within the same stall to the consumer from Amazon regardless of supplier.
    I didn't realise this was a thing, but it puts me off Amazon even more than before.

    A simple law clarifying that any sale via a platform shall have VAT applied based on the total sales of the platform, rather than the individual, would make things black and white and even out the playing field with physical retailors. Likewise with taxi companies, delivery companies etc. Small businesses would still have the option of being VAT exempt when selling through their own website.

    However, I'm not sure removing business rates is the right way to go. Ultimately this is currently a tax of sorts on property assets, so one of our few 'wealth' based taxes. If having a physical location does not offer sufficient commercial benefit to offset property tax on an otherwise level playing field, then the property is better off converted into housing.

    The issue is I expect there's lots of other reform needed to close loopholes and reform business rates to make it a fair playing field.
  • Charles said:

    Nigelb said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    eek said:

    gealbhan said:

    Labour pledging to scrap business tax? A couple of weeks ago the Tories invented a new tax?

    Anyway, another policy reason to keep Labour out of power, they shouldn’t promise what they can’t deliver. This policy promise is undeliverable. Miles behind the Tories on economic credibility because of big brush strokes fantasy policy like this.

    Labour are focussing on old battles relating to high business rates on the high street.

    In reality it means they now need to find another £15bn to fill alongside the existing holes. Which shows how stupid they are as they are re-opening new battle fronts without paying attention to the existing battle fronts where they could easily win votes.

    I'm getting less and less impressed with the Labour party leadership ever single day.
    I don't agree with you. The aim of Labour's proposals today is to shift the burden of taxation from SMEs that occupy the nation's high streets to digital companies that occupy the nation's phones and computers. One of the major problems in the Red Wall, and elsewhere, is that town centres are dying on their feet, making towns less appealing to live in, and destroying the sense of community. If getting rid of business rates can reverse this trend, this would be 'levelling-up' in action. The playing field between Amazon and high-street retailers needs to be levelled. It's a good policy.
    I agree with you that its a good idea, except they've got no clue it seems as to how they would do so. So they're saying it will be done but we're to take it on faith that they'll have a way to do it.

    As it happens I agree that its the beginnings of a good policy, they're at least on the right path! That's something at least and I'll give them credit for that, first time in many years as either in Shadow or in office that Labour's Chancellor spokesperson seems to understand something about the issues in economy.

    But I'll wait before saying its a good policy until the policy is actually formulated and not just "this sounds good" but without details. To be fair though years before the election "this sounds good" but without details is an OK starting point and better than what Labour have had for many years!
    Thanks. As you're broadly sympathetic to the aims, I expect the Tories (yes, I know you're not one) to nick it any time soon.
    I seem to remember when I was drafting a possible policy agenda for SKS that this was one of my suggestions. I think that there is quite a compelling case to try and rebalance the tax demands between bricks and clicks. Shops are not only a good source of employment, they keep our city centres vibrant and are more accessible to the elderly etc.

    But you cannot simply abolish £15bn of tax revenues without having an alternative when we already have an unsustainable deficit. That is just lazy.
    This is the issue here - you need to understand what you plan to tax, why you plan to do so and how you plan to do so.

    You also when talking about retail need to understand why people purchase stuff online and it's usually for reasons where the high street could never compete.

    Only after that can you start talking about how you will give people tax breaks as otherwise it's a question of where are you going to get that £xbn from.

    And there are serious amount of structural issues within our tax system but there isn't any easy solutions as all changes will impact people's behaviour and that might have unintended consequences.
    But the first part of the policy ought to make it easier to repurpose high street properties large numbers of which are just sitting vacant.
    The easiest shift would be to add 2.5% to VAT (raising £16.5m based on 19/20 total VAT receipts of £130bn)

    Spend £15bn of that to reduce business rates. In theory that should keep the ultimate payer (the retail customer) the same while giving the high street store more flexibility to cut their prices if they want

    (And it includes a crafty £1bn tax increase)
    The Tories love increasing VAT.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,084
    edited September 2021
    Those demanding income tax on 'unearned' income would presumably support bringing it into line on other things such as eg allowing such income to be used for pension purposes with tax relief?
    eek said:

    MattW said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.t.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    Low earning?

    27k is not very far below the median salary.
    27k isn't far below the median salary, the new proposed starting point of £20k or so is well below the median salary.
    Aha. Correct.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165

    Charles said:

    Nigelb said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    eek said:

    gealbhan said:

    Labour pledging to scrap business tax? A couple of weeks ago the Tories invented a new tax?

    Anyway, another policy reason to keep Labour out of power, they shouldn’t promise what they can’t deliver. This policy promise is undeliverable. Miles behind the Tories on economic credibility because of big brush strokes fantasy policy like this.

    Labour are focussing on old battles relating to high business rates on the high street.

    In reality it means they now need to find another £15bn to fill alongside the existing holes. Which shows how stupid they are as they are re-opening new battle fronts without paying attention to the existing battle fronts where they could easily win votes.

    I'm getting less and less impressed with the Labour party leadership ever single day.
    I don't agree with you. The aim of Labour's proposals today is to shift the burden of taxation from SMEs that occupy the nation's high streets to digital companies that occupy the nation's phones and computers. One of the major problems in the Red Wall, and elsewhere, is that town centres are dying on their feet, making towns less appealing to live in, and destroying the sense of community. If getting rid of business rates can reverse this trend, this would be 'levelling-up' in action. The playing field between Amazon and high-street retailers needs to be levelled. It's a good policy.
    I agree with you that its a good idea, except they've got no clue it seems as to how they would do so. So they're saying it will be done but we're to take it on faith that they'll have a way to do it.

    As it happens I agree that its the beginnings of a good policy, they're at least on the right path! That's something at least and I'll give them credit for that, first time in many years as either in Shadow or in office that Labour's Chancellor spokesperson seems to understand something about the issues in economy.

    But I'll wait before saying its a good policy until the policy is actually formulated and not just "this sounds good" but without details. To be fair though years before the election "this sounds good" but without details is an OK starting point and better than what Labour have had for many years!
    Thanks. As you're broadly sympathetic to the aims, I expect the Tories (yes, I know you're not one) to nick it any time soon.
    I seem to remember when I was drafting a possible policy agenda for SKS that this was one of my suggestions. I think that there is quite a compelling case to try and rebalance the tax demands between bricks and clicks. Shops are not only a good source of employment, they keep our city centres vibrant and are more accessible to the elderly etc.

    But you cannot simply abolish £15bn of tax revenues without having an alternative when we already have an unsustainable deficit. That is just lazy.
    This is the issue here - you need to understand what you plan to tax, why you plan to do so and how you plan to do so.

    You also when talking about retail need to understand why people purchase stuff online and it's usually for reasons where the high street could never compete.

    Only after that can you start talking about how you will give people tax breaks as otherwise it's a question of where are you going to get that £xbn from.

    And there are serious amount of structural issues within our tax system but there isn't any easy solutions as all changes will impact people's behaviour and that might have unintended consequences.
    But the first part of the policy ought to make it easier to repurpose high street properties large numbers of which are just sitting vacant.
    The easiest shift would be to add 2.5% to VAT (raising £16.5m based on 19/20 total VAT receipts of £130bn)

    Spend £15bn of that to reduce business rates. In theory that should keep the ultimate payer (the retail customer) the same while giving the high street store more flexibility to cut their prices if they want

    (And it includes a crafty £1bn tax increase)
    The Tories love increasing VAT.
    A tax on consumption, what's not to like?
  • eek said:

    eek said:

    Sandpit said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    One way to raise revenues from online would be to ensure that all transactions on platforms like Amazon must be subject to VAT. Currently a plethora of tiny companies can crop up on Amazon and are VAT-exempt which isn't possible inside regular shops.

    I believe you can go to Amazon and buy a dress and not have VAT on it, but if you went to Debenhams and bought a dress it must have always had VAT on it.

    If someone wishes to open their own website then fair enough to be VAT-exempt until the threshold is met, just as if they'd opened their own physical store, but to suggest Amazon haven't hit the VAT threshold is insane.

    That's not a level playing field.

    Unless the company is a startup UK company that issue has already been fixed - as part of the new VAT rules that were introduced back in January.

    And in the cases that remain, Amazon is just a combination of payment and market stall provider to a very small UK business.
    Amazon are not a stall provider, they're a retailer. They should be liable to every bit as much tax for anything they retail every bit as much as any transaction that went through the tills at Debenhams would.

    When Debenhams were trading they'd have clothes divided by brand etc in little 'stalls' but none of them would be VAT exempt since Debenhams were retailer for all of them. Just as Amazon are for everything I buy from them.
    No Amazon are both a retailer (anything amazon sells direct) and a market stall provider (everything that is not sold by Amazon directly).

    The fact you haven't noticed that fact means you haven't paid much attention to how Amazon actually works...
    If they’re simply providing a market stall, then there won’t be a direct financial relationship with the consumer, who will pay the stall holder directly for whatever they are selling.
    Amazon processes payment in case the business turns out to be fake say by not delivering the goods, Amazon can repay the customer.

    One big problem we have as a country is that we've spent the last 30 years trying to Jury rig new business models into our existing tax (and other such as employment) laws.

    And we really need to go back and fix these things properly but no one wishes to do so for fixing them will highlight problems that probably aren't fixable.
    Well precisely because Amazon are the ultimate retailer to the consumer, not whatever name on the hat is supply Amazon.

    Amazon should be taxed as the supplier and they ought to be able to reclaim VAT from their suppliers. Which should be everyone who registers to sell on Amazon.
    See my comment below this one for a better explanation.

    The issue is that when you look at Amazon you see a single firm called Amazon.

    But because I understand how Amazon is built nowadays I see a number of different firms

    Amazon Advertising (a $5bn turnover company from what I've seen)
    Amazon Payments (which is not subject to VAT as it's financial transactions)
    Amazon Warehouse
    Amazon Logistics (which will collect from your warehouse at 10pm for next day delivery).


    and somewhere down the line

    Amazon the Department store....
    I get that.

    And the point is "Amazon the Department store" has met the tax threshold. They should be taxed on all transactions exactly the same as "Debenhams the Department store".

    Amazon the Department store ought to then be able to reclaim the VAT they themselves pay* while purchasing whether that be from Amazon Warehouse, or RandomSupplier27652b.

    * Accounting-wise, the payment may not need to be physically made.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    Well we've got around 70 miles range left in the tank and have to make a long journey on Thursday.

    Hopefully I can fill up on Wednesday or else it's £££ for two train tickets.

    Yep it's £££.

    Booked 2 tickets to London in December yesterday £210 was the cheapest I could sensible do it.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    Sandpit said:

    Phil said:

    Phil said:

    One way to raise revenues from online would be to ensure that all transactions on platforms like Amazon must be subject to VAT. Currently a plethora of tiny companies can crop up on Amazon and are VAT-exempt which isn't possible inside regular shops.

    I believe you can go to Amazon and buy a dress and not have VAT on it, but if you went to Debenhams and bought a dress it must have always had VAT on it.

    If someone wishes to open their own website then fair enough to be VAT-exempt until the threshold is met, just as if they'd opened their own physical store, but to suggest Amazon haven't hit the VAT threshold is insane.

    That's not a level playing field.

    The simplest way to do that would be to eliminate the VAT threshold of course. (as is the case on most of the continent).

    TBH eliminating most of the get out clauses from VAT would get rid of a lot of ludicrous shenanigans & put many accountants out of work which could only be a good thing.
    The threshold is sensible at some levels, if someone is setting up a small business then it doesn't make much sense to be fiddling about with VAT. Plus they'll be paying VAT when they buy supplies and not be able to reclaim it as a result of not being registered so its not much of a difference.

    But all online platforms have met the threshold. If I buy from Debenhams then Debenhams charge me VAT and reclaim any VAT they've paid their suppliers - if their suppliers aren't VAT registered then there'll be no VAT to reclaim for them but still a full charge for the consumer.

    Online platforms should operate exactly the same as retail ones. Amazon, eBay etc should be liable to pay VAT on every transaction they sell to us, and then be on their responsibility to reclaim VAT they pay to their suppliers. Just as physical retailers have to do.
    I assumed from the OP’s comment that there was some way for small sellers to avoid charging VAT through Amazon, so some were exploiting this by setting up a rolling sequence of small companies.

    But maybe this is not a plausible exploit of the tax system? It would depend on whether Amazon was acting as seller or merely as third party payment handler for non-Amazon sales on the Amazon platform.
    Yes. There’s a court case against Uber working its way through at the moment. If the government wins, the award will be something like £1.5bn in historic VAT payments not collected by the fake taxi firm.

    The government are saying that if you take the money, and set both the price to the consumer and the payment to the service provider, you’re liable for the VAT on the fare. Uber are saying that they are just a platform, that processes payments for a number of small businesses who are not VAT registered.
    I don’t believe Amazon sets the price for Marketplace transactions
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,145

    Charles said:

    Nigelb said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    eek said:

    gealbhan said:

    Labour pledging to scrap business tax? A couple of weeks ago the Tories invented a new tax?

    Anyway, another policy reason to keep Labour out of power, they shouldn’t promise what they can’t deliver. This policy promise is undeliverable. Miles behind the Tories on economic credibility because of big brush strokes fantasy policy like this.

    Labour are focussing on old battles relating to high business rates on the high street.

    In reality it means they now need to find another £15bn to fill alongside the existing holes. Which shows how stupid they are as they are re-opening new battle fronts without paying attention to the existing battle fronts where they could easily win votes.

    I'm getting less and less impressed with the Labour party leadership ever single day.
    I don't agree with you. The aim of Labour's proposals today is to shift the burden of taxation from SMEs that occupy the nation's high streets to digital companies that occupy the nation's phones and computers. One of the major problems in the Red Wall, and elsewhere, is that town centres are dying on their feet, making towns less appealing to live in, and destroying the sense of community. If getting rid of business rates can reverse this trend, this would be 'levelling-up' in action. The playing field between Amazon and high-street retailers needs to be levelled. It's a good policy.
    I agree with you that its a good idea, except they've got no clue it seems as to how they would do so. So they're saying it will be done but we're to take it on faith that they'll have a way to do it.

    As it happens I agree that its the beginnings of a good policy, they're at least on the right path! That's something at least and I'll give them credit for that, first time in many years as either in Shadow or in office that Labour's Chancellor spokesperson seems to understand something about the issues in economy.

    But I'll wait before saying its a good policy until the policy is actually formulated and not just "this sounds good" but without details. To be fair though years before the election "this sounds good" but without details is an OK starting point and better than what Labour have had for many years!
    Thanks. As you're broadly sympathetic to the aims, I expect the Tories (yes, I know you're not one) to nick it any time soon.
    I seem to remember when I was drafting a possible policy agenda for SKS that this was one of my suggestions. I think that there is quite a compelling case to try and rebalance the tax demands between bricks and clicks. Shops are not only a good source of employment, they keep our city centres vibrant and are more accessible to the elderly etc.

    But you cannot simply abolish £15bn of tax revenues without having an alternative when we already have an unsustainable deficit. That is just lazy.
    This is the issue here - you need to understand what you plan to tax, why you plan to do so and how you plan to do so.

    You also when talking about retail need to understand why people purchase stuff online and it's usually for reasons where the high street could never compete.

    Only after that can you start talking about how you will give people tax breaks as otherwise it's a question of where are you going to get that £xbn from.

    And there are serious amount of structural issues within our tax system but there isn't any easy solutions as all changes will impact people's behaviour and that might have unintended consequences.
    But the first part of the policy ought to make it easier to repurpose high street properties large numbers of which are just sitting vacant.
    The easiest shift would be to add 2.5% to VAT (raising £16.5m based on 19/20 total VAT receipts of £130bn)

    Spend £15bn of that to reduce business rates. In theory that should keep the ultimate payer (the retail customer) the same while giving the high street store more flexibility to cut their prices if they want

    (And it includes a crafty £1bn tax increase)
    The Tories love increasing VAT.
    Yes, because it bears on the poorer more heavily.
  • Mr. Sandpit, overlooking Sainz, perhaps. He's leading Leclerc in the standings right now.
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362
    eek said:

    gealbhan said:

    MaxPB said:

    F1: to win in Turkey:
    Bottas 17
    Norris 21
    Perez 21

    Highlights what an outstanding season Norris is having.

    If McLaren can deliver the car, then Norris and Ricciardo are a formidable lineup. Similar for Leclerc and Sainz, actually.

    If Riccardo can start to bring it on Saturdays as well as he has done on Sundays the last two races McLaren have got the best driver line up on the grid IMO. A race winning car next season would completely shake up the sport, for the better as Mercedes vs RBR has become dull.
    Norris is remarkably consistent. So why do the Sky F1 team make so much more fuss over the gobby shunter Russell? 🤔
    Because Russell is potentially a better driver (he won F2, Norris came second).

    Either way the next few years should be interesting, we have 4 top notch 21 year old F1 drivers all at different top teams.
    In terms of potential would you not back Mr Consistency over a shunter?
  • FishingFishing Posts: 4,555
    tlg86 said:

    Cookie said:

    Selebian said:

    Cookie said:

    From my observations, any panic that there was in GM is already over. I filled up on Saturday - there was a queue of five minutes or so, but only for cars with pumps on their right. The left hand pumps were all free. Which made me think the problem was more a case of an imbalance of left- and right-handed pump cars turning up at the same time.

    How does the left vs right thing work? Do manufacturers do a 50:50 split across each model, or do they make all cars within the same model either left or right to reduce costs? Presumably there is some goal to even the numbers out?
    We have the same car as our previous car (but 8 years newer) and the fuel inlet has switched from right to left - the source of much confusion the first few times I filled up the new car.
    My wife pointed out to me (after I asked her for the nth time which side the filler was on the family car) that the fuel gauge has a little arrow telling you which side. That's a Ford, was also the case in another Ford we used to have, but I'm not sure whether all cars have that.

    In most fuel stations the hoses are long enough to fill up on either side, particularly if you pull forwards a bit (never as comfortable on the far side, but normally very doable). You do have to accept everyone else looks at you as the idiot who forgot which side the filler cap was, but you don't have to queue so long.
    Yes, all cars have them. I had been driving for over 20 years before I realised that.

    In the garage I was in on Saturday, some did break ranks and fill up from the 'wrong' side - but I think most of us thought the extra wait was worth the not-looking-a-bit-awkward.

    If you know how long your car is, filling up from the wrong side is easy.

    But I always quote Partridge when I do it!
    I saw the most obnoxious thing I've seen in a while today. Some Range Rover driver was filling up, with a long trailer that blocked anyone from using the pump behind him, while the queue stretched off the forecourt and down the busy dual carriageway.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,765

    F1: to win in Turkey:
    Bottas 17
    Norris 21
    Perez 21

    Highlights what an outstanding season Norris is having.

    If McLaren can deliver the car, then Norris and Ricciardo are a formidable lineup. Similar for Leclerc and Sainz, actually.

    I think Lando is more likely to be the next UK champion after Lewis than Russell, despite the latter having the Mercedes seat.
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 3,869

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    For all of the flap, the change in tuition fees was a positive step in allowing poorer students access. Instead of fees up front it was hypothecated fees when earning.

    The issue was funding for universities. With the government contribution to uni teaching cut by 78%, we've seen institutions both get it in the neck for charging the "maximum" £9k a year and offering poor tuition due to a lack of money.

    Anyway, think what these £9k fees are. Instead of the government handing money to the universities, it hands it to student loans who pay it to universities. We know that in this era of bankism debt is an asset. How much "asset" was added to bank balance sheets in this way? a very quiet way to keep injecting cash into a broken banking system.
    And the funding comes down to the idea that 50% of kids need to go to university. IMV that was always an insane target, and has massively skewed expectations, education and the jobs market.

    IMV everything else leads on from that.
    Except that sort of figure for Tertiary education is the norm in nearly all competitor economies. It reaches 69% in South Korea. Italy and Germany are the exceptions in the developed world.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment

    Maybe Britons are thicker than other nations, but that doesn't bode well for the future.

    The problem perhaps is more the poor quality of many courses, particularly in terms of contact time with students, so little value added.

    I think that the cost of Tertiary education is quite inflated in Britain by two factors: Universities use undergraduate fees to subsidise other things, and second that British students want to live a good lifestyle away from home. Few go to nearby Universities. The student loan system barely covers rent, and not even close to that in London and a number of other cities.
    Except tertiary education != universities. From your link;

    " The World Bank, for example, defines tertiary education as including universities as well as institutions that teach specific capacities of higher learning such as colleges, technical training institutes, community colleges, nursing schools, research laboratories, centers of excellence, and distance learning centers."

    That's where we're going wrong. Universities are just one strand of tertiary education, and yet they've grown to dominate. We'd be much better sorted with other types as well, in particular on-job training.
    That is pretty much what I said. The problem is not the numbers going, but rather the poor quality of much British Tertiary education, and the emphasis on a partying life away from home.
    I'm unsure it is. I talked about he goal of 50% to university, and you talked about tertiary education. These are not, and should not be, the same.

    We need plumbers. I see no need for plumbers to go to university; they'd be much better served with an apprenticeship and then a C&G. We have too much university, and not enough apprenticeships and other further education.
    One of my brother-in-laws did a three-year technical course in welding at an Irish Institute of Technology. He has plenty of work and a big new house.

    My impression is that apprenticeships and C&G in Britain simply aren't working as well as the Irish system. Maybe it's a prestige/class thing? In the same family they have a physics PhD, a music Masters and an MBA - there's no sense that the welder has fallen short as there might be with a British middle class family.
    This is another area where the UK's insistence of a uni degree is wrong. If you don't get one, you have somehow failed. And our ability to look down our noses at people based not on their value, but on whether or not they hold a certain piece of paper.

    But in the meantime, the increased numbers going to uni have devalued that piece of paper.
    Yet the figures are clear, Higher apprentices at level 5 or above earn more over their lifetimes on average than all graduates except those who attended a Russell Group university. They also don't pay tuition fees unlike their student counterparts.
    https://onefile.co.uk/explore/which-is-better-university-degrees-or-higher-apprenticeships/

    So apprentices can cope with the snobbery given their higher bank balances and the fact many can buy a property in their 20s or early 30s (certainly outside London and the South East) unlike most students
    Indeed. So why drive kids down the uni route when it won't gain them much? Why 50%? why not 40%? 30%? 20%?

    It's a random figure plucked out of Blair's backside because it sounds good. Yet even if it was based on evidence, then there should have been another policy about further education opportunities for those who did not go.

    My nephew got the grades to go into uni, but chose to get a job. He's worked hard, and is on a salary much greater than his friends who went. He's probably worked harder than them, and has no student debts. Yet if he was in certain industries, there would be a barrier - a paper ceiling - through which he could not burst. Sometimes that ceiling may be necessary - science, for instance. In most it is not.

    Fortunately he's chosen an industry where that is less likely.
    Much of the public sector, including local government, seems to require degrees that are unnecessary for the job.
    What happened with degrees - from the perspective of a graduate and hirer of staff.

    When Blair talked of expanding degree jobs, he was thinking of the type of jobs that Russell Group (and up) are the feeders for.

    The massive expansion with the polys was not done in concert with increasing standards. This created a large number of second class (ha) degrees.

    Employers did indeed find that they needed more people with high quality degrees - So the Russell Group grew and large numbers of graduates were recruited from overseas.

    In the high end jobs, a 2.1 or above from a Russell Group (or overseas equivalent) became mandated by HR. So if you are hiring, you don't get to see other CVs

    So, given the volume of graduates, lower skilled jobs, began demanding degrees. Since they could get them. So, people, who in the past wouldn't have had to have a degree had to get one to get the same quality of job they would have got anyway....

    So we now have a situation where there are two glass ceilings

    Russell Group Degree
    ________

    Former Poly Degree
    ________

    No degree

    The irony was, that back in the day when degrees were much rarer, there was at least some possibility of making it to the top without a degree. Now, it is explicitly forbidden.

    In one job, we were doing work for a bank. The bank (well their HR) tried to stop one of the team coming in, since their background checks showed no degree....

    We have created an absolute caste system.
    Do senior managers have the authority to overrule, or bypass, HR. Why are HR needed. Aren’t managers the people to should have the authority to hire, fire and generally manage their staff?
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603

    Mr. Sandpit, overlooking Sainz, perhaps. He's leading Leclerc in the standings right now.

    Sainz is quality, Ferrari are mistaken if they think he'll quietly take the role of number 2 driver. The only seat in the top 4 that needs improvement is Perez IMO. He's not a top driver.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    Charles said:

    Sandpit said:

    Phil said:

    Phil said:

    One way to raise revenues from online would be to ensure that all transactions on platforms like Amazon must be subject to VAT. Currently a plethora of tiny companies can crop up on Amazon and are VAT-exempt which isn't possible inside regular shops.

    I believe you can go to Amazon and buy a dress and not have VAT on it, but if you went to Debenhams and bought a dress it must have always had VAT on it.

    If someone wishes to open their own website then fair enough to be VAT-exempt until the threshold is met, just as if they'd opened their own physical store, but to suggest Amazon haven't hit the VAT threshold is insane.

    That's not a level playing field.

    The simplest way to do that would be to eliminate the VAT threshold of course. (as is the case on most of the continent).

    TBH eliminating most of the get out clauses from VAT would get rid of a lot of ludicrous shenanigans & put many accountants out of work which could only be a good thing.
    The threshold is sensible at some levels, if someone is setting up a small business then it doesn't make much sense to be fiddling about with VAT. Plus they'll be paying VAT when they buy supplies and not be able to reclaim it as a result of not being registered so its not much of a difference.

    But all online platforms have met the threshold. If I buy from Debenhams then Debenhams charge me VAT and reclaim any VAT they've paid their suppliers - if their suppliers aren't VAT registered then there'll be no VAT to reclaim for them but still a full charge for the consumer.

    Online platforms should operate exactly the same as retail ones. Amazon, eBay etc should be liable to pay VAT on every transaction they sell to us, and then be on their responsibility to reclaim VAT they pay to their suppliers. Just as physical retailers have to do.
    I assumed from the OP’s comment that there was some way for small sellers to avoid charging VAT through Amazon, so some were exploiting this by setting up a rolling sequence of small companies.

    But maybe this is not a plausible exploit of the tax system? It would depend on whether Amazon was acting as seller or merely as third party payment handler for non-Amazon sales on the Amazon platform.
    Yes. There’s a court case against Uber working its way through at the moment. If the government wins, the award will be something like £1.5bn in historic VAT payments not collected by the fake taxi firm.

    The government are saying that if you take the money, and set both the price to the consumer and the payment to the service provider, you’re liable for the VAT on the fare. Uber are saying that they are just a platform, that processes payments for a number of small businesses who are not VAT registered.
    I don’t believe Amazon sets the price for Marketplace transactions
    Amazon don't impose any price on marketplace transactions, they can be as high or as low as the seller wants.

    Uber is a very different case to Amazon although Uber has probably spent a fortune on PR trying to make them look identical.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    Am I the only one here who thinks government should mostly get out of higher education completely?

    Let the universities, students and banks determine price in a free market.

    Expand sixth form colleges into ‘community colleges’, if they want to keep a low-cost way of getting a degree without the students moving away from home.

    There’s certainly no way that politicians should be making decisions on interest rates or repayment thresholds, because apart from anything else it’s politically unpopular!
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    edited September 2021

    Selebian said:

    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    gealbhan said:

    Labour pledging to scrap business tax? A couple of weeks ago the Tories invented a new tax?

    Anyway, another policy reason to keep Labour out of power, they shouldn’t promise what they can’t deliver. This policy promise is undeliverable. Miles behind the Tories on economic credibility because of big brush strokes fantasy policy like this.

    Labour are focussing on old battles relating to high business rates on the high street.

    In reality it means they now need to find another £15bn to fill alongside the existing holes. Which shows how stupid they are as they are re-opening new battle fronts without paying attention to the existing battle fronts where they could easily win votes.

    I'm getting less and less impressed with the Labour party leadership ever single day.
    I don't agree with you. The aim of Labour's proposals today is to shift the burden of taxation from SMEs that occupy the nation's high streets to digital companies that occupy the nation's phones and computers. One of the major problems in the Red Wall, and elsewhere, is that town centres are dying on their feet, making towns less appealing to live in, and destroying the sense of community. If getting rid of business rates can reverse this trend, this would be 'levelling-up' in action. The playing field between Amazon and high-street retailers needs to be levelled. It's a good policy.
    It may be a good policy but from where are Labour proposing to fill the £10bn or so tax shortfall? I'd like to see some detail on this proposal and as I've said, I'm still open minded on voting for Labour vs not voting at all.
    I'm not.
    Were you ever? Didn't you make HYUFD's true Tory list the other day? :wink:
    I might abstain from voting Tory, but I'm not voting for a party I disagree with even more out of spite.

    That said, I don't view politics as supporting a football team - if the Tories became social democrat and incompetent, and Labour became very dry and sensible, then it might be different.

    However, there is no sign of that.
    I totally get party loyalty, and members as a result giving benefit of the doubt on many issues to party directive in effect, as they don't feel strongly about it and trust the broad thrust of the party.

    I've never gotten those who literally treat is as supporting a football team, may even use that analogy as a point of pride at how loyal they are, since as you put it there is the possibility at least that one's party might change significantly enough that you feel you have no option but to go elsewhere.

    If they could literally advance any position and still retain support that's just delegating all thought to the whims of a changable entity which might only retain the brand name, where's the sense in that? Surely we back a brand because we believe in more than just the name at some level.
  • Mr. L, debatable. Car matters more than driver by some distance.

    The 2022 title market is going to be... intriguing.

    Mr. Max, Perez confounds me. He was fantastic in 2020, and fully deserved the Red Bull seat. And he won in Azerbaijan. But generally, he's lacklustre. Verstappen-Perez versus any of the other top three teams looks hamstrung.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,620

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    For all of the flap, the change in tuition fees was a positive step in allowing poorer students access. Instead of fees up front it was hypothecated fees when earning.

    The issue was funding for universities. With the government contribution to uni teaching cut by 78%, we've seen institutions both get it in the neck for charging the "maximum" £9k a year and offering poor tuition due to a lack of money.

    Anyway, think what these £9k fees are. Instead of the government handing money to the universities, it hands it to student loans who pay it to universities. We know that in this era of bankism debt is an asset. How much "asset" was added to bank balance sheets in this way? a very quiet way to keep injecting cash into a broken banking system.
    And the funding comes down to the idea that 50% of kids need to go to university. IMV that was always an insane target, and has massively skewed expectations, education and the jobs market.

    IMV everything else leads on from that.
    Except that sort of figure for Tertiary education is the norm in nearly all competitor economies. It reaches 69% in South Korea. Italy and Germany are the exceptions in the developed world.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment

    Maybe Britons are thicker than other nations, but that doesn't bode well for the future.

    The problem perhaps is more the poor quality of many courses, particularly in terms of contact time with students, so little value added.

    I think that the cost of Tertiary education is quite inflated in Britain by two factors: Universities use undergraduate fees to subsidise other things, and second that British students want to live a good lifestyle away from home. Few go to nearby Universities. The student loan system barely covers rent, and not even close to that in London and a number of other cities.
    Except tertiary education != universities. From your link;

    " The World Bank, for example, defines tertiary education as including universities as well as institutions that teach specific capacities of higher learning such as colleges, technical training institutes, community colleges, nursing schools, research laboratories, centers of excellence, and distance learning centers."

    That's where we're going wrong. Universities are just one strand of tertiary education, and yet they've grown to dominate. We'd be much better sorted with other types as well, in particular on-job training.
    That is pretty much what I said. The problem is not the numbers going, but rather the poor quality of much British Tertiary education, and the emphasis on a partying life away from home.
    I'm unsure it is. I talked about he goal of 50% to university, and you talked about tertiary education. These are not, and should not be, the same.

    We need plumbers. I see no need for plumbers to go to university; they'd be much better served with an apprenticeship and then a C&G. We have too much university, and not enough apprenticeships and other further education.
    One of my brother-in-laws did a three-year technical course in welding at an Irish Institute of Technology. He has plenty of work and a big new house.

    My impression is that apprenticeships and C&G in Britain simply aren't working as well as the Irish system. Maybe it's a prestige/class thing? In the same family they have a physics PhD, a music Masters and an MBA - there's no sense that the welder has fallen short as there might be with a British middle class family.
    This is another area where the UK's insistence of a uni degree is wrong. If you don't get one, you have somehow failed. And our ability to look down our noses at people based not on their value, but on whether or not they hold a certain piece of paper.

    But in the meantime, the increased numbers going to uni have devalued that piece of paper.
    Yet the figures are clear, Higher apprentices at level 5 or above earn more over their lifetimes on average than all graduates except those who attended a Russell Group university. They also don't pay tuition fees unlike their student counterparts.
    https://onefile.co.uk/explore/which-is-better-university-degrees-or-higher-apprenticeships/

    So apprentices can cope with the snobbery given their higher bank balances and the fact many can buy a property in their 20s or early 30s (certainly outside London and the South East) unlike most students
    Indeed. So why drive kids down the uni route when it won't gain them much? Why 50%? why not 40%? 30%? 20%?

    It's a random figure plucked out of Blair's backside because it sounds good. Yet even if it was based on evidence, then there should have been another policy about further education opportunities for those who did not go.

    My nephew got the grades to go into uni, but chose to get a job. He's worked hard, and is on a salary much greater than his friends who went. He's probably worked harder than them, and has no student debts. Yet if he was in certain industries, there would be a barrier - a paper ceiling - through which he could not burst. Sometimes that ceiling may be necessary - science, for instance. In most it is not.

    Fortunately he's chosen an industry where that is less likely.
    Much of the public sector, including local government, seems to require degrees that are unnecessary for the job.
    What happened with degrees - from the perspective of a graduate and hirer of staff.

    When Blair talked of expanding degree jobs, he was thinking of the type of jobs that Russell Group (and up) are the feeders for.

    The massive expansion with the polys was not done in concert with increasing standards. This created a large number of second class (ha) degrees.

    Employers did indeed find that they needed more people with high quality degrees - So the Russell Group grew and large numbers of graduates were recruited from overseas.

    In the high end jobs, a 2.1 or above from a Russell Group (or overseas equivalent) became mandated by HR. So if you are hiring, you don't get to see other CVs

    So, given the volume of graduates, lower skilled jobs, began demanding degrees. Since they could get them. So, people, who in the past wouldn't have had to have a degree had to get one to get the same quality of job they would have got anyway....

    So we now have a situation where there are two glass ceilings

    Russell Group Degree
    ________

    Former Poly Degree
    ________

    No degree

    The irony was, that back in the day when degrees were much rarer, there was at least some possibility of making it to the top without a degree. Now, it is explicitly forbidden.

    In one job, we were doing work for a bank. The bank (well their HR) tried to stop one of the team coming in, since their background checks showed no degree....

    We have created an absolute caste system.
    Do senior managers have the authority to overrule, or bypass, HR. Why are HR needed. Aren’t managers the people to should have the authority to hire, fire and generally manage their staff?
    Gatekeeping - trying to bypass HR in large organisations hits the block that HR are appointed to control the hiring process.

    Legal and other responsibility - Tons of legislation about fairness in hiring, and usually company policies as well. So HR argues it must go through their defined, audited process.

    So bypassing them involves.... well, good luck with that one. You are trying to tell people that you are talking the job they are paid for away from them.....
  • RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    It will only be a tax increase for those who aren't paying their share. For those who are paying their share it will be a tax cut.

    If you're going to charge for education then charge for education, but if you're going to charge based on earnings then that's income tax. Charging some different rates of income tax than others is not equitable.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    Nope, you haven’t. Money is fungible - the QC should be paying more.

    My answer: a degree is a conscious choice by an individual which they think will add value to them in the long run. They should pay for that (as well as paying a share of the improvement in their earnings through a progressive tax system). The government should contribute to the cost because of the positive externalities (although I’d hazard those are higher for, say, STEM courses than film studies)

    The loan structure smooths the financing requirement to allow poorer students to pursue degrees. I’d be fine for there to be a taper on the availability of loans (or a higher rate of interest charged) for children of high income parents*. In principle I wouldn’t have an issue for grants first poor students/high value courses.

    The government shouldn’t be making a profit on the loans though

    * subject to protection for kids with no access to parental support
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited September 2021

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    For all of the flap, the change in tuition fees was a positive step in allowing poorer students access. Instead of fees up front it was hypothecated fees when earning.

    The issue was funding for universities. With the government contribution to uni teaching cut by 78%, we've seen institutions both get it in the neck for charging the "maximum" £9k a year and offering poor tuition due to a lack of money.

    Anyway, think what these £9k fees are. Instead of the government handing money to the universities, it hands it to student loans who pay it to universities. We know that in this era of bankism debt is an asset. How much "asset" was added to bank balance sheets in this way? a very quiet way to keep injecting cash into a broken banking system.
    And the funding comes down to the idea that 50% of kids need to go to university. IMV that was always an insane target, and has massively skewed expectations, education and the jobs market.

    IMV everything else leads on from that.
    Except that sort of figure for Tertiary education is the norm in nearly all competitor economies. It reaches 69% in South Korea. Italy and Germany are the exceptions in the developed world.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment

    Maybe Britons are thicker than other nations, but that doesn't bode well for the future.

    The problem perhaps is more the poor quality of many courses, particularly in terms of contact time with students, so little value added.

    I think that the cost of Tertiary education is quite inflated in Britain by two factors: Universities use undergraduate fees to subsidise other things, and second that British students want to live a good lifestyle away from home. Few go to nearby Universities. The student loan system barely covers rent, and not even close to that in London and a number of other cities.
    Except tertiary education != universities. From your link;

    " The World Bank, for example, defines tertiary education as including universities as well as institutions that teach specific capacities of higher learning such as colleges, technical training institutes, community colleges, nursing schools, research laboratories, centers of excellence, and distance learning centers."

    That's where we're going wrong. Universities are just one strand of tertiary education, and yet they've grown to dominate. We'd be much better sorted with other types as well, in particular on-job training.
    That is pretty much what I said. The problem is not the numbers going, but rather the poor quality of much British Tertiary education, and the emphasis on a partying life away from home.
    I'm unsure it is. I talked about he goal of 50% to university, and you talked about tertiary education. These are not, and should not be, the same.

    We need plumbers. I see no need for plumbers to go to university; they'd be much better served with an apprenticeship and then a C&G. We have too much university, and not enough apprenticeships and other further education.
    One of my brother-in-laws did a three-year technical course in welding at an Irish Institute of Technology. He has plenty of work and a big new house.

    My impression is that apprenticeships and C&G in Britain simply aren't working as well as the Irish system. Maybe it's a prestige/class thing? In the same family they have a physics PhD, a music Masters and an MBA - there's no sense that the welder has fallen short as there might be with a British middle class family.
    This is another area where the UK's insistence of a uni degree is wrong. If you don't get one, you have somehow failed. And our ability to look down our noses at people based not on their value, but on whether or not they hold a certain piece of paper.

    But in the meantime, the increased numbers going to uni have devalued that piece of paper.
    Yet the figures are clear, Higher apprentices at level 5 or above earn more over their lifetimes on average than all graduates except those who attended a Russell Group university. They also don't pay tuition fees unlike their student counterparts.
    https://onefile.co.uk/explore/which-is-better-university-degrees-or-higher-apprenticeships/

    So apprentices can cope with the snobbery given their higher bank balances and the fact many can buy a property in their 20s or early 30s (certainly outside London and the South East) unlike most students
    Indeed. So why drive kids down the uni route when it won't gain them much? Why 50%? why not 40%? 30%? 20%?

    It's a random figure plucked out of Blair's backside because it sounds good. Yet even if it was based on evidence, then there should have been another policy about further education opportunities for those who did not go.

    My nephew got the grades to go into uni, but chose to get a job. He's worked hard, and is on a salary much greater than his friends who went. He's probably worked harder than them, and has no student debts. Yet if he was in certain industries, there would be a barrier - a paper ceiling - through which he could not burst. Sometimes that ceiling may be necessary - science, for instance. In most it is not.

    Fortunately he's chosen an industry where that is less likely.
    Much of the public sector, including local government, seems to require degrees that are unnecessary for the job.
    What happened with degrees - from the perspective of a graduate and hirer of staff.

    When Blair talked of expanding degree jobs, he was thinking of the type of jobs that Russell Group (and up) are the feeders for.

    The massive expansion with the polys was not done in concert with increasing standards. This created a large number of second class (ha) degrees.

    Employers did indeed find that they needed more people with high quality degrees - So the Russell Group grew and large numbers of graduates were recruited from overseas.

    In the high end jobs, a 2.1 or above from a Russell Group (or overseas equivalent) became mandated by HR. So if you are hiring, you don't get to see other CVs

    So, given the volume of graduates, lower skilled jobs, began demanding degrees. Since they could get them. So, people, who in the past wouldn't have had to have a degree had to get one to get the same quality of job they would have got anyway....

    So we now have a situation where there are two glass ceilings

    Russell Group Degree
    ________

    Former Poly Degree
    ________

    No degree

    The irony was, that back in the day when degrees were much rarer, there was at least some possibility of making it to the top without a degree. Now, it is explicitly forbidden.

    In one job, we were doing work for a bank. The bank (well their HR) tried to stop one of the team coming in, since their background checks showed no degree....

    We have created an absolute caste system.
    Do senior managers have the authority to overrule, or bypass, HR. Why are HR needed. Aren’t managers the people to should have the authority to hire, fire and generally manage their staff?
    It is managers of top companies and partners in top law and accountancy firms who tell HR they will only look at candidates for interview who attended a Russell Group university.

    HR simply process CVs based on what they are told to do in accordance with hiring policies set by senior management
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362
    tlg86 said:

    Charles said:

    Nigelb said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    eek said:

    gealbhan said:

    Labour pledging to scrap business tax? A couple of weeks ago the Tories invented a new tax?

    Anyway, another policy reason to keep Labour out of power, they shouldn’t promise what they can’t deliver. This policy promise is undeliverable. Miles behind the Tories on economic credibility because of big brush strokes fantasy policy like this.

    Labour are focussing on old battles relating to high business rates on the high street.

    In reality it means they now need to find another £15bn to fill alongside the existing holes. Which shows how stupid they are as they are re-opening new battle fronts without paying attention to the existing battle fronts where they could easily win votes.

    I'm getting less and less impressed with the Labour party leadership ever single day.
    I don't agree with you. The aim of Labour's proposals today is to shift the burden of taxation from SMEs that occupy the nation's high streets to digital companies that occupy the nation's phones and computers. One of the major problems in the Red Wall, and elsewhere, is that town centres are dying on their feet, making towns less appealing to live in, and destroying the sense of community. If getting rid of business rates can reverse this trend, this would be 'levelling-up' in action. The playing field between Amazon and high-street retailers needs to be levelled. It's a good policy.
    I agree with you that its a good idea, except they've got no clue it seems as to how they would do so. So they're saying it will be done but we're to take it on faith that they'll have a way to do it.

    As it happens I agree that its the beginnings of a good policy, they're at least on the right path! That's something at least and I'll give them credit for that, first time in many years as either in Shadow or in office that Labour's Chancellor spokesperson seems to understand something about the issues in economy.

    But I'll wait before saying its a good policy until the policy is actually formulated and not just "this sounds good" but without details. To be fair though years before the election "this sounds good" but without details is an OK starting point and better than what Labour have had for many years!
    Thanks. As you're broadly sympathetic to the aims, I expect the Tories (yes, I know you're not one) to nick it any time soon.
    I seem to remember when I was drafting a possible policy agenda for SKS that this was one of my suggestions. I think that there is quite a compelling case to try and rebalance the tax demands between bricks and clicks. Shops are not only a good source of employment, they keep our city centres vibrant and are more accessible to the elderly etc.

    But you cannot simply abolish £15bn of tax revenues without having an alternative when we already have an unsustainable deficit. That is just lazy.
    This is the issue here - you need to understand what you plan to tax, why you plan to do so and how you plan to do so.

    You also when talking about retail need to understand why people purchase stuff online and it's usually for reasons where the high street could never compete.

    Only after that can you start talking about how you will give people tax breaks as otherwise it's a question of where are you going to get that £xbn from.

    And there are serious amount of structural issues within our tax system but there isn't any easy solutions as all changes will impact people's behaviour and that might have unintended consequences.
    But the first part of the policy ought to make it easier to repurpose high street properties large numbers of which are just sitting vacant.
    The easiest shift would be to add 2.5% to VAT (raising £16.5m based on 19/20 total VAT receipts of £130bn)

    Spend £15bn of that to reduce business rates. In theory that should keep the ultimate payer (the retail customer) the same while giving the high street store more flexibility to cut their prices if they want

    (And it includes a crafty £1bn tax increase)
    The Tories love increasing VAT.
    A tax on consumption, what's not to like?
    When it’s on nice to haves, but when it’s on must haves, like fuel, clothes, food, it operates like a stealth income tax, a sneaky hand into the housekeeping budget. The Torys must never again be the party that points to its income tax cuts whilst putting its sneaky hand into purses and wallets with VAT on necessary items, that piss taking out of the voters was main reason for 97.

    Sounds like you haven’t learnt that lesson?
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    It will only be a tax increase for those who aren't paying their share. For those who are paying their share it will be a tax cut.

    If you're going to charge for education then charge for education, but if you're going to charge based on earnings then that's income tax. Charging some different rates of income tax than others is not equitable.
    Again you are conflating your proposed tax reforms with the narrow point regarding whether or not taxpayers should pay for tuition. If taxpayers are paying for it, regardless of the system, you will be in the situation Charles described right back at the start of this thread.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739
    New voting intention, too:

    CON: 39% (-2)
    LAB: 36% (+6)
    LIB: 9% (-4)

    Best PM:

    Boris Johnson: 38% (-9)
    Keir Starmer: 38% (=)

    Via @IpsosMORI https://twitter.com/nicholascecil/status/1442428094074212353 https://twitter.com/JobeDoherty/status/1442442013736013829/photo/1
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,574
    edited September 2021
    DavidL said:

    F1: to win in Turkey:
    Bottas 17
    Norris 21
    Perez 21

    Highlights what an outstanding season Norris is having.

    If McLaren can deliver the car, then Norris and Ricciardo are a formidable lineup. Similar for Leclerc and Sainz, actually.

    I think Lando is more likely to be the next UK champion after Lewis than Russell, despite the latter having the Mercedes seat.
    Too early to say, I think, given Russell hasn't had the car to show much. Norris does look the more complete driver of the two for now.
  • Sandpit said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    Am I the only one here who thinks government should mostly get out of higher education completely?

    Let the universities, students and banks determine price in a free market.

    Expand sixth form colleges into ‘community colleges’, if they want to keep a low-cost way of getting a degree without the students moving away from home.

    There’s certainly no way that politicians should be making decisions on interest rates or repayment thresholds, because apart from anything else it’s politically unpopular!
    That's a more reasonable suggestion than our current one. What we have right now isn't a market rate, its a convoluted income tax surcharge for certain people in the name of student finance.
  • PhilPhil Posts: 1,919
    I’m agreeing with Philip T a lot today. Must be something in the water.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    For all of the flap, the change in tuition fees was a positive step in allowing poorer students access. Instead of fees up front it was hypothecated fees when earning.

    The issue was funding for universities. With the government contribution to uni teaching cut by 78%, we've seen institutions both get it in the neck for charging the "maximum" £9k a year and offering poor tuition due to a lack of money.

    Anyway, think what these £9k fees are. Instead of the government handing money to the universities, it hands it to student loans who pay it to universities. We know that in this era of bankism debt is an asset. How much "asset" was added to bank balance sheets in this way? a very quiet way to keep injecting cash into a broken banking system.
    And the funding comes down to the idea that 50% of kids need to go to university. IMV that was always an insane target, and has massively skewed expectations, education and the jobs market.

    IMV everything else leads on from that.
    Except that sort of figure for Tertiary education is the norm in nearly all competitor economies. It reaches 69% in South Korea. Italy and Germany are the exceptions in the developed world.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment

    Maybe Britons are thicker than other nations, but that doesn't bode well for the future.

    The problem perhaps is more the poor quality of many courses, particularly in terms of contact time with students, so little value added.

    I think that the cost of Tertiary education is quite inflated in Britain by two factors: Universities use undergraduate fees to subsidise other things, and second that British students want to live a good lifestyle away from home. Few go to nearby Universities. The student loan system barely covers rent, and not even close to that in London and a number of other cities.
    Except tertiary education != universities. From your link;

    " The World Bank, for example, defines tertiary education as including universities as well as institutions that teach specific capacities of higher learning such as colleges, technical training institutes, community colleges, nursing schools, research laboratories, centers of excellence, and distance learning centers."

    That's where we're going wrong. Universities are just one strand of tertiary education, and yet they've grown to dominate. We'd be much better sorted with other types as well, in particular on-job training.
    That is pretty much what I said. The problem is not the numbers going, but rather the poor quality of much British Tertiary education, and the emphasis on a partying life away from home.
    I'm unsure it is. I talked about he goal of 50% to university, and you talked about tertiary education. These are not, and should not be, the same.

    We need plumbers. I see no need for plumbers to go to university; they'd be much better served with an apprenticeship and then a C&G. We have too much university, and not enough apprenticeships and other further education.
    One of my brother-in-laws did a three-year technical course in welding at an Irish Institute of Technology. He has plenty of work and a big new house.

    My impression is that apprenticeships and C&G in Britain simply aren't working as well as the Irish system. Maybe it's a prestige/class thing? In the same family they have a physics PhD, a music Masters and an MBA - there's no sense that the welder has fallen short as there might be with a British middle class family.
    This is another area where the UK's insistence of a uni degree is wrong. If you don't get one, you have somehow failed. And our ability to look down our noses at people based not on their value, but on whether or not they hold a certain piece of paper.

    But in the meantime, the increased numbers going to uni have devalued that piece of paper.
    Yet the figures are clear, Higher apprentices at level 5 or above earn more over their lifetimes on average than all graduates except those who attended a Russell Group university. They also don't pay tuition fees unlike their student counterparts.
    https://onefile.co.uk/explore/which-is-better-university-degrees-or-higher-apprenticeships/

    So apprentices can cope with the snobbery given their higher bank balances and the fact many can buy a property in their 20s or early 30s (certainly outside London and the South East) unlike most students
    Indeed. So why drive kids down the uni route when it won't gain them much? Why 50%? why not 40%? 30%? 20%?

    It's a random figure plucked out of Blair's backside because it sounds good. Yet even if it was based on evidence, then there should have been another policy about further education opportunities for those who did not go.

    My nephew got the grades to go into uni, but chose to get a job. He's worked hard, and is on a salary much greater than his friends who went. He's probably worked harder than them, and has no student debts. Yet if he was in certain industries, there would be a barrier - a paper ceiling - through which he could not burst. Sometimes that ceiling may be necessary - science, for instance. In most it is not.

    Fortunately he's chosen an industry where that is less likely.
    Much of the public sector, including local government, seems to require degrees that are unnecessary for the job.
    What happened with degrees - from the perspective of a graduate and hirer of staff.

    When Blair talked of expanding degree jobs, he was thinking of the type of jobs that Russell Group (and up) are the feeders for.

    The massive expansion with the polys was not done in concert with increasing standards. This created a large number of second class (ha) degrees.

    Employers did indeed find that they needed more people with high quality degrees - So the Russell Group grew and large numbers of graduates were recruited from overseas.

    In the high end jobs, a 2.1 or above from a Russell Group (or overseas equivalent) became mandated by HR. So if you are hiring, you don't get to see other CVs

    So, given the volume of graduates, lower skilled jobs, began demanding degrees. Since they could get them. So, people, who in the past wouldn't have had to have a degree had to get one to get the same quality of job they would have got anyway....

    So we now have a situation where there are two glass ceilings

    Russell Group Degree
    ________

    Former Poly Degree
    ________

    No degree

    The irony was, that back in the day when degrees were much rarer, there was at least some possibility of making it to the top without a degree. Now, it is explicitly forbidden.

    In one job, we were doing work for a bank. The bank (well their HR) tried to stop one of the team coming in, since their background checks showed no degree....

    We have created an absolute caste system.
    Do senior managers have the authority to overrule, or bypass, HR. Why are HR needed. Aren’t managers the people to should have the authority to hire, fire and generally manage their staff?
    It is managers of top companies and partners in top law and accountancy firms who tell HR they will only look at candidates for interview who attended a Russell Group university.

    HR simply process CVs based on what they are told
    I work for a top investment bank and we don't do that, it's too simplistic and you lose a lot of good candidates. One of our star performers last year was a school leaver who didn't go to university.

    I'd suggest those managers who do that at these top accounting and law firms are an example of lazy management.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    Sandpit said:

    Selebian said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Selebian said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    gealbhan said:

    Labour pledging to scrap business tax? A couple of weeks ago the Tories invented a new tax?

    Anyway, another policy reason to keep Labour out of power, they shouldn’t promise what they can’t deliver. This policy promise is undeliverable. Miles behind the Tories on economic credibility because of big brush strokes fantasy policy like this.

    Labour are focussing on old battles relating to high business rates on the high street.

    In reality it means they now need to find another £15bn to fill alongside the existing holes. Which shows how stupid they are as they are re-opening new battle fronts without paying attention to the existing battle fronts where they could easily win votes.

    I'm getting less and less impressed with the Labour party leadership ever single day.
    I don't agree with you. The aim of Labour's proposals today is to shift the burden of taxation from SMEs that occupy the nation's high streets to digital companies that occupy the nation's phones and computers. One of the major problems in the Red Wall, and elsewhere, is that town centres are dying on their feet, making towns less appealing to live in, and destroying the sense of community. If getting rid of business rates can reverse this trend, this would be 'levelling-up' in action. The playing field between Amazon and high-street retailers needs to be levelled. It's a good policy.
    OK, so where is the £15bn as it won't be coming from Amazon and co as Labour hasn't yet devised a means of collecting £15bn in tax from them.
    I'm sure you and others will be listening to Rachel Reeves shortly. At this stage of the electoral cycle, it wouldn't be sensible to say precisely where the money's coming from, because things change. It will be in the manifesto in time for the next GE campaign.
    I listened to Rachel a couple of times this weekend and her interview with Nick Robinson is worth watching on catch up

    At school she won a British under 14 girls chess championship and her cv dwarfs the shadow cabinet with time at the Bank of England, British Embassy in Washington and HBOS

    Labour should be falling over backwards to promote her to leader, she may even attract me to her policies but labour have to divest themselves of a lot of nonsense first
    I haven't listened, but will - thank you.

    Did she spend a lot of time going on about how awful the Tories are or did she set out the problems facing the country and broad ideas on how to address them and/or a vision for where to get to? If it's worth listening to, then I suspect the latter.

    She's incredibly boring and lacks revolutionary zeal. She's exactly the type of person a never-labour voter would think would make a good leader of the Labour Party.
    Sounds much like Starmer!

    I must admit I can't remember ever having heard her, although I suspect I must have done.

    Edit: And BigG has in fact voted Labour in the past, hasn't he? Or doesn't Blair count?
    Blair? Tory scum....
    2019 Tory Scum
    2017 Tory Scum
    2015 Tory Scum
    2010 Tory Scum
    2005 Tony Blair Tony Scum
    2001 Tony Blair Tony Scum
    1997 Tony Blair Tony Scum
    1992 Tory Scum
    1987 Tory Scum
    1983 Tory Scum
    1979 Tory Scum
    1974 Labour!!!!
    FIFY
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    For all of the flap, the change in tuition fees was a positive step in allowing poorer students access. Instead of fees up front it was hypothecated fees when earning.

    The issue was funding for universities. With the government contribution to uni teaching cut by 78%, we've seen institutions both get it in the neck for charging the "maximum" £9k a year and offering poor tuition due to a lack of money.

    Anyway, think what these £9k fees are. Instead of the government handing money to the universities, it hands it to student loans who pay it to universities. We know that in this era of bankism debt is an asset. How much "asset" was added to bank balance sheets in this way? a very quiet way to keep injecting cash into a broken banking system.
    And the funding comes down to the idea that 50% of kids need to go to university. IMV that was always an insane target, and has massively skewed expectations, education and the jobs market.

    IMV everything else leads on from that.
    Except that sort of figure for Tertiary education is the norm in nearly all competitor economies. It reaches 69% in South Korea. Italy and Germany are the exceptions in the developed world.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment

    Maybe Britons are thicker than other nations, but that doesn't bode well for the future.

    The problem perhaps is more the poor quality of many courses, particularly in terms of contact time with students, so little value added.

    I think that the cost of Tertiary education is quite inflated in Britain by two factors: Universities use undergraduate fees to subsidise other things, and second that British students want to live a good lifestyle away from home. Few go to nearby Universities. The student loan system barely covers rent, and not even close to that in London and a number of other cities.
    Except tertiary education != universities. From your link;

    " The World Bank, for example, defines tertiary education as including universities as well as institutions that teach specific capacities of higher learning such as colleges, technical training institutes, community colleges, nursing schools, research laboratories, centers of excellence, and distance learning centers."

    That's where we're going wrong. Universities are just one strand of tertiary education, and yet they've grown to dominate. We'd be much better sorted with other types as well, in particular on-job training.
    That is pretty much what I said. The problem is not the numbers going, but rather the poor quality of much British Tertiary education, and the emphasis on a partying life away from home.
    I'm unsure it is. I talked about he goal of 50% to university, and you talked about tertiary education. These are not, and should not be, the same.

    We need plumbers. I see no need for plumbers to go to university; they'd be much better served with an apprenticeship and then a C&G. We have too much university, and not enough apprenticeships and other further education.
    One of my brother-in-laws did a three-year technical course in welding at an Irish Institute of Technology. He has plenty of work and a big new house.

    My impression is that apprenticeships and C&G in Britain simply aren't working as well as the Irish system. Maybe it's a prestige/class thing? In the same family they have a physics PhD, a music Masters and an MBA - there's no sense that the welder has fallen short as there might be with a British middle class family.
    This is another area where the UK's insistence of a uni degree is wrong. If you don't get one, you have somehow failed. And our ability to look down our noses at people based not on their value, but on whether or not they hold a certain piece of paper.

    But in the meantime, the increased numbers going to uni have devalued that piece of paper.
    Yet the figures are clear, Higher apprentices at level 5 or above earn more over their lifetimes on average than all graduates except those who attended a Russell Group university. They also don't pay tuition fees unlike their student counterparts.
    https://onefile.co.uk/explore/which-is-better-university-degrees-or-higher-apprenticeships/

    So apprentices can cope with the snobbery given their higher bank balances and the fact many can buy a property in their 20s or early 30s (certainly outside London and the South East) unlike most students
    Indeed. So why drive kids down the uni route when it won't gain them much? Why 50%? why not 40%? 30%? 20%?

    It's a random figure plucked out of Blair's backside because it sounds good. Yet even if it was based on evidence, then there should have been another policy about further education opportunities for those who did not go.

    My nephew got the grades to go into uni, but chose to get a job. He's worked hard, and is on a salary much greater than his friends who went. He's probably worked harder than them, and has no student debts. Yet if he was in certain industries, there would be a barrier - a paper ceiling - through which he could not burst. Sometimes that ceiling may be necessary - science, for instance. In most it is not.

    Fortunately he's chosen an industry where that is less likely.
    Much of the public sector, including local government, seems to require degrees that are unnecessary for the job.
    What happened with degrees - from the perspective of a graduate and hirer of staff.

    When Blair talked of expanding degree jobs, he was thinking of the type of jobs that Russell Group (and up) are the feeders for.

    The massive expansion with the polys was not done in concert with increasing standards. This created a large number of second class (ha) degrees.

    Employers did indeed find that they needed more people with high quality degrees - So the Russell Group grew and large numbers of graduates were recruited from overseas.

    In the high end jobs, a 2.1 or above from a Russell Group (or overseas equivalent) became mandated by HR. So if you are hiring, you don't get to see other CVs

    So, given the volume of graduates, lower skilled jobs, began demanding degrees. Since they could get them. So, people, who in the past wouldn't have had to have a degree had to get one to get the same quality of job they would have got anyway....

    So we now have a situation where there are two glass ceilings

    Russell Group Degree
    ________

    Former Poly Degree
    ________

    No degree

    The irony was, that back in the day when degrees were much rarer, there was at least some possibility of making it to the top without a degree. Now, it is explicitly forbidden.

    In one job, we were doing work for a bank. The bank (well their HR) tried to stop one of the team coming in, since their background checks showed no degree....

    We have created an absolute caste system.
    Do senior managers have the authority to overrule, or bypass, HR. Why are HR needed. Aren’t managers the people to should have the authority to hire, fire and generally manage their staff?
    Gatekeeping - trying to bypass HR in large organisations hits the block that HR are appointed to control the hiring process.

    Legal and other responsibility - Tons of legislation about fairness in hiring, and usually company policies as well. So HR argues it must go through their defined, audited process.

    So bypassing them involves.... well, good luck with that one. You are trying to tell people that you are talking the job they are paid for away from them.....
    HR and, thesedays, IT - the people who hold the real power and who cannot be defeated!

    There was a post apocalyptic series by Hugh Howey where, IIRC, the only people who were privy to the big secret of the true nature of the society in question, and truly running things, were the Heads of IT. Made total sense to me.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    eek said:

    eek said:

    Sandpit said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    One way to raise revenues from online would be to ensure that all transactions on platforms like Amazon must be subject to VAT. Currently a plethora of tiny companies can crop up on Amazon and are VAT-exempt which isn't possible inside regular shops.

    I believe you can go to Amazon and buy a dress and not have VAT on it, but if you went to Debenhams and bought a dress it must have always had VAT on it.

    If someone wishes to open their own website then fair enough to be VAT-exempt until the threshold is met, just as if they'd opened their own physical store, but to suggest Amazon haven't hit the VAT threshold is insane.

    That's not a level playing field.

    Unless the company is a startup UK company that issue has already been fixed - as part of the new VAT rules that were introduced back in January.

    And in the cases that remain, Amazon is just a combination of payment and market stall provider to a very small UK business.
    Amazon are not a stall provider, they're a retailer. They should be liable to every bit as much tax for anything they retail every bit as much as any transaction that went through the tills at Debenhams would.

    When Debenhams were trading they'd have clothes divided by brand etc in little 'stalls' but none of them would be VAT exempt since Debenhams were retailer for all of them. Just as Amazon are for everything I buy from them.
    No Amazon are both a retailer (anything amazon sells direct) and a market stall provider (everything that is not sold by Amazon directly).

    The fact you haven't noticed that fact means you haven't paid much attention to how Amazon actually works...
    If they’re simply providing a market stall, then there won’t be a direct financial relationship with the consumer, who will pay the stall holder directly for whatever they are selling.
    Amazon processes payment in case the business turns out to be fake say by not delivering the goods, Amazon can repay the customer.

    One big problem we have as a country is that we've spent the last 30 years trying to Jury rig new business models into our existing tax (and other such as employment) laws.

    And we really need to go back and fix these things properly but no one wishes to do so for fixing them will highlight problems that probably aren't fixable.
    Well precisely because Amazon are the ultimate retailer to the consumer, not whatever name on the hat is supply Amazon.

    Amazon should be taxed as the supplier and they ought to be able to reclaim VAT from their suppliers. Which should be everyone who registers to sell on Amazon.
    See my comment below this one for a better explanation.

    The issue is that when you look at Amazon you see a single firm called Amazon.

    But because I understand how Amazon is built nowadays I see a number of different firms

    Amazon Advertising (a $5bn turnover company from what I've seen)
    Amazon Payments (which is not subject to VAT as it's financial transactions)
    Amazon Warehouse
    Amazon Logistics (which will collect from your warehouse at 10pm for next day delivery).


    and somewhere down the line

    Amazon the Department store....
    I get that.

    And the point is "Amazon the Department store" has met the tax threshold. They should be taxed on all transactions exactly the same as "Debenhams the Department store".

    Amazon the Department store ought to then be able to reclaim the VAT they themselves pay* while purchasing whether that be from Amazon Warehouse, or RandomSupplier27652b.

    * Accounting-wise, the payment may not need to be physically made.
    So I have a new startup selling Soap.

    I decide to sell on my own website, ebay and amazon to maximise my potential customer base and pay Amazon Advertising / Payments 10% for every order I get from Amazon's website.

    Where is Amazon Department store involved in that transaction and why should I be losing 20% in VAT when I'm not VAT registered as my turnover is currently £30k.
  • RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    It will only be a tax increase for those who aren't paying their share. For those who are paying their share it will be a tax cut.

    If you're going to charge for education then charge for education, but if you're going to charge based on earnings then that's income tax. Charging some different rates of income tax than others is not equitable.
    Again you are conflating your proposed tax reforms with the narrow point regarding whether or not taxpayers should pay for tuition. If taxpayers are paying for it, regardless of the system, you will be in the situation Charles described right back at the start of this thread.
    Taxpayers are already paying for it.

    Its just the taxpayers are simply only some of the taxpayers paying a tax surcharge.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    Sandpit said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    Am I the only one here who thinks government should mostly get out of higher education completely?

    Let the universities, students and banks determine price in a free market.

    Expand sixth form colleges into ‘community colleges’, if they want to keep a low-cost way of getting a degree without the students moving away from home.

    There’s certainly no way that politicians should be making decisions on interest rates or repayment thresholds, because apart from anything else it’s politically unpopular!
    That's a more reasonable suggestion than our current one. What we have right now isn't a market rate, its a convoluted income tax surcharge for certain people in the name of student finance.
    How is it more reasonable? The implementation would be identical, with graduates repaying their loan over time.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    Charles said:

    Sandpit said:

    Phil said:

    Phil said:

    One way to raise revenues from online would be to ensure that all transactions on platforms like Amazon must be subject to VAT. Currently a plethora of tiny companies can crop up on Amazon and are VAT-exempt which isn't possible inside regular shops.

    I believe you can go to Amazon and buy a dress and not have VAT on it, but if you went to Debenhams and bought a dress it must have always had VAT on it.

    If someone wishes to open their own website then fair enough to be VAT-exempt until the threshold is met, just as if they'd opened their own physical store, but to suggest Amazon haven't hit the VAT threshold is insane.

    That's not a level playing field.

    The simplest way to do that would be to eliminate the VAT threshold of course. (as is the case on most of the continent).

    TBH eliminating most of the get out clauses from VAT would get rid of a lot of ludicrous shenanigans & put many accountants out of work which could only be a good thing.
    The threshold is sensible at some levels, if someone is setting up a small business then it doesn't make much sense to be fiddling about with VAT. Plus they'll be paying VAT when they buy supplies and not be able to reclaim it as a result of not being registered so its not much of a difference.

    But all online platforms have met the threshold. If I buy from Debenhams then Debenhams charge me VAT and reclaim any VAT they've paid their suppliers - if their suppliers aren't VAT registered then there'll be no VAT to reclaim for them but still a full charge for the consumer.

    Online platforms should operate exactly the same as retail ones. Amazon, eBay etc should be liable to pay VAT on every transaction they sell to us, and then be on their responsibility to reclaim VAT they pay to their suppliers. Just as physical retailers have to do.
    I assumed from the OP’s comment that there was some way for small sellers to avoid charging VAT through Amazon, so some were exploiting this by setting up a rolling sequence of small companies.

    But maybe this is not a plausible exploit of the tax system? It would depend on whether Amazon was acting as seller or merely as third party payment handler for non-Amazon sales on the Amazon platform.
    Yes. There’s a court case against Uber working its way through at the moment. If the government wins, the award will be something like £1.5bn in historic VAT payments not collected by the fake taxi firm.

    The government are saying that if you take the money, and set both the price to the consumer and the payment to the service provider, you’re liable for the VAT on the fare. Uber are saying that they are just a platform, that processes payments for a number of small businesses who are not VAT registered.
    I don’t believe Amazon sets the price for Marketplace transactions
    Correct, Amazon are on the right side of the law as it is now. Uber are probably not, and are going to end up with a very large bill.

    If I were Chancellor, I’d be looking to close the Amazon loophole.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    kle4 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    For all of the flap, the change in tuition fees was a positive step in allowing poorer students access. Instead of fees up front it was hypothecated fees when earning.

    The issue was funding for universities. With the government contribution to uni teaching cut by 78%, we've seen institutions both get it in the neck for charging the "maximum" £9k a year and offering poor tuition due to a lack of money.

    Anyway, think what these £9k fees are. Instead of the government handing money to the universities, it hands it to student loans who pay it to universities. We know that in this era of bankism debt is an asset. How much "asset" was added to bank balance sheets in this way? a very quiet way to keep injecting cash into a broken banking system.
    And the funding comes down to the idea that 50% of kids need to go to university. IMV that was always an insane target, and has massively skewed expectations, education and the jobs market.

    IMV everything else leads on from that.
    Except that sort of figure for Tertiary education is the norm in nearly all competitor economies. It reaches 69% in South Korea. Italy and Germany are the exceptions in the developed world.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment

    Maybe Britons are thicker than other nations, but that doesn't bode well for the future.

    The problem perhaps is more the poor quality of many courses, particularly in terms of contact time with students, so little value added.

    I think that the cost of Tertiary education is quite inflated in Britain by two factors: Universities use undergraduate fees to subsidise other things, and second that British students want to live a good lifestyle away from home. Few go to nearby Universities. The student loan system barely covers rent, and not even close to that in London and a number of other cities.
    Except tertiary education != universities. From your link;

    " The World Bank, for example, defines tertiary education as including universities as well as institutions that teach specific capacities of higher learning such as colleges, technical training institutes, community colleges, nursing schools, research laboratories, centers of excellence, and distance learning centers."

    That's where we're going wrong. Universities are just one strand of tertiary education, and yet they've grown to dominate. We'd be much better sorted with other types as well, in particular on-job training.
    That is pretty much what I said. The problem is not the numbers going, but rather the poor quality of much British Tertiary education, and the emphasis on a partying life away from home.
    I'm unsure it is. I talked about he goal of 50% to university, and you talked about tertiary education. These are not, and should not be, the same.

    We need plumbers. I see no need for plumbers to go to university; they'd be much better served with an apprenticeship and then a C&G. We have too much university, and not enough apprenticeships and other further education.
    One of my brother-in-laws did a three-year technical course in welding at an Irish Institute of Technology. He has plenty of work and a big new house.

    My impression is that apprenticeships and C&G in Britain simply aren't working as well as the Irish system. Maybe it's a prestige/class thing? In the same family they have a physics PhD, a music Masters and an MBA - there's no sense that the welder has fallen short as there might be with a British middle class family.
    This is another area where the UK's insistence of a uni degree is wrong. If you don't get one, you have somehow failed. And our ability to look down our noses at people based not on their value, but on whether or not they hold a certain piece of paper.

    But in the meantime, the increased numbers going to uni have devalued that piece of paper.
    Yet the figures are clear, Higher apprentices at level 5 or above earn more over their lifetimes on average than all graduates except those who attended a Russell Group university. They also don't pay tuition fees unlike their student counterparts.
    https://onefile.co.uk/explore/which-is-better-university-degrees-or-higher-apprenticeships/

    So apprentices can cope with the snobbery given their higher bank balances and the fact many can buy a property in their 20s or early 30s (certainly outside London and the South East) unlike most students
    Indeed. So why drive kids down the uni route when it won't gain them much? Why 50%? why not 40%? 30%? 20%?

    It's a random figure plucked out of Blair's backside because it sounds good. Yet even if it was based on evidence, then there should have been another policy about further education opportunities for those who did not go.

    My nephew got the grades to go into uni, but chose to get a job. He's worked hard, and is on a salary much greater than his friends who went. He's probably worked harder than them, and has no student debts. Yet if he was in certain industries, there would be a barrier - a paper ceiling - through which he could not burst. Sometimes that ceiling may be necessary - science, for instance. In most it is not.

    Fortunately he's chosen an industry where that is less likely.
    Much of the public sector, including local government, seems to require degrees that are unnecessary for the job.
    What happened with degrees - from the perspective of a graduate and hirer of staff.

    When Blair talked of expanding degree jobs, he was thinking of the type of jobs that Russell Group (and up) are the feeders for.

    The massive expansion with the polys was not done in concert with increasing standards. This created a large number of second class (ha) degrees.

    Employers did indeed find that they needed more people with high quality degrees - So the Russell Group grew and large numbers of graduates were recruited from overseas.

    In the high end jobs, a 2.1 or above from a Russell Group (or overseas equivalent) became mandated by HR. So if you are hiring, you don't get to see other CVs

    So, given the volume of graduates, lower skilled jobs, began demanding degrees. Since they could get them. So, people, who in the past wouldn't have had to have a degree had to get one to get the same quality of job they would have got anyway....

    So we now have a situation where there are two glass ceilings

    Russell Group Degree
    ________

    Former Poly Degree
    ________

    No degree

    The irony was, that back in the day when degrees were much rarer, there was at least some possibility of making it to the top without a degree. Now, it is explicitly forbidden.

    In one job, we were doing work for a bank. The bank (well their HR) tried to stop one of the team coming in, since their background checks showed no degree....

    We have created an absolute caste system.
    Do senior managers have the authority to overrule, or bypass, HR. Why are HR needed. Aren’t managers the people to should have the authority to hire, fire and generally manage their staff?
    Gatekeeping - trying to bypass HR in large organisations hits the block that HR are appointed to control the hiring process.

    Legal and other responsibility - Tons of legislation about fairness in hiring, and usually company policies as well. So HR argues it must go through their defined, audited process.

    So bypassing them involves.... well, good luck with that one. You are trying to tell people that you are talking the job they are paid for away from them.....
    HR and, thesedays, IT - the people who hold the real power and who cannot be defeated!

    There was a post apocalyptic series by Hugh Howey where, IIRC, the only people who were privy to the big secret of the true nature of the society in question, and truly running things, were the Heads of IT. Made total sense to me.
    All companies are just software houses.

    The problem is most companies don't realise it.
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362

    Mr. L, debatable. Car matters more than driver by some distance.

    The 2022 title market is going to be... intriguing.

    Mr. Max, Perez confounds me. He was fantastic in 2020, and fully deserved the Red Bull seat. And he won in Azerbaijan. But generally, he's lacklustre. Verstappen-Perez versus any of the other top three teams looks hamstrung.

    Verstappen - I’d appreciate the driving more if the prat of a person would grow up.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    It will only be a tax increase for those who aren't paying their share. For those who are paying their share it will be a tax cut.

    If you're going to charge for education then charge for education, but if you're going to charge based on earnings then that's income tax. Charging some different rates of income tax than others is not equitable.
    Again you are conflating your proposed tax reforms with the narrow point regarding whether or not taxpayers should pay for tuition. If taxpayers are paying for it, regardless of the system, you will be in the situation Charles described right back at the start of this thread.
    Taxpayers are already paying for it.

    Its just the taxpayers are simply only some of the taxpayers paying a tax surcharge.
    Come off it. Only graduates are paying for it, not all taxpayers.
  • Mr. B, Russell was excellent at Sakhir 2020 in the Mercedes.

    And his bad luck was so good for my bets it was my best result since Spain 2016.
  • eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    Sandpit said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    One way to raise revenues from online would be to ensure that all transactions on platforms like Amazon must be subject to VAT. Currently a plethora of tiny companies can crop up on Amazon and are VAT-exempt which isn't possible inside regular shops.

    I believe you can go to Amazon and buy a dress and not have VAT on it, but if you went to Debenhams and bought a dress it must have always had VAT on it.

    If someone wishes to open their own website then fair enough to be VAT-exempt until the threshold is met, just as if they'd opened their own physical store, but to suggest Amazon haven't hit the VAT threshold is insane.

    That's not a level playing field.

    Unless the company is a startup UK company that issue has already been fixed - as part of the new VAT rules that were introduced back in January.

    And in the cases that remain, Amazon is just a combination of payment and market stall provider to a very small UK business.
    Amazon are not a stall provider, they're a retailer. They should be liable to every bit as much tax for anything they retail every bit as much as any transaction that went through the tills at Debenhams would.

    When Debenhams were trading they'd have clothes divided by brand etc in little 'stalls' but none of them would be VAT exempt since Debenhams were retailer for all of them. Just as Amazon are for everything I buy from them.
    No Amazon are both a retailer (anything amazon sells direct) and a market stall provider (everything that is not sold by Amazon directly).

    The fact you haven't noticed that fact means you haven't paid much attention to how Amazon actually works...
    If they’re simply providing a market stall, then there won’t be a direct financial relationship with the consumer, who will pay the stall holder directly for whatever they are selling.
    Amazon processes payment in case the business turns out to be fake say by not delivering the goods, Amazon can repay the customer.

    One big problem we have as a country is that we've spent the last 30 years trying to Jury rig new business models into our existing tax (and other such as employment) laws.

    And we really need to go back and fix these things properly but no one wishes to do so for fixing them will highlight problems that probably aren't fixable.
    Well precisely because Amazon are the ultimate retailer to the consumer, not whatever name on the hat is supply Amazon.

    Amazon should be taxed as the supplier and they ought to be able to reclaim VAT from their suppliers. Which should be everyone who registers to sell on Amazon.
    See my comment below this one for a better explanation.

    The issue is that when you look at Amazon you see a single firm called Amazon.

    But because I understand how Amazon is built nowadays I see a number of different firms

    Amazon Advertising (a $5bn turnover company from what I've seen)
    Amazon Payments (which is not subject to VAT as it's financial transactions)
    Amazon Warehouse
    Amazon Logistics (which will collect from your warehouse at 10pm for next day delivery).


    and somewhere down the line

    Amazon the Department store....
    I get that.

    And the point is "Amazon the Department store" has met the tax threshold. They should be taxed on all transactions exactly the same as "Debenhams the Department store".

    Amazon the Department store ought to then be able to reclaim the VAT they themselves pay* while purchasing whether that be from Amazon Warehouse, or RandomSupplier27652b.

    * Accounting-wise, the payment may not need to be physically made.
    So I have a new startup selling Soap.

    I decide to sell on my own website, ebay and amazon to maximise my potential customer base and pay Amazon Advertising / Payments 10% for every order I get from Amazon's website.

    Where is Amazon Department store involved in that transaction and why should I be losing 20% in VAT when I'm not VAT registered as my turnover is currently £30k.
    As far as the customer is concerned if they're buying from Amazon that's Amazon's department store. Even if you're the supplier. No different to if it was in Debenhams instead.

    Why should you be losing 20% VAT? That's a cost of business for having your stock sold via Amazon, or Debenhams or Tesco's.
  • squareroot2squareroot2 Posts: 6,287
    edited September 2021
    TOPPING said:

    Charles said:

    Good morning everybody. I wonder what the PB brains trust would advise. Mrs C and I are on holiday some 350 miles from home. We have, thanks to topping up when we arrived last Thursday, more than enough fuel to get home.
    However, part of the plans for the holiday include a week-long visit to N Wales, starting on Thursday, adding a further 275 or so miles to our trip.

    I am beginning to wonder; should we call off the N Wales leg?

    No. I think motorway service stations will always have fuel, though you'll obviously pay a bit more for it.
    No, you will be ripped off. All motorway fuel.is a rip.off
    Motorway fuel is indeed a rip-off, but at least they'll have fuel and there's unlikely to be queues. That may be worth paying extra to OKC.
    They aren’t a rip off.

    In addition to the price of the fuel you are paying for time and convenience.

    I never buy there as I plan not to
    No motorway fuel on the A1 yday so the point is moot. And actually some of the cheapest fuel can be found on the motorway. Or at least the A1.

    Not much point in having the cheapest fuel on the A 1 if there isn't any.....
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,574
    For Steely Dan fans, a great interview with Donald Fagen.
    https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/conversation-with-donald-fagen
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    Presumably a response to the Miller news, and may well have been spotted, but I did like this

    Rob Ford
    @robfordmancs

    What Britain really needs is a political consultancy devoted to talking people out of launching centrist parties doomed to fail given our electoral system and the actual views & priorities of voters. I will happily volunteer my services & cost much less than launching a party.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    On the discussion of fees one of the lesser talked about but just as malign effects of the £9k per year is that universities treat students like customers and students themselves have become customers and the dynamic has become "the customer is always right" and student power has now become overwhelming when most of the time they need to be told to get back in their box.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    edited September 2021
    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    For all of the flap, the change in tuition fees was a positive step in allowing poorer students access. Instead of fees up front it was hypothecated fees when earning.

    The issue was funding for universities. With the government contribution to uni teaching cut by 78%, we've seen institutions both get it in the neck for charging the "maximum" £9k a year and offering poor tuition due to a lack of money.

    Anyway, think what these £9k fees are. Instead of the government handing money to the universities, it hands it to student loans who pay it to universities. We know that in this era of bankism debt is an asset. How much "asset" was added to bank balance sheets in this way? a very quiet way to keep injecting cash into a broken banking system.
    And the funding comes down to the idea that 50% of kids need to go to university. IMV that was always an insane target, and has massively skewed expectations, education and the jobs market.

    IMV everything else leads on from that.
    Except that sort of figure for Tertiary education is the norm in nearly all competitor economies. It reaches 69% in South Korea. Italy and Germany are the exceptions in the developed world.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment

    Maybe Britons are thicker than other nations, but that doesn't bode well for the future.

    The problem perhaps is more the poor quality of many courses, particularly in terms of contact time with students, so little value added.

    I think that the cost of Tertiary education is quite inflated in Britain by two factors: Universities use undergraduate fees to subsidise other things, and second that British students want to live a good lifestyle away from home. Few go to nearby Universities. The student loan system barely covers rent, and not even close to that in London and a number of other cities.
    Except tertiary education != universities. From your link;

    " The World Bank, for example, defines tertiary education as including universities as well as institutions that teach specific capacities of higher learning such as colleges, technical training institutes, community colleges, nursing schools, research laboratories, centers of excellence, and distance learning centers."

    That's where we're going wrong. Universities are just one strand of tertiary education, and yet they've grown to dominate. We'd be much better sorted with other types as well, in particular on-job training.
    That is pretty much what I said. The problem is not the numbers going, but rather the poor quality of much British Tertiary education, and the emphasis on a partying life away from home.
    I'm unsure it is. I talked about he goal of 50% to university, and you talked about tertiary education. These are not, and should not be, the same.

    We need plumbers. I see no need for plumbers to go to university; they'd be much better served with an apprenticeship and then a C&G. We have too much university, and not enough apprenticeships and other further education.
    One of my brother-in-laws did a three-year technical course in welding at an Irish Institute of Technology. He has plenty of work and a big new house.

    My impression is that apprenticeships and C&G in Britain simply aren't working as well as the Irish system. Maybe it's a prestige/class thing? In the same family they have a physics PhD, a music Masters and an MBA - there's no sense that the welder has fallen short as there might be with a British middle class family.
    This is another area where the UK's insistence of a uni degree is wrong. If you don't get one, you have somehow failed. And our ability to look down our noses at people based not on their value, but on whether or not they hold a certain piece of paper.

    But in the meantime, the increased numbers going to uni have devalued that piece of paper.
    Yet the figures are clear, Higher apprentices at level 5 or above earn more over their lifetimes on average than all graduates except those who attended a Russell Group university. They also don't pay tuition fees unlike their student counterparts.
    https://onefile.co.uk/explore/which-is-better-university-degrees-or-higher-apprenticeships/

    So apprentices can cope with the snobbery given their higher bank balances and the fact many can buy a property in their 20s or early 30s (certainly outside London and the South East) unlike most students
    Indeed. So why drive kids down the uni route when it won't gain them much? Why 50%? why not 40%? 30%? 20%?

    It's a random figure plucked out of Blair's backside because it sounds good. Yet even if it was based on evidence, then there should have been another policy about further education opportunities for those who did not go.

    My nephew got the grades to go into uni, but chose to get a job. He's worked hard, and is on a salary much greater than his friends who went. He's probably worked harder than them, and has no student debts. Yet if he was in certain industries, there would be a barrier - a paper ceiling - through which he could not burst. Sometimes that ceiling may be necessary - science, for instance. In most it is not.

    Fortunately he's chosen an industry where that is less likely.
    Much of the public sector, including local government, seems to require degrees that are unnecessary for the job.
    What happened with degrees - from the perspective of a graduate and hirer of staff.

    When Blair talked of expanding degree jobs, he was thinking of the type of jobs that Russell Group (and up) are the feeders for.

    The massive expansion with the polys was not done in concert with increasing standards. This created a large number of second class (ha) degrees.

    Employers did indeed find that they needed more people with high quality degrees - So the Russell Group grew and large numbers of graduates were recruited from overseas.

    In the high end jobs, a 2.1 or above from a Russell Group (or overseas equivalent) became mandated by HR. So if you are hiring, you don't get to see other CVs

    So, given the volume of graduates, lower skilled jobs, began demanding degrees. Since they could get them. So, people, who in the past wouldn't have had to have a degree had to get one to get the same quality of job they would have got anyway....

    So we now have a situation where there are two glass ceilings

    Russell Group Degree
    ________

    Former Poly Degree
    ________

    No degree

    The irony was, that back in the day when degrees were much rarer, there was at least some possibility of making it to the top without a degree. Now, it is explicitly forbidden.

    In one job, we were doing work for a bank. The bank (well their HR) tried to stop one of the team coming in, since their background checks showed no degree....

    We have created an absolute caste system.
    Do senior managers have the authority to overrule, or bypass, HR. Why are HR needed. Aren’t managers the people to should have the authority to hire, fire and generally manage their staff?
    It is managers of top companies and partners in top law and accountancy firms who tell HR they will only look at candidates for interview who attended a Russell Group university.

    HR simply process CVs based on what they are told
    I work for a top investment bank and we don't do that, it's too simplistic and you lose a lot of good candidates. One of our star performers last year was a school leaver who didn't go to university.

    I'd suggest those managers who do that at these top accounting and law firms are an example of lazy management.
    Yep any HR department implementing that policy needs to be told to do the job they are being paid to do - which is finding and recruiting the best candidates, not just the people clueless people in HR think are the best candidates.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,620
    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    For all of the flap, the change in tuition fees was a positive step in allowing poorer students access. Instead of fees up front it was hypothecated fees when earning.

    The issue was funding for universities. With the government contribution to uni teaching cut by 78%, we've seen institutions both get it in the neck for charging the "maximum" £9k a year and offering poor tuition due to a lack of money.

    Anyway, think what these £9k fees are. Instead of the government handing money to the universities, it hands it to student loans who pay it to universities. We know that in this era of bankism debt is an asset. How much "asset" was added to bank balance sheets in this way? a very quiet way to keep injecting cash into a broken banking system.
    And the funding comes down to the idea that 50% of kids need to go to university. IMV that was always an insane target, and has massively skewed expectations, education and the jobs market.

    IMV everything else leads on from that.
    Except that sort of figure for Tertiary education is the norm in nearly all competitor economies. It reaches 69% in South Korea. Italy and Germany are the exceptions in the developed world.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment

    Maybe Britons are thicker than other nations, but that doesn't bode well for the future.

    The problem perhaps is more the poor quality of many courses, particularly in terms of contact time with students, so little value added.

    I think that the cost of Tertiary education is quite inflated in Britain by two factors: Universities use undergraduate fees to subsidise other things, and second that British students want to live a good lifestyle away from home. Few go to nearby Universities. The student loan system barely covers rent, and not even close to that in London and a number of other cities.
    Except tertiary education != universities. From your link;

    " The World Bank, for example, defines tertiary education as including universities as well as institutions that teach specific capacities of higher learning such as colleges, technical training institutes, community colleges, nursing schools, research laboratories, centers of excellence, and distance learning centers."

    That's where we're going wrong. Universities are just one strand of tertiary education, and yet they've grown to dominate. We'd be much better sorted with other types as well, in particular on-job training.
    That is pretty much what I said. The problem is not the numbers going, but rather the poor quality of much British Tertiary education, and the emphasis on a partying life away from home.
    I'm unsure it is. I talked about he goal of 50% to university, and you talked about tertiary education. These are not, and should not be, the same.

    We need plumbers. I see no need for plumbers to go to university; they'd be much better served with an apprenticeship and then a C&G. We have too much university, and not enough apprenticeships and other further education.
    One of my brother-in-laws did a three-year technical course in welding at an Irish Institute of Technology. He has plenty of work and a big new house.

    My impression is that apprenticeships and C&G in Britain simply aren't working as well as the Irish system. Maybe it's a prestige/class thing? In the same family they have a physics PhD, a music Masters and an MBA - there's no sense that the welder has fallen short as there might be with a British middle class family.
    This is another area where the UK's insistence of a uni degree is wrong. If you don't get one, you have somehow failed. And our ability to look down our noses at people based not on their value, but on whether or not they hold a certain piece of paper.

    But in the meantime, the increased numbers going to uni have devalued that piece of paper.
    Yet the figures are clear, Higher apprentices at level 5 or above earn more over their lifetimes on average than all graduates except those who attended a Russell Group university. They also don't pay tuition fees unlike their student counterparts.
    https://onefile.co.uk/explore/which-is-better-university-degrees-or-higher-apprenticeships/

    So apprentices can cope with the snobbery given their higher bank balances and the fact many can buy a property in their 20s or early 30s (certainly outside London and the South East) unlike most students
    Indeed. So why drive kids down the uni route when it won't gain them much? Why 50%? why not 40%? 30%? 20%?

    It's a random figure plucked out of Blair's backside because it sounds good. Yet even if it was based on evidence, then there should have been another policy about further education opportunities for those who did not go.

    My nephew got the grades to go into uni, but chose to get a job. He's worked hard, and is on a salary much greater than his friends who went. He's probably worked harder than them, and has no student debts. Yet if he was in certain industries, there would be a barrier - a paper ceiling - through which he could not burst. Sometimes that ceiling may be necessary - science, for instance. In most it is not.

    Fortunately he's chosen an industry where that is less likely.
    Much of the public sector, including local government, seems to require degrees that are unnecessary for the job.
    What happened with degrees - from the perspective of a graduate and hirer of staff.

    When Blair talked of expanding degree jobs, he was thinking of the type of jobs that Russell Group (and up) are the feeders for.

    The massive expansion with the polys was not done in concert with increasing standards. This created a large number of second class (ha) degrees.

    Employers did indeed find that they needed more people with high quality degrees - So the Russell Group grew and large numbers of graduates were recruited from overseas.

    In the high end jobs, a 2.1 or above from a Russell Group (or overseas equivalent) became mandated by HR. So if you are hiring, you don't get to see other CVs

    So, given the volume of graduates, lower skilled jobs, began demanding degrees. Since they could get them. So, people, who in the past wouldn't have had to have a degree had to get one to get the same quality of job they would have got anyway....

    So we now have a situation where there are two glass ceilings

    Russell Group Degree
    ________

    Former Poly Degree
    ________

    No degree

    The irony was, that back in the day when degrees were much rarer, there was at least some possibility of making it to the top without a degree. Now, it is explicitly forbidden.

    In one job, we were doing work for a bank. The bank (well their HR) tried to stop one of the team coming in, since their background checks showed no degree....

    We have created an absolute caste system.
    Do senior managers have the authority to overrule, or bypass, HR. Why are HR needed. Aren’t managers the people to should have the authority to hire, fire and generally manage their staff?
    It is managers of top companies and partners in top law and accountancy firms who tell HR they will only look at candidates for interview who attended a Russell Group university.

    HR simply process CVs based on what they are told
    I work for a top investment bank and we don't do that, it's too simplistic and you lose a lot of good candidates. One of our star performers last year was a school leaver who didn't go to university.

    I'd suggest those managers who do that at these top accounting and law firms are an example of lazy management.
    But that involves thinking. And effort.
  • RobD said:

    Sandpit said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    Am I the only one here who thinks government should mostly get out of higher education completely?

    Let the universities, students and banks determine price in a free market.

    Expand sixth form colleges into ‘community colleges’, if they want to keep a low-cost way of getting a degree without the students moving away from home.

    There’s certainly no way that politicians should be making decisions on interest rates or repayment thresholds, because apart from anything else it’s politically unpopular!
    That's a more reasonable suggestion than our current one. What we have right now isn't a market rate, its a convoluted income tax surcharge for certain people in the name of student finance.
    How is it more reasonable? The implementation would be identical, with graduates repaying their loan over time.
    It would be on commercial free market terms and it wouldn't be related to income. Universities would have to compete on price and not have the backing of the state to charge as much as they like and to then have the payments collected by the Exchequer via PAYE.
  • RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    It will only be a tax increase for those who aren't paying their share. For those who are paying their share it will be a tax cut.

    If you're going to charge for education then charge for education, but if you're going to charge based on earnings then that's income tax. Charging some different rates of income tax than others is not equitable.
    Again you are conflating your proposed tax reforms with the narrow point regarding whether or not taxpayers should pay for tuition. If taxpayers are paying for it, regardless of the system, you will be in the situation Charles described right back at the start of this thread.
    Taxpayers are already paying for it.

    Its just the taxpayers are simply only some of the taxpayers paying a tax surcharge.
    Come off it. Only graduates are paying for it, not all taxpayers.
    Come off it. Via PAYE some taxpayers are paying for it, not all graduates.
  • squareroot2squareroot2 Posts: 6,287
    edited September 2021

    Charles said:

    Nigelb said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    eek said:

    gealbhan said:

    Labour pledging to scrap business tax? A couple of weeks ago the Tories invented a new tax?

    Anyway, another policy reason to keep Labour out of power, they shouldn’t promise what they can’t deliver. This policy promise is undeliverable. Miles behind the Tories on economic credibility because of big brush strokes fantasy policy like this.

    Labour are focussing on old battles relating to high business rates on the high street.

    In reality it means they now need to find another £15bn to fill alongside the existing holes. Which shows how stupid they are as they are re-opening new battle fronts without paying attention to the existing battle fronts where they could easily win votes.

    I'm getting less and less impressed with the Labour party leadership ever single day.
    I don't agree with you. The aim of Labour's proposals today is to shift the burden of taxation from SMEs that occupy the nation's high streets to digital companies that occupy the nation's phones and computers. One of the major problems in the Red Wall, and elsewhere, is that town centres are dying on their feet, making towns less appealing to live in, and destroying the sense of community. If getting rid of business rates can reverse this trend, this would be 'levelling-up' in action. The playing field between Amazon and high-street retailers needs to be levelled. It's a good policy.
    I agree with you that its a good idea, except they've got no clue it seems as to how they would do so. So they're saying it will be done but we're to take it on faith that they'll have a way to do it.

    As it happens I agree that its the beginnings of a good policy, they're at least on the right path! That's something at least and I'll give them credit for that, first time in many years as either in Shadow or in office that Labour's Chancellor spokesperson seems to understand something about the issues in economy.

    But I'll wait before saying its a good policy until the policy is actually formulated and not just "this sounds good" but without details. To be fair though years before the election "this sounds good" but without details is an OK starting point and better than what Labour have had for many years!
    Thanks. As you're broadly sympathetic to the aims, I expect the Tories (yes, I know you're not one) to nick it any time soon.
    I seem to remember when I was drafting a possible policy agenda for SKS that this was one of my suggestions. I think that there is quite a compelling case to try and rebalance the tax demands between bricks and clicks. Shops are not only a good source of employment, they keep our city centres vibrant and are more accessible to the elderly etc.

    But you cannot simply abolish £15bn of tax revenues without having an alternative when we already have an unsustainable deficit. That is just lazy.
    This is the issue here - you need to understand what you plan to tax, why you plan to do so and how you plan to do so.

    You also when talking about retail need to understand why people purchase stuff online and it's usually for reasons where the high street could never compete.

    Only after that can you start talking about how you will give people tax breaks as otherwise it's a question of where are you going to get that £xbn from.

    And there are serious amount of structural issues within our tax system but there isn't any easy solutions as all changes will impact people's behaviour and that might have unintended consequences.
    But the first part of the policy ought to make it easier to repurpose high street properties large numbers of which are just sitting vacant.
    The easiest shift would be to add 2.5% to VAT (raising £16.5m based on 19/20 total VAT receipts of £130bn)

    Spend £15bn of that to reduce business rates. In theory that should keep the ultimate payer (the retail customer) the same while giving the high street store more flexibility to cut their prices if they want

    (And it includes a crafty £1bn tax increase)
    The Tories love increasing VAT.
    Used to be the LD election plank.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    Charles said:

    DavidL said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    This is completely different to 2000. In 2000 there was actually a shortage for weeks and stations were NOT being refilled.

    There is no shortage here other that irresponsible idiots shouting fire when there wasn't one, creating an artificial one.

    There's not even a shortage of drivers. The fuel companies have all said they're doing extra routes this week to compensate for the panic buying.

    This is just madness. This is Sparta.

    You forgot to add that there aren’t any tanks in Baghdad either? ;)

    Just wait until we get on to no turkeys and no toys……
    Why would there be no toys? You can get any toy you want next day delivered. Most of our Christmas shopping is hidden in our cupboards already.
    You’ve panic bought already? Lol.

    https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/schools-family/3493379/christmas-shortages-will-this-toy-story-have-a-happy-ending/
    No panic buying, just buying through the year as we have always done. You pay more if you buy at Christmas.

    Eg my eldest daughter's main present we are giving her this year is going to be the Lego Harry Potter Great Hall. Normally £90, but a couple of months ago Amazon had it for £45 as a 24 hour flash sale. Why not buy it then?

    She's really into both Lego and Harry Potter. I can't imagine that changing in the next three months.
    Blimey, I hope she doesn't read PB.
    You wouldn’t want her to learn that her Dad isn’t willing to pay full price for her…
    My youngest is extremely proud about getting bargains. I think she would regard a reduction like that as evidence that extra effort was put into the present!

    I try and buy Christmas stuff early as well. A lot of retailers put the prices up, then claim that they are discounting (still above regular prices) etc etc.
    You have trained her well, Sensei

    I was very proud when my daughter - having wanted to go to the Caribbean for Christmas - looked at the prices and decided it was far too expensive!
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    RobD said:

    Sandpit said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    Am I the only one here who thinks government should mostly get out of higher education completely?

    Let the universities, students and banks determine price in a free market.

    Expand sixth form colleges into ‘community colleges’, if they want to keep a low-cost way of getting a degree without the students moving away from home.

    There’s certainly no way that politicians should be making decisions on interest rates or repayment thresholds, because apart from anything else it’s politically unpopular!
    That's a more reasonable suggestion than our current one. What we have right now isn't a market rate, its a convoluted income tax surcharge for certain people in the name of student finance.
    How is it more reasonable? The implementation would be identical, with graduates repaying their loan over time.
    It would be on commercial free market terms and it wouldn't be related to income. Universities would have to compete on price and not have the backing of the state to charge as much as they like and to then have the payments collected by the Exchequer via PAYE.
    Do you honestly think that commercial free market terms unrelated to income would be beneficial for the less well-off?
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392

    Charles said:

    DavidL said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    This is completely different to 2000. In 2000 there was actually a shortage for weeks and stations were NOT being refilled.

    There is no shortage here other that irresponsible idiots shouting fire when there wasn't one, creating an artificial one.

    There's not even a shortage of drivers. The fuel companies have all said they're doing extra routes this week to compensate for the panic buying.

    This is just madness. This is Sparta.

    You forgot to add that there aren’t any tanks in Baghdad either? ;)

    Just wait until we get on to no turkeys and no toys……
    Why would there be no toys? You can get any toy you want next day delivered. Most of our Christmas shopping is hidden in our cupboards already.
    You’ve panic bought already? Lol.

    https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/schools-family/3493379/christmas-shortages-will-this-toy-story-have-a-happy-ending/
    No panic buying, just buying through the year as we have always done. You pay more if you buy at Christmas.

    Eg my eldest daughter's main present we are giving her this year is going to be the Lego Harry Potter Great Hall. Normally £90, but a couple of months ago Amazon had it for £45 as a 24 hour flash sale. Why not buy it then?

    She's really into both Lego and Harry Potter. I can't imagine that changing in the next three months.
    Blimey, I hope she doesn't read PB.
    You wouldn’t want her to learn that her Dad isn’t willing to pay full price for her…
    A lot of retailers put the prices up, then claim that they are discounting (still above regular prices) etc etc.
    I thought that was illegal. How naiive of me.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited September 2021
    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    For all of the flap, the change in tuition fees was a positive step in allowing poorer students access. Instead of fees up front it was hypothecated fees when earning.

    The issue was funding for universities. With the government contribution to uni teaching cut by 78%, we've seen institutions both get it in the neck for charging the "maximum" £9k a year and offering poor tuition due to a lack of money.

    Anyway, think what these £9k fees are. Instead of the government handing money to the universities, it hands it to student loans who pay it to universities. We know that in this era of bankism debt is an asset. How much "asset" was added to bank balance sheets in this way? a very quiet way to keep injecting cash into a broken banking system.
    And the funding comes down to the idea that 50% of kids need to go to university. IMV that was always an insane target, and has massively skewed expectations, education and the jobs market.

    IMV everything else leads on from that.
    Except that sort of figure for Tertiary education is the norm in nearly all competitor economies. It reaches 69% in South Korea. Italy and Germany are the exceptions in the developed world.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment

    Maybe Britons are thicker than other nations, but that doesn't bode well for the future.

    The problem perhaps is more the poor quality of many courses, particularly in terms of contact time with students, so little value added.

    I think that the cost of Tertiary education is quite inflated in Britain by two factors: Universities use undergraduate fees to subsidise other things, and second that British students want to live a good lifestyle away from home. Few go to nearby Universities. The student loan system barely covers rent, and not even close to that in London and a number of other cities.
    Except tertiary education != universities. From your link;

    " The World Bank, for example, defines tertiary education as including universities as well as institutions that teach specific capacities of higher learning such as colleges, technical training institutes, community colleges, nursing schools, research laboratories, centers of excellence, and distance learning centers."

    That's where we're going wrong. Universities are just one strand of tertiary education, and yet they've grown to dominate. We'd be much better sorted with other types as well, in particular on-job training.
    That is pretty much what I said. The problem is not the numbers going, but rather the poor quality of much British Tertiary education, and the emphasis on a partying life away from home.
    I'm unsure it is. I talked about he goal of 50% to university, and you talked about tertiary education. These are not, and should not be, the same.

    We need plumbers. I see no need for plumbers to go to university; they'd be much better served with an apprenticeship and then a C&G. We have too much university, and not enough apprenticeships and other further education.
    One of my brother-in-laws did a three-year technical course in welding at an Irish Institute of Technology. He has plenty of work and a big new house.

    My impression is that apprenticeships and C&G in Britain simply aren't working as well as the Irish system. Maybe it's a prestige/class thing? In the same family they have a physics PhD, a music Masters and an MBA - there's no sense that the welder has fallen short as there might be with a British middle class family.
    This is another area where the UK's insistence of a uni degree is wrong. If you don't get one, you have somehow failed. And our ability to look down our noses at people based not on their value, but on whether or not they hold a certain piece of paper.

    But in the meantime, the increased numbers going to uni have devalued that piece of paper.
    Yet the figures are clear, Higher apprentices at level 5 or above earn more over their lifetimes on average than all graduates except those who attended a Russell Group university. They also don't pay tuition fees unlike their student counterparts.
    https://onefile.co.uk/explore/which-is-better-university-degrees-or-higher-apprenticeships/

    So apprentices can cope with the snobbery given their higher bank balances and the fact many can buy a property in their 20s or early 30s (certainly outside London and the South East) unlike most students
    Indeed. So why drive kids down the uni route when it won't gain them much? Why 50%? why not 40%? 30%? 20%?

    It's a random figure plucked out of Blair's backside because it sounds good. Yet even if it was based on evidence, then there should have been another policy about further education opportunities for those who did not go.

    My nephew got the grades to go into uni, but chose to get a job. He's worked hard, and is on a salary much greater than his friends who went. He's probably worked harder than them, and has no student debts. Yet if he was in certain industries, there would be a barrier - a paper ceiling - through which he could not burst. Sometimes that ceiling may be necessary - science, for instance. In most it is not.

    Fortunately he's chosen an industry where that is less likely.
    Much of the public sector, including local government, seems to require degrees that are unnecessary for the job.
    What happened with degrees - from the perspective of a graduate and hirer of staff.

    When Blair talked of expanding degree jobs, he was thinking of the type of jobs that Russell Group (and up) are the feeders for.

    The massive expansion with the polys was not done in concert with increasing standards. This created a large number of second class (ha) degrees.

    Employers did indeed find that they needed more people with high quality degrees - So the Russell Group grew and large numbers of graduates were recruited from overseas.

    In the high end jobs, a 2.1 or above from a Russell Group (or overseas equivalent) became mandated by HR. So if you are hiring, you don't get to see other CVs

    So, given the volume of graduates, lower skilled jobs, began demanding degrees. Since they could get them. So, people, who in the past wouldn't have had to have a degree had to get one to get the same quality of job they would have got anyway....

    So we now have a situation where there are two glass ceilings

    Russell Group Degree
    ________

    Former Poly Degree
    ________

    No degree

    The irony was, that back in the day when degrees were much rarer, there was at least some possibility of making it to the top without a degree. Now, it is explicitly forbidden.

    In one job, we were doing work for a bank. The bank (well their HR) tried to stop one of the team coming in, since their background checks showed no degree....

    We have created an absolute caste system.
    Do senior managers have the authority to overrule, or bypass, HR. Why are HR needed. Aren’t managers the people to should have the authority to hire, fire and generally manage their staff?
    It is managers of top companies and partners in top law and accountancy firms who tell HR they will only look at candidates for interview who attended a Russell Group university.

    HR simply process CVs based on what they are told
    I work for a top investment bank and we don't do that, it's too simplistic and you lose a lot of good candidates. One of our star performers last year was a school leaver who didn't go to university.

    I'd suggest those managers who do that at these top accounting and law firms are an example of lazy management.
    Yep any HR department implementing that policy needs to be told to do the job they are being paid to do - which is finding and recruiting the best candidates, not just the people clueless people in HR think are the best candidates.
    It is the partners in the most snobby city law firms etc who tell HR to only recruit from Russell Group universities, the polices are set by senior management. HR just implement them.

  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    For all of the flap, the change in tuition fees was a positive step in allowing poorer students access. Instead of fees up front it was hypothecated fees when earning.

    The issue was funding for universities. With the government contribution to uni teaching cut by 78%, we've seen institutions both get it in the neck for charging the "maximum" £9k a year and offering poor tuition due to a lack of money.

    Anyway, think what these £9k fees are. Instead of the government handing money to the universities, it hands it to student loans who pay it to universities. We know that in this era of bankism debt is an asset. How much "asset" was added to bank balance sheets in this way? a very quiet way to keep injecting cash into a broken banking system.
    And the funding comes down to the idea that 50% of kids need to go to university. IMV that was always an insane target, and has massively skewed expectations, education and the jobs market.

    IMV everything else leads on from that.
    Except that sort of figure for Tertiary education is the norm in nearly all competitor economies. It reaches 69% in South Korea. Italy and Germany are the exceptions in the developed world.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment

    Maybe Britons are thicker than other nations, but that doesn't bode well for the future.

    The problem perhaps is more the poor quality of many courses, particularly in terms of contact time with students, so little value added.

    I think that the cost of Tertiary education is quite inflated in Britain by two factors: Universities use undergraduate fees to subsidise other things, and second that British students want to live a good lifestyle away from home. Few go to nearby Universities. The student loan system barely covers rent, and not even close to that in London and a number of other cities.
    Except tertiary education != universities. From your link;

    " The World Bank, for example, defines tertiary education as including universities as well as institutions that teach specific capacities of higher learning such as colleges, technical training institutes, community colleges, nursing schools, research laboratories, centers of excellence, and distance learning centers."

    That's where we're going wrong. Universities are just one strand of tertiary education, and yet they've grown to dominate. We'd be much better sorted with other types as well, in particular on-job training.
    That is pretty much what I said. The problem is not the numbers going, but rather the poor quality of much British Tertiary education, and the emphasis on a partying life away from home.
    I'm unsure it is. I talked about he goal of 50% to university, and you talked about tertiary education. These are not, and should not be, the same.

    We need plumbers. I see no need for plumbers to go to university; they'd be much better served with an apprenticeship and then a C&G. We have too much university, and not enough apprenticeships and other further education.
    One of my brother-in-laws did a three-year technical course in welding at an Irish Institute of Technology. He has plenty of work and a big new house.

    My impression is that apprenticeships and C&G in Britain simply aren't working as well as the Irish system. Maybe it's a prestige/class thing? In the same family they have a physics PhD, a music Masters and an MBA - there's no sense that the welder has fallen short as there might be with a British middle class family.
    This is another area where the UK's insistence of a uni degree is wrong. If you don't get one, you have somehow failed. And our ability to look down our noses at people based not on their value, but on whether or not they hold a certain piece of paper.

    But in the meantime, the increased numbers going to uni have devalued that piece of paper.
    Yet the figures are clear, Higher apprentices at level 5 or above earn more over their lifetimes on average than all graduates except those who attended a Russell Group university. They also don't pay tuition fees unlike their student counterparts.
    https://onefile.co.uk/explore/which-is-better-university-degrees-or-higher-apprenticeships/

    So apprentices can cope with the snobbery given their higher bank balances and the fact many can buy a property in their 20s or early 30s (certainly outside London and the South East) unlike most students
    Indeed. So why drive kids down the uni route when it won't gain them much? Why 50%? why not 40%? 30%? 20%?

    It's a random figure plucked out of Blair's backside because it sounds good. Yet even if it was based on evidence, then there should have been another policy about further education opportunities for those who did not go.

    My nephew got the grades to go into uni, but chose to get a job. He's worked hard, and is on a salary much greater than his friends who went. He's probably worked harder than them, and has no student debts. Yet if he was in certain industries, there would be a barrier - a paper ceiling - through which he could not burst. Sometimes that ceiling may be necessary - science, for instance. In most it is not.

    Fortunately he's chosen an industry where that is less likely.
    Much of the public sector, including local government, seems to require degrees that are unnecessary for the job.
    What happened with degrees - from the perspective of a graduate and hirer of staff.

    When Blair talked of expanding degree jobs, he was thinking of the type of jobs that Russell Group (and up) are the feeders for.

    The massive expansion with the polys was not done in concert with increasing standards. This created a large number of second class (ha) degrees.

    Employers did indeed find that they needed more people with high quality degrees - So the Russell Group grew and large numbers of graduates were recruited from overseas.

    In the high end jobs, a 2.1 or above from a Russell Group (or overseas equivalent) became mandated by HR. So if you are hiring, you don't get to see other CVs

    So, given the volume of graduates, lower skilled jobs, began demanding degrees. Since they could get them. So, people, who in the past wouldn't have had to have a degree had to get one to get the same quality of job they would have got anyway....

    So we now have a situation where there are two glass ceilings

    Russell Group Degree
    ________

    Former Poly Degree
    ________

    No degree

    The irony was, that back in the day when degrees were much rarer, there was at least some possibility of making it to the top without a degree. Now, it is explicitly forbidden.

    In one job, we were doing work for a bank. The bank (well their HR) tried to stop one of the team coming in, since their background checks showed no degree....

    We have created an absolute caste system.
    Do senior managers have the authority to overrule, or bypass, HR. Why are HR needed. Aren’t managers the people to should have the authority to hire, fire and generally manage their staff?
    Minor quibble: there is a tier of universities which aren't Russell Group but predate the former Polys (e.g. Leicester, Hull, Salford).
  • RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    It will only be a tax increase for those who aren't paying their share. For those who are paying their share it will be a tax cut.

    If you're going to charge for education then charge for education, but if you're going to charge based on earnings then that's income tax. Charging some different rates of income tax than others is not equitable.
    Again you are conflating your proposed tax reforms with the narrow point regarding whether or not taxpayers should pay for tuition. If taxpayers are paying for it, regardless of the system, you will be in the situation Charles described right back at the start of this thread.
    Taxpayers are already paying for it.

    Its just the taxpayers are simply only some of the taxpayers paying a tax surcharge.
    Come off it. Only graduates are paying for it, not all taxpayers.
    Graduates parents more like.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 10,458
    I see there is discussion about Rachel Reeves. I am involved in a specific pensions campaign which has cross party support. I won't go into the details as they aren't important for the point I want to make. All MPs have been lobbied and the response varies from full blown support to indifference, but one MP and her staff stood out for their utter incompetence and that was Rachel Reeves. And here is the real kicker, she was shadow secretary of state for the DWP at the time so it was a golden opportunity for her, not that, that should have mattered. The lack of competence was breathtaking. MPs with a reputation for laziness ran circles around her, by at least replying with standard letters.
  • Sandpit said:

    eek said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    One way to raise revenues from online would be to ensure that all transactions on platforms like Amazon must be subject to VAT. Currently a plethora of tiny companies can crop up on Amazon and are VAT-exempt which isn't possible inside regular shops.

    I believe you can go to Amazon and buy a dress and not have VAT on it, but if you went to Debenhams and bought a dress it must have always had VAT on it.

    If someone wishes to open their own website then fair enough to be VAT-exempt until the threshold is met, just as if they'd opened their own physical store, but to suggest Amazon haven't hit the VAT threshold is insane.

    That's not a level playing field.

    Unless the company is a startup UK company that issue has already been fixed - as part of the new VAT rules that were introduced back in January.

    And in the cases that remain, Amazon is just a combination of payment and market stall provider to a very small UK business.
    Amazon are not a stall provider, they're a retailer. They should be liable to every bit as much tax for anything they retail every bit as much as any transaction that went through the tills at Debenhams would.

    When Debenhams were trading they'd have clothes divided by brand etc in little 'stalls' but none of them would be VAT exempt since Debenhams were retailer for all of them. Just as Amazon are for everything I buy from them.
    No Amazon are both a retailer (anything amazon sells direct) and a market stall provider (everything that is not sold by Amazon directly).

    The fact you haven't noticed that fact means you haven't paid much attention to how Amazon actually works...
    If they’re simply providing a market stall, then there won’t be a direct financial relationship with the consumer, who will pay the stall holder directly for whatever they are selling.
    And if they're merely providing a market stall then that market stall should have its own search engine etc and not be a part of the retailers own search engine.
    Search engines and marketing arrangements are all fine, what’s important is to follow the money.

    You pay a small business = no VAT.
    You pay a $2trn business = full VAT.
    but you are buying a good off a small business - who currently receive 90% or so of the amount I pay Amazon Payments for the good.

    If you add 20% VAT to that, that small business is now receiving 71% of the money I paid, because I bought from Amazon rather than their own website which I would never have found to purchase from.

    No, you’re buying the good from a massive multinational, who is buying it from a small business. Many of which only exist as tax dodges in the first place.

    The whole point is to level the playing field between online sales and physical store sales, and between people setting up their own small stores and using someone else’s large store.
    Spot on. Isn't it great when there's harmony between left and right on the odd issue?
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    It will only be a tax increase for those who aren't paying their share. For those who are paying their share it will be a tax cut.

    If you're going to charge for education then charge for education, but if you're going to charge based on earnings then that's income tax. Charging some different rates of income tax than others is not equitable.
    Again you are conflating your proposed tax reforms with the narrow point regarding whether or not taxpayers should pay for tuition. If taxpayers are paying for it, regardless of the system, you will be in the situation Charles described right back at the start of this thread.
    Taxpayers are already paying for it.

    Its just the taxpayers are simply only some of the taxpayers paying a tax surcharge.
    Come off it. Only graduates are paying for it, not all taxpayers.
    Come off it. Via PAYE some taxpayers are paying for it, not all graduates.
    Not all taxpayers are repaying student loans, maybe something like 20-25%? Many more taxpayers would have to foot the bill if tuition fees were abolished, including the checkout lady mentioned at the start.
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362
    Phil said:

    I’m agreeing with Philip T a lot today. Must be something in the water.

    Is our Thommo better without the ball and chain of defending this government with every post, can now just be his libertarian self?
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    It will only be a tax increase for those who aren't paying their share. For those who are paying their share it will be a tax cut.

    If you're going to charge for education then charge for education, but if you're going to charge based on earnings then that's income tax. Charging some different rates of income tax than others is not equitable.
    Again you are conflating your proposed tax reforms with the narrow point regarding whether or not taxpayers should pay for tuition. If taxpayers are paying for it, regardless of the system, you will be in the situation Charles described right back at the start of this thread.
    Taxpayers are already paying for it.

    Its just the taxpayers are simply only some of the taxpayers paying a tax surcharge.
    Come off it. Only graduates are paying for it, not all taxpayers.
    Graduates parents more like.
    Better them than someone on minimum wage without a degree.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    DavidL said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    This is completely different to 2000. In 2000 there was actually a shortage for weeks and stations were NOT being refilled.

    There is no shortage here other that irresponsible idiots shouting fire when there wasn't one, creating an artificial one.

    There's not even a shortage of drivers. The fuel companies have all said they're doing extra routes this week to compensate for the panic buying.

    This is just madness. This is Sparta.

    You forgot to add that there aren’t any tanks in Baghdad either? ;)

    Just wait until we get on to no turkeys and no toys……
    Why would there be no toys? You can get any toy you want next day delivered. Most of our Christmas shopping is hidden in our cupboards already.
    You’ve panic bought already? Lol.

    https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/schools-family/3493379/christmas-shortages-will-this-toy-story-have-a-happy-ending/
    No panic buying, just buying through the year as we have always done. You pay more if you buy at Christmas.

    Eg my eldest daughter's main present we are giving her this year is going to be the Lego Harry Potter Great Hall. Normally £90, but a couple of months ago Amazon had it for £45 as a 24 hour flash sale. Why not buy it then?

    She's really into both Lego and Harry Potter. I can't imagine that changing in the next three months.
    Blimey, I hope she doesn't read PB.
    You wouldn’t want her to learn that her Dad isn’t willing to pay full price for her…
    My youngest is extremely proud about getting bargains. I think she would regard a reduction like that as evidence that extra effort was put into the present!

    I try and buy Christmas stuff early as well. A lot of retailers put the prices up, then claim that they are discounting (still above regular prices) etc etc.
    You have trained her well, Sensei

    I was very proud when my daughter - having wanted to go to the Caribbean for Christmas - looked at the prices and decided it was far too expensive!
    When I was young I was gifted a football shirt and we were getting a named put on it. As it was cost per letter I asked for someone other than my favourite player to save money. It's not as warming for me to remember as my trying to be sensible child mind thought at the time.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    For all of the flap, the change in tuition fees was a positive step in allowing poorer students access. Instead of fees up front it was hypothecated fees when earning.

    The issue was funding for universities. With the government contribution to uni teaching cut by 78%, we've seen institutions both get it in the neck for charging the "maximum" £9k a year and offering poor tuition due to a lack of money.

    Anyway, think what these £9k fees are. Instead of the government handing money to the universities, it hands it to student loans who pay it to universities. We know that in this era of bankism debt is an asset. How much "asset" was added to bank balance sheets in this way? a very quiet way to keep injecting cash into a broken banking system.
    And the funding comes down to the idea that 50% of kids need to go to university. IMV that was always an insane target, and has massively skewed expectations, education and the jobs market.

    IMV everything else leads on from that.
    Except that sort of figure for Tertiary education is the norm in nearly all competitor economies. It reaches 69% in South Korea. Italy and Germany are the exceptions in the developed world.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment

    Maybe Britons are thicker than other nations, but that doesn't bode well for the future.

    The problem perhaps is more the poor quality of many courses, particularly in terms of contact time with students, so little value added.

    I think that the cost of Tertiary education is quite inflated in Britain by two factors: Universities use undergraduate fees to subsidise other things, and second that British students want to live a good lifestyle away from home. Few go to nearby Universities. The student loan system barely covers rent, and not even close to that in London and a number of other cities.
    Except tertiary education != universities. From your link;

    " The World Bank, for example, defines tertiary education as including universities as well as institutions that teach specific capacities of higher learning such as colleges, technical training institutes, community colleges, nursing schools, research laboratories, centers of excellence, and distance learning centers."

    That's where we're going wrong. Universities are just one strand of tertiary education, and yet they've grown to dominate. We'd be much better sorted with other types as well, in particular on-job training.
    That is pretty much what I said. The problem is not the numbers going, but rather the poor quality of much British Tertiary education, and the emphasis on a partying life away from home.
    I'm unsure it is. I talked about he goal of 50% to university, and you talked about tertiary education. These are not, and should not be, the same.

    We need plumbers. I see no need for plumbers to go to university; they'd be much better served with an apprenticeship and then a C&G. We have too much university, and not enough apprenticeships and other further education.
    One of my brother-in-laws did a three-year technical course in welding at an Irish Institute of Technology. He has plenty of work and a big new house.

    My impression is that apprenticeships and C&G in Britain simply aren't working as well as the Irish system. Maybe it's a prestige/class thing? In the same family they have a physics PhD, a music Masters and an MBA - there's no sense that the welder has fallen short as there might be with a British middle class family.
    This is another area where the UK's insistence of a uni degree is wrong. If you don't get one, you have somehow failed. And our ability to look down our noses at people based not on their value, but on whether or not they hold a certain piece of paper.

    But in the meantime, the increased numbers going to uni have devalued that piece of paper.
    Yet the figures are clear, Higher apprentices at level 5 or above earn more over their lifetimes on average than all graduates except those who attended a Russell Group university. They also don't pay tuition fees unlike their student counterparts.
    https://onefile.co.uk/explore/which-is-better-university-degrees-or-higher-apprenticeships/

    So apprentices can cope with the snobbery given their higher bank balances and the fact many can buy a property in their 20s or early 30s (certainly outside London and the South East) unlike most students
    Indeed. So why drive kids down the uni route when it won't gain them much? Why 50%? why not 40%? 30%? 20%?

    It's a random figure plucked out of Blair's backside because it sounds good. Yet even if it was based on evidence, then there should have been another policy about further education opportunities for those who did not go.

    My nephew got the grades to go into uni, but chose to get a job. He's worked hard, and is on a salary much greater than his friends who went. He's probably worked harder than them, and has no student debts. Yet if he was in certain industries, there would be a barrier - a paper ceiling - through which he could not burst. Sometimes that ceiling may be necessary - science, for instance. In most it is not.

    Fortunately he's chosen an industry where that is less likely.
    Much of the public sector, including local government, seems to require degrees that are unnecessary for the job.
    What happened with degrees - from the perspective of a graduate and hirer of staff.

    When Blair talked of expanding degree jobs, he was thinking of the type of jobs that Russell Group (and up) are the feeders for.

    The massive expansion with the polys was not done in concert with increasing standards. This created a large number of second class (ha) degrees.

    Employers did indeed find that they needed more people with high quality degrees - So the Russell Group grew and large numbers of graduates were recruited from overseas.

    In the high end jobs, a 2.1 or above from a Russell Group (or overseas equivalent) became mandated by HR. So if you are hiring, you don't get to see other CVs

    So, given the volume of graduates, lower skilled jobs, began demanding degrees. Since they could get them. So, people, who in the past wouldn't have had to have a degree had to get one to get the same quality of job they would have got anyway....

    So we now have a situation where there are two glass ceilings

    Russell Group Degree
    ________

    Former Poly Degree
    ________

    No degree

    The irony was, that back in the day when degrees were much rarer, there was at least some possibility of making it to the top without a degree. Now, it is explicitly forbidden.

    In one job, we were doing work for a bank. The bank (well their HR) tried to stop one of the team coming in, since their background checks showed no degree....

    We have created an absolute caste system.
    Do senior managers have the authority to overrule, or bypass, HR. Why are HR needed. Aren’t managers the people to should have the authority to hire, fire and generally manage their staff?
    It is managers of top companies and partners in top law and accountancy firms who tell HR they will only look at candidates for interview who attended a Russell Group university.

    HR simply process CVs based on what they are told
    I work for a top investment bank and we don't do that, it's too simplistic and you lose a lot of good candidates. One of our star performers last year was a school leaver who didn't go to university.

    I'd suggest those managers who do that at these top accounting and law firms are an example of lazy management.
    Yep any HR department implementing that policy needs to be told to do the job they are being paid to do - which is finding and recruiting the best candidates, not just the people clueless people in HR think are the best candidates.
    It is the partners in the most snobby law firms etc who tell HR to only recruit from Russell Group universities, the polices are set by senior management. HR just implement them
    Firstly, law firms are not the whole market, secondly you can't transpose one sector to the rest of the market.
  • kamskikamski Posts: 4,199
    HYUFD said:

    kamski said:

    HYUFD said:

    geoffw said:

    dixiedean said:

    Ps. If you want an interactive map of all the German results, try this one.

    https://www.election.de/cgi-bin/showres_btw21.pl

    The split is Prussia/Bavaria/NRW.
    Though the Union has clearly still won West Germany on that map, Merkel departing has lost them East Germany however and the SPD made enough gains in the North West of Germany and on the list to win most seats overall
    No, the SPD got more (party) votes than the CDU/CSU in every state East and West except Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg.
    Bavaria and Baden-Wurttemberg were also part of West Germany, so as I said the Union won most constituencies in the old West Germany overall even if they lost East Germany
    OK what you said was:

    "the Union has clearly still won West Germany on that map, Merkel departing has lost them East Germany however and the SPD made enough gains in the North West of Germany and on the list to win most seats"

    I don't think this is a particularly accurate reflection of the result because:

    - The SPD got more seats than the CDU/CSU in every former West German state except the southern states of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, so it would be far more accurate to say they won in southwest Germany.

    - Overall in the former West Germany the CDU/CSU had a big enough lead in those 2 states to get 3 more seats in the whole of the former West Germany (not counting Berlin) than the SPD. I don't think that getting 3 more seats (171-168) is accurately described as "clearly still won". More like "slightly ahead".

    btw on your logic Laschet must be an electoral genius because the CDU lost less vote share in NRW than the CSU lost in Bavaria.

    dixiedean was closer pointing out a bit of a North-South divide, as well as a clear East-West split.

  • RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Sandpit said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    Am I the only one here who thinks government should mostly get out of higher education completely?

    Let the universities, students and banks determine price in a free market.

    Expand sixth form colleges into ‘community colleges’, if they want to keep a low-cost way of getting a degree without the students moving away from home.

    There’s certainly no way that politicians should be making decisions on interest rates or repayment thresholds, because apart from anything else it’s politically unpopular!
    That's a more reasonable suggestion than our current one. What we have right now isn't a market rate, its a convoluted income tax surcharge for certain people in the name of student finance.
    How is it more reasonable? The implementation would be identical, with graduates repaying their loan over time.
    It would be on commercial free market terms and it wouldn't be related to income. Universities would have to compete on price and not have the backing of the state to charge as much as they like and to then have the payments collected by the Exchequer via PAYE.
    Do you honestly think that commercial free market terms unrelated to income would be beneficial for the less well-off?
    No but then that'd actually be a charge for a service received. Not simply a tax that is simply taxed on some but not others.

    There's no reason why a graduate with a salary of £30k should be on an even higher real tax rate than eg a landlord with an income of £70k.
  • RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    It will only be a tax increase for those who aren't paying their share. For those who are paying their share it will be a tax cut.

    If you're going to charge for education then charge for education, but if you're going to charge based on earnings then that's income tax. Charging some different rates of income tax than others is not equitable.
    Again you are conflating your proposed tax reforms with the narrow point regarding whether or not taxpayers should pay for tuition. If taxpayers are paying for it, regardless of the system, you will be in the situation Charles described right back at the start of this thread.
    Taxpayers are already paying for it.

    Its just the taxpayers are simply only some of the taxpayers paying a tax surcharge.
    Come off it. Only graduates are paying for it, not all taxpayers.
    Come off it. Via PAYE some taxpayers are paying for it, not all graduates.
    Not all taxpayers are repaying student loans, maybe something like 20-25%? Many more taxpayers would have to foot the bill if tuition fees were abolished, including the checkout lady mentioned at the start.
    Not all graduates are paying the graduate tax.

    Taxpayers would have a fairer bill if all taxpayers were taxed the same rather than being taxed differently based upon age etc.
  • Everything that is wrong with the Labour party in one photo from conference

    https://twitter.com/BennUniversity/status/1442443827348967424
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Sandpit said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    Am I the only one here who thinks government should mostly get out of higher education completely?

    Let the universities, students and banks determine price in a free market.

    Expand sixth form colleges into ‘community colleges’, if they want to keep a low-cost way of getting a degree without the students moving away from home.

    There’s certainly no way that politicians should be making decisions on interest rates or repayment thresholds, because apart from anything else it’s politically unpopular!
    That's a more reasonable suggestion than our current one. What we have right now isn't a market rate, its a convoluted income tax surcharge for certain people in the name of student finance.
    How is it more reasonable? The implementation would be identical, with graduates repaying their loan over time.
    It would be on commercial free market terms and it wouldn't be related to income. Universities would have to compete on price and not have the backing of the state to charge as much as they like and to then have the payments collected by the Exchequer via PAYE.
    Do you honestly think that commercial free market terms unrelated to income would be beneficial for the less well-off?
    No but then that'd actually be a charge for a service received. Not simply a tax that is simply taxed on some but not others.

    There's no reason why a graduate with a salary of £30k should be on an even higher real tax rate than eg a landlord with an income of £70k.
    How are the current tuition fees not a charge for a service received? And the repayment mechanism if it is in the private sector would be very similar, if not more onerous on the poorest graduates. Just look at the US.
  • HYUFD said:

    kamski said:

    HYUFD said:

    geoffw said:

    dixiedean said:

    Ps. If you want an interactive map of all the German results, try this one.

    https://www.election.de/cgi-bin/showres_btw21.pl

    The split is Prussia/Bavaria/NRW.
    Though the Union has clearly still won West Germany on that map, Merkel departing has lost them East Germany however and the SPD made enough gains in the North West of Germany and on the list to win most seats overall
    No, the SPD got more (party) votes than the CDU/CSU in every state East and West except Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg.
    Bavaria and Baden-Wurttemberg were also part of West Germany, so as I said the Union won most constituencies in the old West Germany overall even if they lost East Germany
    I could have sworn Germany is one country these days.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    I've also noticed some special pleading about furlough, though much less than expected. Some people seem to think it should continue indefinitely.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    It will only be a tax increase for those who aren't paying their share. For those who are paying their share it will be a tax cut.

    If you're going to charge for education then charge for education, but if you're going to charge based on earnings then that's income tax. Charging some different rates of income tax than others is not equitable.
    Again you are conflating your proposed tax reforms with the narrow point regarding whether or not taxpayers should pay for tuition. If taxpayers are paying for it, regardless of the system, you will be in the situation Charles described right back at the start of this thread.
    Taxpayers are already paying for it.

    Its just the taxpayers are simply only some of the taxpayers paying a tax surcharge.
    Come off it. Only graduates are paying for it, not all taxpayers.
    Come off it. Via PAYE some taxpayers are paying for it, not all graduates.
    Not all taxpayers are repaying student loans, maybe something like 20-25%? Many more taxpayers would have to foot the bill if tuition fees were abolished, including the checkout lady mentioned at the start.
    The problem comes from the next step.

    Not all Graduates are repaying their student loans - which means the checkout lady is already paying the bill as the graduates aren't.
  • QuincelQuincel Posts: 3,949

    Everything that is wrong with the Labour party in one photo from conference

    https://twitter.com/BennUniversity/status/1442443827348967424

    It baffles me that parties broadcast so much of their conferences and invite the press to every side-room. It just leads to a bunch of the wackier members of the choir who are preaching to one another being broadcast to the nation while they do so.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    For all of the flap, the change in tuition fees was a positive step in allowing poorer students access. Instead of fees up front it was hypothecated fees when earning.

    The issue was funding for universities. With the government contribution to uni teaching cut by 78%, we've seen institutions both get it in the neck for charging the "maximum" £9k a year and offering poor tuition due to a lack of money.

    Anyway, think what these £9k fees are. Instead of the government handing money to the universities, it hands it to student loans who pay it to universities. We know that in this era of bankism debt is an asset. How much "asset" was added to bank balance sheets in this way? a very quiet way to keep injecting cash into a broken banking system.
    And the funding comes down to the idea that 50% of kids need to go to university. IMV that was always an insane target, and has massively skewed expectations, education and the jobs market.

    IMV everything else leads on from that.
    Except that sort of figure for Tertiary education is the norm in nearly all competitor economies. It reaches 69% in South Korea. Italy and Germany are the exceptions in the developed world.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment

    Maybe Britons are thicker than other nations, but that doesn't bode well for the future.

    The problem perhaps is more the poor quality of many courses, particularly in terms of contact time with students, so little value added.

    I think that the cost of Tertiary education is quite inflated in Britain by two factors: Universities use undergraduate fees to subsidise other things, and second that British students want to live a good lifestyle away from home. Few go to nearby Universities. The student loan system barely covers rent, and not even close to that in London and a number of other cities.
    Except tertiary education != universities. From your link;

    " The World Bank, for example, defines tertiary education as including universities as well as institutions that teach specific capacities of higher learning such as colleges, technical training institutes, community colleges, nursing schools, research laboratories, centers of excellence, and distance learning centers."

    That's where we're going wrong. Universities are just one strand of tertiary education, and yet they've grown to dominate. We'd be much better sorted with other types as well, in particular on-job training.
    That is pretty much what I said. The problem is not the numbers going, but rather the poor quality of much British Tertiary education, and the emphasis on a partying life away from home.
    I'm unsure it is. I talked about he goal of 50% to university, and you talked about tertiary education. These are not, and should not be, the same.

    We need plumbers. I see no need for plumbers to go to university; they'd be much better served with an apprenticeship and then a C&G. We have too much university, and not enough apprenticeships and other further education.
    One of my brother-in-laws did a three-year technical course in welding at an Irish Institute of Technology. He has plenty of work and a big new house.

    My impression is that apprenticeships and C&G in Britain simply aren't working as well as the Irish system. Maybe it's a prestige/class thing? In the same family they have a physics PhD, a music Masters and an MBA - there's no sense that the welder has fallen short as there might be with a British middle class family.
    This is another area where the UK's insistence of a uni degree is wrong. If you don't get one, you have somehow failed. And our ability to look down our noses at people based not on their value, but on whether or not they hold a certain piece of paper.

    But in the meantime, the increased numbers going to uni have devalued that piece of paper.
    Yet the figures are clear, Higher apprentices at level 5 or above earn more over their lifetimes on average than all graduates except those who attended a Russell Group university. They also don't pay tuition fees unlike their student counterparts.
    https://onefile.co.uk/explore/which-is-better-university-degrees-or-higher-apprenticeships/

    So apprentices can cope with the snobbery given their higher bank balances and the fact many can buy a property in their 20s or early 30s (certainly outside London and the South East) unlike most students
    Indeed. So why drive kids down the uni route when it won't gain them much? Why 50%? why not 40%? 30%? 20%?

    It's a random figure plucked out of Blair's backside because it sounds good. Yet even if it was based on evidence, then there should have been another policy about further education opportunities for those who did not go.

    My nephew got the grades to go into uni, but chose to get a job. He's worked hard, and is on a salary much greater than his friends who went. He's probably worked harder than them, and has no student debts. Yet if he was in certain industries, there would be a barrier - a paper ceiling - through which he could not burst. Sometimes that ceiling may be necessary - science, for instance. In most it is not.

    Fortunately he's chosen an industry where that is less likely.
    Much of the public sector, including local government, seems to require degrees that are unnecessary for the job.
    What happened with degrees - from the perspective of a graduate and hirer of staff.

    When Blair talked of expanding degree jobs, he was thinking of the type of jobs that Russell Group (and up) are the feeders for.

    The massive expansion with the polys was not done in concert with increasing standards. This created a large number of second class (ha) degrees.

    Employers did indeed find that they needed more people with high quality degrees - So the Russell Group grew and large numbers of graduates were recruited from overseas.

    In the high end jobs, a 2.1 or above from a Russell Group (or overseas equivalent) became mandated by HR. So if you are hiring, you don't get to see other CVs

    So, given the volume of graduates, lower skilled jobs, began demanding degrees. Since they could get them. So, people, who in the past wouldn't have had to have a degree had to get one to get the same quality of job they would have got anyway....

    So we now have a situation where there are two glass ceilings

    Russell Group Degree
    ________

    Former Poly Degree
    ________

    No degree

    The irony was, that back in the day when degrees were much rarer, there was at least some possibility of making it to the top without a degree. Now, it is explicitly forbidden.

    In one job, we were doing work for a bank. The bank (well their HR) tried to stop one of the team coming in, since their background checks showed no degree....

    We have created an absolute caste system.
    Do senior managers have the authority to overrule, or bypass, HR. Why are HR needed. Aren’t managers the people to should have the authority to hire, fire and generally manage their staff?
    It is managers of top companies and partners in top law and accountancy firms who tell HR they will only look at candidates for interview who attended a Russell Group university.

    HR simply process CVs based on what they are told
    I work for a top investment bank and we don't do that, it's too simplistic and you lose a lot of good candidates. One of our star performers last year was a school leaver who didn't go to university.

    I'd suggest those managers who do that at these top accounting and law firms are an example of lazy management.
    Yep any HR department implementing that policy needs to be told to do the job they are being paid to do - which is finding and recruiting the best candidates, not just the people clueless people in HR think are the best candidates.
    It is the partners in the most snobby law firms etc who tell HR to only recruit from Russell Group universities, the polices are set by senior management. HR just implement them
    Firstly, law firms are not the whole market, secondly you can't transpose one sector to the rest of the market.
    All city firms are very overrepresented with Russell group graduates, especially the more professional law and accountancy firms and the non trading floor investment bank side.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited September 2021
    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Sandpit said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    Am I the only one here who thinks government should mostly get out of higher education completely?

    Let the universities, students and banks determine price in a free market.

    Expand sixth form colleges into ‘community colleges’, if they want to keep a low-cost way of getting a degree without the students moving away from home.

    There’s certainly no way that politicians should be making decisions on interest rates or repayment thresholds, because apart from anything else it’s politically unpopular!
    That's a more reasonable suggestion than our current one. What we have right now isn't a market rate, its a convoluted income tax surcharge for certain people in the name of student finance.
    How is it more reasonable? The implementation would be identical, with graduates repaying their loan over time.
    It would be on commercial free market terms and it wouldn't be related to income. Universities would have to compete on price and not have the backing of the state to charge as much as they like and to then have the payments collected by the Exchequer via PAYE.
    Do you honestly think that commercial free market terms unrelated to income would be beneficial for the less well-off?
    No but then that'd actually be a charge for a service received. Not simply a tax that is simply taxed on some but not others.

    There's no reason why a graduate with a salary of £30k should be on an even higher real tax rate than eg a landlord with an income of £70k.
    How are the current tuition fees not a charge for a service received? And the repayment mechanism if it is in the private sector would be very similar, if not more onerous on the poorest graduates. Just look at the US.
    Because the current tax levied on on income is not a fee, it is a tax based upon income.

    If you're going to tax income, then tax income. If you're going to charge for a service, then charge for the service. The current mess does neither.

    If all you're coming down to is its not fair to expect people to actually pay for fees so it should be income tax based, then just tax income properly. Don't tax a minority of income tax payers.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941
    eek said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    It will only be a tax increase for those who aren't paying their share. For those who are paying their share it will be a tax cut.

    If you're going to charge for education then charge for education, but if you're going to charge based on earnings then that's income tax. Charging some different rates of income tax than others is not equitable.
    Again you are conflating your proposed tax reforms with the narrow point regarding whether or not taxpayers should pay for tuition. If taxpayers are paying for it, regardless of the system, you will be in the situation Charles described right back at the start of this thread.
    Taxpayers are already paying for it.

    Its just the taxpayers are simply only some of the taxpayers paying a tax surcharge.
    Come off it. Only graduates are paying for it, not all taxpayers.
    Come off it. Via PAYE some taxpayers are paying for it, not all graduates.
    Not all taxpayers are repaying student loans, maybe something like 20-25%? Many more taxpayers would have to foot the bill if tuition fees were abolished, including the checkout lady mentioned at the start.
    The problem comes from the next step.

    Not all Graduates are repaying their student loans - which means the checkout lady is already paying the bill as the graduates aren't.
    Is that the case? I thought the interest rate was there to make up the shortfall. In either case, she will be paying significantly less than if fees were abolished, and it was paid entirely via general taxation.
  • Nigelb said:
    I used to get mixed up between Steely Dan and Steeleye Span.
  • RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    It will only be a tax increase for those who aren't paying their share. For those who are paying their share it will be a tax cut.

    If you're going to charge for education then charge for education, but if you're going to charge based on earnings then that's income tax. Charging some different rates of income tax than others is not equitable.
    Again you are conflating your proposed tax reforms with the narrow point regarding whether or not taxpayers should pay for tuition. If taxpayers are paying for it, regardless of the system, you will be in the situation Charles described right back at the start of this thread.
    Taxpayers are already paying for it.

    Its just the taxpayers are simply only some of the taxpayers paying a tax surcharge.
    Come off it. Only graduates are paying for it, not all taxpayers.
    Come off it. Via PAYE some taxpayers are paying for it, not all graduates.
    Not all taxpayers are repaying student loans, maybe something like 20-25%? Many more taxpayers would have to foot the bill if tuition fees were abolished, including the checkout lady mentioned at the start.
    Not all graduates are paying the graduate tax.

    Taxpayers would have a fairer bill if all taxpayers were taxed the same rather than being taxed differently based upon age etc.
    Its not a tax. Its repayment of a loan.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    MaxPB said:

    I've also noticed some special pleading about furlough, though much less than expected. Some people seem to think it should continue indefinitely.

    When there’s a million vacancies? If anything, they’ve let it run a couple of months too long.

    It must only be the travel industry really affected by now, and there’s plenty of opportunities in domestic hospitality and transport.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    HYUFD said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    For all of the flap, the change in tuition fees was a positive step in allowing poorer students access. Instead of fees up front it was hypothecated fees when earning.

    The issue was funding for universities. With the government contribution to uni teaching cut by 78%, we've seen institutions both get it in the neck for charging the "maximum" £9k a year and offering poor tuition due to a lack of money.

    Anyway, think what these £9k fees are. Instead of the government handing money to the universities, it hands it to student loans who pay it to universities. We know that in this era of bankism debt is an asset. How much "asset" was added to bank balance sheets in this way? a very quiet way to keep injecting cash into a broken banking system.
    And the funding comes down to the idea that 50% of kids need to go to university. IMV that was always an insane target, and has massively skewed expectations, education and the jobs market.

    IMV everything else leads on from that.
    Except that sort of figure for Tertiary education is the norm in nearly all competitor economies. It reaches 69% in South Korea. Italy and Germany are the exceptions in the developed world.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment

    Maybe Britons are thicker than other nations, but that doesn't bode well for the future.

    The problem perhaps is more the poor quality of many courses, particularly in terms of contact time with students, so little value added.

    I think that the cost of Tertiary education is quite inflated in Britain by two factors: Universities use undergraduate fees to subsidise other things, and second that British students want to live a good lifestyle away from home. Few go to nearby Universities. The student loan system barely covers rent, and not even close to that in London and a number of other cities.
    Except tertiary education != universities. From your link;

    " The World Bank, for example, defines tertiary education as including universities as well as institutions that teach specific capacities of higher learning such as colleges, technical training institutes, community colleges, nursing schools, research laboratories, centers of excellence, and distance learning centers."

    That's where we're going wrong. Universities are just one strand of tertiary education, and yet they've grown to dominate. We'd be much better sorted with other types as well, in particular on-job training.
    That is pretty much what I said. The problem is not the numbers going, but rather the poor quality of much British Tertiary education, and the emphasis on a partying life away from home.
    I'm unsure it is. I talked about he goal of 50% to university, and you talked about tertiary education. These are not, and should not be, the same.

    We need plumbers. I see no need for plumbers to go to university; they'd be much better served with an apprenticeship and then a C&G. We have too much university, and not enough apprenticeships and other further education.
    One of my brother-in-laws did a three-year technical course in welding at an Irish Institute of Technology. He has plenty of work and a big new house.

    My impression is that apprenticeships and C&G in Britain simply aren't working as well as the Irish system. Maybe it's a prestige/class thing? In the same family they have a physics PhD, a music Masters and an MBA - there's no sense that the welder has fallen short as there might be with a British middle class family.
    This is another area where the UK's insistence of a uni degree is wrong. If you don't get one, you have somehow failed. And our ability to look down our noses at people based not on their value, but on whether or not they hold a certain piece of paper.

    But in the meantime, the increased numbers going to uni have devalued that piece of paper.
    Yet the figures are clear, Higher apprentices at level 5 or above earn more over their lifetimes on average than all graduates except those who attended a Russell Group university. They also don't pay tuition fees unlike their student counterparts.
    https://onefile.co.uk/explore/which-is-better-university-degrees-or-higher-apprenticeships/

    So apprentices can cope with the snobbery given their higher bank balances and the fact many can buy a property in their 20s or early 30s (certainly outside London and the South East) unlike most students
    Indeed. So why drive kids down the uni route when it won't gain them much? Why 50%? why not 40%? 30%? 20%?

    It's a random figure plucked out of Blair's backside because it sounds good. Yet even if it was based on evidence, then there should have been another policy about further education opportunities for those who did not go.

    My nephew got the grades to go into uni, but chose to get a job. He's worked hard, and is on a salary much greater than his friends who went. He's probably worked harder than them, and has no student debts. Yet if he was in certain industries, there would be a barrier - a paper ceiling - through which he could not burst. Sometimes that ceiling may be necessary - science, for instance. In most it is not.

    Fortunately he's chosen an industry where that is less likely.
    Much of the public sector, including local government, seems to require degrees that are unnecessary for the job.
    What happened with degrees - from the perspective of a graduate and hirer of staff.

    When Blair talked of expanding degree jobs, he was thinking of the type of jobs that Russell Group (and up) are the feeders for.

    The massive expansion with the polys was not done in concert with increasing standards. This created a large number of second class (ha) degrees.

    Employers did indeed find that they needed more people with high quality degrees - So the Russell Group grew and large numbers of graduates were recruited from overseas.

    In the high end jobs, a 2.1 or above from a Russell Group (or overseas equivalent) became mandated by HR. So if you are hiring, you don't get to see other CVs

    So, given the volume of graduates, lower skilled jobs, began demanding degrees. Since they could get them. So, people, who in the past wouldn't have had to have a degree had to get one to get the same quality of job they would have got anyway....

    So we now have a situation where there are two glass ceilings

    Russell Group Degree
    ________

    Former Poly Degree
    ________

    No degree

    The irony was, that back in the day when degrees were much rarer, there was at least some possibility of making it to the top without a degree. Now, it is explicitly forbidden.

    In one job, we were doing work for a bank. The bank (well their HR) tried to stop one of the team coming in, since their background checks showed no degree....

    We have created an absolute caste system.
    Do senior managers have the authority to overrule, or bypass, HR. Why are HR needed. Aren’t managers the people to should have the authority to hire, fire and generally manage their staff?
    It is managers of top companies and partners in top law and accountancy firms who tell HR they will only look at candidates for interview who attended a Russell Group university.

    HR simply process CVs based on what they are told
    I work for a top investment bank and we don't do that, it's too simplistic and you lose a lot of good candidates. One of our star performers last year was a school leaver who didn't go to university.

    I'd suggest those managers who do that at these top accounting and law firms are an example of lazy management.
    Yep any HR department implementing that policy needs to be told to do the job they are being paid to do - which is finding and recruiting the best candidates, not just the people clueless people in HR think are the best candidates.
    It is the partners in the most snobby law firms etc who tell HR to only recruit from Russell Group universities, the polices are set by senior management. HR just implement them
    Firstly, law firms are not the whole market, secondly you can't transpose one sector to the rest of the market.
    All city firms are very overrepresented with Russell group graduates, especially the more professional law and accountancy firms and the non trading floor investment bank side.
    Accountancy won't be - the large firms there have been way more active taking on degree apprenticeships than near enough anyone else...

    As for Investment Banks I would accept the word of someone @MaxPB who works in one and recruits people than yourself for obvious reasons.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    HYUFD said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    For all of the flap, the change in tuition fees was a positive step in allowing poorer students access. Instead of fees up front it was hypothecated fees when earning.

    The issue was funding for universities. With the government contribution to uni teaching cut by 78%, we've seen institutions both get it in the neck for charging the "maximum" £9k a year and offering poor tuition due to a lack of money.

    Anyway, think what these £9k fees are. Instead of the government handing money to the universities, it hands it to student loans who pay it to universities. We know that in this era of bankism debt is an asset. How much "asset" was added to bank balance sheets in this way? a very quiet way to keep injecting cash into a broken banking system.
    And the funding comes down to the idea that 50% of kids need to go to university. IMV that was always an insane target, and has massively skewed expectations, education and the jobs market.

    IMV everything else leads on from that.
    Except that sort of figure for Tertiary education is the norm in nearly all competitor economies. It reaches 69% in South Korea. Italy and Germany are the exceptions in the developed world.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment

    Maybe Britons are thicker than other nations, but that doesn't bode well for the future.

    The problem perhaps is more the poor quality of many courses, particularly in terms of contact time with students, so little value added.

    I think that the cost of Tertiary education is quite inflated in Britain by two factors: Universities use undergraduate fees to subsidise other things, and second that British students want to live a good lifestyle away from home. Few go to nearby Universities. The student loan system barely covers rent, and not even close to that in London and a number of other cities.
    Except tertiary education != universities. From your link;

    " The World Bank, for example, defines tertiary education as including universities as well as institutions that teach specific capacities of higher learning such as colleges, technical training institutes, community colleges, nursing schools, research laboratories, centers of excellence, and distance learning centers."

    That's where we're going wrong. Universities are just one strand of tertiary education, and yet they've grown to dominate. We'd be much better sorted with other types as well, in particular on-job training.
    That is pretty much what I said. The problem is not the numbers going, but rather the poor quality of much British Tertiary education, and the emphasis on a partying life away from home.
    I'm unsure it is. I talked about he goal of 50% to university, and you talked about tertiary education. These are not, and should not be, the same.

    We need plumbers. I see no need for plumbers to go to university; they'd be much better served with an apprenticeship and then a C&G. We have too much university, and not enough apprenticeships and other further education.
    One of my brother-in-laws did a three-year technical course in welding at an Irish Institute of Technology. He has plenty of work and a big new house.

    My impression is that apprenticeships and C&G in Britain simply aren't working as well as the Irish system. Maybe it's a prestige/class thing? In the same family they have a physics PhD, a music Masters and an MBA - there's no sense that the welder has fallen short as there might be with a British middle class family.
    This is another area where the UK's insistence of a uni degree is wrong. If you don't get one, you have somehow failed. And our ability to look down our noses at people based not on their value, but on whether or not they hold a certain piece of paper.

    But in the meantime, the increased numbers going to uni have devalued that piece of paper.
    Yet the figures are clear, Higher apprentices at level 5 or above earn more over their lifetimes on average than all graduates except those who attended a Russell Group university. They also don't pay tuition fees unlike their student counterparts.
    https://onefile.co.uk/explore/which-is-better-university-degrees-or-higher-apprenticeships/

    So apprentices can cope with the snobbery given their higher bank balances and the fact many can buy a property in their 20s or early 30s (certainly outside London and the South East) unlike most students
    Indeed. So why drive kids down the uni route when it won't gain them much? Why 50%? why not 40%? 30%? 20%?

    It's a random figure plucked out of Blair's backside because it sounds good. Yet even if it was based on evidence, then there should have been another policy about further education opportunities for those who did not go.

    My nephew got the grades to go into uni, but chose to get a job. He's worked hard, and is on a salary much greater than his friends who went. He's probably worked harder than them, and has no student debts. Yet if he was in certain industries, there would be a barrier - a paper ceiling - through which he could not burst. Sometimes that ceiling may be necessary - science, for instance. In most it is not.

    Fortunately he's chosen an industry where that is less likely.
    Much of the public sector, including local government, seems to require degrees that are unnecessary for the job.
    What happened with degrees - from the perspective of a graduate and hirer of staff.

    When Blair talked of expanding degree jobs, he was thinking of the type of jobs that Russell Group (and up) are the feeders for.

    The massive expansion with the polys was not done in concert with increasing standards. This created a large number of second class (ha) degrees.

    Employers did indeed find that they needed more people with high quality degrees - So the Russell Group grew and large numbers of graduates were recruited from overseas.

    In the high end jobs, a 2.1 or above from a Russell Group (or overseas equivalent) became mandated by HR. So if you are hiring, you don't get to see other CVs

    So, given the volume of graduates, lower skilled jobs, began demanding degrees. Since they could get them. So, people, who in the past wouldn't have had to have a degree had to get one to get the same quality of job they would have got anyway....

    So we now have a situation where there are two glass ceilings

    Russell Group Degree
    ________

    Former Poly Degree
    ________

    No degree

    The irony was, that back in the day when degrees were much rarer, there was at least some possibility of making it to the top without a degree. Now, it is explicitly forbidden.

    In one job, we were doing work for a bank. The bank (well their HR) tried to stop one of the team coming in, since their background checks showed no degree....

    We have created an absolute caste system.
    Do senior managers have the authority to overrule, or bypass, HR. Why are HR needed. Aren’t managers the people to should have the authority to hire, fire and generally manage their staff?
    It is managers of top companies and partners in top law and accountancy firms who tell HR they will only look at candidates for interview who attended a Russell Group university.

    HR simply process CVs based on what they are told
    I work for a top investment bank and we don't do that, it's too simplistic and you lose a lot of good candidates. One of our star performers last year was a school leaver who didn't go to university.

    I'd suggest those managers who do that at these top accounting and law firms are an example of lazy management.
    Yep any HR department implementing that policy needs to be told to do the job they are being paid to do - which is finding and recruiting the best candidates, not just the people clueless people in HR think are the best candidates.
    It is the partners in the most snobby law firms etc who tell HR to only recruit from Russell Group universities, the polices are set by senior management. HR just implement them
    Firstly, law firms are not the whole market, secondly you can't transpose one sector to the rest of the market.
    All city firms are very overrepresented with Russell group graduates, especially the more professional law and accountancy firms and the non trading floor investment bank side.
    And what? You said that companies put in a filter that excludes those who didn't go, yet here you are backing up on that now by saying they are merely over represented. Want to dilute it any further?
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited September 2021
    kamski said:

    HYUFD said:

    kamski said:

    HYUFD said:

    geoffw said:

    dixiedean said:

    Ps. If you want an interactive map of all the German results, try this one.

    https://www.election.de/cgi-bin/showres_btw21.pl

    The split is Prussia/Bavaria/NRW.
    Though the Union has clearly still won West Germany on that map, Merkel departing has lost them East Germany however and the SPD made enough gains in the North West of Germany and on the list to win most seats overall
    No, the SPD got more (party) votes than the CDU/CSU in every state East and West except Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg.
    Bavaria and Baden-Wurttemberg were also part of West Germany, so as I said the Union won most constituencies in the old West Germany overall even if they lost East Germany
    OK what you said was:

    "the Union has clearly still won West Germany on that map, Merkel departing has lost them East Germany however and the SPD made enough gains in the North West of Germany and on the list to win most seats"

    I don't think this is a particularly accurate reflection of the result because:

    - The SPD got more seats than the CDU/CSU in every former West German state except the southern states of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, so it would be far more accurate to say they won in southwest Germany.

    - Overall in the former West Germany the CDU/CSU had a big enough lead in those 2 states to get 3 more seats in the whole of the former West Germany (not counting Berlin) than the SPD. I don't think that getting 3 more seats (171-168) is accurately described as "clearly still won". More like "slightly ahead".

    btw on your logic Laschet must be an electoral genius because the CDU lost less vote share in NRW than the CSU lost in Bavaria.

    dixiedean was closer pointing out a bit of a North-South divide, as well as a clear East-West split.

    Yes but southwest Germany was still part of the old west Germany so you cannot exclude it.

    As I said the Union won west Germany overall.

    Bavaria was still the Union's best region, had Soder been Union chancellor candidate not only would the Union have likely won Bavaria by more than Laschet did, the Union would likely have won most seats overall and kept the chancellor's post
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    Phil said:

    I’m agreeing with Philip T a lot today. Must be something in the water.

    He talks a lot of sense.
    Not everything by a long stretch, but a lot.
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362
    Interesting quote from lindner “only thing greens and us agree on is legalising cannabis”

    Centre party? Under him, I don’t think the FDP should be regarded as merely pro business centre party. Correct me where I am wrong, but are they not the natural home of our own Phillip Thompson, Libertarian Pirates?

    I think the bet is Lindner will keep SDP and Greens out of power, refusing to join them in coalition. And quite right too if they are Libertarian Pirates, they are not at home in such coalition.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    Sandpit said:

    eek said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    One way to raise revenues from online would be to ensure that all transactions on platforms like Amazon must be subject to VAT. Currently a plethora of tiny companies can crop up on Amazon and are VAT-exempt which isn't possible inside regular shops.

    I believe you can go to Amazon and buy a dress and not have VAT on it, but if you went to Debenhams and bought a dress it must have always had VAT on it.

    If someone wishes to open their own website then fair enough to be VAT-exempt until the threshold is met, just as if they'd opened their own physical store, but to suggest Amazon haven't hit the VAT threshold is insane.

    That's not a level playing field.

    Unless the company is a startup UK company that issue has already been fixed - as part of the new VAT rules that were introduced back in January.

    And in the cases that remain, Amazon is just a combination of payment and market stall provider to a very small UK business.
    Amazon are not a stall provider, they're a retailer. They should be liable to every bit as much tax for anything they retail every bit as much as any transaction that went through the tills at Debenhams would.

    When Debenhams were trading they'd have clothes divided by brand etc in little 'stalls' but none of them would be VAT exempt since Debenhams were retailer for all of them. Just as Amazon are for everything I buy from them.
    No Amazon are both a retailer (anything amazon sells direct) and a market stall provider (everything that is not sold by Amazon directly).

    The fact you haven't noticed that fact means you haven't paid much attention to how Amazon actually works...
    If they’re simply providing a market stall, then there won’t be a direct financial relationship with the consumer, who will pay the stall holder directly for whatever they are selling.
    And if they're merely providing a market stall then that market stall should have its own search engine etc and not be a part of the retailers own search engine.
    Search engines and marketing arrangements are all fine, what’s important is to follow the money.

    You pay a small business = no VAT.
    You pay a $2trn business = full VAT.
    but you are buying a good off a small business - who currently receive 90% or so of the amount I pay Amazon Payments for the good.

    If you add 20% VAT to that, that small business is now receiving 71% of the money I paid, because I bought from Amazon rather than their own website which I would never have found to purchase from.

    No, you’re buying the good from a massive multinational, who is buying it from a small business. Many of which only exist as tax dodges in the first place.

    The whole point is to level the playing field between online sales and physical store sales, and between people setting up their own small stores and using someone else’s large store.
    Spot on. Isn't it great when there's harmony between left and right on the odd issue?
    One thing that unites left, right and centre, is making sure massive multinationals pay VAT on their sales.
  • RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    It will only be a tax increase for those who aren't paying their share. For those who are paying their share it will be a tax cut.

    If you're going to charge for education then charge for education, but if you're going to charge based on earnings then that's income tax. Charging some different rates of income tax than others is not equitable.
    Again you are conflating your proposed tax reforms with the narrow point regarding whether or not taxpayers should pay for tuition. If taxpayers are paying for it, regardless of the system, you will be in the situation Charles described right back at the start of this thread.
    Taxpayers are already paying for it.

    Its just the taxpayers are simply only some of the taxpayers paying a tax surcharge.
    Come off it. Only graduates are paying for it, not all taxpayers.
    Come off it. Via PAYE some taxpayers are paying for it, not all graduates.
    Not all taxpayers are repaying student loans, maybe something like 20-25%? Many more taxpayers would have to foot the bill if tuition fees were abolished, including the checkout lady mentioned at the start.
    Not all graduates are paying the graduate tax.

    Taxpayers would have a fairer bill if all taxpayers were taxed the same rather than being taxed differently based upon age etc.
    Its not a tax. Its repayment of a loan.
    It is a tax.

    If I am making a loan repayment then I have a fixed amount I repay each month. If I increase my earnings, I don't suddenly start having to pay more out of PAYE as a result.

    This is a PAYE tax levied on certain people but not others. If it walks like a tax, and quacks like a tax ...
  • New from @IpsosMORI / Evening Standard. Despite Tory lead falling to just 3 points today, only 1 in 4 think Starmer's Labour are ready to form the next government. Politics in a nutshell?



    https://twitter.com/keiranpedley/status/1442471466784727040?s=20
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Sandpit said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    Why should eg a successful middle aged lawyer or businessman who owns their own home be on a lower real marginal tax rate than that Film Studies graduate who has a lower income and rent to pay?
    Ooo goodie!

    Why should a middle aged supermarket check out lady subsidise the teenage son of a QC to spend 3 years drinking his way through a film studies degree?
    The middle aged supermarket checkout lady shouldn't have much tax to pay but the QC should so its the QC paying for it not the check out lady ultimately.

    I answered your question, now can you answer mine?
    I'm sure she'd notice when taxes went up to pay for the £8bn or so needed to fund it.
    If my proposal that all income were taxed at the same rate regardless of how it was taxed (so merging NI, Income Tax and graduate tax etc together) then her taxes as a worker ought to be able to go down not up. It would be those living on unearned incomes that see their taxes rise to match those of earned incomes.
    Regardless of your tax proposals, she would be paying more tax if the taxpayer had to fund the £8bn a year needed to cover tuition fees.
    The taxpayer does have to fund tuition fees as it stands.

    However as it stands even relatively low-earning but young graduates have to pay higher taxes, while even high earning older graduates don't have to pay higher taxes.

    Its pure age discrimination.
    No it doesn't, that's the whole point of tuition fees. We are talking about the difference between the current situation, and one where tuition fees are abolished. In the latter, the checkout lady would certainly notice it in her pay packet.
    No she wouldn't. Not with my proposal, indeed her taxes could go down.

    The people who benefit from the current system aren't checkout ladies, they're landlords and elderly lawyers and pensioners etc who can earn lots of income without seeing that income taxed at the same rates that others get taxed at.
    We're talking about two separate things. Regardless of whether we are using the current tax system, or your tax system, abolishing tuition fees would result in a net cost to the taxpayer of around £8bn a year.
    Which is absolutely a rounding error compared to the cost to the exchequer of ensuring the retired, landlords, inheritees etc don't pay the same rate of income tax as those actually working for their income pay.
    Just to give a sense of scale, that "rounding error" is about the same as the revenue from the new NI tax hike.
    Which again wouldn't have been needed if everyone paid the same share.

    Tax everyone on the same income the same rate, regardless of how its earned. Don't punish people for being workers, or punish them even more for being young workers.
    Yes, but regardless of what tax system you use, abolishing tuition fees will result in a net cost of £8bn, which will be a noticeable tax increase, at least based on the reaction to the NI one.
    Am I the only one here who thinks government should mostly get out of higher education completely?

    Let the universities, students and banks determine price in a free market.

    Expand sixth form colleges into ‘community colleges’, if they want to keep a low-cost way of getting a degree without the students moving away from home.

    There’s certainly no way that politicians should be making decisions on interest rates or repayment thresholds, because apart from anything else it’s politically unpopular!
    That's a more reasonable suggestion than our current one. What we have right now isn't a market rate, its a convoluted income tax surcharge for certain people in the name of student finance.
    How is it more reasonable? The implementation would be identical, with graduates repaying their loan over time.
    It would be on commercial free market terms and it wouldn't be related to income. Universities would have to compete on price and not have the backing of the state to charge as much as they like and to then have the payments collected by the Exchequer via PAYE.
    Do you honestly think that commercial free market terms unrelated to income would be beneficial for the less well-off?
    No but then that'd actually be a charge for a service received. Not simply a tax that is simply taxed on some but not others.

    There's no reason why a graduate with a salary of £30k should be on an even higher real tax rate than eg a landlord with an income of £70k.
    How are the current tuition fees not a charge for a service received? And the repayment mechanism if it is in the private sector would be very similar, if not more onerous on the poorest graduates. Just look at the US.
    Because the current tax levied on on income is not a fee, it is a tax based upon income.

    If you're going to tax income, then tax income. If you're going to charge for a service, then charge for the service. The current mess does neither.

    If all you're coming down to is its not fair to expect people to actually pay for fees so it should be income tax based, then just tax income properly. Don't tax a minority of income tax payers.
    I think this is now just quibbling about semantics rather than discussing any real issue. You could just as well call it repayment of a fee based on income. In fact I think it would be fairer to call it that, you don't have a balance sheet of your expected income tax payments that you are trying to clear, do you?
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    TOPPING said:

    Charles said:

    Good morning everybody. I wonder what the PB brains trust would advise. Mrs C and I are on holiday some 350 miles from home. We have, thanks to topping up when we arrived last Thursday, more than enough fuel to get home.
    However, part of the plans for the holiday include a week-long visit to N Wales, starting on Thursday, adding a further 275 or so miles to our trip.

    I am beginning to wonder; should we call off the N Wales leg?

    No. I think motorway service stations will always have fuel, though you'll obviously pay a bit more for it.
    No, you will be ripped off. All motorway fuel.is a rip.off
    Motorway fuel is indeed a rip-off, but at least they'll have fuel and there's unlikely to be queues. That may be worth paying extra to OKC.
    They aren’t a rip off.

    In addition to the price of the fuel you are paying for time and convenience.

    I never buy there as I plan not to
    No motorway fuel on the A1 yday so the point is moot. And actually some of the cheapest fuel can be found on the motorway. Or at least the A1.

    Not much point in having the cheapest fuel on the A 1 if there isn't any.....
    Very true. I did qualify by saying "yday".

    Petrogas at Biggleswade and the Shell at Wansford spring to mind.

    Usually.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,081
    edited September 2021
    Cookie said:

    Selebian said:

    Cookie said:

    From my observations, any panic that there was in GM is already over. I filled up on Saturday - there was a queue of five minutes or so, but only for cars with pumps on their right. The left hand pumps were all free. Which made me think the problem was more a case of an imbalance of left- and right-handed pump cars turning up at the same time.

    How does the left vs right thing work? Do manufacturers do a 50:50 split across each model, or do they make all cars within the same model either left or right to reduce costs? Presumably there is some goal to even the numbers out?
    We have the same car as our previous car (but 8 years newer) and the fuel inlet has switched from right to left - the source of much confusion the first few times I filled up the new car.
    My wife pointed out to me (after I asked her for the nth time which side the filler was on the family car) that the fuel gauge has a little arrow telling you which side. That's a Ford, was also the case in another Ford we used to have, but I'm not sure whether all cars have that.

    In most fuel stations the hoses are long enough to fill up on either side, particularly if you pull forwards a bit (never as comfortable on the far side, but normally very doable). You do have to accept everyone else looks at you as the idiot who forgot which side the filler cap was, but you don't have to queue so long.
    Yes, all cars have them. I had been driving for over 20 years before I realised that.

    In the garage I was in on Saturday, some did break ranks and fill up from the 'wrong' side - but I think most of us thought the extra wait was worth the not-looking-a-bit-awkward.


    There’s a video somewhere on YouTube full of handy tips that many people don’t know about their cars - which includes the petrol pump arrow. Another was that if you get trapped in your car and can’t open the electric windows, you can smash the glass using the seat head rest, pulled out if its socket so that you hold the soft bit and smash the glass with the two metal rods.

    Anyhow I was just passing the petrol station and of course the panic buyers were queuing back to the roundabout, snarling up the traffic. As I have to return to North Island midweek for my mother’s 90th and ferry various relatives about, I thought I should prudently pre-purchase my fuel by filling up today. So I joined the back of the queue. As we neared the entrance to the filling station there was a big notice “no diesel pumps 1,2,3,4,5 & 6” with the entire queue stretching back from pumps 7-8. The lower numbered pumps were all vacant.

    Since I wanted petrol I pulled out of the queue and drove round to pump 1 and started filling up. Of course it turned out that half the numpties waiting in line for 7 & 8 also had petrol cars who then all pulled out to pumps 2-6 - so I managed to dissolve much of the queue through being the only driver apparently able to understand the notice….
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 3,869
    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    I've also noticed some special pleading about furlough, though much less than expected. Some people seem to think it should continue indefinitely.

    When there’s a million vacancies? If anything, they’ve let it run a couple of months too long.

    It must only be the travel industry really affected by now, and there’s plenty of opportunities in domestic hospitality and transport.
    And GP surgeries?
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    I've also noticed some special pleading about furlough, though much less than expected. Some people seem to think it should continue indefinitely.

    When there’s a million vacancies? If anything, they’ve let it run a couple of months too long.

    It must only be the travel industry really affected by now, and there’s plenty of opportunities in domestic hospitality and transport.
    Indeed, even the travel industry seems to be ramping up now, especially with the UK set to join the EU vaccine passport scheme meaning an end to testing on arrival in both directions for vaccinated people, recognition of more countries by the UK and travel restrictions to the US coming to an end. Those moves will cover 80% of all UK flights.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited September 2021
    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    With regard to student loan repayment issue; it is worth reflecting on how we got in to this mess. Many people on here view the coalition years (2010-2015) as a glorious example of strong and mature government. My view to the contrary is that this was the worst government in living history.

    The student loans are nothing but a con. The degree courses people were directed in to going on, at £9k per annum to go on were, in a very, very large number of cases, completely and utterly useless and a waste of 3 years of young peoples lives when they could have been doing something economically productive instead. The con gets worse when one looks at the repayment system. The absolute scandal is the interest rates, they are set at RPI, which is 1.5%, not the actual bank of england interest rate which is 0.1%. The interest rate increases to 4.5% when students start earning any significant salary. It is effectively a system of cynical exploitation of young people.

    There is a lot of anger about this, it is the one policy area where it is possible to sympathise with people like Andrea Rayner.

    So, between 1.5% and 4.5% for unsecured personal debt, where repayments are automatically paused in the event of unemployment, is a bad deal?

    And, don't people who choose to do degrees in Film Studies bear some responsibility for their choices? Or do only you get to choose?
    For all of the flap, the change in tuition fees was a positive step in allowing poorer students access. Instead of fees up front it was hypothecated fees when earning.

    The issue was funding for universities. With the government contribution to uni teaching cut by 78%, we've seen institutions both get it in the neck for charging the "maximum" £9k a year and offering poor tuition due to a lack of money.

    Anyway, think what these £9k fees are. Instead of the government handing money to the universities, it hands it to student loans who pay it to universities. We know that in this era of bankism debt is an asset. How much "asset" was added to bank balance sheets in this way? a very quiet way to keep injecting cash into a broken banking system.
    And the funding comes down to the idea that 50% of kids need to go to university. IMV that was always an insane target, and has massively skewed expectations, education and the jobs market.

    IMV everything else leads on from that.
    Except that sort of figure for Tertiary education is the norm in nearly all competitor economies. It reaches 69% in South Korea. Italy and Germany are the exceptions in the developed world.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment

    Maybe Britons are thicker than other nations, but that doesn't bode well for the future.

    The problem perhaps is more the poor quality of many courses, particularly in terms of contact time with students, so little value added.

    I think that the cost of Tertiary education is quite inflated in Britain by two factors: Universities use undergraduate fees to subsidise other things, and second that British students want to live a good lifestyle away from home. Few go to nearby Universities. The student loan system barely covers rent, and not even close to that in London and a number of other cities.
    Except tertiary education != universities. From your link;

    " The World Bank, for example, defines tertiary education as including universities as well as institutions that teach specific capacities of higher learning such as colleges, technical training institutes, community colleges, nursing schools, research laboratories, centers of excellence, and distance learning centers."

    That's where we're going wrong. Universities are just one strand of tertiary education, and yet they've grown to dominate. We'd be much better sorted with other types as well, in particular on-job training.
    That is pretty much what I said. The problem is not the numbers going, but rather the poor quality of much British Tertiary education, and the emphasis on a partying life away from home.
    I'm unsure it is. I talked about he goal of 50% to university, and you talked about tertiary education. These are not, and should not be, the same.

    We need plumbers. I see no need for plumbers to go to university; they'd be much better served with an apprenticeship and then a C&G. We have too much university, and not enough apprenticeships and other further education.
    One of my brother-in-laws did a three-year technical course in welding at an Irish Institute of Technology. He has plenty of work and a big new house.

    My impression is that apprenticeships and C&G in Britain simply aren't working as well as the Irish system. Maybe it's a prestige/class thing? In the same family they have a physics PhD, a music Masters and an MBA - there's no sense that the welder has fallen short as there might be with a British middle class family.
    This is another area where the UK's insistence of a uni degree is wrong. If you don't get one, you have somehow failed. And our ability to look down our noses at people based not on their value, but on whether or not they hold a certain piece of paper.

    But in the meantime, the increased numbers going to uni have devalued that piece of paper.
    Yet the figures are clear, Higher apprentices at level 5 or above earn more over their lifetimes on average than all graduates except those who attended a Russell Group university. They also don't pay tuition fees unlike their student counterparts.
    https://onefile.co.uk/explore/which-is-better-university-degrees-or-higher-apprenticeships/

    So apprentices can cope with the snobbery given their higher bank balances and the fact many can buy a property in their 20s or early 30s (certainly outside London and the South East) unlike most students
    Indeed. So why drive kids down the uni route when it won't gain them much? Why 50%? why not 40%? 30%? 20%?

    It's a random figure plucked out of Blair's backside because it sounds good. Yet even if it was based on evidence, then there should have been another policy about further education opportunities for those who did not go.

    My nephew got the grades to go into uni, but chose to get a job. He's worked hard, and is on a salary much greater than his friends who went. He's probably worked harder than them, and has no student debts. Yet if he was in certain industries, there would be a barrier - a paper ceiling - through which he could not burst. Sometimes that ceiling may be necessary - science, for instance. In most it is not.

    Fortunately he's chosen an industry where that is less likely.
    Much of the public sector, including local government, seems to require degrees that are unnecessary for the job.
    What happened with degrees - from the perspective of a graduate and hirer of staff.

    When Blair talked of expanding degree jobs, he was thinking of the type of jobs that Russell Group (and up) are the feeders for.

    The massive expansion with the polys was not done in concert with increasing standards. This created a large number of second class (ha) degrees.

    Employers did indeed find that they needed more people with high quality degrees - So the Russell Group grew and large numbers of graduates were recruited from overseas.

    In the high end jobs, a 2.1 or above from a Russell Group (or overseas equivalent) became mandated by HR. So if you are hiring, you don't get to see other CVs

    So, given the volume of graduates, lower skilled jobs, began demanding degrees. Since they could get them. So, people, who in the past wouldn't have had to have a degree had to get one to get the same quality of job they would have got anyway....

    So we now have a situation where there are two glass ceilings

    Russell Group Degree
    ________

    Former Poly Degree
    ________

    No degree

    The irony was, that back in the day when degrees were much rarer, there was at least some possibility of making it to the top without a degree. Now, it is explicitly forbidden.

    In one job, we were doing work for a bank. The bank (well their HR) tried to stop one of the team coming in, since their background checks showed no degree....

    We have created an absolute caste system.
    Do senior managers have the authority to overrule, or bypass, HR. Why are HR needed. Aren’t managers the people to should have the authority to hire, fire and generally manage their staff?
    It is managers of top companies and partners in top law and accountancy firms who tell HR they will only look at candidates for interview who attended a Russell Group university.

    HR simply process CVs based on what they are told
    I work for a top investment bank and we don't do that, it's too simplistic and you lose a lot of good candidates. One of our star performers last year was a school leaver who didn't go to university.

    I'd suggest those managers who do that at these top accounting and law firms are an example of lazy management.
    Yep any HR department implementing that policy needs to be told to do the job they are being paid to do - which is finding and recruiting the best candidates, not just the people clueless people in HR think are the best candidates.
    It is the partners in the most snobby law firms etc who tell HR to only recruit from Russell Group universities, the polices are set by senior management. HR just implement them
    Firstly, law firms are not the whole market, secondly you can't transpose one sector to the rest of the market.
    All city firms are very overrepresented with Russell group graduates, especially the more professional law and accountancy firms and the non trading floor investment bank side.
    And what? You said that companies put in a filter that excludes those who didn't go, yet here you are backing up on that now by saying they are merely over represented. Want to dilute it any further?
    The whole point was top law firms exclude non Russell group graduates, which was correct.

    Yes banking may be a bit more open but then the trading floor has long been full of Essex and Cockney wideboys who did not go to university, let alone Russell Group universities, once you get to board level then again the more exclusive the educational backgrounds are
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    Charles said:

    Nigelb said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    eek said:

    gealbhan said:

    Labour pledging to scrap business tax? A couple of weeks ago the Tories invented a new tax?

    Anyway, another policy reason to keep Labour out of power, they shouldn’t promise what they can’t deliver. This policy promise is undeliverable. Miles behind the Tories on economic credibility because of big brush strokes fantasy policy like this.

    Labour are focussing on old battles relating to high business rates on the high street.

    In reality it means they now need to find another £15bn to fill alongside the existing holes. Which shows how stupid they are as they are re-opening new battle fronts without paying attention to the existing battle fronts where they could easily win votes.

    I'm getting less and less impressed with the Labour party leadership ever single day.
    I don't agree with you. The aim of Labour's proposals today is to shift the burden of taxation from SMEs that occupy the nation's high streets to digital companies that occupy the nation's phones and computers. One of the major problems in the Red Wall, and elsewhere, is that town centres are dying on their feet, making towns less appealing to live in, and destroying the sense of community. If getting rid of business rates can reverse this trend, this would be 'levelling-up' in action. The playing field between Amazon and high-street retailers needs to be levelled. It's a good policy.
    I agree with you that its a good idea, except they've got no clue it seems as to how they would do so. So they're saying it will be done but we're to take it on faith that they'll have a way to do it.

    As it happens I agree that its the beginnings of a good policy, they're at least on the right path! That's something at least and I'll give them credit for that, first time in many years as either in Shadow or in office that Labour's Chancellor spokesperson seems to understand something about the issues in economy.

    But I'll wait before saying its a good policy until the policy is actually formulated and not just "this sounds good" but without details. To be fair though years before the election "this sounds good" but without details is an OK starting point and better than what Labour have had for many years!
    Thanks. As you're broadly sympathetic to the aims, I expect the Tories (yes, I know you're not one) to nick it any time soon.
    I seem to remember when I was drafting a possible policy agenda for SKS that this was one of my suggestions. I think that there is quite a compelling case to try and rebalance the tax demands between bricks and clicks. Shops are not only a good source of employment, they keep our city centres vibrant and are more accessible to the elderly etc.

    But you cannot simply abolish £15bn of tax revenues without having an alternative when we already have an unsustainable deficit. That is just lazy.
    This is the issue here - you need to understand what you plan to tax, why you plan to do so and how you plan to do so.

    You also when talking about retail need to understand why people purchase stuff online and it's usually for reasons where the high street could never compete.

    Only after that can you start talking about how you will give people tax breaks as otherwise it's a question of where are you going to get that £xbn from.

    And there are serious amount of structural issues within our tax system but there isn't any easy solutions as all changes will impact people's behaviour and that might have unintended consequences.
    But the first part of the policy ought to make it easier to repurpose high street properties large numbers of which are just sitting vacant.
    The easiest shift would be to add 2.5% to VAT (raising £16.5m based on 19/20 total VAT receipts of £130bn)

    Spend £15bn of that to reduce business rates. In theory that should keep the ultimate payer (the retail customer) the same while giving the high street store more flexibility to cut their prices if they want

    (And it includes a crafty £1bn tax increase)
    The Tories love increasing VAT.
    I thought you’d be a fan of reducing unnecessary consumption
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,084
    eek said:

    MattW said:

    eek said:

    Nigelb said:

    gealbhan said:

    Labour pledging to scrap business tax? A couple of weeks ago the Tories invented a new tax?

    Anyway, another policy reason to keep Labour out of power, they shouldn’t promise what they can’t deliver. This policy promise is undeliverable. Miles behind the Tories on economic credibility because of big brush strokes fantasy policy like this.

    A £30 billion promise, where is it coming from if not business rates
    No, the promise is to freeze rates at their current level, to be paid for by an increased levy on the large internet companies:
    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/26/labour-to-scrap-business-rates-if-elected-says-shadow-chancellor

    No detail whatsoever on what might replace rates - but they are quite correct in recognising that rates valuations now bear little or no reaction to either the value of properties, or the ability of businesses to pay.
    Again clueless > attack relief on income from buy-to-let properties but no mention of the ability to expense interest on buy to let properties held within a limited company.

    Yep it's niche but they shouldn't be looking at relief you need to look at a sector / asset and work out how best can we extract tax from it....

    Also high street shops can't and won't up sticks and move to France or Ireland but all manufacturing and all invisible firms such as internet firms can.
    What you you take tax relief off on rental properties? And how much would it raise?

    Do they really want to prevent tax relief on things like improved kitchens, central heating, and double glazed windows?

    Even now, you don't get it on eg insulation, rather you have to claim it against CGT when you sell the property in 10-20 years time.

    The relief they are talking about is (I suspect) S21 interest relief but to do that they will need to treat properties owned within limited companies the same way.

    As I've said for years, we have issues where we tax the ownership method rather than the asset itself.
    Oh - complete the Osborne attack.

    However, that will bugger the Build-to-let sector. Legal & General and the rest.

    Which will put a major poleaxe on any house building targets, given that build-to-let is getting to be a significant minority of the pipeline. Do not have an exact figure, but I think it is around 10% of houses being built.
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