Am I missing the point about tuition fees?

[HovaGirl]

Lord B you make a fair point, surely you are not suggesting that this policy is driven by political dogma rather than the need to save money now

Also, if you have a spare few minutes could you explain for those of us with just a passing interest the LIb Dem argument against tuition fees, why were they animated enough to sign the pre-election pledge against them and what was their policy on paying for university education?

I'll go and put on the kettle...........

Personally, I don't know what the LibDems' policy was on paying for university education, but it's rather an attractive soundbite to claim you WILL NOT RAISE UNIVERSITY FEES when you think you haven't got a hope in hell's chance of getting into Government. I think the LibDems were as surprised as everybody else to find they were actually in Government, and had to take Government policy and national spending seriously.

 

[HovaGirl]

Thanks, granny.

So ... have I got this right? The country got into this mess, thanks to unprecedented levels of public debt. And we are solving the problem by borrowing more money?

As you say ... simplesh.

This is what Labour have been doing for a decade or so. The last Tory Government actually left the nation's finances in a better state than for decades. Along came Gordon, and spent it all. And he sold the national gold as well, so we had nothing to fall back on. As I said in a previous post, the state spent more on benefits than it received in taxes last year. A state can't just stop funding for schools, the NHS, the police, the armed forces, etc, so it has to find it from somewhere. In other words, it has to borrow it, hopefully, at a reasonable rate of interest. We've just lent money to Ireland, at a rate above what we are borrowing from elsewhere. It's like you and me paying 5% for our bank loan, and lending money to our neighbour at 6%. We claw a little back. We just have to hope that Ireland can pay up.

 

[HovaGirl]

Yes,it would be completely cynical,and would go against all we ever knew about the conservatives,who,with their running do......sorry,LibDem stalwarts are acting solely in the national interest,and we should of course support every policy they propose .Don't forget that umbrella is pretty threadbare and the financial crisis is so bad that only a slack handful of rich and very rich citizens will come through unscathed.Lucky we're all in it together,eh?

We have to be. There is no other option. Come on! Dunkirk spirit, everyone.

 

[HovaGirl]

Well explain LBOUR policies then. That is the policy that Ed Miliband wanted but his shadow Chancellor Alan Johnson didn't, until his arm was twisted.

The latest Labour policy was to print money. That just means more paper is floating about, but the increased numbers of bits of paper still add up to the same value. Let's say one bit of paper is worth £5. If you print one more bit of paper, the value of the two together, still adds up to £5, not £10. Printing money just makes each note worth less. You can still buy your £5 worth of petrol, but, eventually, the value of your notes will decrease, until you have to take a wheelbarrow to carry all your £5 notes to the petrol station to get your £5 worth of petrol.

 

[HovaGirl]

And it would also be cynical to suggest that Labour is desperately trying to make people forget the "13 years" - well more if you go back before 1997 in fact - of "New Labour" by actively endorsing and supporting a rabble of thugs and militants who have hijacked peaceful demonstrations to try to panic the Coalition into measures which will be labelled by Labour as extreme.

And remember all the heavy-handed policing that Labour saw firt to impose over Iraq, Power-stations etc.

Or rather they wish you wouldn't.

That is exactly what Labour is trying to do. They are trying to back-pedal from the mess they have created and are trying to blame this coalition government. All the coalition is doing, is picking up the pieces and trying to make the best of it. (Just as other nations around the world are also trying to do. We are not alone.)

 

[HovaGirl]

There is an alternative, albeit one that every major political party is terrified to admit.

Raise taxes, through a more progressive system of income tax than we currently have. Or, if you prefer, cut consumer spending by the very rich.

If you cut consumer spending by the very rich, you will deprive people of jobs. If those with money stop going to hairdressers, or out to dinner or to the theatre, the income from all those will reduced, and fewer hairdressers, restaurants and theatres will be needed and people will lose their jobs. It is usually those with money who keep a country going during a recession.

Conversely, the more people (any people) have to spend on income tax, the less they have to spend in the pet shop, the toy shop, restaurants, cinemas and elsewhere. If income tax was reduced, the tax on spending could be increased. Rich people spend more money on things and their taxation would rise. Middle-income and poor people spend proportionally much less, so their taxation would be far less than rich people.

 

[HovaGirl]

Put me down as abstaining.

The way the political process is developing, maybe "single issue" campaigning is the future?

Single-issue campaigning wouldn't get us anywhere. If one campaigns on a single issue, that issue has to be paid for out of the state coffers. Meantime, funding for other "single issues" would be reduced, and adherents of those other "single issues" would be up in arms and campaigning for their own issue. It's like we ordinary people only concentrating on pay for our mortgages and rents, and nothing else. We have to eat and keep warm, buy birthday presents and pay for our travel costs. Something, eventually, has to give.

 

[HovaGirl]

The cynic in me thinks that they are using the financial crisis as an excuse to do exactly the sort of things they wanted to do anyway.

What things? Whatever those things might have been, they can't afford to. Their hands are tied.

 

[Cheshire Cat]

If you cut consumer spending by the very rich, you will deprive people of jobs. If those with money stop going to hairdressers, or out to dinner or to the theatre, the income from all those will reduced, and fewer hairdressers, restaurants and theatres will be needed and people will lose their jobs. It is usually those with money who keep a country going during a recession.

Conversely, the more people (any people) have to spend on income tax, the less they have to spend in the pet shop, the toy shop, restaurants, cinemas and elsewhere. If income tax was reduced, the tax on spending could be increased. Rich people spend more money on things and their taxation would rise. Middle-income and poor people spend proportionally much less, so their taxation would be far less than rich people.

Actually........ ..........................no

 

[Acker79]

Right next to "reply with quote" is a quote icon with a plus (+). It is a "multi-quote" button. What you do is click that button, and the post it refers to will appear in the reply box when you click the "+reply to thread" button. Press it on all the posts you wish to reply to, and whn to click the reply to thread button, all of the posts will appear and you can reply to them all in one go.

 

[HovaGirl]

I can't help feeling that the Tories are rather pleased that the Lib Dems have been made fools of. I would think this decision will have cost the Lib Dems a lot of votes for many years to come.

Possibly, but the LibDems have another 5 years to sort out their ideology and policies now they have actual experience of the reality of being in Government. If they have learned their lesson, they will be in a much better position to challenge both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party at the next General Election, if they develop realistic policies from a more mature and logical ideological perspective.

 

[Uter]

What things? Whatever those things might have been, they can't afford to. Their hands are tied.

Their hands are far from tied, but they have done a pretty good job of convincing a lot of people they are. How exactly are they tied? There are two ways of reducing a budget deficit. Cut spending and/or increase income.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

If you cut consumer spending by the very rich, you will deprive people of jobs. If those with money stop going to hairdressers, or out to dinner or to the theatre, the income from all those will reduced, and fewer hairdressers, restaurants and theatres will be needed and people will lose their jobs. It is usually those with money who keep a country going during a recession.

Conversely, the more people (any people) have to spend on income tax, the less they have to spend in the pet shop, the toy shop, restaurants, cinemas and elsewhere. If income tax was reduced, the tax on spending could be increased. Rich people spend more money on things and their taxation would rise. Middle-income and poor people spend proportionally much less, so their taxation would be far less than rich people.

No. It's all a question of what people spend their money on. Foreign property, sports trips to Dubai, expensive imported electronic goods, etc etc, contribute very little to the UK economy. Diverting that expenditure, via a taxation mechanism, into education in the UK (and other services that benefit the whole community) delivers far better value to the nation.

 

[HovaGirl]

No. It's all a question of what people spend their money on. Foreign property, sports trips to Dubai, expensive imported electronic goods, etc etc, contribute very little to the UK economy. Diverting that expenditure, via a taxation mechanism, into education in the UK (and other services that benefit the whole community) delivers far better value to the nation.

Indeed, some of them take some of their money abroad. But many of our higher earners and extremely wealthy also spend their money in the UK, in cars, airport taxes, restaurants, clothes, jewellery, poodle parlours and the like. Not all of them take all of their money abroad. Imported electrical goods might increase the income for, say, Japan or Germany, but an increase in Sales Tax (on these and other goods and services) would improve the UK state coffers.

One problem resulting from some of the lower earners, however, is they have cashed up, and gone to cheaper countries like Bulgaria and Romania. There has been a huge population swap during the past decade with the better-off going to more exotic places, the middling sort going to Spain and France and the less well-off going to those cheaper Balkan countries. To some extent, they have been replaced by the huge swathe of immigrants who have landed on these shores in between. And this is all part of the problem. Those who have come in are poorer than those who have left.

 

[Uter]

Rich people spend more money on things and their taxation would rise. Middle-income and poor people spend proportionally much less, so their taxation would be far less than rich people.

You are exactly wrong here. The richer you are the higher your propensity to save. Depriving poorer people of x million will lead to a greater drop in aggregate demand than depriving poorer people of x million.

 

[drew]

The UK is £13 trillion pounds in debt, thanks to Labour. I hardly think the new Government has an ideological agenda. What would that agenda be, anyway? The only agenda this government has, is to reduce the national debt, or reduce the capacity for creating even more national debt.

Where did you get this figure of £13t in debt? Are you sure it's not £1.3t?

 

[HovaGirl]

Actually........ ..........................no

(Multi-quote doesn't seem to work for me!) Are you implying, or are you of the opinion, that the more tax you collect from people, the more the State will have in its coffers? It seems the obvious thing, yet, when you lessen people's spending power, they simply spend less. The Labour Government was actually trying to stimulate spending so the country could spend its way out of the recession. One way of doing that, is to print money, but that just devalues the currency. The other way, is to reduced direct taxation on earnings, and increase indirect taxation on spending.

 

[HovaGirl]

You are exactly wrong here. The richer you are the higher your propensity to save. Depriving poorer people of x million will lead to a greater drop in aggregate demand than depriving poorer people of x million.

The richer you are, the higher your propensity to invest, which is the rich person's version of saving. Few rich people actually have much cash. It's all "tied up". You invest in property, gold, silver, art, funds, stocks and shares. If you make these investments in your own country, in this case, the UK, you are actually helping to stimulate the economy and to preserve and create jobs. If you are rich, you might even invest in a business and help to expand it or even create a new business, by buying it and investing in it, and create more jobs. It is rich people, in the private sector, who pay the wages. Few of them just sit on their money.

 

[HovaGirl]

Where did you get this figure of £13t in debt? Are you sure it's not £1.3t?

My apologies. Britain is only £4 trillion in debt and counting. This was revealed in a C4 programme recently. Some report it as only £1.3 trillion but that may be the balance sheet difference between what we owe and what we are owed.

 

[Dandyman]

This is what Labour have been doing for a decade or so. The last Tory Government actually left the nation's finances in a better state than for decades. Along came Gordon, and spent it all. And he sold the national gold as well, so we had nothing to fall back on. As I said in a previous post, the state spent more on benefits than it received in taxes last year. A state can't just stop funding for schools, the NHS, the police, the armed forces, etc, so it has to find it from somewhere. In other words, it has to borrow it, hopefully, at a reasonable rate of interest. We've just lent money to Ireland, at a rate above what we are borrowing from elsewhere. It's like you and me paying 5% for our bank loan, and lending money to our neighbour at 6%. We claw a little back. We just have to hope that Ireland can pay up.

So, close down the opportunities for tax avoidance, stop subsidising the rich and introduce proper taxation of those on over 100k, scrap Trident. The Tories between 1979 and 1997 sold off public assets on the cheap, encouraged massive house price inflation, gave us at least two recession, mass unemployment, 15% interest rates and cheered on the spiv attitudes responsible for this latest crisis of capitalism.