Current Affairs 2017 General Election

2017 general election

  • Lib Dems

    Votes: 24 6.5%

  • Labour

    Votes: 264 71.0%

  • Tories

    Votes: 41 11.0%

  • Cheese on the ballot paper

    Votes: 35 9.4%

  • SNP

    Votes: 4 1.1%

  • Plaid Cymru

    Votes: 4 1.1%
  • Total voters
    372
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Not open for further replies.
Bruce Wayne said:
It's funny really isn't it? We all have aspirations with regards to public service expenditure, yet we don't want to pay for it ourselves, but rather AN Other do so instead. Whether it's the (wealthy) elderly not wanting to pay for their care, the (wealthy) parents for their childrens lunches, the (wealthy) graduates for their education, or indeed the middle classes for public services in general.
Click to expand...

I think most responsible people are quite happy paying for public services, they just don't like their money being wasted on pencil pushers, rule writers and grandiose empires of non value adding personnel or buildings.......
 
That would be typical tory -waste valuable time and money sorting their own interests out whilst avoiding their main challenge and bailing out at the last second to save themselves.

Chewbacca said:
May is trying to bail

She obviously knows the government in charge after Brexit is in deep doo doo
Click to expand...
 
peteblue said:
I think most responsible people are quite happy paying for public services, they just don't like their money being wasted on pencil pushers, rule writers and grandiose empires of non value adding personnel or buildings.......
Click to expand...

Of which there are loads now, and they are mostly composed of Tory hangers-on. The New Schools Network "charity", for instance.
 
tsubaki said:
Of which there are loads now, and they are mostly composed of Tory hangers-on. The New Schools Network "charity", for instance.
Click to expand...

Both parties have people and fingers in numerous NGO's and Quangos. People move around the public sector from one plush job to another seamlessly, and there's always more jobs being created. Brown built up a Labour voting client base in the public sector.......
 
Bruce Wayne said:
It's funny really isn't it? We all have aspirations with regards to public service expenditure, yet we don't want to pay for it ourselves, but rather AN Other do so instead.
Click to expand...

I don't really think this is true, actually.

When I move to the UK, my tax rate will decrease by about 5% compared to what it is now even in America (!), after 30 years of relentless, manic neo-liberalism. And it will be lower still compared to what I would pay in Canada, where I mostly grew up.

But I would gladly pay more tax in exchange for Canadian-quality public services, which, although fairly mediocre by the standards of continental Europe, are miles and miles ahead of America, and in some fields - education in particular - Britain too. I have British citizenship (though I suppose these days I'm more "a citizen of nowhere"), but I won't stick around if public services here continue to decline in order to save middle-class people relative pocket-change, and to give billionaires tax windfalls.

This is at least as big a concern as the looming Brexit catastrophe, though the two will no doubt exacerbate each other. It's not as though as an individual you can obtain improved health care or education with the few-hundred pounds that most people can expect each time the tax rate drops a percentage point.

The thing is, even "responsible" opinion recognises the need to pay higher taxes.
"It is time for Britain to talk about raising taxes"
https://www.ft.com/content/8dc89816-3b13-11e7-ac89-b01cc67cfeec

Spending on health care (GDP %), for example, is lower than most countries in Europe.

But the professional class will for the most part only accept these policies if they appear to come from within itself - anyone who doesn't take pains to signal conformity to its social and professional mores is treated like an impertinent child - the subjects of that Economist cover, in other words. They'd prefer to have the right sort of people in charge, even if it perpetuates the wrong sort of policies. Which is why despite being wrong about so many decisions over the past 20 years - Iraq, austerity - these sorts of publications and their disciples can still contrive to imagine themselves as being responsible.
 
abelard said:
I don't really think this is true, actually.

When I move to the UK, my tax rate will decrease by about 5% compared to what it is now even in America (!), after 30 years of relentless, manic neo-liberalism. And it will be lower still compared to what I would pay in Canada, where I mostly grew up.

But I would gladly pay more tax in exchange for Canadian-quality public services, which, although fairly mediocre by the standards of continental Europe, are miles and miles ahead of America, and in some fields - education in particular - Britain too. I have British citizenship (though I suppose these days I'm more "a citizen of nowhere"), but I won't stick around if public services here continue to decline in order to save middle-class people relative pocket-change, and to give billionaires tax windfalls.

This is at least as big a concern as the looming Brexit catastrophe, though the two will no doubt exacerbate each other. It's not as though as an individual you can obtain improved health care or education with the few-hundred pounds that most people can expect each time the tax rate drops a percentage point.

The thing is, even "responsible" opinion recognises the need to pay higher taxes.
"It is time for Britain to talk about raising taxes"
https://www.ft.com/content/8dc89816-3b13-11e7-ac89-b01cc67cfeec

Spending on health care (GDP %), for example, is lower than most countries in Europe.

But the professional class will for the most part only accept these policies if they appear to come from within itself - anyone who doesn't take pains to signal conformity to its social and professional mores is treated like an impertinent child - the subjects of that Economist cover, in other words. They'd prefer to have the right sort of people in charge, even if it perpetuates the wrong sort of policies. Which is why despite being wrong about so many decisions over the past 20 years - Iraq, austerity - these sorts of publications and their disciples can still contrive to imagine themselves as being responsible.
Click to expand...

I'll comment on Labour though as most here swing that way, and they aren't talking about rising tax contributions across the board, they're talking about rising taxes for a relative few to dish out. It's not surprising really that so many are happy to have other peoples money spent on them, is it?

There's also this perception that the only way to do better is to spend more, yet you have a country like Estonia that is remarkably progressive, does very well in terms of education, healthcare and so on, yet their income tax is very low. They also have a land value tax, which is one of those fiscal innovations that we seem loathe to try here, despite our completely bogged down housing market.

I'm nerdy so look at a lot of good examples of governance around the world, and the one thing that most have in common is that they have nothing in common in terms of the political ideology that underpins them. There's surely a message for us there?
 
Bruce Wayne said:
I'll comment on Labour though as most here swing that way, and they aren't talking about rising tax contributions across the board, they're talking about rising taxes for a relative few to dish out. It's not surprising really that so many are happy to have other peoples money spent on them, is it?

There's also this perception that the only way to do better is to spend more, yet you have a country like Estonia that is remarkably progressive, does very well in terms of education, healthcare and so on, yet their income tax is very low. They also have a land value tax, which is one of those fiscal innovations that we seem loathe to try here, despite our completely bogged down housing market.

I'm nerdy so look at a lot of good examples of governance around the world, and the one thing that most have in common is that they have nothing in common in terms of the political ideology that underpins them. There's surely a message for us there?
Click to expand...

I am willing to dish out, even if those who earn less than I do don't also dish out, if it means better public services for everyone. And I don't think that's an uncommon point of view. But that said, I think those who earn much more than I do should also pay a higher rate than I do. Progressive taxation to me is fair, and beyond simple fairness, it's all but essential for running liberal social democracies. The alternatives to those are... not promising so far.

Beyond taxing income, we need to be far more serious about taxing wealth. It's important to distinguish. In many places, people with enough money (including from inheritance) so as never to have to earn wages effectively pay lower tax rates than any wage-earner. This why the 1% - well-educated people who often work punishing hours in the City or for law firms - don't feel rich compared to the 0.1%, for whom they are essentially glorified butlers. This is also why people who do work, worldwide, increasingly can't compete for housing that stays vacant. Likewise, offshore tax havens are a much more serious problem than commonly acknowledged. The 2012 estimates were $32 trillion (!!!), globally, and given the state of the markets now, it is surely much, much higher. It would take international cooperation to meaningfully address this (along the lines of anti-apartheid etc), but above all else, it would take political will. I can sympathize with the sentiment (if not the substance) of Brexit when you have people like Juncker, who's country only exists to allow the Greek ownership class et al to avoid paying for the services it consumes, lecturing Greek teachers and nurses and pensioners on the need to accept fiscal responsibility and discipline.

It's a similar story with corporate taxes. The same promises get trotted out each time we cut them, that they will lead to investment in hiring, and research, and productivity. But corporate profits are already at record levels, and none of this ever happens. The money goes to mergers, or stock-buy backs, or it just gets hoarded abroad, so as to avoid what remains of the tax that we still can't slash fast enough for them. Meanwhile, almost the entire burden of actual research remains born by tax-payers, at universities. Which is sensible enough, but which also makes it more than fair that the public collects a return on the investment. Since you like policy examples, how about in Israel, where the government holds a percentage of shares in corporations that employ the results of public research? Over here though, political will is lacking, and it is clearly not going to come from centrist technocrats or spiteful shire Tories.

Sure, it's true that the challenges are far more complicated than just spending v not spending. Increased American-style rote standardized testing, for instance, will be a disaster, as America overwhelmingly demonstrates. I don't expect the grammar school experiment to produce different results the second time through, either. The thought of having children and navigating such a system, with so much at stake, is terrifying. And cultural factors, like the value East Asian families tend to place on education, can't just be replicated overnight. This is a big factor in, say, Vietnam's impressive education results (to the detriment of many a promising young Vietnamese football career). Among social scientists, there is a growing consensus that social inequality has a far greater impact reinforcing disparities in health, education, and a whole other range of categories, than what economists (least of all "The" Economist) have understood or could have imagined. I expect that a history of forcefully imposed equality in places like Estonia or Vietnam is a major factor in their rapid emergence now, even as the prosperity they help engender undermines its own origins. Increasing NHS spending will have a limited impact without also addressing these deeper and more structural inequalities.

Of course, Britain essentially invented the industrial class system, and it's not going to just disappear as a result of a few policy tweaks. But in this climate, mindlessly cutting the budget for public services or dumping responsibilities onto the councils exacerbates just about every other problem. Government can't just eradicate the cultural and psychological effects of stratification and chronic deprivation, but at very least, it can stop contributing to this. We need to start listening to what educators and nurses and social workers are telling us, rather than skimming self-serving FT op-eds and assuming that we know better.

(This was actually meant to be short when I started writing....)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
abelard said:
I am willing to dish out, even if those who earn less than I do don't also dish out, if it means better public services for everyone. And I don't think that's an uncommon point of view. But that said, I think those who earn much more than I do should also pay a higher rate than I do. Progressive taxation to me is fair, and beyond simple fairness, it's all but essential for running liberal social democracies. The alternatives to those are... not promising so far.

Beyond taxing income, we need to be far more serious about taxing wealth. It's important to distinguish. In many places, people with enough money (including from inheritance) so as never to have to earn wages effectively pay lower tax rates than any wage-earner. This why the 1% - well-educated people who often work punishing hours in the City or for law firms - don't feel rich compared to the 0.1%, for whom they are essentially glorified butlers. This is also why people who do work, worldwide, increasingly can't compete for housing that stays vacant. Likewise, offshore tax havens are a much more serious problem than commonly acknowledged. The 2012 estimates were $32 trillion (!!!), globally, and given the state of the markets now, it is surely much, much higher. It would take international cooperation to meaningfully address this (along the lines of anti-apartheid etc), but above all else, it would take political will. I can sympathize with the sentiment (if not the substance) of Brexit when you have people like Juncker, who's country only exists to allow the Greek ownership class et al to avoid paying for the services it consumes, lecturing Greek teachers and nurses and pensioners on the need to accept fiscal responsibility and discipline.

It's a similar story with corporate taxes. The same promises get trotted out each time we cut them, that they will lead to investment in hiring, and research, and productivity. But corporate profits are already at record levels, and none of this ever happens. The money goes to mergers, or stock-buy backs, or it just gets hoarded abroad, so as to avoid what remains of the tax that we still can't slash fast enough for them. Meanwhile, almost the entire burden of actual research remains born by tax-payers, at universities. Which is sensible enough, but which also makes it more than fair that the public collects a return on the investment. Since you like policy examples, how about in Israel, where the government holds a percentage of shares in corporations that employ the results of public research? Over here though, political will is lacking, and it is clearly not going to come from centrist technocrats or spiteful shire Tories.

Sure, it's true that the challenges are far more complicated than just spending v not spending. Increased American-style rote standardized testing, for instance, will be a disaster, as America overwhelmingly demonstrates. I don't expect the grammar school experiment to produce different results the second time through, either. The thought of having children and navigating such a system, with so much at stake, is terrifying. And cultural factors, like the value East Asian families tend to place on education, can't just be replicated overnight. This is a big factor in, say, Vietnam's impressive education results (to the detriment of many a promising young Vietnamese football career). Among social scientists, there is a growing consensus that social inequality has a far greater impact reinforcing disparities in health, education, and a whole other range of categories, than what economists (least of all "The" Economist) have understood or could have imagined. I expect that a history of forcefully imposed equality in places like Estonia or Vietnam is a major factor in their rapid emergence now, even as the prosperity they help engender undermines its own origins. Increasing NHS spending will have a limited impact without also addressing these deeper and more structural inequalities.

Of course, Britain essentially invented the industrial class system, and it's not going to just disappear as a result of a few policy tweaks. But in this climate, mindlessly cutting the budget for public services or dumping responsibilities onto the councils exacerbates just about every other problem. Government can't just eradicate the cultural and psychological effects of stratification and chronic deprivation, but at very least, it can stop contributing to this. We need to start listening to what educators and nurses and social workers are telling us, rather than skimming self-serving FT op-eds and assuming that we know better.

(This was actually meant to be short when I started writing....)
Click to expand...

I'm heading out so won't have time to give this the time it deserves, but thank you, very interesting post :)
 
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