2015- July Budget

[Obelix]

I'm not telling any lies. Stating cold hard facts versus your anecdotals and making sure other posters do not get the wrong impression about higher education in Japan and Korea. No strawman there and I have not lied once.

 

I have not made one statement about higher education in either of those countries. You've consistently sought to present that I have.

 

That's a lie

 

You've then failed to acknowledge your strawman, in order to derail the thread.

 

You are in fact a lying troll. I expected better from you.

[Eater Sundae]

I'm not telling any lies. Stating cold hard facts versus your anecdotals and making sure other posters do not get the wrong impression about higher education in Japan and Korea. No strawman there and I have not lied once.

 

---------- Post added 10-07-2015 at 07:26 ----------

 

 

Not necessarily. Teaching, social work, media, retail, charity sector, services etc... all have lots of career paths where a degree is needed but with lifetime earnings well below what say a doctor would earn.

 

Take the blinkers off

 

You raised the issue of doctors by quoting the cost of their education, as being outside the reach of poor people. However it clearly isn't.

 

I really hope that poor people trying to aspire to such a career are not put off by your disinformation.

[Eater Sundae]

Its established its not a good budget for many. I was dismayed to see a sliding scale from the poorest to the richest bearing the least brunt.

Today is a new day tho. Must be positive.

 

I'm still not sure how bad it is. In an interview I listened to with a representative from the IFS (who had talked about some families being disadvantaged by around £1,000), he openly admitted that some positive changes (I can't remember what they were) had not been included Also, that a lot depends on which years you look at, as some gains and losses come in at different times.

 

I'd like to see a calculation tool to help see the effects. The Telegraph one above covers some of it, but there are clearly things missing. Does anyone know of any good online tools.

[L00b]

Its established its not a good budget for many.

No budget can ever please all of the people all of the time.

I was dismayed to see a sliding scale from the poorest to the richest bearing the least brunt.

Would that have any grounding on the fact that the 'richest' have borne the brunt of the fiscal heavy lifting since 2008, like pretty much everywhere else affected by the global financial crisis?

 

It's not as if the Tories did not announce that they were going to take an axe to the welfare budget, and from a very long time. We've not really had austerity at all in the UK, the measures towards diminishing the deficit have been as much fiscal as budgetary cuts. The economic context in the UK is far different in 2015 to what it was in 2010, and Osbourne & Co. must believe it to be ready for clutching into 2nd gear: now that the economy is getting into its stride, the opportunities are there for people to get more/better jobs, so the welfare budget can now be trimmed to push the relevant portion of the UK population into self-improvement, a cornerstone of Tory policies since the year dot.

 

Disinformation also seems ripe, unfortunately and unsuprisingly. For instance, the Metro has published an article about the Budget relying on a comparison graph from the website theconversation.com, in which the post-tax income for a minimum wage earner working full time on the new living wage rate is shown as £12,705 and according to which that person, single with 2 kids, is £1,358 worse off overall.

 

But I make that income after tax as £13,801 (39x52x£7.20, £10,600 allowance with balance taxed at 20%) which -if I am correct- reduces that £1,358 (£26 a week) to £263 worse-off (£5 a week).

 

Small price to pay, to do away with the budgetary burden of tax credits (which, lest we forget, have long been criticised by many as the State effectively subsidising employers).

Edited July 10, 2015 by L00b

[DnAuK]

I'm not telling any lies. Stating cold hard facts versus your anecdotals and making sure other posters do not get the wrong impression about higher education in Japan and Korea. No strawman there and I have not lied once.

 

---------- Post added 10-07-2015 at 07:26 ----------

 

 

Not necessarily. Teaching, social work, media, retail, charity sector, services etc... all have lots of career paths where a degree is needed but with lifetime earnings well below what say a doctor would earn.

 

Take the blinkers off

 

And they don't pay a penny for it unless they earn over £21k pa, and then only at 9% of earnings above that - so no worries. Maybe you should be the one taking the blinkers off and looking at the whole policy, not just bits of it?

 

---------- Post added 10-07-2015 at 09:17 ----------

 

If, as the IFS representative claimed, the poorest workers are being hit hardest, then it is a poor budget. It is now up to the Treasury to demonstrate how they are right and the IFS is wrong.

 

I'd hoped for a budget that incentivises people on the margins between working and not working to work if they can. If it doesn't manage that, it has failed, in my opinion.

 

Agree with this wholeheartedly. Must admit I was surprised by the IFS report but, if true, the budget hasn't achieved it's objectives. Or maybe it has. I'm sure you guys will have your own opinion on that.

Edited July 10, 2015 by DnAuK

[Obelix]

No budget can ever please all of the people all of the time.

Would that have any grounding on the fact that the 'richest' have borne the brunt of the fiscal heavy lifting since 2008, like pretty much everywhere else affected by the global financial crisis?

 

It's not as if the Tories did not announce that they were going to take an axe to the welfare budget, and from a very long time. We've not really had austerity at all in the UK, the measures towards diminishing the deficit have been as much fiscal as budgetary cuts. The economic context in the UK is far different in 2015 to what it was in 2010, and Osbourne & Co. must believe it to be ready for clutching into 2nd gear: now that the economy is getting into its stride, the opportunities are there for people to get more/better jobs, so the welfare budget can now be trimmed to push the relevant portion of the UK population into self-improvement, a cornerstone of Tory policies since the year dot.

 

Disinformation also seems ripe, unfortunately and unsuprisingly. For instance, the Metro has published an article about the Budget relying on a comparison graph from the website theconversation.com, in which the post-tax income for a minimum wage earner working full time on the new living wage rate is shown as £12,705 and according to which that person, single with 2 kids, is £1,358 worse off overall.

 

But I make that income after tax as £13,801 (39x52x£7.20, £10,600 allowance with balance taxed at 20%) which -if I am correct- reduces that £1,358 (£26 a week) to £263 worse-off (£5 a week).

 

Small price to pay, to do away with the budgetary burden of tax credits (which, lest we forget, have long been criticised by many as the State effectively subsidising employers).

 

A favourite trick of the Left is to count lost future gains.

 

So say you freeze benefit X for five years. They then say that inflation will be X% (where X is a large figure plucked out of their backside) and that means that we've not had Benefit X compuinded over five years at whatever %age.

 

They then take this amount - call it a "loss" and take the "loss" over FIVE years and say Person X has "lost" all that - wave hands - it's all occured this year, honest! - outrage - evil Tory cuts!?!?!?!!!!!!

 

Charitable it's called creative accounting. I call it lying through your teeth but they are very good at this disinformation and the faithful lap it up not realising their masters are lying to them...

[Cyclone]

I think changing something as innate as intelligence (as opposed to eduction) is going to be very difficult bar employing genetic engineering....

 

Is it intelligence that actually needs to change? We are talking about education, and you're claiming that >50% of people simply aren't smart enough to be educated to degree level.

As far as I can see neither of us is offering anything other than an opinion though.

[Fudbeer]

I still think increasing the tax allowance and minimum wage is the right way to go in encouraging people to work and reducing reliance on benefits.

[Obelix]

It used to be - and I'm afraid you will have to take this on trust as I cannot provide a source that A-levels were set up so that only 1% of the population could get a grade A in the subject. That was the definition of what the A-grade was.

 

Similarly with a degree - these were set up so that perhaps 2% of the population was capable of getting a First. (and a larger percentage of lower grades).

 

You can of course set the boundaries wherver you like, no one doubts that. But for true original research of the kind needed for a PhD you cannot make that harder or easier - it's new knowledge that has never been discovered before. That requires a partucualr and rare mind - one that has raw intelligence, creativity, drive, curiosity and the udnerlying education to make use of it. It's not possible to change most of those parameters so you cannot make research easier, or make more people suitable for it.

 

What you can do is equip people for it, and that's part of the reason for degrees and masters programs - they need to provide a very good education for people to equip them to do research.

 

Now degrees are also useful for other things - but it's the original high base of education that made them useful for other things - like industry etc. If that elvel is debased they become less useful and thats a common consistent complaint from employers these days that graduates are not what they used to be.

 

As for education in general then yes we probably do need to educare more people. But they don't need degrees. Going back to Samsung before our CND mate tried derailing it - they have a highly educated workforce adn most of them hold technical qualiications anbd abilities - practical technical skills from precision machining, assembly, component rework, how to runa solder bath machine etc... these skills are what we are dreadfully lacking in this country.

 

Why? They are hard to do, and they are not highly regarded - the populace goes oh they are not degrees and sniffs in a Gallic fashion and refuses to do them. The BTEC and HND are seen as inferior to a degree and are doen by someone who cannot doa degree, but they should be on a different pedastal, at the same height and regarded as being just as good as a degree - but simply leading to a different career path.

 

That's whats wrong with post 18 education IMO in this country.

[L00b]

Charitable it's called creative accounting.

I have to revise my earlier figures, after checking the hourly basis on which the graph is based, which is 37.6 hours per week (£14080/£7.20/52 weeks) instead of my 39.

 

So the article's worse-off total of £1,358 in 2016 is not wrong by 80%, it is wrong by 50% (the person is £679 worse-off, i.e. £13 per week).

 

It's not creative accounting as such, I don't think. It's simply bad maths and journalism (topically with your aside about STEM/education )