Do you think you can be a socialist and

[Swedes]

1. Pay for your child to be independently educated?
2. Buy a house in right catchment for the right school?
3. Feign religion to get your child into a faith school?
4. Object to a lottery system for school places with urban areas (ignoring all convenient environmental issues)?
5. Vote Tory? (because some people seem particularly confused)

Eeek, glad soapbox is not in charge.

I would abolish all benefits, pay everyone £200 a week over age of 18 whether they work or not and whatever their income, start income tax only when you earn £10k a year and have one flat rate of income tax only which you stop paying once you've payd say £100k a year in tax for that year; and cut back a huge amount of the state which has grown far too much under labour. People appreciate better what they pay for. For a start....

Why would you give people who don't work 200 ponds a week if you think the state benefits are too much now?

Because I am not as right wing as I could be and because you would remove at a stroke all benefits offices, cheating on benefits issues etc etc There has been a lot written about this kind of "universal benefit" and it could work well. You do not then have a disincentive to work either. Presumably ideally it would also cover you to rent a room too so includes the housing benefit, disability benefit etc. It would also help the stay at home mother lobby would would receive it too and people like me who earn too much for all those complex child tax credit things.

Please can I vote for Soapbox and not Xenia?
In fact, I would consider tactical voting to keep Xenia out of office.

When Thomas Paine's book, "The Rights of Man", was published in 1791, it was a best seller and one of the most borrowed books from British Libraries. It touched a raw nerve with the underclass in British society as well as the altruistic, benevolent members of the middle and ruling classes.

Paine's imagination exceeded his knowledge (hence why I like Einstein's quote) and he became one of the most radical thinkers of that era in his pursuit to eradicate grinding, endemic poverty through social justice. He campaigned for an interventionist programme of welfare provision including healthcare, old-age pensions, marriage allowances and maternity benefits to be financed by the redistribution of wealth/taxation. Paine's imagination and intellect forged the social framework that laid the foundation for the work of philanthropists and eventually led to the formation of institutions like the NHS.

Left to the handful of benevolent capitalist, we would not have the welfare system that we take for granted today. Indeed the rich liked the status quo because power was concentrated in their little niche group and they controlled government.

Thank heavens for the likes of Paine.

I agree with MrsRuffallo.

We are all capitalists now.

Interesting stuff in the Guardian today:

education.guardian.co.uk/policy/story/0,,2248285,00.html

"

The class gap in participation rates in higher education is larger than ever before, despite the overall increases in participation; the poorest children, those with special educational needs, recent arrivals and those for whom English is not their mother tongue are clustered in certain schools. We are seeing the recreation of almost all the elements of the Victorian class-divided education system." This, Ball says in his "forensic analysis" of education policies over the past 20 years, is despite "unprecedented government activity" in education. "

It's interesting as to what the cause might be. The demise of the grammar schools is one possibility.

Another theory is that once you have equality of opportunity at some tipping point the very very thick who will never get any better kind of stay at the bottom in the mire and you cannot expect there then to be the same rate of class movement as in the prior period when there was adjustment and the very clever poor moved their way up.

The gap between rich and poor has been growing steadily since the 70s. That has to be part of it also.

I would say its the gap between very rich and relatively poor in UK

But how can the gap be 'larger than ever before' when you beleive the equality has been addressed. And how can it be that the 'very very thick' are also the poorest? It can not be coincidence that the very poorest are the lowest achievers.

I don't think it is as simple as rich and poor. I think there are many people who are just getting by - nothing spare but managing to pay rent/mortgage and bills. The cost of living is very high in the UK after all.

Why is the gap larger than ever? I'm not sure it's really that much different in terms of it being difficult to achieve social mobility but I have no problems with richer people earning a lot more than poor which is a different issue.

As to if that theory were right and you reach a point where all the clever people have risen up and at the bottom are those who could never be successful because their IQ if 80 or they are various inherited problems which preclude that or whatever then you're right the gap would not get bigger unless those poor have more children than the rich of course which is perfectly possible given our current silly system encourages the poor to have children more than the rich. I don't actually think that much of that theory but it's one that is around, because clever chilren are born fairly randomly and two thick people often have a slightly cleverer child and two clever parents don't have a child who is cleverer than them...instead we all tend back towards or up towards the mean I think.

We mustn't muddle two points - the gap between what the richest earn and what the poorest get in benefits and the difficulty of moving up/moving class. It's the fewer poor getting into good universities which is the issue that concerns a lot of people more than the fact some clever people because Britain is better than it was in the 60s and 70s at encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship are doing better than eve... or it was until Gordon Brown recently started making a huge mess of it.

link

Polly Toynbee wrote Hard Work about the working poor a few years ago too

and you don't have to be clever to be successful, well connected will do you just as well, and for women, being beautiful helps with becoming upwardly mobile

I think you are less likely to become a successful entrepreneur with an IQ above 130 than you are to become a successful entrepreneur with an IQ below 80. Clearly most people don't become successful entrepreneurs but it's interesting nonetheless.

Doesn't Polly Toynbee now inform Tory social policy, with Cameron borrowing her caravan analogy?

My memory might be a bit vague on this, but didn't Thomas Paine narrowly avoid getting sent to the gallows for espousing these ideas in England? William Blake aided his escape to America?

I looked at that line. But that's just about the gap between rich and poor which I think is a separate issue. That gap doesn't bother me in a free society as long as the poor are fed.

Now it may well be that people are less happy when they think a lot of people are a lot better off than they are (and Labour knows this but they haven't had the gall (thank goodness) to reintroduce redistributive taxes of the 50 - 80% plus my fairly modestly paid doctor father was paying on his upper income in the 70s) because they are really a conservative party - Kinnock only got in when he stole tory policies). However - that's just tough. They should go to church more to divest themselves of the sin of envy or seek to emulate those who do well or comfort themselves with the fact that rich men don't enter the kingdom of heaven according to some creeds or be grateful they have food.

However

"But that's just about the gap between rich and poor which I think is a separate issue. That gap doesn't bother me in a free society as long as the poor are fed."

But then, this is Xenia, I am not going to let myself rise to it.

Spockster, the likes of Xenia need the poor to clean their houses so as long as they are fed.......

Why does it matter if some people earn more than others? Some people are happier than others or prettier etc etc., I don't think there is any moral duty to seek to remove all differences between people. If that were so we'd put all the world's resources into human cloning surely?

If those at the bottom are well fed and housed then it is not morally wrong others earn £10m a year. I just never got why that is so bad. It's no different from one child having depression and another not or one being pretty and one ugly. These differences are just part of life's rich variety. We wouldn't want to be dull and scandinavian (or even worse Chinese under Moa) and all paid about the same would we?

Only read the last few posts, but I agree with Xenia, the poor people I feel for are those who work their bollocks off to get something that they need and struggle with finances every day of their life leading them into a form of depression, but this country is one in which you do not have to stay poor, there are ways and means of increaing your income and often it depends on priorities.

Sounds harsh but it's true.