Boomers will be net beneficiaries over the course of their life.
Gen Z will be net contributers over the course of their life.
Why? Because ultimately we have an issue that pension contributions and tax contributions for boomers weren't high enough when they were working and because of demographic quirks the boomer generation has dominated the electoral outcome for decades.
This also has implications when we do get to the generational tipping point. It is likely that we will start to see pensions taxed more heavily and we will see policies such as assisted dying creeping in for cost reasons.
Far from the younger generations being more kind and less prejudice than older ones, we will just see a change in self interest and different prejudices.
Which will also come with shooting yourself in the foot in the long run due to the fact we all get older.
And with the demographic shift I really don't see the numbers stacking up as a windfall for the state education. Not when schools are going to be facing smaller class sizes and the issues with finances surrounding classes not being full and economies of scale. State schools will be facing mergers and closures - THAT'S the educational conversation we should be having for the next electoral term and the one beyond it. Not wittering on about private schools and VAT.
We are firmly in a race to the bottom because that's ultimately what populism does. Politicians are more interested in their own careers and being elected/reelected than what's best for the country.
This policy isn't about equality at all. It's red meat for red rosette wearers. It won't solve problems within education because it's not focused on problems. It's focused on punishing more wealthy workers out of jealously. There's no interest in looking at the difficult issues within our society due - things like abdication of parental responsibility and a distain for others and an active rejection of community.
I look at the red meat thrown at blue rosette wears with equal despair. The national service bollocks. I saw a great thread about this on twitter. It pointed out that people who like the policy tend to say it works well in places like Denmark. This thread talked about what they also don't talk about is how young people feel that national service is in their interests because the state looks out for them in other ways. The state is community because it provides for them and it invests in them and understands things like people need decent childcare at a reasonable cost.
Here the concept of national service is about taking from young people without those people actively feeling like they gain or feeling like this helps community and is a collective gain. It's seen almost a punishment for being spoilt and pampered by society.
We do have this enormous gap between kids who haven't been taught responsibility by parents and a culture which doesn't actively work as a 'village raising kids' when are then thrown into an adult world which is ever harsher as financial conditions worsen. Yet no one is really addressing this gap. It's just a blame game and one where we discuss how much more we can talk from a working population without much thought to the concept of selfishness.
The UK is selfish. Selfish in a way that's not paralleled anywhere else in Europe. That's our problem. That's why we elect fuckwitted politicians with shallow policies and no desire to get to grips with the heart of problems. Everyone is out for themselves. No one asks how we can change this. We have a new generation who see themselves as more kind and it's just utterly bullshit.
It's just 'if I can't have that no one else should have it' rather changing the question to 'how can we expand opportunities and lessen inequality in a meaningful way'. This difference in mentality might seem minor but it's hugely important.
There are so many poster on this thread who can't see the wood for the trees because they are being spoon fed this utter shite and haven't got their eyes on the issues that are incoming and will have a much bigger impact than private schooling.