To have though of a fairer way to fund state education than VAT on private?

[wlakaaf]

State schools are in desperate need of funding.

Money needs raising.

Instead of sticking 20% onto private fees - when those people are already paying 100% of the costs for educating their child, how about this:

Parents of children currently in state schools ought to contribute to their education on a means tested basis. There would be no argument over means, it would be a simple reference to the council tax band of the house you live in. We have bands A-H. I would propose that people in band A-F pay nothing. People in band G pay a fixed charge per year and people in band H pay a higher fixed charge per year.

Keir Starmer has used money to buy a massively expensive house, worth in the region of £2m, in the very tight catchment of a lovely state primary. This is buying privilege, same as buying private education. So why does he get away without paying?

Ok. Just picked this up @Nellodee
No that’s absolutely the wrong attitude to have no one is doing anyone any favours.
The reason we have such a small % of net providers is due to bad management of the economy over the past 50 plus years.

Everyone knew birth rates were rising, no Government prepared for it

Talk to three different economists and you’ll get three different theories.

In my opinion, cycles of growth and recession tend to be more global than national. I don’t believe there is a strong negative correlation between wage parity and gdp, in fact, I suspect the correlation is rather in the opposite direction.

This is complete rubbish.

I’ve just done some interesting research. Inequality is measured by the gini scale. Where societies are very equal, introducing a little inequality provides incentives towards entrepreneurialism. Where societies are already unequal, creating more inequality leads to wealth collecting more and more in the hands of the rich and stifles investment opportunities due to the population being too poor to spend.

The turning point between these two systems is a gini score of 27 (0 meaning wealth is distributed evenly, 100 being one person owning all wealth) Below this, more inequality is good for growth, above this, inequality is acting as a brake on growth.

The U.K. currently has a gini score of 35, meaning that inequality is actively hampering growth. This means that a party should aim to redistribute wealth in order to grow the economy and create both a bigger, and more evenly distributed, pie.

Aren’t birth rates dropping? Isn’t that the issue, rather than them rising? I presume that was a typo?

Is that to me?

No, this has absolutely nothing at all to do with trickle down economics.

The pie is how much economic value is created.

Money is just a way of managing it: economic value fundamentally comes from someone creating something more valuable than what they had before. Eg a farmer growing crops from seeds, a chef cooking a meal, a doctor doing an operation, a factory worker building a widget from parts, an engineer designing a factory robot, a researcher discovering that a specific material improves battery efficiency, a politician changing laws to reflect changing macroeconomics and environment, a hedge fund manager buying and selling shares so that it is the UK which benefits from some of the value created by a US tech startup instead of China.

Economic management is about incentivising personal behaviours to maximise how much economic value is created within the UK.

Each person will always act to do the right thing for themselves, depending on what's most important to them (eg balancing free time versus private school versus a new car versus day-to-day job satisfaction).

Economics is about understanding how policies change incentives, and as a result change behaviours, and as a result change how much economic value is created for people in the UK to consume.

Because that's the other side of the coin: we can only consume (as a country) what we create (as a country). We can mess around with government borrowing (taking value from the future), saving (which creates value since the capital is then available for more value generation), and printing money (which is the government appropriating growth) but fundamentally all we have is the value we create.

The Gini coefficient is not a reliable marker.
Smaller economies generally come out low.
Larger the reverse,
The analysis has many problems and limitations.

Its like approving a drug when you’ve only tested it on one group of people,
Looked for something to post, see attached. Lots of further reading on this method also.

News article stated birth rates are dropping 140,000 on average every year since the boomer years

Are you proposing full on Marxism then, because that’s the logic of your argument?

I am no defender of mega-pay for hedge fund managers but it’s incorrect to say that they - and other people who work in finance - have no use, contribute nothing to society and help nobody’s lives apart from paying (a lot of) tax. Who do you think is responsible for ensuring nurses, policemen and teachers can receive the generous public sector pensions they expect to live on in retirement? It’s fund managers. They are responsible for managing billions of other people’s retirement savings. It is a responsibility I wouldn’t want and a talent that I don’t have, and if they can ensure that my pension pot grows by 8% rather than 0% a year, I do not begrudge paying them for that service.

Like to elaborate?

Nothing in economics is hard and fast, but the fact remains, the concept of left wing shrinking the pie by slicing it up too much is unsupported on this thread. The gini co-efficient, whilst a law measure, at least provides some kind of basis for forming a theory about correlations.

Show me some evidence, any evidence, that aiming for a more equal society correlates in general to restricting growth (without going to the extremes of communism).

Yes 😳that was a typo mistake ! In my 18:18 post, thanks for picking that up @Nellodee

Exactly.
Every worker plays a valid part in society.

Do you deny that those are the political aims?

Whether either party is successful in their respective aims is a separate question, although I think historically they are.

The gini coefficient is flawed as such it is unreliable.
We live in a capitalist country.
What you are suggesting is communism.

Not something many in this country would favour, with good reason!

I do deny those are the political aims. I think the political aims of our current batch of conservatives mps is to line the pockets of them and their friends as much as possible. I would possibly vote for someone like John Major, right now, but i have zero confidence in this current lot to have the economic interests of the country at large at the forefront of their thinking. I don’t think they care if the pie grows, to continue the analogy, so long as their slice does.

I’m not suggesting communism at all. What I’m saying is, a truly communist society would lack incentive towards growth. An overly inequal society (as we currently have) will also restrict it.

Now whether the model of perpetual growth is sustainable or desirable is a different argument altogether.

Maybe some of the Marxist class warriors on this thread would “do well to remember” that in many countries, including collectivist ‘equal’ Scandinavian ones, governments actually subsidise private schools. Either directly - recognising that the outlay is still much cheaper than running schools itself - or in the form of vouchers which parents can use towards the cost of private education if they aren’t taking up a state place.

In fact I am not aware of a single country except Cuba and North Korea which has banned private schools or otherwise forced them out of existence. If anyone posting in favour of doing so would like to move to either of those countries then please feel free…

Private schools in Finland etc are not comparable in any way to the ones we have here, being, as y you say, that they are state funded and open to all.

It's not equality or inequality themselves which promote or restrict growth. It's factors which tend to correlate with them.

Excess equality almost always correlates with an environment which doesn't incentivise personal achievement.

Excess inequality can correlate with education and opportunity being unavailable to part of the population. But doesn't always.

I describe myself as a socialist, don’t really know enough about Marxism to commit to it. Class is very much a neglected axis of intersectionality, but I think I’m more of a class cadet than a class warrior, given my level of commitment extends only to making a few posts on a mumsnet thread.
The unarguable truth is, though, that the system we have is very much working for the few, not the many, and it would be a better world if we changed that. Expecting a government as wealthy as the one we have now to share those aims is unrealistic. They’re doing very well out of things the way they are and have no incentive to change anything.

Good post 👏👏👏 and how horrific that we could be following in the ‘ideological’ path of Cuba and North Korea.

How do you know it’s not equality/inequality itself? And if it’s the factors that correlate with them, what are those factors?

And if it’s not equality/inequality that correlate directly, then all things being equal, wouldn’t we want as much equality as possible?

I will admit, and I’m going to be slammed for this I know, that once someone reaches an age that they could never possibly expect to pay back a student loan (40 plus maybe ) then they shouldn’t get one.

Personally, I think tha tas long as you are able to demonstrate a good likelihood of passing an accepted qualification from CGSE to Doctorate, then the state should pay for it. A lot of problems started when we started hypothecating loans to fees, rather than generally accepting a well educated and trained workforce is itself far more valuable than a few geegaws like the odd loan or two.

And if that isn't for everyone, then let's apply the education model of charging to health. After all why the fuck should I pay for your heart op ?

Siri, give me an example of a straw man argument.