The Politics Thread 2019

[DarkFruitsRam7]

8 minutes ago, AdamRam said:

I have no issue with funding university students, nor would it matter to me what they choose with that opportunity. What I do find bizarre is that you got rewarded for good marks ?
 

Is that a standard thing, do students need incentives to learn ? 

As I said, it was a private bursary. It was from a fund provided by an association of companies in Burton on Trent to students with good grades. Nothing to do with the government, and not an incentive.

[Curtains]

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/mar/09/actually-the-rich-pay-lots-of-tax-but-on-income-not-their-wealth

[King Kevin]

2 hours ago, DarkFruitsRam7 said:

I live extremely cheaply so that I can afford to go to games. I’m very fortunate that my parents pay my rent whilst I’m at university. The government gives me a maintenance loan of £4,500 per year, and I receive a £500 private bursary that I earned through achieving good grades at school. So, I essentially live on £5,000 for ten months of the year, which includes close to 20 away games. I know how to live frugally.

I fully intend to earn good money after I graduate, and I fully intend to pay my fair share of taxes and help those who need it. Just like a rich person can have socialist values, a person with little money can support taxing the rich.

I’m not going to abandon my morals as soon as I earn a bit of money.

Good man ,but turning it on it's head your parents are helping you out ,I do the same for my kids and grand kids.I'm sure your mum and dad have worked hard all their lives to be able to do that for you.

I want to spend my hard earned cash on my family ,not on some undeserving person that abuses the system .Of course I want to pay for the real needy / NHS but unfortunately it's not paying the tax that I mind it's what they spend it on. 

[Angry Ram]

2 hours ago, DarkFruitsRam7 said:

 

And, funnily enough, I've helped raise around £300 for Movember this month; I regularly give money to homeless people and am planning on making a charitable donation this Christmas. But carry on assuming that I'm a hypocrite who blows all my money on football and alcohol and relies on mummy and daddy to bail me out.

 

Proof please of the Movember thing.. I’ve seen your picture and I think you might be in a rebate situation to those who sponsored you.

 

In all seriousness, you seem to have a really balanced outlook on life for one as young as you and that is great.. I am hugely lucky with my current situation, I had no qualifications just a good work ethic. I now pay the national debt with my tax but I have no problem with that. All I ask is that it is used wisely and that is why I will vote for the Tory’s this time. We are in a position now where we can give back and that is great. Some of our friends think we are mad but when retirement is secure, the kids are self sufficient and you have money to do whatever you want to do.. Then it’s a great position to give some extra back. I’ve always been family first, we look after ourselves, number one priority..

Keep with your principles mate, you seem to have had a great upbringing and know good from bad. Youth gets a bad rep but you restore my faith in it.. You know how to have a great time and enjoy everything about being young and foolish but keep the basics in order. Good luck to you.

[AdamRam]

15 minutes ago, AndyinLiverpool said:

Why is it 'cuckoo'?

Imo because the country hasn’t got the funds to implement it

[GboroRam]

2 hours ago, AdamRam said:

Great you grew a moustache and got others to pay for it, well done, I presume anyone earning over 80k doesn’t do that ?
 

I’m not sitting here saying you should pay more taxes, what I’m saying is that it is easy to identify a problem and get someone else to pay for it, you get given 5000 spare cash and I think you should be able to do with it what you wish. Same as I think if you are going to solve the country’s problems it shouldnt be just be the minority that have to pay for it, who already contribute more than anyone else.

The hypocrisy is that you are quite happy to have a go and say that anyone eating over 80k a year should contribute to food banks and sit on your high horse whilst you continue to go out drinking and attending away matches.

There's a fundamental flaw in this argument. Since the Tories came in and introduced austerity measures, the poor have been paying the brunt of the costs. The first thing the Tories did was cut taxes for the highest paying. The rhetoric of "we're all in this together" has been unveiled as a complete lie.

Sadly you are raising the issue of paying more tax from a very personal perspective. But colour it how you will, if you are paying 40k tax on an 80k income, you're still taking home much more than a person earning 25k before tax. With sensible progressive taxation in bands, you should be taxed a proportion - not a large amount - on the higher figures. The figures that Labour are asking the higher earners to pay are very minor in comparison with the problem. The loudmouth guy on QT was throwing his toys out at the idea of paying something in the region of a fiver a week more tax.

We need the higher earners to pitch and support the rejuvenation of the country. The people at the bottom have borne the brunt of it for a decade, time to have some fairness. And let's be honest, almost nobody made 80k a year without needing some of those lower paid people to do the grunt work for them. Hardly anyone gets to the top of the tree without others helping them up.

[AndyinLiverpool]

2 minutes ago, AdamRam said:

Imo because the country hasn’t got the funds to implement it

Not sure why that makes it cuckoo

[GboroRam]

1 hour ago, Ghost of Clough said:

Back to the student loans issue.

I finished Uni in 2017 after completing 5 years (sandwich course). The 'true cost' (tuition fees plus maintenance loans) was roughly £55,000. At this current moment in time this is roughly what I have. 

I must stress that I have no problem what so ever with repaying the 'true cost' at the rate of inflation. To be honest, that's what I estimate I'll end up repaying anyway. In 30 years time, I doubt I'll clear this 'debt' due to the interest being in the ballpark of 2.5% above inflation for the majority of that. In the 18/19 tax year total interest was £2387.25. I'd need to be earning £55k just to pay off the interest each year! This is then compounded by the rising threshold every year, meaning I repay even less.

The truth is it's not a debt... it's an additional tax - 9% of income above the threshold which for the vast majority isn't even equivalent to a couple of pints a week. The balance I shared is irrelevant. The only time it's of any use is when I gloat about how big my 'student debt' is compared to everyone else.

My personal income puts me near to the 75th percentile, and combined with my girlfriend's income we're in the top 10% for household income. If i'm incredibly unliekly to pay off my 'debt', most other people must therefore be unable to clear of their 'debt' as well. In my opinion, Government should abolish student debts and just put a flat x.x% tax on all future university graduates. I have a feeling that would also remove the stigma @TuffLuff was speaking about due to not being burdened with a debt (although there may not be an actual difference). Labour voters will then have that warm fuzzy feeling of knowing they'll be able to get more money off the rich - under the current system the high earning graduates pay off their debt before the 30 year cutoff, whereas my policy would see them continuing to pay in to the system.

I'd be more than happy to see the threshold drop and increase the repayment rates... but I doubt that would win many votes.

I'd much rather scrap the loan - it discourages people from going into education, leaving with such high levels of debt.

Once you're not lumbered with repaying the costs, make those who come out of the other end of the education process pay more to fund it. And the chances are, if you've been to university it's to get a better salary than those who don't. So tax those people on higher incomes - job done.

It's so simple in my eyes.

[AdamRam]

17 minutes ago, DarkFruitsRam7 said:

As I said, it was a private bursary. It was from a fund provided by an association of companies in Burton on Trent to students with good grades. Nothing to do with the government, and not an incentive.

Lucky you I suppose, I got treated for my company for doing a good job and got taxed a lump 7k for doing it. No problem with that, just can’t agree with increasing it to fund a labour manifesto and being in the minority in that respect.

As you say though, not going to agree on that one.

[Angry Ram]

16 minutes ago, 86 Schmokes & a Pancake said:

I doubt it somehow. If an economist were to forecast solely based on his or her political leanings I think they'd soon be unemployed and unemployable. Perhaps some will allow their judgement to be coloured by their political views, but all 163 of them? Seems massively unlikely to me.  As for the Tories, well they have secured the alternate view from a few economists, just not 163 of them. Should we dismiss their opinions too then?

After the financial crash, 140 economists wrote an open letter to The Observer stating that austerity measures would not stimulate the economy. As it turns out, they were right. I don't think in either case these people made their views known because of political leanings but rather because in their professional opinions, the Government was making assumptions that were at very least, questionable. Is it really as likely as you suggest that each and every contributor was simply playing lip-service to the Labour party?

Yet I was just told, a few posts later, that the Tory party could muster those as well as they were all funded by Hedge Fund managers blah, blah, blah.

Bit like climate change experts, if you dig deep enough they get their funding somewhere which could set an agenda. Who the fook  knows nowadays what is right and what is wrong? You would like to think they were impartial but I am not so sure anymore. Sad times.

[Comrade 86]

 

[Comrade 86]

2 minutes ago, Angry Ram said:

Yet I was just told, a few posts later, that the Tory party could muster those as well as they were all funded by Hedge Fund managers blah, blah, blah.

Bit like climate change experts, if you dig deep enough they get their funding somewhere which could set an agenda. Who the fook  knows nowadays what is right and what is wrong? You would like to think they were impartial but I am not so sure anymore. Sad times.

So you're assuming that's what happened then? That in fact Labour have gathered together the 163 economists and asked them to say something nice about Labour fiscal policies? If not I'm struggling to understand your point. Not trying to be obtuse but if you are not suggesting this then what is the relevance of what the Tories could or couldn't pull together. If you are suggesting that this is a Labour influenced 'plot', on what basis are you making that assumption?

[AdamRam]

4 minutes ago, GboroRam said:

There's a fundamental flaw in this argument. Since the Tories came in and introduced austerity measures, the poor have been paying the brunt of the costs. The first thing the Tories did was cut taxes for the highest paying. The rhetoric of "we're all in this together" has been unveiled as a complete lie.

Sadly you are raising the issue of paying more tax from a very personal perspective. But colour it how you will, if you are paying 40k tax on an 80k income, you're still taking home much more than a person earning 25k before tax. With sensible progressive taxation in bands, you should be taxed a proportion - not a large amount - on the higher figures. The figures that Labour are asking the higher earners to pay are very minor in comparison with the problem. The loudmouth guy on QT was throwing his toys out at the idea of paying something in the region of a fiver a week more tax.

We need the higher earners to pitch and support the rejuvenation of the country. The people at the bottom have borne the brunt of it for a decade, time to have some fairness. And let's be honest, almost nobody made 80k a year without needing some of those lower paid people to do the grunt work for them. Hardly anyone gets to the top of the tree without others helping them up.

And the people in the middle are exempt for what reason ? As I said got no problem with the tax I pay at the moment, even haven’t paying that bit more if everyone else is also chipping in. Labour are doing exactly the exactly the same as  of what you accuse the conservatives of, getting one band of the population to brunt the cost of their new projects.

Intresting you say it’s only a fiver a week, if it is “only”, I’m sure you’d agree that you’d be quite happy to pay and fund it ?

[AdamRam]

9 minutes ago, AndyinLiverpool said:

Not sure why that makes it cuckoo

Fair enough.

[Angry Ram]

7 minutes ago, 86 Schmokes & a Pancake said:

So you're assuming that's what happened then? That in fact Labour have gathered together the 163 economists and asked them to say something nice about Labour fiscal policies? If not I'm struggling to understand your point. Not trying to be obtuse but if you are not suggesting this then what is the relevance of what the Tories could or couldn't pull together. If you are suggesting that this is a Labour influenced 'plot', on what basis are you making that assumption?

I'm saying that is a possibility. I would need to research who those 'economists' are. Did they ask 500 hundred economists and only 163 backed their stance? There quote would not be wrong but not wholly accurate. Everything has a twist to suit an agenda. Draw 5 games on the bounce, is that you are unbeaten in 5 or you have not won in 5? Everything has a spin and I take a position now where I don't trust much I hear or read without doing some of my own investigation.  

[Highgate]

19 minutes ago, Angry Ram said:

Yet I was just told, a few posts later, that the Tory party could muster those as well as they were all funded by Hedge Fund managers blah, blah, blah.

Bit like climate change experts, if you dig deep enough they get their funding somewhere which could set an agenda. Who the fook  knows nowadays what is right and what is wrong? You would like to think they were impartial but I am not so sure anymore. Sad times.

What are you suggesting there?  Are you doubting the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change is genuine?

[GboroRam]

15 minutes ago, AdamRam said:

Intresting you say it’s only a fiver a week, if it is “only”, I’m sure you’d agree that you’d be quite happy to pay and fund it ?

Absolutely I would. Most people would wholeheartedly support increasing taxes across the board to save the NHS.

[AdamRam]

2 minutes ago, GboroRam said:

Absolutely I would. Most people would wholeheartedly support increasing taxes across the board to save the NHS.

We in agreement there then, but unless I’m mistaken that isn’t on the table ?

[Angry Ram]

21 minutes ago, Highgate said:

What are you suggesting there?  Are you doubting the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change is genuine?

Climates change all the time. Plenty of ying to that yang. 

[JuanFloEvraTheCocu'sNesta]

8 minutes ago, Angry Ram said:

Climates change all the time. Plenty of ying to that yang. 

Do you believe climate change is an issue that needs tackling with urgency?