"We've Come to Repossess Your Education"

[steepholm]

I see that Vince Cable is trying to wriggle round the LibDem opposition to student fees by proposing a tax on graduates. But will this apply only to new graduates, or to existing ones too? And if the latter are to be spared, why - given that most of them got their education for free, and are considerably more able to pay than recent graduates with their average £25K in debt? After all, we're presumably still benefiting from our graduate status - worth some £250,000 to each of us over a lifetime, I seem to remember Margaret Hodge claiming.

It won't happen, though.

Comments

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't mind paying. Thousands would.

[sheenaghpugh]

I know graduates who, because they chose to go into ill-paid professions, have never earned more than about £20,000 - is he saying they have to pay an extra tax on that when Alan Sugar can keep all his?

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Yes indeedy - once they reach a certain level of income.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Personally I rather do mind paying, because I think education ought to be free, and that having educated people is a benefit to society rather than something that ought to be taxed. However, if they are going to tax it, I can see no argument for taxing some graduates and not others.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I agree that education ought to be free, but given that it isn't now and isn't going to be in future, I feel guilty about the fact that it was for me. Well, not really, because I went to a fee-paying secondary school and my mother had to contribute to my maintenance at university, but it was freer than it is now.

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

Extra earning potential = extra income tax-paying potential
Everybody wins.
*headdesk*

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Well, quite. See posts passim for my plaintive pleas for a rise in income tax as the fairest and simplest mechanism to raise extra revenue. It continues to be mentioned by nobody from the main parties, as far as I can see.

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know you know that, I just had to say it out loud.
Obviously the anti-VAT rant I delivered in person this morning did not get my tax-related frustrations out of the system.

[emmaco.livejournal.com]

No mention of past graduates paying so far. So very unfair that the generation with free uni education, cheaper housing and good pensions also skip this tax...

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Can it be a coincidence that they are also the ones drafting the laws?