Two Eds are worse than one.

Sterlingtimes

wessy53 wrote: »

What a selfish self serving lot you are. Not a mention that it may benefit some of the kids of today.

My son is a 19 years old law student and has received his form for his third payment of £9,000 for his fee loan. He is far from impressed that Labour will reduce the fees for future students to £6,000 which the current generation of students would need to cross fund.

zagfles

robin61 wrote: »

I am a big fan of apprenticeships and vocational training. I'd far rather see the money spent on that.
Labour introduced tuition fees in the first place and then encouraged kids to study mickey mouse subjects with no hope of a relevant job.
Typically sanctimonious of them to now belly ache about the kids not getting a fair deal when the roots of the problem are of their own making.

Who'd believe them anyway?

From the 2001 Labour manifesto: http://www.labour-party.org.uk/manifestos/2001/2001-labour-manifesto.shtml

We will not introduce 'top-up' fees and have legislated to prevent them.

Then in 2004 they introduced them. Lots of Labour MPs rebelled at this blatent breach of an election promise, and they only got the vote through Parliament because of Scottish Labour MPs voting for it, even though it didn't affect Scotland, university still fee free there, but their hypocritcal Labour MPs still voted that English students should pay more http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3432767.stm

Yeah, students should really trust Labour on this :rotfl:

atush

wessy53 wrote: »

What a selfish self serving lot you are

Not a mention that it may benefit some of the kids of today.

No lets worry about those who already have more reserves than can probably be spent in a limited life span, lets worry about the effect on the guys on £150k a year for gods sake. Non of you will hit the breadline and most won't be affected.

If your worried about 60% tax bands and 150K pensions then my heart bleeds

Stand back for the Daily Mail Brigade!!!!!

I dont read the Daily mail and never will. But I have twins at Uni and I know what it costs. And I know some of why it costs what it does is Labor and the way the left the country's finances last time.

Anyone who votes for them now (with Red Ed and Mr Balls who engineered the collapse in his job at the Treasury at the time) needs their head examining?

Of course, had they elected a leader who could actually lead, then things could be different.

I am NOT worried about those who earn over 150K. At all.

I am worried about those coming up to retirement trying to boost their pots and the LTA being lowered as well as the yearly allowance. I am worried about mid level people in PS DB pensions who will be hit (such as Matrons for example- are they fat cats? I think NOT)

And I am worried about those who earn over 42K yet are not wealthy at all and need tax rel on their pensions. Because I am not convinced they wont go after HR relief for those in this tax bracket.

jamesd

wessy53 wrote: »

Not a mention that it may benefit some of the kids of today.

Like our host who called the loan part "financially illiterate" we just understand how it works so we can see that his description is accurate. The maintenance grant increase is useful, though.

The loan plan is to reduce tax relief today to reduce loan repayments by the better off students repaying loans twenty years from now. It's a short term tax grab justified by false claims that it's helping needy students.

This happens because the rate of repayment for loans hasn't changed. So the graduated or not former students just start to pay as they pay now and continue to do so through all of the most financially stressed early working years of their lives. Eventually the higher earners reach the point where they pay off the loan. A lower loan value will mean that more of them do, at lower but still high income levels.

So what do we have? A proposal to increase taxes in the short term on those earning £150,000 to mainly help in twenty plus years higher rate tax paying graduates.

Except the well advised earners of more than £150,000 will not actually pay more tax. Instead they will be advised that they can pay into a VCT and get 30% tax relief with a £250,000 paying in limit. And that five years later they can sell and buy another VCT and get another 30%. And they can repeat this for the rest of their life, so they end up getting more than 100% income tax relief instead of just 45%. As an added bonus VCTs pay income tax free and have no CGT. There are also EIS that have similar properties. Beyond those, for more mixed investments, there are offshore investment trusts. Those haven't been so useful in recent years but this will make them more popular again.

The plan is financially illiterate and won't work except as an election bribe to any students who are too poorly educated to realise what it really is. And since those students are at university we can expect that most of them will be financially literate enough to know it.

Meanwhile MSE has a useful financial education role in explaining why it's financially illiterate.

robin61

atush wrote: »

And I am worried about those who earn over 42K yet are not wealthy at all and need tax rel on their pensions. Because I am not convinced they wont go after HR relief for those in this tax bracket.

If the Lib Dems have any influence after the GE Webb has been banging on about how unfair it is for these people earning 42k a year to get tax relief at the rate they actually pay tax at. I am sure Labour would not take much convincing. The only saving grace is that it has the potential to be more complex and therefore take longer to introduce than the other things Milliband has said they are going after. One thing is for sure there will be nothing positive for hard working prudent savers.

wessy53

So i am supposed to believe that the brains behind a major political party know less than a few self obsessed pot growers.

This 10 weeks before an election it must have some political merit, would love someone from the think team to come on here and blow you away.

It appears to me that any solution would be considered financially illiterate seeing Martin himself decided all three major parties offerings were so.

This is not about student grants or pensions this is pure politics and people on here expect to be able to use derogatory remarks like Red Ed and whatever remark you care to make about Ed Balls, without redress.

Well not everyone thinks this way and that may just become apparent in 10 weeks time when Gideon and his Eaton cronies (see i am doing it now) are begging to form some other coalition with anyone that will have them god forbid. UKIP (Tory with knobs on) anyone!!

kidmugsy

Linking the pensions proposal to student fees is just rubbish to fool the politically naive. Taxes in Britain are not hypothecated so Labour will spend any income from the pension changes on whatever they like. That means that the only sensible thing to do is to discuss each set of changes separately.

The university fee proposal looks weak to me; as Mr Lewis has repeatedly argued the present system is more of a graduate (or, strictly ex-student) tax than a genuine fees-and-loan system, since many of the "loans" end up being forgiven, in whole or in part. The benefits that flow from the changes will flow largely to those students who get the best paid jobs. Which is fine by me, but I don't see much point to it from the public interest perspective; arguing that it helps "the kids" just means that the poster doesn't understand the system.

The pension proposals are too stupid to merit discussion; amusingly that seems to be roughly the view of "Krystal" Balls too.

If anyone really, really wants to change tuition fees, and claim that some other tax change will be dedicated to that end, the obvious change to make is an increase on the duty on booze. That way students will pay less on fees and more on their bottles. Result!

BobQ

Aside from the specifics it seems to me the argument being put forward is very simple. It makes sense to use tax relief as a means of incentivising people to save for a pension. The question is at which point does the tax subsidy become too generous?

Most people are very lucky if they can afford to put £30K a year into their pensions so giving them tax relief makes sense. But should we be giving 45% tax relief on pensions to those earning £150K+ when (as JamesD points out) there are other tax free options available? Of course the pensions industry has a vested interest in objecting to such a measures.

There is also an argument as to whether there should be tax free lump sums.

Ultimately, this is about fairness and there is no absolute right to get tax relief on a pension. While I agree that some tax reliefs are very desirable, when people are building up a £50K+ pension why should they get any tax relief on contributions or tax free lump sums?

Politicians clearly have to make a political judgement on how far to go but this outrage from those of us with large pension pots and those who make a good living from the industry is somewhat bizarre.

BobQ

kidmugsy wrote: »

Linking the pensions proposal to student fees is just rubbish to fool the politically naive. Taxes in Britain are not hypothecated so Labour will spend any income from the pension changes on whatever they like. That means that the only sensible thing to do is to discuss each set of changes separately.

!

Sensible to whom? Politicians advocating anything that costs money are invariably asked how they will pay for it without raising taxes. The reality is they are expected to have plausible answers. To do anything else is not sensible.

In this case you may not like the changes proposed to pensions or tuition fees but the IFS has concluded that one change will be fully funded by the other.

jamesd

wessy53 wrote: »

So i am supposed to believe that the brains behind a major political party know less ... This 10 weeks before an election it must have some political merit ... This is not about student grants or pensions this is pure politics

Right, it's just politics because apparently Labour Party internal polls showed that it would be a popular move.

The right counter to playing political games with education and pensions is to educate people so they know that they are being played with for political gains with policies that don't make financial sense. With enough of that the political games may backfire on those who relied on the ignorance of the voters.