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What will the tories do today?

  
  

Page: 12(3)45

 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
20:23 / 01.10.07
Ah, she doesn't explicitly claim that her skin colour allows her to repeat the usual Tory racist nonsense but it's close. Either Cameron can't get her to shut up and is therefore weak, or worse, thinks that playing a card that hasn't worked for the Tories for the last three elections is going to magically work this time, in which case she's a fool.

It's also worth remembering that Warsi got her parliamentary seat by using a homophobic campaign, so obviously has form for believing the best way for the Tories to succeed is to divide communities using whatever excuse fits the circumstances.

Meanwhile, over on Facebook...
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
19:41 / 02.10.07
God. It's like the Major days; every day, they find new ways to screw the pooch.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
11:32 / 09.10.07
I'm gobsmacked by the suggestion that a tax on inherited wealth inhibits social mobility.

If you have figures that dispute the official claims that 6% of the UK population are affected by inheritance tax, it would be interesting to see them. Byers' article (in the Telegraph, note) begins with a supposedly typical but admittedly fictitious sob-story and then relies on a statistic from the Halifax that sounds impressive - "there are now more than one and half million properties with a value in excess of the threshold for inheritance tax liability" - but is less so once remembers there are about 25 million homes in the UK. (Seven out of 10 are owner-occupied - the Halifax doesn't state how many of the 1 and a half million are owner-occupied.)

If the "super-rich" (a moveable feast - £300,000* seems like a lot of money to me, but I guess these things are relative) are avoiding paying inheritance tax due to prudent gifting more than seven years in advance of death, then the solution is better taxation on gifts over a certain value, and better information about the current system so that it's not just those with expensive lawyers who can do this - not to raise the nil-rate band to reduce the amount of taxation paid by people who have estates worth more than those of almost 94% of the population.

Byers' rhetoric - it punishes hard work and thrift, etc - is the same stuff that's always wheeled out when tax cuts are proposed. To view taxation of the very wealthy as punishment rather than part of the social contract is classic right-wing stuff, as is making a tax that affects a wealthy minority into a major issue that scares the bejeezus out of Middle England.

(Aren't you against compulsory redistribution of wealth in general anyway, Nick?)

*The current nil-rate band cut-off point.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:46 / 09.10.07
I find the idea of inheritance tax as a block on ambition tricky to get my head round - I don't think anyone has ever been dissuaded from making money by the risk that at the end of their life their assets may be taxed; possibly it will persuade them to look for ways to avoid their assets being in taxable form at the end of their lives, for example by the aforementioned gifting. If they decide to fritter it away instead, that's actually OK, too - they will probably be paying VAT, and will be keeping people in jobs, at least as long as the frittering is done in the UK.

Philosophically, the thought of taxing an estate that has already been taxed might be objectionable, but then I pay tax (VAT) when spending money that was also taxed at source, I might pay capital gains tax on share dealings made with my already-taxed salary, tax is charged on the interest on savings made up of the same taxed salary, and so on. Basically, there's tax all over the shop, and in particular inheritance tax might seek to reflect the untaxed appreciation of property, even though the property purchase itself was taxed (at my end of life, stamp duty upsets me more than inheritance tax).

If inheritance tax does pull in £3bn, there would need to be a _lot_ of non-domiciled people paying the stipend. On the plus side, 25,000 quid not to have people asking questions about your financial affairs is probably a very good bargain. It would be a good deal for, say, Michael Ashcroft.

However, while we may tot up the Tories' follies, the whole thing seems to be going down quite well with the voters at large...
 
 
Alex's Grandma
15:24 / 09.10.07
In particular inheritance tax might seek to reflect the untaxed appreciation of property, even though the property purchase itself was taxed

It's a notional appreciation though, until the property's actually sold. I might, as a homeowner in district X, have all kinds of ideas about what my domicile's worth based on the area, how many drinks I've had in the golf club bar etc, and the Inland Revenue might have other ideas, and a cross-section of local estate agents might have other thoughts again, but unless the property's been put on the market it's difficult to say for sure. Presumably there's some sort of formula in place for working out fair value, but even so, I wonder if it isn't a bit much for property (as distinct from, say, shares or bank accounts, which can be ascribed a specific worth at a specfic point in time) to be subject to taxation until such time as it's changed hands for cash.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
15:28 / 09.10.07
(Though there are obviously problems with the above when it comes to property that generates an income, as well as other areas that I've no doubt failed to consider ...)
 
 
_pin
19:23 / 09.10.07
Do I sound stupid when I ask what it is that inheritance tax actually taxes? Is it just the house(s), or are we talking about everything that passes through the will, or a point in between?

And Haus, as my boss never tires of saying, when people are actually asked about whether they'd like to give tax-paid things up to pay for this tax break, its far less popular.

Does everyone really feel like they need to plan for a future where they're worth £300,000? Does they not think that, when they are, money will, pound-for-pound, probablly be less meaningful to them then it is right now?
 
 
Alex's Grandma
21:39 / 09.10.07
It's the estate in general.

I suppose £300,000 in assets seems a lot to have accumulated in ones twenties or thirties, but the time one hits sixty five, after thirty-plus years of hard, but presumably nevertheless still socially productive bloody toil in the corporate, industrial or otherwise salt mines, plus the mortgage payments and so on, it's really not so much. £300,000 being the price of a reasonably modest family home in large areas of Britain, anyway.

While UK property values have shot through the roof in the last ten years, through circumstances pretty much entirely outside the average homeowner's control, the inheritance tax threshold, as managed by Gordon 'Prudence' Brown, has failed to keep step with the basic rate of inflation. This leaving aside the argument that Gordon 'Piggy Bank' Brown's figures with regard to inflation are in some sense compromised by their stern, furrowed-brow refusal to take account of property values in the 'basket of goods' with regard to which inflation's* assessed in the first place.

* This, like the Bogle of Pitlocherey, or the beast in Glamis castle, pretty clearly doesn't exist any more. Witchfinder Brown having finally banished it with his cross, his starched collar, and his mighty red biro.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
07:40 / 10.10.07
Well, in a move that has led to accusations of borrowing the Tories' policies, Alistair Darling has announced that inheritance tax will rise to £600,000, and then to £700,000 by 2010 - which is shy of the Tory "millionaires only" proposal, but still a major shift from the rate of increase in the last 20 years or so.

I suppose a more generalised discussion of the principle of inheritance tax, and what an ideal, fair, socially beneficial application of that principle would look like, are subjects for another thread.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
09:47 / 10.10.07
Petey:

I'm gobsmacked by the suggestion that a tax on inherited wealth inhibits social mobility

Yes, but that's partly because I annoy you by existing. It's not just me sitting out here wondering about this: I had almost this exact discussion with a Labour councillor the other day - he was dealing with inheritance problems in his constituents in... well. Not one of the rich bits of London, anyway.

Look: the very rich don't pay much tax, except when they feel like it, so write them out of the social mobility thing. They're not being lowered by inheritance tax. That means this tax is interesting only in the context of what it does to social mobility at the bottom end of the scale. If it raises revenue which is needed and doesn't prevent families from making a shift in access - from jobs which have a wage ceiling to jobs which basically don't - then let's keep it. If there's a danger that it blocks the children of a pipe-fitter who made decent money from going to university, then it's a sucky tax.

Question: I asked before - what is the basic unit of society? Family? Individual? Should a government be trying to improve the lot of individuals across society or down through generational lines?

If you have figures that dispute the official claims that 6% of the UK population are affected by inheritance tax, it would be interesting to see them.

Actually, I think it would be more interesting to see a breakdown of that six per cent in terms of class and income, what they pay as a per centage of their worth while they were alive, who makes a vast amount of money and doesn't pay inheritance tax (or indeed many other taxes) and to compare the fortunes of a family just below the tax band with those of someone above it.

£300,000* seems like a lot of money to me, but I guess these things are relative

Consider what that buys - two children raised to the age of 21 using state schools and healthcare; a house in Truro - at ten times the local average wage; one favour from a Saudi prince.

If what you're saying to me is that anyone who can afford to raise two kids is "super-rich" then I think we've got bigger problems than inheritance tax - although that would be wonderful, actually, because it would imply that the UK is in far better shape than I thought.

The big kicker at the moment is property, obviously, and one consequence of the tax is that property has to be sold on the death of the owner, because no one living in it can afford a fraction of its notional value, which has increased wildly over these last years. When this happens, of course, it is bought by a nice rich family or a developer.

Thank God for progress, eh?

Question: Why isn't inheritance tax properly banded? Why does it have to go from zero to forty percent?

the solution is better taxation on gifts over a certain value, and better information about the current system so that it's not just those with expensive lawyers who can do this

I think the problem just replicates itself when people make their gifts.... as to the rest:

The problem about the tax system and access to it is not information, it's complexity and fear. The information is out there, but how can anyone hope to understand it? I've got a degree and a better-than-average grasp of English; my wife's a lawyer. Neither one of us has a rat's chance in hell of understanding our tax obligations without help. The penalties for getting it wrong - even by accident - are incredibly frightening/expensive, and have knock-on effects on credit rating and eligibility as a director of a company (I'm not talking about ICI, I'm talking about Ben's Painting & Decorating of Sutton-On-Blinge). In other words, if you screw up, you may not only get fined, you may lose your job and your access to loans. Either it needs to be simplified (which is a herculean task in itself, and leads to things like flat taxes of which I imagine you disapprove) or to achieve what you're talking about you need a staff of public tax consultants, which kicks off the whole funding/cost-benefit/liability thing.

(Aren't you against compulsory redistribution of wealth in general anyway, Nick?)

I'm against gun-to-the-head, revolutionary redistribution, because I'm against gun-to-the-head revolution in general. If you mean, am I against taxes?, then no. I think you have this weird Brideshead/Fatcat picture of me in your head, and you need to leave it behind. I believe in public healthcare, public transport, public education, and all the taxes to pay for these things. I believe that green taxes are a vital tool in regulating emissions. On the other hand, I hate taxes which basically generate blowback. I think this may be one. If it's not, let's keep it.

Haus:

I don't think anyone has ever been dissuaded from making money by the risk that at the end of their life their assets may be taxed

I think my point was that it's hard to get people to save, rather than hard to get them to make money. It's a curious position: the government is desperate to encourage savings, but if you are sufficiently prudent with your pension/life insurance etc. that there's money left in your estate when you face death, the state reserves the right to take a large per centage - even if it has already been taxed as income. Coupled with the government's hot-cold strategy about pensions in general, it's a problem.

possibly it will persuade them to look for ways to avoid their assets being in taxable form at the end of their lives, for example by the aforementioned gifting

Well, Petey wants to shut that down, too, and in any case you need advice to know that it's necessary. Not everyone is going to get that advice - especially people who have not considered the possibility that this affects them, because the only reason it does is their home.

Apologies if I've threadrotted this discussion into, you know, seriousness. I just read the summary.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:21 / 10.10.07
It's a curious position: the government is desperate to encourage savings

Well, there's a doubling, there. The government wants people to save, but it also wants them to spend, to maintain consumer confidence and the appearance of a healthy high street. People spending brings in tax revenue, and helps to maintain businesses, which also pay tax. I suppose the ideal person, fromt he government point of view, invests in their own pension plan and a private healthcare plan, pays high rates of tax, spends a considerable portion of their income but also saves, is a part of the credit system but does not borrow beyond their means, never defaults... and so on. I suppose sort of like the ideal person for a banker is one with a large amount of funding spread across a wide range of accounts, but who still doesn't pay off their credit card in full every month.

Mind you, the government likes property ownership, as well, and it still taxes house purchases over a certain value - a much lower one than inheritance tax, in fact.

Labour have now raised the inheritance tax threshold to £600,000, as of now, and plan to raise it further, to £700,000. If the very rich, if they are douchebags, won't pay anyway, who does that leave being squeezed by inheritance tax? My immediate instinct is that the main sufferers, hypothetically, would be epigonoi whose residence goes into that valuation, especially in a soft housing market and who do not have the cash assets to pay the inheritance tax.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:41 / 10.10.07
On the plus side, in tax terms, if they have to sell the house, the government gets stamp duty on the purchase. Mind you, almost anything they do to pay the inheritance tax will have some sort of tax implication.

Unless they go on the game.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
12:27 / 10.10.07
Actually, it's an interesting question, and a more traditionally left-right one: if this tax is radically bad for a small number of people of modest means (and with the increase in the threshold, that seems less likely) and is moderately good news most people of modest means, does that mean it's a good thing?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
12:42 / 10.10.07
Well, ideally you'd arrange to have that small number of people supported from a fund set up by the moneys gathered from the larger mass of people who were not so affected - an inheritance hardship fund, in effect. But that's another layer of bureaucracy. Or you could stagger tax payments for people dependent on the property and without liquidity - in effect, have them pay back an interest-free loan form UKGov...

It's not ideal, though, certainly. At £600,000 or £700,000, I think you are getting to the level of people who are unlikely still to be living in their sole parent's home, though.
 
 
_pin
19:53 / 10.10.07
£300,000 spend ona child's education is already spent, though. It's getting to the end of your life with £300,000 in assets and savings that seems a bit difficult, I think. not impossile, obviously, but...

... surely a bigger and more pressing problem for most people is the state of care for the elderly, and that assets are being liquidated to fund that?

Certainly, if there's blowback, blowback is bad and should be stopped, but that's not why the Tories are opposed to it, or - more accurately - why the Daily Express against.

And what actually is the material, as opposed to sentimental and administative, hit of inheritance tax to most people who do come in to the threshold?
 
 
Alex's Grandma
02:32 / 11.10.07
... surely a bigger and more pressing problem for most people is the state of care for the elderly, and that assets are being liquidated to fund that?

Realistically, it's good to fall apart in a cancer ward on at least a notional government tab. The awful, and encouraged alternative is to rot away gently courtesy of expensive senile dementia. Because the state in this joint no longer pays the bills for that sort of thing.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
07:54 / 11.10.07
£300,000 spend on a child's education is already spent, though. It's getting to the end of your life with £300,000 in assets and savings that seems a bit difficult, I think. not impossile, obviously, but...

But people do manage to raise more than two children, even - perhaps especially - less well-off families. So by some alchemy, it can be done. If you have one child and scrimp for three, for example. I'm not suggesting it's common, just that three hundred grand, while a vast sum of money, is what you might call realistic lifetime money. Seven hundred, not so much, even including property, so this issue is sort of falling apart for me now.

And what actually is the material, as opposed to sentimental and administative, hit of inheritance tax to most people who do come in to the threshold?

I rather thought we'd talked about that as far as we could without hard data. However, thinking about it, I think the potential seriousness of it comes as much from knock-on effects across a community as from damage to individuals. Let's take Cornwall as an example, since it's near to my heart.

Suppose your family house is an old three bedroom. The owner dies. Property prices in the South West are a bit silly; they're inflated by second-homers. The house is valued at £400,000 - I'm going to use the old threshhold, because the new one clearly obviates this particular problem - which means a tax liability on the house of £40,000. The rest of the estate isn't worth that much, so unless you can find, say, an extra twenty thousand pounds, you're selling up. That means you've now got £360,000 to find a new home. You're going to have to make some compromises on where or on how large. Since you can't really manage with less space, you move out of town to a modern property. You've made a small step down in property terms, you've suffered the grief, the hassle and cost of the move. But it's more than that...

You're that much further from where you work, and now your kids can't walk to school and don't have access to the social life they're used to. More generally, you've sold the house to second-home buyers or developers. The area you live in is increasingly a ghost-town nine months of the year - no one who comes from Cornwall can afford the houses. The entire community is getting atomised, losing its sense of identity. You didn't grow up with the people next door to you, you don't know anyone in this village or this part of town. The web of relationships which is what it means to live here is breaking apart. As a consequence, you don't have the immediate support which you're used to - free, easy child care from Mrs. Barton at number 61, a rolling tab at Bob Lannock's shop, a drink in the Tadcaster Arms with the other fishermen/farmers/women from the tourist office/bank. You've maybe had to move bank branches; in some bits of Cornwall, bank managers still exist who have handled generations of a family and are prepared to be flixible about bills and such because the fleet hasn't come in or whatever.

This is obviously not all the fault of a tax which has now been changed anyway. But it is a problem, and it doesn't need any help.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
08:23 / 11.10.07
You're that much further from where you work, and now your kids can't walk to school and don't have access to the social life they're used to.

In most cases, probably not - if you are the spouse of the decedent, then you don't pay tax on the inheritance, so you don't have to move. So, unless you are talking about a situation in which the house is owned by a widowed grandparent and occupied by a child and the grandchildren, which is possible but I would suggest fairly rare, as it would require that the child/parent has either never left home or has moved back into the parental home and thus has _already_ displaced his or her children, that's unlikely to be a huge issue.

Also, not wishing to be cruel, but in such a situation one would presumably be looking for a smaller property, since one would have one fewer person to accommodate, and would also no longer require the facilities to care for a possibly aged parent.

Of course, a tax where you might have to obtain large amounts of cash by liquidating assets is going to cause pain, and in some cases that pain may be hard to manage. However, I don't think it's necessarily a major cause of second homeisation in Cornwall - not nearly so much as, for example, city bonuses. What you want there is legislation against second homes in protected areas, which is probably another kettle of fish.

But, as you say, at £600,000 or £700,000 we're talking about being able to spring for four or five bedrooms in a nice bit of Truro, so it probably won't drive too many people dependent on the quality of the latest fish haul out of their homes. I'm still curious as to whether the lost tax revenue will be balanced by this non-domicile charge, though...
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
19:16 / 11.10.07
unless you are talking about a situation in which the house is owned by a widowed grandparent and occupied by a child and the grandchildrenn, which is possible but I would suggest fairly rare

You sound kind of urban saying that. Cornwall still works like that more than you might think, especially in the kind of community where properties can become bijou holiday homes.

in such a situation one would presumably be looking for a smaller property, since one would have one fewer person to accommodate, and would also no longer require the facilities to care for a possibly aged parent.

Well, you're talking about a growing family, and I think you're optimistic if you imagine that most people caring for elderly relatives in the South West have anything which would count as 'facilities'. A rail to get out of the bath, maybe.

Very much a moot point, though, now. However, I'm thinking we need a thread about Labour doing totally nutso things, given they're proposing to favour second home owners in the next budget.... Jeez.
 
 
Peach Pie
11:54 / 14.10.07
Was anyone expecting the tories to go 7 points ahead in the polls? Oy vey!
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
16:43 / 14.10.07
It's the conference bounce, remember the week previous how people were saying that Brown should call the election now because Labour support had momentarily shifted upwards because people turned on their TV and saw him on TV for a bit. I'm regurgitating a half-remembered factoid from somewhere so I may be wrong, but I believe it was that the Tories have not managed to sustain a lead in the opinion polls since 1991. Labour approval, battered down when Blair was hanging around, recovered a couple of points when he finally left. So, one poll doth not a Cameron premiership make, but Mister 'But Actually the Exit Polls Predicted a Labour Win in '92' will be along shortly I've no doubt.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
22:28 / 14.10.07
The dangers of getting your budget information from Barbelith... the inheritance tax bracket has not gone up to £600,000. What has happened is that a spouse, upon decease, transfers his or her inheritance tax allowance to the surviving spouse - so, when the surviving spouse dies, the limit on their join bequest is £300,000. Which might help out hypothetical Cornish family, but is no use to the unmarried.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
23:02 / 14.10.07
I think that's actually the dangers of me getting my pre-budget information from the front pages.
 
 
Lurid Archive
00:26 / 15.10.07
I'm gobsmacked by the suggestion that a tax on inherited wealth inhibits social mobility.

I'm also pretty gobsmacked by the idea. I'm not sure I get it, but it seems Nick is arguing that due to house prices and the appreciation of property value, inheritance tax is needed so that people can afford (to keep) homes. While I can see that, I'm not sure where that leaves people who don't own property. If you buy the argument that inheriting a *measly* 300,000 leaves you in real trouble if it is taxed, then people without inheritances are pretty much condemned to be an underclass. I'm not saying that the redistributive effects of an inheritance tax will magically make these problems go away - obviously not - but it seems odd to oppose inheritance tax in the name of social mobility.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
00:29 / 15.10.07
It's actually weirdly circular - we started this thread talking about the Tories wanting to reward married couples for being married, and now we see (New) Labour pretty much doing the same. I assume that it works the same way for the civilly partnered, but not for cohabiting unmarried couples.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
05:55 / 15.10.07
it seems Nick is arguing that due to house prices and the appreciation of property value, inheritance tax is needed so that people can afford (to keep) homes

Uh, no. Nick is arguing that if someone inherits a house with a paper value of over three hundred grand, they get taxed at 40% on the extra, and there are places where property is so out of whack with earnings (and people who are otherwise poor may live in family property which is now valued highly) that the - for example - thirty grand they'd have to raise to stay in the house is a burden they can't shoulder. I'm particularly concerned about this in the context of land which is valued on the basis that it could be developed or sold for second homes (something Labour seem curiously positive about) which has ghastly knock-on effects in terms of community cohesion.

At the same time, I'm asking more generally what the basic unit of society is which Labour is seeking to benefit. Is it the family? The individual? What's the model for positive social change?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
07:37 / 15.10.07
Well, it appears to be encouraging us to be married or civilly partnered, and to have assets between £300,000 and £600,000. It's quite _specific_, really...
 
 
Lurid Archive
12:41 / 15.10.07
Uh, no.

Then I'm obviously missing something, since your clarification seems to me to be a repeat of my summary.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
13:03 / 15.10.07
I'd just like to point out, although it's slightly off-topic, that this:

Yes, but that's partly because I annoy you by existing.... I think you have this weird Brideshead/Fatcat picture of me in your head, and you need to leave it behind.

...is totally unsubstantiated by the post I wrote, which deals 90% with the issue of inheritance tax and what you had already posted about it, rather than you personally or whatever your social and financial situation may be. The one deviation from this was a mention of something else you had earlier stated on Barbelith, here:

Never a big fan [of redistribution of wealth]. Historically, it has a shoddy pedigree of corruption and death. And at the point when it becomes likely it would be done fairly, the necessity for doing it rather fades away. I mean, if people were that foresightful and fair minded...etc.

...and here:

[shrug] I'm opposed to direct redistribution for reasons with which you are familiar: I dislike the consequences - the instant criminalisation of an arbitrary group - and I see it as yet another deployment of force as the defining aspect of society, with broad-base solutions applied without regard for the human-scale consequences.

You are now stating that your position is:

I'm against gun-to-the-head, revolutionary redistribution, because I'm against gun-to-the-head revolution in general. If you mean, am I against taxes?, then no.

This seems on first inspection as a redefinement of your position, and fair enough, it's been several years - maybe you see all those people's point about Ayn Rand these days? Except that really, it's a bit of a rhetorical dodge: I never mentioned revolution, which seems to have been introduced for reasons which are at best arbitrary. As for "gun-to-the-head" - well, being opposed to that sounds very fair and moderate and reasonable! Except - what happens in the current system if one refuses to pay one's taxes and then refuses to comply with any legal penalty imposed as a result?

(Everything I've ever written in response to things you've written on Barbelith has been in response to the content of things you've written here, Nick, and I'm affronted that you suggest otherwise.)
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
09:46 / 16.10.07
Lurid - you wrote: inheritance tax is needed so that people can afford (to keep) homes - I'm wondering if that was a typo. My point was that inheritance tax as it was constructed seemed to make problems for those keeping their inherited homes.

Petey:

I think it probably depends on what 'redistribution of wealth' means. Usually when you talk about it you sound as if you're intending to go round to the castles of the wealthy with pitchforks and burning torches. That sits ill with me, for reasons we've rehearsed too many times, but briefly: it seems to me that violence in politics breeds violence in politics, and the only revolution worth the name is one where we ditch that model for something which does not suck. If what you mean is a constant, rolling redistribution of wealth through taxation, then I suspect we're closer than you might think - although it seems that my definition of wealth is wealthier than yours.

On the other hand, I'm still wondering about exactly what this social mobility we're all talking about so freely is intended to achieve, and how we're proposing to get there. I'm curious about the basic unit of society in the plan. Inheritance tax seems to fit with a notion of mobility which is not generational, which I find odd. Surely, as with the business of education in poorer nations, where if you teach women you teach de facto their children as well, the smart move is to raise a family to the point where they can stay in higher education, even if the newly middle class children of a wealthy working class parent end up chosing non-wealth creating careers. It depends, ultimately, what the end game is.

If I'm re-defining my posiition, you should probably be glad, given how much we've argued over the years - but in any case, I have like many others treated Barbelith as a place where I feel free to be wrong... especially since, even when your cause is just, this place is liable to put you through the acid bath.

Everything I've ever written in response to things you've written on Barbelith has been in response to the content of things you've written here, Nick, and I'm affronted that you suggest otherwise.

That is, if true, very sad. Almost everything you say to me seems calculated to offend, and drawn from some deep well of personal dislike. From my point of view, you snipe and moan at me. I've always assumed you simply don't try to empathise with the people you talk to and understand what they might be reaching for; you seem - as Haus does on occasion - to be more interested in ripping into what I say than you are in seeing whether we have common ground or whether a synthesis of ideas might make a more sustainable and fair model. When I wrote that post, by the way, I was thinking of your comment in the Books As Objects thread, where you questioned my sanity because I suggested making someone cut up their own clothes, but ignored another poster's alternative: break her fingers with a mallet. Frankly, that's how it seems to be between us, to the point where, as you know, I usually ignore everything you say because it seems profitless to discuss things with you.

If this isn't the effect you intend, I have to say your approach to collegial discussion and friendly interaction is remarkable.
 
 
Lurid Archive
10:33 / 16.10.07
Oops, yes, typo which I kept misreading because I meant the opposite.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
10:54 / 16.10.07
Nick, let's divert the personal grievances you clearly need to air elsewhere.

Sticking to the issue at hand, you still seem to be setting up what I think is a misleading dichotomy between "violent" redistribution of wealth and the current model of taxation - unless you're specifically saying that one of the problems with the current model of taxation is that it can be punitively enforced by the state via law enforcement agents. I would repeat the question of what happens under the current system if one refuses to pay taxes and also to comply with the initial punitive measures doled out as a result, if not violence.

On the issue of whether impeding the flow of inherited wealth between generations impedes social mobility, I think it's fairly simple. The basic principle of taxation ought to be to ensure that basic needs are met for everyone, including those who cannot meet these needs themselves. This should be funded by those who can not only meet their own needs but can also go above and beyond that - and the social contract is not that this is done on a simply altruistic basis, but that those who pay taxes understand that the those taxes fund create a better society and also provide services and indeed a safety net for taxpayers should their circumstances change.

That all being accepted (and it is not a description of the UK at present, clearly), inherited wealth should be taxed as is required to meet the basic needs of the children who inherit (below the) poverty (line). Opportunities for social mobility should exist in the sense that people should be able, through their work earnings, to provide a level of comfort that was not theirs as children for their own children. Higher education shouldn't even require inherited wealth. And "well my dad/grandad was working class" shouldn't be a reason for anyone who is privileged to deny their own privileged status.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
20:39 / 16.10.07
I think I get the confusion here - there seem to be some different ideas about what social mobility means. I think, Nick, that you are using it to describe a situation where, once elevated in circumstances, a family does not slip back down with the next generation - so, it's social mobility, followed by social... consolidation? This is encouraged by the abolition of inheritance tax, because it means that families hold on to a greater proportion of their assets from generation to generation.

On the other hand, the other side of this argument is presumably that by redirecting this wealth instead towards helping (non-related) people in need of assistance, social mobility is facilitated because it is easier to better one's circumstances when starting from a position of greater resources and support generally - so, the descendants of those who have already crossed social and wealth boundaries are disadvantaged, but others have a better chance to do the same as those descendants' parents.

Am I reading aright?

Meanwhile, back ontopic - surely the winner today is the discovery that the Conservatives have been locked in a legal battle to hold on to the money bequeathed to them by a man who, the court has found, was out of his mind when he made the bequest. The fact that his communications to Tory Central Office would not have been out of place in a Barbelith thread about the English gematria.

So, not only will the Conservatives have to give the money back to the man's son, they will also potentially have to pay the costs from the legal action they embarked on to keep the money from what turns out to have been his rightful heir. Also, they tried to keep the money willed to them by a man who believed Cecil Parkinson was framed by Satanists.

Sweet.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
10:35 / 17.10.07
his is encouraged by the abolition of inheritance tax, because it means that families hold on to a greater proportion of their assets from generation to generation.

At no point has Nick argued for the abolition of inheritance tax. That's an over-simplification of the argument he's making.
 
 
Mon Oncle Ignatius
16:35 / 08.11.07
What the fucking fuckity fuck?

Centre-right principles

Mr Cameron said it was appropriate to launch the new organisation in Manchester, just a few miles away from Rochdale, where the first co-operative movement in the world was created.

He said: "Manchester became great in the 19th Century when the words 'Manchester liberalism' stood for free trade and capitalism.

"And of course the city also inspired another idea - Friedrich Engels lived here for many years and he wrote about the dark side of the industrial revolution."

Mr Cameron said it was a "shame" that the co-operative movement was associated with the "left", when its principle "captures precisely the vision of social progress that we on the centre-right believe in".

Cameron is using Engels to plug the idea of the Conservatives as a centre-Right party?

My mind is boggling, somewhat.
 
  

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