Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr Angry
I think an important and oft overlooked part of the student position is that they have seen that a banking system was let run riot and bring the UK to the point of bankruptcy.
The reality is that not all students are as short sighted / stupid as many posters in this thread would like to believe.
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If they are happy to believe the first paragraph is entirely the source of the current issues they are most certainly short sighted / stupid.
I would suggest that only people like Ken Livingstone and others on the left believe the banking system is entirely to blame for all our ills. There are many reasons for the issues largely focussing around economic mismanagement in the past decade.
It is however a convenient excuse and a wonderful scapegoat without a doubt. I'd be looking closer to home at things like increasing the number of undergraduates dramatically without giving appropriate thought to funding, the unfunded EMA, billions in 'off the books' PFI spending.
Even with the UK economy apparently very healthy and growing consistently, the best times seen in a very long time even if they were largely an illusion, Labour were managing to spend more than the record tax receipts, and that was just what was being spent 'on the books' ignoring expenditures shuffled around like some cynical corporation trying to avoid tax. Or in this case avoid being held to account.
The policy to get 50% to university was wrong, it continues to be wrong, it's done nothing to address skills shortages as the degrees don't have value in the context of the labour market. It's merely robbed us of many skilled trade professionals who instead of doing vocational training did some nonsense degree and are on the dole or underemployed.
Due to this wholesale dilution of the value of degrees the old train of thought, that investing in higher education was valuable as graduates would earn more than their counterparts so put more back into the chancellor's coffers than was spent educating them, is in doubt.
We're stuck, it sucks, it's not the fault of bankers. We either need to jack up taxes a lot or reduce spending. Our economy isn't compatible with jacking taxes up at this time, which leaves....
---------- Post added at 11:56 ---------- Previous post was at 11:54 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by danielf
I think the last four words in that sentence are superfluous.  |
Care to explain your comment in more detail rather than merely insulting anyone who doesn't share your point of view?
I appreciate it's not the modus operandi of most of those opposed to the austerity measures actually explaining their views coherently but if you could it'd be most welcome, thanks!