Britain is going to be Tory for at least 10 years.

[pErvinalia]

He's a genuine socialist with a genuine sense of equality and fairness and just wants to play his part putting it into practice.

Good luck with that, Jeremy, since they are nearly always mutually exclusive.

I hate to agree with mistermack, but it's true. It is absolutely fair that some people have very little and some people have a lot, and to forcibly make it more equal would be to introduce unfairness into the system.

Can you explain why you consider it fair?

[Strontium Dog]

Can you explain why you consider it fair?

Because some people contribute nothing to the system and only take from it. In a fair system, they would get absolutely nothing, and it is only the basic humanity of the rest of us that means they even get a small slice of the pie - enough to keep them ticking over, at least.

[Hermit]

The equality I believe in is equality of opportunity, so a person is able to fulfill their potential without being hamstrung by the uselessness and poor life choices of their forebears. Eventually this will give you more equal outcomes, as people are able to escape their origins, but in a fair way that doesn't involve robbing Peter to pay lazy Paul.

Yeah. Right.

Money and getting ahead .jpg (30.46 KiB) Viewed 2548 times

[mistermack]

That's why I would have a 100% inheritance tax if I was dictator.
I (yuk) agree with strontium dog about equality of opportunity. Hermit, if there was equality of opportunity, your cartoon wouldn't apply.

You could never make it perfect, but you can work towards it.

As far as baling out the less fortunate or less able goes, there's nothing wrong with that.
It's fair, if everyone has the same safety net available. We don't call insurance payouts unfair to the the lucky, because they don't claim.

[Svartalf]

people would just donate their goods and monies to their heirs while stil alive... and why do you want to take homes away from their owners/dwellers?

[JimC]

One aspect of equality of opportunity would be to ensure that there were 2 main universals - free, universal healthcare (since poor health in children creates major barriers to success) and free, universal education, up to and including tertiary. Then, coming from wealthy parents would not be so clearly a major advantage to ensure success in life.

[Svartalf]

there always be top universities for the wealthy and crap universities for the rest

[JimC]

there always be top universities for the wealthy and crap universities for the rest

Yes, but governments can act to make the difference in real opportunity via education between the scions of the rich and the offspring of the poor as low as possible...

[Hermit]

That's why I would have a 100% inheritance tax if I was dictator.

By the time most people benefit from their inheritance they have typically already been advantaged by a quarter century of privileged upbringing.

[pErvinalia]

As far as baling out the less fortunate or less able goes, there's nothing wrong with that.
It's fair, if everyone has the same safety net available. We don't call insurance payouts unfair to the the lucky, because they don't claim.

I agree (yuk) with MM here in the meantime. Still deciding whether to burr up at SD's comment.

[Brian Peacock]

The idea of 'Fairness' we're flirting with here needs a little unpacking. Some think that it's unfair for the rich to contribute financially towards ameliorating the dire conditions of the poor, some think the exact opposite, and some, like myself, think that 'fairness' cannot be determined in the kind of absolute terms which makes one or other of those particular conditions unequivocally correct.

But when it comes to political lessons about fairness it doesn't take a genius to see that those who benefit from circumstances and systems which are, shall we say, less than just are reluctant, or perhaps simply unmotivated, to think seriously about reforms which would appear to have no net gain for them. Of course, political argument and action dwells within this context of presumed net-sum-gains, almost as if there is a finite amount of fairness to go around and if something, like say the concept of 'equality', is going to be applied to make things fairer for some then things are necessarily going to be made less fair for others. This kind of thinking highlights a fundamental flaw in the idea of fairness and leads to a raft of dissonant ideas which essentially boil down to the charge that deliberately attempting to make society fairer is intrinsically unfair - and in particular it's unfair to those who currently benefit, mostly unwittingly, from less than just circumstances and systems.

[pErvinalia]

Can you explain why you consider it fair?

Because some people contribute nothing to the system and only take from it. .

You're talking about bankers and many in the financial sector, right?

(still undecided whether to go 'Hulk smash' mode, or present a reasoned argument which will probably be ignored because freedum)

[mistermack]

That's why I would have a 100% inheritance tax if I was dictator.

By the time most people benefit from their inheritance they have typically already been advantaged by a quarter century of privileged upbringing.

They don't need the inheritance then, do they?
Anyway, I would be using that money to close the gap by improving the worst schools and the environment of the poorer areas.
And by raising the income tax thresholds so that the poorest families only start paying when they are better off than now.
I know people would be immediately looking for loopholes, but closing them would be a job for the taxman.

Another thing I would do would be to insist that the very top universities could only take the same proportion of public school entrants as are in the general school population.

[Hermit]

That's why I would have a 100% inheritance tax if I was dictator.

By the time most people benefit from their inheritance they have typically already been advantaged by a quarter century of privileged upbringing.

They don't need the inheritance then, do they?

Precisely. By then they have typically already been advantaged by a quarter century of privileged upbringing.

[pErvinalia]

Yeah, but they deserve it. We've got to look after the wealth creators.