The Magic Money Tree Is Growing Well.

[webbo3]

Another promise, at what cost ?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-free-education-labour-adults-higher-courses-promises-lost-decade-any-age-a7825861.html

“That’s why Labour has made a flagship commitment to make all further education courses free at the point of use for everyone at any stage of their lives.”

So someone of 80+ years can get this.?


And what market can he be targeting with this.

The plan would see Labour replace upfront fees for courses at colleges, or with training providers, with grants, including for English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) courses.



Dave

[Kromovaracun]

Aside from ESOL I really don't see the point of this. The fees for adult education courses are not particularly eye-watering and don't strike me as a problem that needs solving.

[Kromovaracun]

Personally I think a more credible response to automation threatening jobs and employment is to introduce Universal Basic Income. But it'll never happen.

[atalanta]

Oooh, goody, goody, I've always wanted to start a PhD. Might take me until I'm about 85, but just imagine how useful I shall be then to 21st century British society !

[Quizmonster]

If Mr Corbyn needs to access a Magic Money Tree, all he needs to do is ask Mrs Weak'n'Wobbly, where she managed to lay her hands almost instantaneously on the £1 billion bung for the DUP to save her own job!

[dave50]

Ho w can you have a universal basic income? The incentive to work for a living would be gone, a lot would say why bother working when I get it anyway then who would pay taxes to pay for it?

[New Judge]

They have a sort of "Universal Basic Income" in Cuba. Doctors get near enough the same pay as people that sweep the roads and clean public kharzis. I've seen doctors running market stalls to supplement their income. The question that nobody there seems to ask themselves is "why should I study for seven years to become a doctor [and, as an aside, may well be sent by their government to Venezuela in exchange for cheap oil] when I can sweep the streets for the same pay?"

[Peter Pedant]

so someone of 80+ years can get this.?

yup- I got the first year free and cheerfully paid up for the second year on a student loan which is at present open to all ages...

Courses start in Sep

[jim360]

There are a few Basic income programmes around the world -- still in its trial stages, so we'll see how it goes.

[Quizmonster]

I'm pretty sure that most, if not all, Cubans who go on to become doctors do...superficially...ask themselves the question you pose, NJ. They probably all come up with the same answers, along the lines of: "I have dreamt of being a doctor since I was eight years old"..."My parents encouraged me in every way to realise that ambition"..."I want to heal people and make the world a better place"...and so forth.
I doubt whether they ever seriously consider becoming street-sweepers. And well done to them, I say!

[scooping]

New Judge: Professionals in Cuba ask themselves just that question every day. When the regime collapses, as all quasi-communist regimes are pre-programmed to do, you might be able to ask them.

[scooping]

Dave50: You use the tax system.

[ll_billym]

The thing about 'being 80' is not about whether someone has the capacity to learn and enjoy new knowledge and experiences. It is that government money for training and skills is essentially an investement that will be repaid in a more productive country and more taxable income to pay for other nice things. Such as care for the elderly.

It is highly unlikely that someone at 80 will go on to use those new skills and go on pay tax and realistically even if they do it will be for a limited time only - the investment is better spent on younger people only.

[Kromovaracun]

Basic income doesn't mean imposed wage equality as happens in Cuba/the old USSR. The idea is you scrap the welfare system as it is entirely and instead guarantee every citizen the basic amount needed to live, and for savings or better living standards you need to work to earn it.

Of course, that looks rather silly in an economy where you can reasonably assume that most people who can work are gainfully employed. But that's looking like a less and less valid assumption as employment is becoming less stable and low-skill jobs increasingly replaced by machines. Our social security system is designed to cope with a working population that occasionally fall on hard times, it is not designed to cope with unemployment or hardship that is structural. So it's probably a good idea to try and invent one that is.

Anyway. I disagree with Corbyn that funding adult education is a solution to that problem, though I am glad he is at least addressing it. The money could be put to better use and will just add another layer of byzantine bureaucracy to our labyrinthine welfare system.

[scooping]

Never before has the losing side in a general election decided to announce fresh policies so soon into a parliament. Folly, or a cunning plan to maintain the momentum...Don't know.

[naomi24]

Cunning plans like this only work on the gullible who really believe they can have everything for nothing. Labour is making fools of its supporters who are lapping it up - but anything to maintain the momentum.

[sevenOP]

"The Magic Money Tree Is Growing Well."


Indeed it is:

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/13/12-trillion-of-qe-and-the-lowest-rates-in-5000-years-for-this.html

[gulliver1]

I see May and her fellow members of the CON party managed to pick £20,000 off the Con's magic money tree to fly the leader of the DUP back to N/I, in RAF transport.