Strong agree on number 4 obviously. The insane pathologies of the low tarriff end of the market are pretty grievous but as you note, the damage to the elite end is also significant and, IMO, understated.
I teach architecture in London. There has been a weird inversion of the whole market structure here over the last decade and a half. Status quo ante was small, elite courses (e.g UCL) and large, easier-to-access, mostly ex poly ones. Both worked, in their own way.
Cohorts in the ex polys would be 100+ with a fairly unsentimental attitude to failing people. But poorly credentialed students with a good attitude could do very well there, and the work at the top of the distribution would be as good as anywhere. In the elites, it was smaller (50+), and the culture was extremely intense (there were obvs problematic things about it, but on balance highly effective).
Now it's all flipped. The prestige places, plus a few successful million-plussers, take 250-odd students a year. The rest are scraping around for whatever they can get. Between when I went to the Bartlett and now, the first year intake is 4x larger. For good or ill, the culture is entirely gone. When I was at university the Royal College of Art used to take 20 students a year on Architecture — I think it's about 10x that now? It's really brutal when you go round the summer shows and see what's happened to the standards. I feel sorry for the students.
Writing as someone who was a civil servant for 12 years, I agree with you about defined benefit pensions. My notional contribution to my pension (Classic in their parlance) was at the top end of your range and if I had converted to Premium would have been 3.5% higher, so comparable with the top ends of the other Public Sector pension schemes. The Civil Service accounted for my employee contribution by simply paying me less, which no doubt pleased the Treasury as it reduced their in-year manpower costs and the problem of paying for the pension was left for a future administration.
As far as Income tax is concerned, if we accept that relative poverty is an income below 60% of the median, and we pay benefits on this basis, then it doesn't make sense both to tax people on their income and to pay them benefits. Indeed one of the biggest poverty traps is the withdrawal rate of Universal Credit at 55% which creates a higher effective tax rate even without paying income tax for people on UC than on those earning over £125,400 (47%). Arguing that someone in deep poverty should be paying income tax on top of their UC withdrawal is no less than abuse.
You'd have to adjust the taper rates, I agree, but I think the principle that more people should contribute is still worthwhile, even if some of them are also getting money back.
If you are going to insist on keeping income tax, then yes, scrap the thresholds. And at the same time make it a 10% flat tax on all income up to a maximum of say £2.5m per annum. None of this 'progressive' nonsense.
Does the Lawsonian public choice argument about Income Tax apply to other measures? I don't think I've paid tax on dividends: are ISAs bad? Should most people pay (a low rate of) inheritance tax?
I'd say income tax stands alone, both for the psychological impact of contribution and because it's the single biggest source of tax revenue - and that you'd have to make the case for others individually.
I definitely wouldn't want to tax ISAs as we save too little as a nation as it is. However, I've seen proposals for wider VAT coverage and a lower rate, and removing exemptions to inheritance tax and lowering the rate (in both cases in a fiscally neutral way) that seemed fairly compelling.
In an older era Welsh cultural preservation was of interest to the wider political spectrum, eg "Cymru Fydd" in 19th century which sought distinction from how Irish nationalism was developing. I think its tribal valence (preceding but intensified by latest culture war developments) have kept it out of view of c/Conservatives which is a shame. Quite striking that in my Welsh medium school in 90s/2000s you would have a huge emphasis on hymns, older poetry, culture, patriotism, ties to the chapel specifically, in a way that had gone firmly out of fashion in English schools even then.
Although somewhat transmuted in the "officialdom" version which is quite progressive-tinged, still a lot that would be appealing to small-c conservatives.
And although there are many differences in the situation, there is something interesting on Wales' equilibrium of Labour successfully (hitherto!) sitting in a soft-nationalist and overtly patriotic places as clearly Welsh though non-separatist, while the Conservatives are the ones struggling to be comfortable with the nation and its symbols perceiving them as politically charged against them, and serving as an interest group for an inward migrant group (the many people living in Wales who are from England and feels English).
Very interesting! I've also mellowed on the specific Welsh element, and now recognise one can value and support wanting Welsh culture and heritage to thrive even as Wales remains part of the UK, not purely as an independence movement.
I would say that there is a common theme. That is you think emotionally, not logically. Your mode of thinking is to chose a position based on how it makes you feel, not a dispassionate analysis of what is true or false.
All of the examples that you mentioned where you changed your mind, were obviously wrong at the time. They were bad policies pushed by politicians suing emotional arguments, which you fell for.
Simple questions, such as 'how do we know?', 'what will happen if we do this?', 'what if I am wrong?' would have got you to the right answer.
Thanks for sharing these genuine changes. I certainly sympathise with "the older I get the less interested I get in theory, and the more interested in whether it actually works."
I start by saying that it is really laudable for anyone not only to seriously reflect on things they have changed their minds about but to also make it public in this way. There are some very interesting points made, most of which I am not qualified in anyway to properly analyse. I do however take issue with the points made on teaching history, shame, and pride. My criticisms come from concerns about academic standards and history as a discipline. I know you are not talking about history at university level but I have concerns about what you seem to be suggesting about its teaching in schools. I do not understand why history as a school subject should be treated differently to other subjects in order to promote shared values however desirable those values are. As well as specific historical examples, students need to be taught the basics of the discipline in terms of use of sources and how history is written from them. History is an academic subject with its own methods, not simply a collection of historical examples to be chosen for other purposes. If you want to teach some sort of citizenship to promote shared values then surely you should label it as such and make it clear that is what you are doing. Surely this would be better than trying to appropriate another school subject? It makes sense for a geography teacher to use the resources around them and provide examples from the locality, but they could not ignore the geography of other parts of the world, and certainly not claim that English geography is superior. Similarly they would do students a disservice if they only focused on English geography, even if this was what a majority of people wanted. Thinking about the role of heritage bodies gets one into more ambiguous territory I admit, but even here there are questions to ask. Debates about which kind of ‘Welshness’ gets promoted by Welsh cultural bodies have a long history (e.g objections to the location of Welsh institutions in 'anglicised' Cardiff). Anyone who has lived in Edinburgh will know that many Scots do not identify with the ‘Bagpipes and Tartan’ version of Scottishness on display. Indeed even the group History Reclaimed, whose primary aim seems to be to challenge aspects of history writing based on ‘decolonisation’, includes the historian Liam Kennedy who has produced critiques of simplistic nationalist versions of Irish history. Other countries’ misuse of academic and school-based history should not be invitation for it to happen in England. Thanks.
I'd say you're the one actually claiming a privileged status for history here. In reality, most school subjects serve a mixture of pure study for the discipline's sake and practical use, so history should be no different:
- Maths: developing future mathematicians and scientists and teaching people to understand mortgage rates and percentages.
- English: developing an appreciation of great literature and teaching the literacy needed to function in society.
- PE: developing sporting excellence and combating obesity
- History: developing understanding of the academic discipline and fostering civic identity/belonging/pride.
I agree about practicality. I would question if your claimed use for history here is quite the same as that for the other subjects. I concede there is certainly much debate about the practical uses of history (and about the practical uses of some other subjects) . For History I have worries that the practical use you propose is not compatible with developing a good understanding of the discipline. Instead I would say the practical uses would relate more to critical analysis of source materials, learning about how accounts of an event can be written from limited/incomplete information (useful for analysing media sources etc). Thanks again
While I agree with you that the Iraq war was a new negative for western countries and a mistake to engage in (especially given how it strengthened Iran), saying ISIS and the ensuing chaos caused as many problems as Saddam did underestimates just how bad Saddam was. Between Kuwait, Iran/Iraq war, and the kurds, he killed about a million people in people in wars of choice. ISIS never got close to that.
I think your argument on public pensions is flawed because you work on the assumption that contributions are fixed. This is incorrect. They vary approximately every five years after the Government Actuaries Department completes their assessment of how much money is needed to be paid into the system to cover expected payments out. This amount can go up and down, and is predicated largely on underlying financial conditions. At the last assessment, this made the contribution rate very high. In the latest assessment, the conditions are quite different and the expectation is that the contribution rate will fall. Thus freeing up expenditure to be redirected elsewhere.
Secondly there appears to be a failure to assess what £1 contribution may buy you in a defined contribution scheme versus a defined benefit scheme. The reality is that £1 saved in DC will result in a significantly lower outcome than had it been saved in a DB scheme. This is largely due to flaws on how DC schemes are invested (lower investment returns from the "lifestyling" strategies used in DC schemes) and then the transitions into annuities at retirement which are sold by profit making insurance companies where make a profit margin of 15-20%.
Collective defined contribution schemes offer a halfway house between DB and DC. However any transition from an unfunded public sector model to a funded one will rely upon several generations paying increased taxes to make up for the funding gap created.
I disagree regarding your assertion that "employer contributions ... have always been significantly higher". Where there have been private sector DB schemes still open, in the late 2010s and early 2020s, employers could expect to pay over 40% for DB accrual (deficit contributions would be on top). The rise in gilt yields since 2022 has brought employer contribution rates down considerably (with some now paying less than the members).
On CDC, there just hasn't been the take up yet on these vehicles. Which is a great pity because outcomes for those individuals with largely DC pension savings remain very poor and will continue to do so. By the time CDC becomes a more widely used savings vehicle, it'll be too late for both gen X and millennials who largely have DC savings.
Strong agree on number 4 obviously. The insane pathologies of the low tarriff end of the market are pretty grievous but as you note, the damage to the elite end is also significant and, IMO, understated.
I teach architecture in London. There has been a weird inversion of the whole market structure here over the last decade and a half. Status quo ante was small, elite courses (e.g UCL) and large, easier-to-access, mostly ex poly ones. Both worked, in their own way.
Cohorts in the ex polys would be 100+ with a fairly unsentimental attitude to failing people. But poorly credentialed students with a good attitude could do very well there, and the work at the top of the distribution would be as good as anywhere. In the elites, it was smaller (50+), and the culture was extremely intense (there were obvs problematic things about it, but on balance highly effective).
Now it's all flipped. The prestige places, plus a few successful million-plussers, take 250-odd students a year. The rest are scraping around for whatever they can get. Between when I went to the Bartlett and now, the first year intake is 4x larger. For good or ill, the culture is entirely gone. When I was at university the Royal College of Art used to take 20 students a year on Architecture — I think it's about 10x that now? It's really brutal when you go round the summer shows and see what's happened to the standards. I feel sorry for the students.
Writing as someone who was a civil servant for 12 years, I agree with you about defined benefit pensions. My notional contribution to my pension (Classic in their parlance) was at the top end of your range and if I had converted to Premium would have been 3.5% higher, so comparable with the top ends of the other Public Sector pension schemes. The Civil Service accounted for my employee contribution by simply paying me less, which no doubt pleased the Treasury as it reduced their in-year manpower costs and the problem of paying for the pension was left for a future administration.
As far as Income tax is concerned, if we accept that relative poverty is an income below 60% of the median, and we pay benefits on this basis, then it doesn't make sense both to tax people on their income and to pay them benefits. Indeed one of the biggest poverty traps is the withdrawal rate of Universal Credit at 55% which creates a higher effective tax rate even without paying income tax for people on UC than on those earning over £125,400 (47%). Arguing that someone in deep poverty should be paying income tax on top of their UC withdrawal is no less than abuse.
You'd have to adjust the taper rates, I agree, but I think the principle that more people should contribute is still worthwhile, even if some of them are also getting money back.
The income tax thing.
If you are going to insist on keeping income tax, then yes, scrap the thresholds. And at the same time make it a 10% flat tax on all income up to a maximum of say £2.5m per annum. None of this 'progressive' nonsense.
Does the Lawsonian public choice argument about Income Tax apply to other measures? I don't think I've paid tax on dividends: are ISAs bad? Should most people pay (a low rate of) inheritance tax?
Interesting question!
I'd say income tax stands alone, both for the psychological impact of contribution and because it's the single biggest source of tax revenue - and that you'd have to make the case for others individually.
I definitely wouldn't want to tax ISAs as we save too little as a nation as it is. However, I've seen proposals for wider VAT coverage and a lower rate, and removing exemptions to inheritance tax and lowering the rate (in both cases in a fiscally neutral way) that seemed fairly compelling.
In an older era Welsh cultural preservation was of interest to the wider political spectrum, eg "Cymru Fydd" in 19th century which sought distinction from how Irish nationalism was developing. I think its tribal valence (preceding but intensified by latest culture war developments) have kept it out of view of c/Conservatives which is a shame. Quite striking that in my Welsh medium school in 90s/2000s you would have a huge emphasis on hymns, older poetry, culture, patriotism, ties to the chapel specifically, in a way that had gone firmly out of fashion in English schools even then.
Although somewhat transmuted in the "officialdom" version which is quite progressive-tinged, still a lot that would be appealing to small-c conservatives.
And although there are many differences in the situation, there is something interesting on Wales' equilibrium of Labour successfully (hitherto!) sitting in a soft-nationalist and overtly patriotic places as clearly Welsh though non-separatist, while the Conservatives are the ones struggling to be comfortable with the nation and its symbols perceiving them as politically charged against them, and serving as an interest group for an inward migrant group (the many people living in Wales who are from England and feels English).
Very interesting! I've also mellowed on the specific Welsh element, and now recognise one can value and support wanting Welsh culture and heritage to thrive even as Wales remains part of the UK, not purely as an independence movement.
Martin Johnes is a historian who'd probably appeal to you if you haven't come across already.
Diolch am y blog diddorol!
I would say that there is a common theme. That is you think emotionally, not logically. Your mode of thinking is to chose a position based on how it makes you feel, not a dispassionate analysis of what is true or false.
All of the examples that you mentioned where you changed your mind, were obviously wrong at the time. They were bad policies pushed by politicians suing emotional arguments, which you fell for.
Simple questions, such as 'how do we know?', 'what will happen if we do this?', 'what if I am wrong?' would have got you to the right answer.
Yes, writing lengthy analytical reflections on where they have previously made mistakes, and why, is a known hallmark of emotional thinkers.
You have a lonely O before point 4.
Thanks for sharing these genuine changes. I certainly sympathise with "the older I get the less interested I get in theory, and the more interested in whether it actually works."
I start by saying that it is really laudable for anyone not only to seriously reflect on things they have changed their minds about but to also make it public in this way. There are some very interesting points made, most of which I am not qualified in anyway to properly analyse. I do however take issue with the points made on teaching history, shame, and pride. My criticisms come from concerns about academic standards and history as a discipline. I know you are not talking about history at university level but I have concerns about what you seem to be suggesting about its teaching in schools. I do not understand why history as a school subject should be treated differently to other subjects in order to promote shared values however desirable those values are. As well as specific historical examples, students need to be taught the basics of the discipline in terms of use of sources and how history is written from them. History is an academic subject with its own methods, not simply a collection of historical examples to be chosen for other purposes. If you want to teach some sort of citizenship to promote shared values then surely you should label it as such and make it clear that is what you are doing. Surely this would be better than trying to appropriate another school subject? It makes sense for a geography teacher to use the resources around them and provide examples from the locality, but they could not ignore the geography of other parts of the world, and certainly not claim that English geography is superior. Similarly they would do students a disservice if they only focused on English geography, even if this was what a majority of people wanted. Thinking about the role of heritage bodies gets one into more ambiguous territory I admit, but even here there are questions to ask. Debates about which kind of ‘Welshness’ gets promoted by Welsh cultural bodies have a long history (e.g objections to the location of Welsh institutions in 'anglicised' Cardiff). Anyone who has lived in Edinburgh will know that many Scots do not identify with the ‘Bagpipes and Tartan’ version of Scottishness on display. Indeed even the group History Reclaimed, whose primary aim seems to be to challenge aspects of history writing based on ‘decolonisation’, includes the historian Liam Kennedy who has produced critiques of simplistic nationalist versions of Irish history. Other countries’ misuse of academic and school-based history should not be invitation for it to happen in England. Thanks.
I'd say you're the one actually claiming a privileged status for history here. In reality, most school subjects serve a mixture of pure study for the discipline's sake and practical use, so history should be no different:
- Maths: developing future mathematicians and scientists and teaching people to understand mortgage rates and percentages.
- English: developing an appreciation of great literature and teaching the literacy needed to function in society.
- PE: developing sporting excellence and combating obesity
- History: developing understanding of the academic discipline and fostering civic identity/belonging/pride.
I agree about practicality. I would question if your claimed use for history here is quite the same as that for the other subjects. I concede there is certainly much debate about the practical uses of history (and about the practical uses of some other subjects) . For History I have worries that the practical use you propose is not compatible with developing a good understanding of the discipline. Instead I would say the practical uses would relate more to critical analysis of source materials, learning about how accounts of an event can be written from limited/incomplete information (useful for analysing media sources etc). Thanks again
While I agree with you that the Iraq war was a new negative for western countries and a mistake to engage in (especially given how it strengthened Iran), saying ISIS and the ensuing chaos caused as many problems as Saddam did underestimates just how bad Saddam was. Between Kuwait, Iran/Iraq war, and the kurds, he killed about a million people in people in wars of choice. ISIS never got close to that.
It's a fair reminder that Saddam was indeed very very bad.
I think your argument on public pensions is flawed because you work on the assumption that contributions are fixed. This is incorrect. They vary approximately every five years after the Government Actuaries Department completes their assessment of how much money is needed to be paid into the system to cover expected payments out. This amount can go up and down, and is predicated largely on underlying financial conditions. At the last assessment, this made the contribution rate very high. In the latest assessment, the conditions are quite different and the expectation is that the contribution rate will fall. Thus freeing up expenditure to be redirected elsewhere.
Secondly there appears to be a failure to assess what £1 contribution may buy you in a defined contribution scheme versus a defined benefit scheme. The reality is that £1 saved in DC will result in a significantly lower outcome than had it been saved in a DB scheme. This is largely due to flaws on how DC schemes are invested (lower investment returns from the "lifestyling" strategies used in DC schemes) and then the transitions into annuities at retirement which are sold by profit making insurance companies where make a profit margin of 15-20%.
Collective defined contribution schemes offer a halfway house between DB and DC. However any transition from an unfunded public sector model to a funded one will rely upon several generations paying increased taxes to make up for the funding gap created.
The employer contributions may vary but they have always been significantly higher than the typical private sector contribution.
Agree collective defined contribution schemes are interesting, though I think the verdict is still out on them.
I disagree regarding your assertion that "employer contributions ... have always been significantly higher". Where there have been private sector DB schemes still open, in the late 2010s and early 2020s, employers could expect to pay over 40% for DB accrual (deficit contributions would be on top). The rise in gilt yields since 2022 has brought employer contribution rates down considerably (with some now paying less than the members).
On CDC, there just hasn't been the take up yet on these vehicles. Which is a great pity because outcomes for those individuals with largely DC pension savings remain very poor and will continue to do so. By the time CDC becomes a more widely used savings vehicle, it'll be too late for both gen X and millennials who largely have DC savings.