The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:
Which general approach would you prefer for the UK..?
Trump-style travel ban for people from Islamist countries - 97%
Merkel-style welcoming all Arabs in, no questions asked - 3%
Even I, a trendy liberal metropolitan who dislikes everything about Trump, voted for the first option. Which just goes to show how out of the touch the most politicians and journalists are in this country.
-----------------------------------------------------
The meddlers are at it again. The Institute for Economic Affairs - of all people - have gone completely off script and recommended means testing of nursery subsidies, as reported by the BBC:
The Institute of Economic Affairs study says the right to 15 hours free care a week has distorted the market price.
It probably has, subsidies always do.
It also argues regulations have made it more costly, with many families on average earnings spending more than a third of their income on childcare.
Agreed, but the regulations (i.e. barriers to entry) are a completely separate topic.
The government says it is investing £6bn a year on the facility.
"Spending".
The report argues that despite this investment, families are still paying huge sums for people to look after their children.
Yes they are, that's not really the point. Mum's decision is simple: compare the net cost of a nursery place from my after-tax earnings, travel costs etc and then see whether it's worth going back to work. By and large, the tax deducted from Mum's earnings (and the wages of the nursery staff) and the subsidies net off to plus/minus nothing either way, so the final clearing price is probably not that far off a true tax-free market price.
The way early years care is funded means that those who need help the most do not receive it, while many affluent families are generously subsidised, the report found.
This is lefty jealousy bollocks through and through. It's the "affluent families" who are paying most of the £6 bn cost. They are losing out overall.
All of which reminds me of the stupid Killer Argument Against Citizen's Income we looked at yesterday.
It's tempting to means-test stuff in the vague hope it leads to smaller government and lower taxes. Clearly, it does not. You need much larger government to police these things, and the effective tax rates on those whose subsidies are tapered away quickly approaches 100%.
For example, let's take a family with three kids at state school, cost to the taxpayer about £24,000. It would be tempting to say that any household with income over £100,000 should pay the cost in full (or send them private). That is an effective tax rate of 24%, on top of normal effective tax rate on higher earners of overall 50% = 74%.
So that's this week's Fun Online Poll, which things ought to be means tested?
Debate Magazine
