Payroll to be cut by 3%.

bassman22 wrote: »

sorry for not keeping on topic, but this is starting to annoy me. Does anyone else notice Kaptain Redeye regularly will post two posts in a row, when they could be combined into one. Fair enough if it was occasional, you've only just thought of something else to add to the conversation. But this is quite regular.
Silly stuff.

Ernie Ball wrote: »

Fees should be reintroduced. However,

1) the idea of using them to compensate for Brady's complete mismanagement of UCD's finances (on consultants and off-the-scales admin salaries) would be a scandal. The condition for reintroducing fees at UCD should be Brady's resignation.

2) Batt O'Keefe, it seems to me, has about zero chance of pushing this through. I don't get the impression he has anything like the political smarts that would be required to sell it.

3) This quote is a hilarious joke: "Mr von Prondzynski said that the free-fees system is outdated for a developed country like Ireland, and is normally seen only in developing countries. He said that we must properly fund the third-level sector, if we want to begin competing with Harvard, Cambridge and other internationally recognised colleges."

I assume that von Prondzynski is clued in enough to know that he's talking nonsense. The sad thing is that there are those, particularly in the political class, who believe such a thing is possible.

Ernie Ball wrote: »

It's very simple: Your error is in seeing fees as "an extra tax" when it is simply asking those who benefit from college to pay their way.

By not charging fees to the wealthy, you are effectively giving them a subsidy.

The costs of their children going to college have to be paid by someone and the OP's view is that those costs should be paid by somebody other than him.

The name of that "somebody else" is the taxpayer. Now, the average taxpayer is less well-off than the family of the average college student.

The abolition of fees was, effectively, a subsidy paid by the poor to the rich.

Amazing how right wingers like yourself become dyed-in-the-wool socialists when the beneficiaries of the socialism are the wealthy. When the beneficiaries are the poor, however, then you're in favour of the purest laissez-faire capitalism.

Ernie Ball wrote: »

I'm sorry, but this is just wrong. If taxpayers are paying the bill for your education, you're getting a subsidy. The removal of that subsidy is not a "tax."

A couple of points: the fact that the wealthy pay more tax (on a per capita basis) doesn't mean that wealthy people as a group pay more tax than poor and middle-class people as a group. Quite the contrary. Most taxes are paid by people who are less well-off than the families of college students.

Second, the fact that the wealthy pay more tax on a per capita basis is of no relevance whatever to whether they are receiving a subsidy in the form of free fees. They are. This is not up for debate, no matter how you try to slice it.

You're simply misinformed. This is arrant nonsense and not borne out by any facts. You must've missed the multiple stories in the press about how the abolition of fees has failed to have the desired effect. For example: this and this and this HEA report from 2004 which I quote:

Look, if you want to spew uninformed garbage, you can't get a case of the vapours when someone points it out to you.

You're mistaking respect for keeping the thread on-topic with an inability to answer. It doesn't speak well for your handle on the facts of the matter.

Ernie Ball wrote: »

And the service you're getting is one:

1) that you're not paying for;
2) that provides huge benefits to you;
3) that provides scant benefits to those who are paying for you (who are, in general, poorer than you are)

Even if true, this proves absolutely nothing about the question at hand: is the average taxpaying household poorer than the average household with at least one kid in college. The answer to this is an unqualified: yes. Which means that the poor are subsidising the educations of the rich. That's socialism in reverse. So what do you have against capitalism?

OK, I'll bite: prove it.

1) That's a misuse of the word facetious, but literacy is not your strong point, I gather.

2) It is simply a fact that relatively poor taxpayers are subsidising the educations of the rich. It's a simple point so I don't know why I expect you to grasp it.

3) Of course the wealthiest (in general: that link you provided had some juicy information about tax cheats, er, tax avoiders under the headline "Ireland's Top Earners and Tax 2003: 48 paid less than 5% on their income; 3 Millionaires paid Zero Income Tax") should be net providers. That is how it should be in any industrialised country based on at least some principles of social justice. Which is why it violates those principles to have the poor paying for the rich. But I've seen no proof that they are net providers: they seem to benefit from national defence, fire protection, police protection and they are given free education for as many offspring as they care to produce.

Got any proof?

"Some indications of progress" is not the clear-cut progress you've claimed.

It's also false. From....

All those reports are saying the same thing. That there are far more wealthy people going to college than poor people. Something Im not denying. But free fees increased the numbers attending college from all backgrounds. It has benefited all groups, thus it is not a subsidy for one particular group as you are making it out.

There are more people going to college, from all backgrounds.

Perhaps, but the rate of increase has been greater among the wealthy than it has among the poor. Result: the poor are subsidising the wealthy.

You cant logically draw that conclusion, because the wealthy provide most of the public income. They subsidise the public sector services for the less well off, they just avail of this one particular service more often than the less well off, but they still provide the funding for it.

Don't flatter yourself. You've done nothing of the sort. You have no idea what you're talking about.

Well if thats the case it doesnt say much for your intelligence if someone without a clue has run rings around you.

Uh, not to burst your bubble, but that was a conversation you were having with yourself. I made one post to it, which I stand by.

But this quote about the dole is revealing of the extent to which you're in favour of socialism, but only for the rich. You have no problem with, say, a Medical student from Foxrock getting a taxpayer subsidy of some €24,000 per year. Such taxpayer money is always ennobling when given to the rich: it makes them stronger as well as wiser. But the very same taxpayer money (less, actually) is of course corrupting when given to the poor: it makes them stupid as well as weak.

You talk about one way conversations, then put words in someone elses mouth . You're a hypocrite.

And its nice of you to acknowledge you had no come back, its given me a warm fuzzy feeling.

And you, sir, are illiterate and misinformed and not worth debating.

Hmm, coherent posts, well structured, backed up by references and statistics. Yup, must be illiterate, you're inability to come up with rebuttals must be a result of my failings, heaven forbid you made fatal assumptions.

:rolleyes: