Jeremy Corbyn Would Make A Good Prime Minister

This'll be a fun one, I hope to have a good debate! Best of luck, Pro. I'm going to make one point here, and carry on with the other two points in a later round (because i ran out of space) C1: The proposed tuition fees abolishing is economically illiterate and will be ineffective. C2: Jeremy Corbyn's tax plans would cause capital flight and be counterproductive. Right, let's get right into it. +++++C1+++++ According to Labour's own admissions, the costs of tuition fees being abolished would be "100bn in the long run. [1] The IFS has calculated that it would be at least 8bn [2] and increase the deficit by more. This is symptomatic of a greater problem with Corbyn and his policy, and I'll get onto that in a later round, but even assuming we could pay for it by Corbyn's proposed corporation tax increase (also not a good thing, later round material because I ran out of space) So the reason that tuition fees were raised under the coalition government is the Browne report[3], which was commissioned by the Blair govt into tuition fees - it recommended raise to 9000. Quoting now directly from the report - "We estimate that only the top 40% of earners on average will pay back all the charges paid on their behalf by the Government upfront; and the 20% of lowest earners will pay less than today. For all students, studying for a degree will be a risk free activity" The question here now is why on earth would they even do this in the first place? Surely even if there was some short term benefit, having free education meant that all could go to university? So in order to answer this question, we need to answer another - what exactly are tuition fees? Tuition fees are essentially paid to the university. They are generally financed by a student loan, which is written off (govt covers cost) after 30 years. 100% of student loans are approved. So the benefits of fees are mostly that the university simply has more money than it did before - and it can spend this on things like -libraries - new teachers - facilities - new computers - support staff - research - laboratories Most importantly, it can spend on bursaries, and it can spend on grants. What does this mean? This means that those who otherwise wouldn't have the facilities to live in a university town and provide for themselves now can, especially those who are intelligent and talented and as such those who deserve it. But the question remains, wouldn't having no fees at all mean that those people can go to university for free and therefore have a lot more money to spend on themselves? The question therefore changes from "should we abolish fees" to "what happens if"we abolish fees? Universities have less money, first off. Second, that means two really important things for the education of students. One, it means that they don't have as much "spending money" to spend on their student - they don't get as nice facilities, less nice rooms, worse food, slightly less motivated teachers. But two, they now have less money to spend on grants for lower class students. That means that what happens is that fewer lower class students go to university. Now what happens? Well, universities have only one thing that they can accept students on, and that's grades. It's very difficult to tell apart a lot of really reasonably intelligent people. Now, who does better on exams? Middle class and upper class students. Why? They're not more intelligent, they're not brighter. No, they have more facility to study. Putting it bluntly, they have more money. They can afford expensive tutors, textbooks, private schools. They go to university. Before, with fees, the upper class and middle classes's fees subsidised - paid for - the university tuition of lower classes. Now, in this hypothetical world, it's upside down. Because the government is paying for the education of what is now a preponderately middle and upper class student base. And that money comes from the taxes of the lower class. The lower class is subsidising the upper class to go to university. What if I'm wrong? What if this doesn't happen? Well, as it happens, you don't have to believe me. But there's one thing that cannot be denied, and that's the evidence. [4] In 1980, there were only 68,000 people starting university - this year there will be 500,000." Women are 35% more likely to go to university than men. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, raising fees to "9,000 brought universities 25% more funding per student. But for arts and humanities, they made an extra 47% on each student. Here's the most important statistic of all. Since the introduction of fees, 35% more people from lower income backgrounds are now attending university. In other words, they work! But before we get out the confetti and throw a ticker tape parade, we need to look at other countries. Maybe there's been a general upswing in those from lower socioeconomic background attending university? We need to look at some countries where there aren't any fees. And let's look at two vaguely comparable ones. ++Scotland++ In England the application rate for lowest group has decreased by 2.5 percentage points. This is against a trend of annual increases since 2006 of between 0.5 and 3.0 percent each year. However, it's not as black and white as that, because Scotland only has no fees for native Scots. So let"s look at Germany. Another country with no fees. One of the most economically strong countries in the world. And yet a far smaller percentage of people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds go to universities there. Universities have complained that they cannot provide certain essential facilities. But every time that tuition fees have been proposed, they've been denied by a very strong youth lobby. So, tuition fees aren"t perfect, especially with the abolishment of the maintenance grant and the new interest rate rise, but they"re the best system. They enable the poor to go to university, they tax people who generally earn more anyway and they don"t stop anyone going to university. In other words, Corbyn's Labour proposes to spend 100bn on making fewer lower class people go to university. So this is emblematic of the problem with Labour, which is that it spends money on things like this, which sound really nice, but actually don't work. Other examples of this is things like nationalisation, which drives up prices and screws consumers over, and the most key example of this which is rent controls which sounds nice but is the reason why Trump owns a quarter of Manhattan and drive up prices for homeowners. Over to you, Pro. 1.)http://www.independent.co.uk... 2.)https://www.ifs.org.uk... 3.)http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk.../ 4.)http://www.bbc.co.uk...