Rhian

I meant 'philosophy' as a general worldview. If you want a list of names and ideologies on neoliberalism as a bona fide field of intellectual endeavour, just go to Wiki. You can nitpick the details all you like, but neo-liberalism is just the latest terminology for the perennial, age-old business of the rich screwing the poor by running the poor into some form of servitude, usually via debt.

The basis of neo-liberalism is a user-pays ideology in which individuals must take complete financial responsibility for all their needs and thus drive a free market. The beauty of this is that most individuals can’t afford to pay for all their needs and must go into debt in order to do so. The more services you deny the public, the more individuals must go into debt to pay for them.

Socialism – or as it more commonly expresses itself, social democracy – is the antithesis of this. Social democracy minimises individual debt by the free or near-free provision of many of the services that people need.

However, as the international monetary system is based on debt, social democracy has been under vindictive attack from neo-liberalism (and before that, capitalism) for many decades.

As for HECS, I agree that free tertiary education does partly use taxes paid by the non-tertiary educated taxpayer to provide free education for the tertiary educated taxpayer. But then the tertiary educated taxpayer also pays tax to provide facilities for non-tertiary educated taxpayers.

An easy enough way around this dilemma is to reintroduce free education that is means-tested. (Is that Hell I see freezing over?)

Killarney

In effect, HECS is means-tested, but it is means-tested against the student’s future income, not their the parents’ present income, which seems to me fairer and more appropriate. People earning less than $51,309pa do not have to repay any HECS, and above that threshold there is a progressive step up in rates so people with higher earnings pay proportionately more.

I’m sure that googling “neoliberalism” yields squillions of hits. It doesn’t mean it exists, at least in the form its detractors propose.

Many opponents of “neoliberalism” take parts of others’ views that are often qualified and contingent and present them as dogmatic absolutes. Except perhaps on the loopiest fringe of anarcho-capitalism, no one believes that “individuals must take complete financial responsibility for all their needs,” and not even these believe driving people into debt is the objective of economic policy. Again, I challenge you to point to a single individual or organisation of political influence in Australia that actually propounds this.

It is certainly not the basis of HECS, which covers only about 20% of the cost of higher education. For school students the state contribution is far higher, and for good reason.

In societies like Australia, the political debate is not between the extremes of total laissez faire and total state control. The vast majority of people accept that we have a mixed economy in which both the private sector and the state have legitimate and beneficial roles, with the latter including both ensuring that citizens have access to some essential services, and redistribution and a social safety net. The main debates are about matters of degree. Some favour more intervention in markets or government provision of services, some less.

The evidence supports this. Government consumption as a percentage of GDP has been stable at 17-19% of GDP for 30 years. Social assistance benefits as a percentage of household income have risen from about 5% in the 1970s and 7½ % in the 1990s to 9% in the past decade.

If there is a neoliberal conspiracy to wind back the state, it has been spectacularly unsuccessful.

Hi Rhian,

I agree with you, HECS is not some sort of conspiracy to bankrupt younger generations, concocted out of the evil mind of some neo-liberal.

I owe around $ 25,000 in HECS but since I'm not working for any income, so any repayments keep getting postponed. As with many 'senior citizens', some of us work every day, doing what we think is valuable to society, and getting nothing for it in financial terms.

I own my house, but if ever I sold it for something much more modest, or in order to rent, I would have no hesitation in paying off my HECS debt first.

In my view, I owe that debt to society, not particularly to the state: tax-payers allowed me to study and as far as I am concerned, I owe them. I studied because I wanted to, and I really enjoyed it, an old fart amongst all these beautiful young people, mostly Asians, mostly gorgeous young women (at least, as I remember it all), and I wouldn't have missed it for quids.

So I have no qualms about paying back ASAP some of the expenses incurred by institutions, and thereby the 'state', and thereby the taxpayers, in my education. I used their money, I had a good time, and I expect to do the right thing and cough up as soon as I'm able.

Thank you, my fellow Australian taxpayers. Hey, give it a try :)

Joe

Maybe you didn't hear, Kellie, but all the money slated for giving free education to your mates was splurged on providing Centrelink benefits, free housing and free furniture on the 40,000 boat people who turned up with their hands out last year.

I don't know what degree you have got Kellie, but I will bet it is not Economics.