Friday, July 13, 2012
Mental arithmetic
I turn from my mental arithmetic to the arithmetical standards of the population at large to notice a page 2 piece in a recent 'Guardian' about death taxes, a piece which might fall short of the how awfulls you would get from the 'Daily Mail' but not by that much.
Along the way it mentions that 89.2% of adults in the resident population of England think that the government ought to do something about the costs of care for the elderly, a mention which does not go on to explain that all these resources have to come from somewhere. Government can only provide services to the extent that the population is prepared to pay taxes - this being a population which seems to think that government ought to be able to get along with a 25% share of the national cake rather than the 50% it needs - along with more or less all the other civilised countries of the world. (And half of which population, so it is said, cannot name the Prime Minister). So we do need to do something about arithmetic in our schools. Make the little darlings answer questions like 'if you have 5,234 old people who need an average of 3.54 years of care at £676 a week, how much do you need to put on the basic rate of tax to pay for it? Extra marks for answers which take account of leap years'.
And while we struggle along, getting little further than a rather poor standard of public debate, the Irish appear to have a scheme up and running. A national register of places offering residential care. A scheme called 'Fair Deal' to spread the load a bit, with a proportion of the costs coming out of general taxation rather than out of the pockets those lucky enough to live for a very long time. Or unlucky I suppose, depending on your point of view.
The general idea is that if you sign up for help with your care home costs, the state might take up to 80% of your income plus 5% of your capital each year, this last for up to three years. As a basic deal, that sounds pretty good to me. Hopefully their civil servants have crossed all the eyes and dotted all the tees, dealt with the old miser who when up against it would rather give his house to his son than let the state get a share of it - or, to put it another way, pay for his own care. Or somebody who expects fancier food than most old people are content with. Or somebody who spent most of a long life paying little or no tax at all.
Maybe I will take a peek at whatever small print is lurking at http://www.irishhealth.com/article.html?id=16363. Maybe it is another example of how small outfits can just get on and do things which big outfits tie themselves up in knots over. Big is not always beautiful and it is sometimes a lot more complicated.
Along the way it mentions that 89.2% of adults in the resident population of England think that the government ought to do something about the costs of care for the elderly, a mention which does not go on to explain that all these resources have to come from somewhere. Government can only provide services to the extent that the population is prepared to pay taxes - this being a population which seems to think that government ought to be able to get along with a 25% share of the national cake rather than the 50% it needs - along with more or less all the other civilised countries of the world. (And half of which population, so it is said, cannot name the Prime Minister). So we do need to do something about arithmetic in our schools. Make the little darlings answer questions like 'if you have 5,234 old people who need an average of 3.54 years of care at £676 a week, how much do you need to put on the basic rate of tax to pay for it? Extra marks for answers which take account of leap years'.
And while we struggle along, getting little further than a rather poor standard of public debate, the Irish appear to have a scheme up and running. A national register of places offering residential care. A scheme called 'Fair Deal' to spread the load a bit, with a proportion of the costs coming out of general taxation rather than out of the pockets those lucky enough to live for a very long time. Or unlucky I suppose, depending on your point of view.
The general idea is that if you sign up for help with your care home costs, the state might take up to 80% of your income plus 5% of your capital each year, this last for up to three years. As a basic deal, that sounds pretty good to me. Hopefully their civil servants have crossed all the eyes and dotted all the tees, dealt with the old miser who when up against it would rather give his house to his son than let the state get a share of it - or, to put it another way, pay for his own care. Or somebody who expects fancier food than most old people are content with. Or somebody who spent most of a long life paying little or no tax at all.
Maybe I will take a peek at whatever small print is lurking at http://www.irishhealth.com/article.html?id=16363. Maybe it is another example of how small outfits can just get on and do things which big outfits tie themselves up in knots over. Big is not always beautiful and it is sometimes a lot more complicated.
# posted by Jim @ 7:21 AM 
