It really comes down to who holds assets and who doesn't. At the moment we are asking working age people, who are often living hand-to-mouth, to shoulder the burden of care costs of an asset-rich older generation.
The manifesto promise was a starting point for more equitable treatment, but now May has shit herself and has decided to make the young pay for the old again.
This is a bit of a cherry picking of the financial relationships between generations, isn't it? (Not the first time in recent days).
There's a curve of how someone contributes to society over their lifetime, and a curve of how one is supported financially by society. It's surely misleading to suggest the 'young' (and we're really talking 18+, in terms of paying taxes) are paying the social care costs of the 'old' without asking who paid for the education of the 'young', before they contributed; yep, it was the 'old'. Not just education either; the infrastructure of society, the development and growth of the companies the young now work for, the health and social costs associated with the habits of the 'young' (particularly alcohol). Not forgetting also that this terrible burden now faced by the 'young' in providing for the 'old' was once, of course, paid by the then-young-now-old, for their elders in turn.
I can't help feeling there's a slippery slope (and certainly a Thatcherite individualist element) in this argument. Do we start penalising women, for increased health costs relating to childbirth - at precisely the moment their contribution dips, no less? Are those with savings to be forced to use BUPA rather than the NHS? That might sound tempting - but it's actually an old Tory argument: the follow up is why should they contribute to the NHS if they don't use it? Then why should they contribute to public education costs when they send little Tarquin to a posh private school? Once we start pushing the rich to pay for their own services, we break the principles of taxation for social provision; we open the chasm to small government, low taxation, every one for themselves provision.
If we need more money for social care and equitable pensions in an ageing society, it must be done through fair and transparent taxation (and I support much heavier inheritance taxes; just not one based on how healthy you were in the years before death). The Tory social care policy is charging right after the point of delivery. That's not a policy that the left should be embracing.
