"Cameron didn't pay for his education"

Yes he did, you idiot.

That claim was one I saw when I was unfortunate enough to be reading OxStu, the inferior of the two Oxford student papers. It was on a placard being brandished by a demonstrator at the highly intellectual and in no way self interested demonstration by students against the impending increase in fees and drop in government educational subsidies (I'm sure they'd be in an equal outrage if supplements to disabled people was reduced as well, because their views come from nothing other than clear impartial discourse).

The 'argument' which the placard holder was presumably putting forward was that, because David Cameron didn't pay for his university tuition, it is unfair for him to force others to do so.

Aside from the obvious flaws in this argument, I thought that this placard represented a catastrophic, but regrettably widespread, misunderstanding in what it means for government to fund something. Cameron, reported to have a tidy £30 million in the bank, has not only paid for his own education; he has paid for tens, perhaps hundreds of others too. Because he is a tax payer. His earning of money pays for people to go to university, as well as for all the other things the UK government spends its money on.

What the placard represented, I think, is a complete failure to recognise that when the government pays for something, it doesn't create the money out of thin air; it takes the money from the taxpayer and then spends it. When Conservatives reduce the educational subsidy, it doesn't mean that they're 'selfish', and want to keep all the government's magic pot of gold for themselves. It means that (as at least one potential reason), that they don't think that other people should pay for students to go to university. Describing any government as selfish, (unless they are actually paying themselves*), it to entirely miss the point.

Of course, people know that the government doesn't have a pot of money which it can choose to spend or not; they know it comes from the taxpayer. But as soon as there is a threat of a cut to something, that knowledge goes right out the window. Frankly, it would make as much sense for the protesters to go outside rich people's houses and shout and demand that they give them money to go to university; as, by proxy, this is what they're asking for when they do the same outside Westminster (except, rather than the money-givers in question deciding, it's an unrelated third party). If the rich people refused then they would have some reason (albeit not much) to call them selfish. But to call the government selfish for choosing not to move some money from some to others is nothing short of ridiculous.


*As a side note, the coalition government isn't doing this, as they've dropped MPs pay. So they actually are less selfish than the Labour government.