Reduced pensions, higher university fees, cuts to schools, the breaking up of the national health service and so on are fundamentally about an ideological stance which asserts that markets are better than communal provision of services. There is huge evidence to show that this is not a sustainable assertion, but we have the fetishisation of markets and that's the nub of the problem.

Brian says we must all DIY, but the extension of that argument is there is there is no general provision of water, cleaning of public spaces, maintenance of roads, nor police nor armed forces and so on. The issue is where to strike the balance between communal (public) provision and individual (private) provision of goods and services.

My feeling is that the post-war solution of a range of problems through the nationalisation of power, transport, health and schools was probably sensible. I also think that people should have an expectation for a reasonable pension which means that there is a system set up to achieve this. Just because New Labour and the Conservatives both have adopted policies of marketisation doesn't mean they are correct. The resiling from pension provision by private companies after the dot.com bubble (and the opportunity for theft like Robert Maxwell did at the Mirror) doesn't mean that public sector pensions should now be cut.

The low tax policies of governments since 1979 have inevitably required a cut in public provision. The solution to the problem of poor pensions, lack of housing, the NHS and so on can be achieved through higher taxation with better off people paying more. The current system is roughly the opposite of this. People get upset about paying tax because they want more pay. The issue then, is one of pay, not of tax rates.

Anyway, these are well rehearsed arguments. If there is a national debt to pay off, then from each according to his(sic) means might be the all-in-it-together strategy. The effect of dividing young/old, private/public is to shift the debate away from "means".