This old chestnut

avantra

UK's aging population is a bigger economic threat than the financial crisis


Dear forum,

We need your help, please advice us how the hell we are going to get out of this never ending mess.

Yours Faithfully


Gordon and Dave

lostinrates

Population is always going to be a crisis. Ageing...scary financially, staying the same with a steady upwards consumerism would not with out eventally serious problems, and growing would be the worst IMO.

Old_Slaphead

Stop insisting that people with terminal illnesses and/or are in intolerable pain and misery have no freedom of choice to end their own life in a civilised and controlled way and must be kept alive, against their wishes, at all costs.

MRSTITTLEMOUSE

Old_Slaphead wrote: »

Stop insisting that people with terminal illnesses and/or are in intolerable pain and misery have no freedom of choice to end their own life in a civilised and controlled way and must be kept alive, against their wishes, at all costs.

Provided that it's rigidly policed I'm all for this.
We would'nt let our pet animals suffer yet we allow ourselves to suffer terrible pain right to the end of our lives.
I hope they do bring legalised euthanasia in so me and OH can benefit from it.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

avantra wrote: »

how the hell we are going to get out of this .

Immigration, Immigration, Immigration.

There is no other solution..... Unless mass euthanasia appeals to you.

IveSeenTheLight

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Immigration, Immigration, Immigration.

There is no other solution..... Unless mass euthanasia appeals to you.

That's not the long term solution, it's a short term one.
If you keep up the requirement of an ever increasing population, it's just a big spiral.

What is required is a reduction in hand outs and a culture change to understand that you have to provide for yourself and your future.

Lesser countries don't have big hand outs for unemployed / pensioners, and we need to move to a society that is less dependant

ILW

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Immigration, Immigration, Immigration.

There is no other solution..... Unless mass euthanasia appeals to you.

Why? Apparently we have over 2 million unemployed already, plus another few million claiming incapacity for bad backs, depression and obesity.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

ILW wrote: »

Why? Apparently we have over 2 million unemployed already, plus another few million claiming incapacity for bad backs, depression and obesity.

Because as it stands today, (and I'm including NI as a tax here) your taxes, and my taxes, and the taxes of every other worker, are not paying for our own pensions and old age care, they are paying for those of todays retirees.

That works OK, when the number of workers exceeds the number of retirees.

But it doesn't work at all well when the number of retirees exceeds the number of workers.

The only viable solution for the long term, is to bring forward the pensions and care liability through the generations, so that each generation is paying for it's own, and demographic swings don't matter.

To put it in perspective, if you wanted to do that in one lifetime, you'd probably need to increase NI contributions to 30% of income.... On top of the 20% to 50% income tax, and all the various other taxes.

It's impossible to do it quickly.... And by quickly I mean within a lifetime. So immigration becomes the only solution for the next few decades at least.

.

ILW

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Because as it stands today, (and I'm including NI as a tax here) your taxes, and my taxes, and the taxes of every other worker, are not paying for our own pensions and old age care, they are paying for those of todays retirees.

That works OK, when the number of workers exceeds the number of retirees.

But it doesn't work at all well when the number of retirees exceeds the number of workers.

The only viable solution for the long term, is to bring forward the pensions and care liability through the generations, so that each generation is paying for it's own, and demographic swings don't matter.

To put it in perspective, if you wanted to do that in one lifetime, you'd probably need to increase NI contributions to 30% of income.... On top of the 20% to 50% income tax, and all the various other taxes.

It's impossible to do it quickly.... And by quickly I mean within a lifetime. So immigration becomes the only solution for the next few decades at least.

.

Fair point, but you did not address the issue of why import workers when we have millions unemployed already here.

Thrugelmir

Many people are fit and healthy enough to work well beyond the "statutory" retirement age, and in fact doing so. Even if just on a part time basis.

Life doesn't stop at 65 or whatever the pension age is set at.

nitr02007

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Because as it stands today, (and I'm including NI as a tax here) your taxes, and my taxes, and the taxes of every other worker, are not paying for our own pensions and old age care, they are paying for those of todays retirees.
.

Its basically a Ponzi scheme.

A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to separate investors from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from any actual profit earned.

It cannot exist without growth. i.e. you need ever increasing numbers of people coming into the scheme to pay for the ones already in it. Infinite growth isn't possible, as we live on a relatively small island on a finite planet, so it will collapse eventually.

http://blog.moneysavingexpert.com/2009/03/27/is-the-state-pension-a-ponzi-scheme/