MSE News: Millions face cut in final salary pensions

cvd

Costs will be lower in the early years and higher in the later years when pensioners tend to spend less money but use a lot more public services (ie NHS). This seems emminently reasonable.

I suggest you read this study here from the Institute of Fiscal Studies:

http://www.ifs.org.uk/comms/comm106.pdf

From the conclusions:

"Older and poorer pensioners have tended to have higher inflation than younger and richer pensioners for most of the past five or six years, for example, and single pensioner households have had higher inflation rates than pensioner couples since 2002."

Facts are a nuisance.

PS I agree with wakeupalarm

Gorgeous_George

wakeupalarm wrote: »

... Look at the increase in VAT, the cuts in benefit and services which will effect the poor more then the rich. Society as a whole will suffer if you make the poor poorer in order to protect the comfortable and rich. The whole approch is wrong.

Welcome to the world of the Tories.

GG

Andy_L

owainglyndwr wrote: »

The government seem to be selective in their approach to the gold plated public sector pensions. The teachers scheme seems to be the first port of call but the higher cost police and GP schemes are less of a priority.Do we need to ask why?

What do you mean? this change affects all public sector schemes

zigzigzag

lvader wrote: »

Did you complain about the low interest rates or the obscene goverment spending?

YES!!! I do at every opportunity - but what does that matter, those in power aren't listening!!!! So what's your point exactly???

Those in the private sector have already been subject to so many cuts - very few of us have any pension to speak of, let alone a final-salary one; in the past two years we've faced redundancies, reduced working hours with cuts in pay, increased working hours with no increase in pay, outsourcing, fewer jobs available etc etc etc. Yet now that the cuts are finally reaching the public sector, for some reason the unions and govt want to ignore all the cuts we've already had, and want to inflict more cuts on the private sector. So for all my years of work, all I have is one tiny final-salary scheme, and now the government has decided that it should be worth even less than it is now. Thanks a bunch, I'll be living on a park bench when I'm 60.:(

lvader

On the other forum they keep going on about house prices falling, so we might be better off. In any case I expect the difference between CPI and RPI to narrow considerably.

chucknorris

Sapphire wrote: »

No, actually - some people (me included) have been prudent, saved, have not taken risks and over-borrowed huge sums on luxuries they think they are entitled to, fleeced the taxpayer, or had vastly over-inflated salaries and bonuses.

So not everyone has contributed to this, though many certainly have through their stupidity and greed.

The point is though that WE are in a MESS and it needs to be sorted, it's a drastic situation which requires drastic measures. There is no point in sticking our heads in the sand and pretending everything will be alright in the end, it will not unless we all wake up and accept the situation and address the issues.

dunstonh

The mess does need sorting but the changes in pensions have more to do with the 1960s baby boom and living longer than the more recent global recession and credit crunch.

lvader

dunstonh wrote: »

The mess does need sorting but the changes in pensions have more to do with the 1960s baby boom and living longer than the more recent global recession and credit crunch.

They are linked though, without massive government debt they would have more money to deal with the pension issue. Also we can ill afford to save extra for pensions now because we have less spare money and as a country we need people to be spending rather than saving. The positive thing is that it takes an event like the global credit crisis to get enough political will for real change.

Old_Slaphead

Gorgeous_George wrote: »

The credit crunch started because Americans sold bad debt rated as AAA around the world. Had they not done so, America would have been bankrupt and that would have been a huge security problem for all of us.

When we look for people to blame, we need to look further afield. It was neither the public sector worker nor the private sector worker. It as America and the banks.

GG

So the British public who racked up debt, ie took 125% mortgages with Northern Rock, the British banks HBOS, RBS etc are totally blamefree?

Did anyone force the banks to buy 'junk' or did they think they were so clever with their little 'pass the parel' games?

Was the government's balance sheet and future spending commitments stresstested to see if it could copy with a downturn or there they complacent (ie connecd by the financial services industry).

Whatever happened to Brown's 'Golden Rules' and the 'fixing the roof while the sun shone'

Gorgeous_George

Old_Slaphead wrote: »

So the British public who racked up debt, ie took 125% mortgages with Northern Rock, the British banks HBOS, RBS etc are totally blamefree?

Largely, yes. In the UK, mortgage debt can only be offloaded by going bankrupt. Otherwide the debt stays with the individual. In America, you can hand the keys back and the debt is wiped. In a falling market, everybody thinks this is a good way to walk away fom their responsibilities. The American banks realised this was going to wipe them out so their ratings agencies parcelled up the debt and rated it AAA. Once rated, it was sold as a solid security. It's like getting a slab of steel, painting it gold and getting an expert to verify that it is gold. Then sell it to someone for cash. It is only when the expert is proven to have been fraudulent that the slab of steel is worthless.

Did anyone force the banks to buy 'junk' or did they think they were so clever with their little 'pass the parel' games?

No, but it was parcelled up as AAA securities. Fraud by any other name.

Was the government's balance sheet and future spending commitments stresstested to see if it could cope with a downturn or there they complacent (ie connecd by the financial services industry).

Dunno.

Whatever happened to Brown's 'Golden Rules' and the 'fixing the roof while the sun shone'

Without Gordon Brown, the pain would have been far worse. We will get a taster of the pain as the ConDems inflict cuts on the poor whilst lining the pockets of the rich.

Whatever happened to the polluter pays?

GG