Public sector wellcome to the real world

fted

Just wanted to say that people currently employed will still have final salary pensions the new regulations only effect new members - so the final salary pensions still exist and are a LOT better than anything you guy have.

So while you are bent over being given a good seeing to by your corporate overlords, spending the rest of life's working until you drop dead, paying off the debt created by the bankers, before departing this world with as much money as you came in with, I will be enjoying a great pension. So thanks for "paying" for that. :-) I really appreciate it (not really haha).

All your envy makes it all the more enjoyable and your tears are so delicious!

3v3

roysterer wrote: »

... The only way this country has got any chance of getting out of this mess is to re-introduce a manufacturing envioronment that can make things that can be exported to generate wealth for the nation.

Its not going to happen.

Globalisation is the reason our manufacturing industry is no longer dominant; minimum wages here vs low-cost labour (and resources) in other countries ensure that it is not financially viable for private sector investment. The UK doesn't have that competitive advantage.

Just_landed

The only way this country has got any chance of getting out of this mess is to re-introduce a manufacturing envioronment that can make things that can be exported to generate wealth for the nation. Many jobs were created in the Public Sector when Manufacturing Industry was destroyed in this country by Thatcher. The son of Thatcher (Blair) also done nothing to stimulate manufacturing in this country,
______________

Product made in this country £2.00

Same product made abroad £1.00

Which one to buy decisions decisions?

:rotfl:

dunstonh

Many jobs were created in the Public Sector when Manufacturing Industry was destroyed in this country by Thatcher.

I think its too simple to blame Thatcher like that. She inherited a mess. A total basket case of a country. The manufacturing base of the country had been destroyed by unions. The decisions she had to take were harsh but they did rescue the country from the abyss. Some decisions were right, some wrong but in all, the unions were the worst thing for manufacturing in this country along with some pretty shoddy work quality. The latter has improved big time though.

I dont think you will get full manufacturing back (i.e. resources) as that is now dominated by the cheap emerging markets. We get assembly instead as that is where we can over something in respect of quality control. What we really need is R&D. If we can create new things and then assemble them here it wont matter if the resources come from elsewhere.

roysterer

Manufacturing in this day and age is completely different from the 60s,70s. It is far less labour intensive due to the high Precision computerised machine tools used today.
That is why this country needs Highly trained engineers to design, programme, and strive to continually improve.
yes I agree that a lot of manufacturing as moved to low cost countries like China, and India but for how long will these contries be low cost? Is Japan considered low cost today?
Many of the products moved overseas are mature products that have been proven and have robust manufacturing processes.
Dunstonh I agree that R&D is important we must have new engineering talent to continue to lead in this field.
Japanese car manufacturing in THIS COUNTRY is the most productive of all there factories from around the world that is what is claimed from the Japanese CEOs not me. To me that proves if you put the right investment in place with the right talent with the right work ethic then we can compete with any country in the world.
This country can not exist on selling burgers, pizzas, services, and finance.
We must have a manufacturing industry to survive in the future surely?? or am I missing something???
Where is the flow of money going to come from to pay for the services being sold???????

ILW

roysterer wrote: »

Manufacturing in this day and age is completely different from the 60s,70s. It is far less labour intensive due to the high Precision computerised machine tools used today.
That is why this country needs Highly trained engineers to design, programme, and strive to continually improve.
yes I agree that a lot of manufacturing as moved to low cost countries like China, and India but for how long will these contries be low cost? Is Japan considered low cost today?
Many of the products moved overseas are mature products that have been proven and have robust manufacturing processes.
Dunstonh I agree that R&D is important we must have new engineering talent to continue to lead in this field.
Japanese car manufacturing in THIS COUNTRY is the most productive of all there factories from around the world that is what is claimed from the Japanese CEOs not me. To me that proves if you put the right investment in place with the right talent with the right work ethic then we can compete with any country in the world.
This country can not exist on selling burgers, pizzas, services, and finance.
We must have a manufacturing industry to survive in the future surely?? or am I missing something???
Where is the flow of money going to come from to pay for the services being sold???????

I believe that most of the Jpaanese car manf. in the UK is non unionised. Does that tell us anything?

property.advert

dunstonh wrote: »

I think its too simple to blame Thatcher like that. She inherited a mess. A total basket case of a country. The manufacturing base of the country had been destroyed by unions. The decisions she had to take were harsh but they did rescue the country from the abyss. Some decisions were right, some wrong but in all, the unions were the worst thing for manufacturing in this country along with some pretty shoddy work quality. The latter has improved big time though.

I dont think you will get full manufacturing back (i.e. resources) as that is now dominated by the cheap emerging markets. We get assembly instead as that is where we can over something in respect of quality control. What we really need is R&D. If we can create new things and then assemble them here it wont matter if the resources come from elsewhere.

Pretty much agree with that statement. I ended up having to do a Norman Tebbit and get on my bike to go get a job but it wasn't all rosy and candy with bells on when the loony left controlled the country and brought the UK to the IMF begging for scraps.

Fundamentally I believe final salary pensions are a good thing but their funding is horrendous. Firms should never have been allowed to take pension fund holidays but Gordon "Robber" Brown killed it all off with his stealth dividend reclaim tax theft.

Funny how Labour never want to discuss that isn't it ? or his flogging the gold for bag of magic beans.

real1314

jamesd wrote: »

It's happening in the private sector. There's no reason for the public sector to be any different.

£5,000 a year with 3% annual inflation increase and no spouse benefit.

Which can be had for about £45 a month investment at 5% average interest per annum. Hardly a lot.

I don't resent it, I'm just explaining how much the private sector equivalent costs and how few people in the private sector buy annuities that large.

Because not many actually bother. You have to bear in mind that for many they might as well rely on the state (hence the Condem £140 a week proposal) and not bother saving. Why save £10 a month to end up £1 a week better off than minimum income guarantee?

The Association of British Insurers found that "23% of all annuities bought in 2006 had a fund value of less than £5,000, and 41% had a value of less than £10,000". To give a better idea of the range, here's the range for externally purchased pensions:

Funds less than £5,000 23%
Funds less than £10,000 41%
Funds less than £60,000 93%


That's only a partial picture, though, better to take a look at the chart on page 14, in part because externally bought pensions are generally larger pot sizes than normal.

Or see my point above. Many people see saving as irrelevant, but the private pension selling in the 80s convinced many to "save" so they'd be better off. But pension sales don't generally use Income Support (or pension type IS) as a factor.

Like public sector workers, a retiree in the private sector may have more than one pension income source so neither tells the full income story.

A £5,000 pension on top of the £7,000 that new state pensions are likely to pay amounts to £12,000 a year. The national minimum wage is £12,334.40 a year if working 40 hours a week for 52 weeks. So that £5,000 and the state pensions also being paid for is enough to get an employee on minimum wage up to almost 100% of their pre-retirement income level. Go higher and even more employees at the low earning side of things will end up with a higher income when retired than before retirement.

So if there's talk of a £5,000 pension income level, what I'd want to know is how much the employee was earning and whether they were working full time or not. If they were on minimum wage then they are getting a high pension, not a low one, since pensions are normally below 100% of working income.

The public sector pension system is such that it disfavours those of my age moving into the public sector. That adverse effect on mobility of labour, either into or out of the public sector, is one of the negatives of the current public sector system being so different from what private sector workers are getting. Ideally everyone would be on either final salary schemes with the same basis or money purchase schemes so it would be easy to move around between employer types.

I chose when I was 20. You chose different. as you see it, I won and you lost. So now you think I should be punished for winning. Oh dear, how PC is that? No-one can win.

Those are irrelevant to me. I've never been in a job that offered a final salary, average salary or similar type of pension scheme. No final salary, no chance of an employer taking payment holidays.

Did you set up a pension at age 20? That cold give you half salary at retirement? I did. See Won/Lost and PC.

I've no problem at all with you making intelligent decisions. Nor should you have a problem with governments and private sector tax payers doing the same when it comes to trying to get public sector pay and benefits closer to those in the private sector.

Because I won? What if I'd lost? What if private pensions had done spectactularly well? Would you be saying "ah well, theose poor public sector people, they deserve a share?" or, (more likely) "you had security and guarantees"

A public sector worker arguing in favour of no change is asking private sectors to pay for benefits well above those that the private sector gets. Nobody in the public sector should be surprised if there's not a lot of support for that position. Equality is a good thing. That includes in pay and benefits between public and private sectors, not just between genders.

Equality? Ok, if yo want to see equality, we should rake back over every penny you have earned, every bonus, we should all be paid the same - like soviet russia?
It's funny how some private sector people now want to stop free market choices, stop people's decisions from counting.
I made an investment choice. I knew it wouldn't ever be a stellar performer. But it was a safe choice.
Now that my "safe choice" has turned out better than the risk choice the risk takers want some of my investment.

You didn't mention the point about company directors.

Tell me, have profits in the private sector plummeted over the past 10-15 years? That's the period that has seen private sector pensions stripped to the bones, whilst porfits generally rose. Isn't that a bit odd?
Don't you see the irony?

More profit and smaller pensions? Who is realy being foolish/Who is really saying pensions are not sustainable? The CBI? Not like they have a vested interest.

I pay at private sector suppliers, which help their profits. I have done all my life. Can I have some of THAT back to stop what YOU should have put into YOUR pensions now that YOU want some back out of MINE? :cool:

chris_m

property.advert wrote: »

Firms should never have been allowed to take pension fund holidays

Not so much shouldn't have been "allowed" as shouldn't have been "forced". Most (if not all) of the pension holidays were because the funds were in surplus to a degree that legislation did not permit. I think it was to stop companies putting money into pension funds that were in surplus, thereby reducing their tax bills.

property.advert

chris_m wrote: »

Not so much shouldn't have been "allowed" as shouldn't have been "forced". Most (if not all) of the pension holidays were because the funds were in surplus to a degree that legislation did not permit. I think it was to stop companies putting money into pension funds that were in surplus, thereby reducing their tax bills.

I don't know whether that was a significant factor. What I do remember was overstatement of profits due to massive pension holidays.

However, we must point a finger at actuaries really. A large part of the fiasco reflected in the abandonment of final salary schemes results from their utter abysmal forecasting.

Any halfwit could see people were living longer.

Then you have consecutive governments who simply pocketed the NI and pension contributions without thought as to how they would pay pensions out of income farther down the line. That model must have been known as unsustainable decades ago but they did nothing. Pathetic.

Now we're all supposed to work until 20 minutes before we drop and pay half of our meagre earnings in taxes. No wonder people are rebelling and saying sod the system and squireling away what they can.