Should automatic benefits be cut for those who "don't need them"?

N1AK

CLAPTON wrote: »

you graph seems to show that government spending as a proportion of GDP hasn't been fairly constant until fairly recently.

e.g. the spend now looks very like the spend in the 1970s

The graph only goes to 2010. Spending since then has not decreased as a % of GDP I can assure you that by the time we're in a real recovery and GDP starts growing it will look noticably higher than the short peak in the 70s but that wasn't even the point I was making.

That chart is certainly stable for the context. Tax rises to slightly over 40% in slowdowns and drops to the high 30%s in booms.

CLAPTON

N1AK wrote: »

The graph only goes to 2010. Spending since then has not decreased as a % of GDP I can assure you that by the time we're in a real recovery and GDP starts growing it will look noticably higher than the short peak in the 70s but that wasn't even the point I was making.

That chart is certainly stable for the context. Tax rises to slightly over 40% in slowdowns and drops to the high 30%s in booms.

clearly the facts divide us as well as opinions

once the economy starts to boom then one would expect the tax revenue to rise and the benefits bill to drop so one would expect the peak (as a percentage of GDP ) to drop.

N1AK

ukcarper wrote: »

The difficulty is where you draw the line in a way that is fare and cost effective.

The difficulty is that the elderly have decided, and are mostly supported by the public at large, that what they have at the moment (and maybe a bit more) IS what's fair. They expect their pension, fuel allowance, bus pass and everything else and will not entertain the thought that maybe we can't afford these. They're perfectly happy, although in honesty I would say more likely completely ignorant, for it to be funded by loading debt onto their children which may well leave future generations noticably worse off.

If I had to measure the success of a generation I would do so by the efforts they make to ensure that those who come after them have it as good or better than they did. The generation that fought in the war can hold their head very high in that regard. Those that followed? They fail that test in my opinion and can't even claim credit for repenting on their deathbed

N1AK

CLAPTON wrote: »

why will your generation not have a state pension to look forward to?

Because money isn't infinite and if we bankrupt the country building up debts paying for pensions now we won't be in a position to pay them later.

Obviously most people think there will be pensions in future though likely much smaller. It's not exactly a complex argument and we've been talking about it for about a million posts now.

ukcarper

N1AK wrote: »

I think £100 is enough to live by but it certainly isn't as high as I would like it to be. I'd love to be able to give pensioners mega-money, to have 1 teacher for every 5 children and world peace but I don't believe we can afford it. I think that our tax take at the moment is already about as high as sustainable. We taxing ~36% of GDP consistently now which is as high (averaging) as its been since before the 60s (there was a short spike in the early 80s). If we don't cut spending now then the cuts in spending later will be even worse. In other words by having a £100 pension now we may be able to afford an £80 pension in 20 years. If we pay £110 now then we'll be luck if we can do £60 for those retiring in 20 years (figures made up for sake of example).

I don't intend to imply that the previous generations did nothing economically. However the shrink in debt as % of GDP is because of GDP growth not paying debts off. In £s our debt has increased by 15,000% between the end of the war and now. Keep in mind that between WWI and WWII it increased by only 300% (1/50th of the amount). Also keep in mind that the majority of the decrease in debt as a % of GDP happened before the 60s (as the economy recovered from the war, while we still had a huge army and we had just lost an incredible amount of our working population).

Truly the generation of young-middle aged adults alive during WWII were incredible people. They fought a war and when it finished lived well within their means when they, surely more than any since, deserved everything they could ask for.

You really believe you can live on £100 a week the rent on my mothers 1 bed housing association flat is almost that.

N1AK

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Do you actually need me to go into the details of the already unsustianable pension system? Or are you just being awkward?

I have genuinely no idea of whether he simply isn't interested in grasping the point or is actually unable to. However by this point it's become readily apparent that his argument is based on nothing more than the fact that's the position he started in. He wouldn't know what affordable government spending was if you wrote it in font 24 and stuck it in the letter page of the daily mail.

N1AK

CLAPTON wrote: »

clearly the facts divide us as well as opinions

once the economy starts to boom then one would expect the tax revenue to rise and the benefits bill to drop so one would expect the peak (as a percentage of GDP ) to drop.

Are you serious the first thing I said was that tax as a proportion of GDP has remained pretty much constant. I haven't suggested that we're seeing a deviation from that.

I've responded to inane points from you on more occassions than I care to recall in this thread. You're clearly not informed on the subject and not interested in becoming so. I'm happy to keep debating this with the many people on this thread who passionately disagree with me, but appear to be engaging in a debate, however we're done.

N1AK

ukcarper wrote: »

You really believe you can live on £100 a week the rent on my mothers 1 bed housing association flat is almost that.

The problem with any debate about this kind of spending is that there have been so many changes in policy and benefit and so many exceptions that trying to set a generic limit is never going to work for everyone. I'm not a think tank or a government department. I can't account for all situations when making a 5 min post on a discussion board.

In the case of your mother I have to assume given the rent it isn't simply a 1 bed flat but comes with a warden and maybe so assistance? I have no issue with supporting those with additional needs and services like those often keep the elderly out of hospital which is both better for them and cheaper

I'm not suggesting we make the old miserable for the sake of it. I think we need to cut spending and that the elderly shouldn't be treated as sacred, especially as I believe they have played a large part in causing our long term financial problems.

ukcarper

N1AK wrote: »

The difficulty is that the elderly have decided, and are mostly supported by the public at large, that what they have at the moment (and maybe a bit more) IS what's fair. They expect their pension, fuel allowance, bus pass and everything else and will not entertain the thought that maybe we can't afford these. They're perfectly happy, although in honesty I would say more likely completely ignorant, for it to be funded by loading debt onto their children which may well leave future generations noticably worse off.

If I had to measure the success of a generation I would do so by the efforts they make to ensure that those who come after them have it as good or better than they did. The generation that fought in the war can hold their head very high in that regard. Those that followed? They fail that test in my opinion and can't even claim credit for repenting on their deathbed

You make that assumption but nobody has tested the water if the cut off point was set to at a reasonable level some people would complain but it wouldn’t change most peoples voting habits.

What I don’t like in the way means testing is done at the moment is that people who made some effort to look after themselves in old age find themselves worse of than people who did nothing.

grizzly1911

N1AK wrote: »

People voted for those politicians. If the best defence for the financial mismanagement they voted for is that voters in the 50s-80s were too incompetent to be expected to pick decent MPs it's a pretty damning verdict on our democracy.

I actually do have a pretty good understanding of how government spending has changed and I can assure you that the increase in pensions is real. Government spending as a proportion of GDP has remained pretty consistent until very recently:

It appears from the graph that public spending has stayed within a range of 40% +/- 5 % since the second world war, with spikes little different to the 70s.

It doesn't tell us what the mix of spending is or the reason for any change in that mix shift from armed forces to welfare for example.

It also doesn't tell us how much of that spending is as a result of the GFC.

IMO a pension of £80/week in future may wekll be possible if you can get a bigger uptake in personal provision but I have a sneaking suspicion it won't. Certainly with run away energy costs, fuel and its associated impact on foods costs £100 now is insufficient without supplementary assistance for more than subsistence living, don't forget that the tax threshold is closer to £200 per week.

There is a tipping point at which personal provision just isn't viable. If we tax that for people then the tipping point becomes higher. Pensioners.

Increasing GDP and increasing the collected tax take in line with it needs to be priority. The graph doesn't tell us where we have lost tax revenue from the collected pot.