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

chewmylegoff

Loanranger wrote: »

How is it that pensioner bashing is acceptable yet any other kind of bashing isn't?
I worked full time for 42 years, paid tax and NI and paid into a private pension pot. Also paid for all my university fees and no grant, studied part time while working. Yet am begrudged a bus pass and a fuel allowance to which I am entitled!
May I suggest that younger folk who are envious of my position in society take on my aches and pains, my insomnia, my husband's painful hip and deafness and then decide who they'd rather be?
There is nothing so good in life as to be young. The young will sadly only appreciate this sentiment when it's too late and, like me, they're old.
Who said, youth is wasted on the young? Can't remember, that'll probably be the dementia rearing its ugly head.

i have no idea what your income is, but no one is suggesting that bus passes and wfa are removed from those who genuinely need it. however, do you think that it is sensible to tax people (including pensioners paying basic rate tax) more money so that wealthy pensioners can be given free money for no reason? does a pensioner with an income of £45,000 a year need £200 to help them pay their gas bill. i know my gran didn't - because the heating wasn't on as she spent the entire winter in a 5* hotel in thailand.

it just makes no sense to tax people and pay the money to people who do not need it. worse still, the money that is being paid out in wfa to wealthy pensioners is actually being borrowed, not raised in tax revenue.

if anyone can come up with a sensible argument why it is a good idea to pay money to rich pensioners (or indeed a person of any age who doesn't need the money) financed by deficit spending, then please, tell me what it is.

Jennifer_Jane

Has anyone got any statistics for how many higher-rate 'pensioners', or even 'people over 65',or perhaps 'over 70' there are? Compared with non-taxpaying pensioners and basic rate pensioners?

Apologies, too lazy to try to find this myself.

Loanranger

N1AK wrote: »

And they say it is the young today who have an entitlement complex. Fred Goodwin was 'entitled' to a sizable pension but he got considerable flack for it.



Those young people will still be old one day so that's a pretty pointless paragraph. The people who 'begrudge' the elderly the benefits they currently receive would likely say that insufficient tax upon, or over-spending on services for, them has become a massive liability that young and future generations have been lumbered with.


I think the short answer to Graham's original point is pretty short and pretty obvious: Turkey's don't vote for Christmas. The elderly are a large voting block and any party that materially decreases the benefits they receive won't be part of the government.

Lumbered with ?
You wouldn't be here at all were it not for the older generation that you are now lumbered with.
How about you learn some respect, sonny boy?

Ah well, you'll be old one day and will view the world through a rather different lens.

ukcarper

chewmylegoff wrote: »

i have no idea what your income is, but no one is suggesting that bus passes and wfa are removed from those who genuinely need it. however, do you think that it is sensible to tax people (including pensioners paying basic rate tax) more money so that wealthy pensioners can be given free money for no reason? does a pensioner with an income of £45,000 a year need £200 to help them pay their gas bill. i know my gran didn't - because the heating wasn't on as she spent the entire winter in a 5* hotel in thailand.

it just makes no sense to tax people and pay the money to people who do not need it. worse still, the money that is being paid out in wfa to wealthy pensioners is actually being borrowed, not raised in tax revenue.

if anyone can come up with a sensible argument why it is a good idea to pay money to rich pensioners (or indeed a person of any age who doesn't need the money) financed by deficit spending, then please, tell me what it is.

I agree and they could easily set the cut of at that level without losing support but how much would it raise. I personally think you could set the level lower but that would be more costly to implement.

CLAPTON

N1AK wrote: »

Calm down and learn to keep your assumptions and what's been said seperately . In one paragraph I pointed out that what I spend on services for the elderly is considerably more than on welfare (to counter the previous posters nonsense about benefit scrounging youngsters). In the second I said I am happy to pay that much tax but want it to be spent well, surely most people do?

I do have issues with how various benefits including pensions operate. However the entire debate is largely pointless. The elderly won't accept a decrease in their benefits, if they won't accept it then no party will bring it in due to their voting power.

You chose to link the cost of 'pensions and healthcare (for the elderly) with spending your taxes 'effectively and fairly'.

I politely asked why you thought they were spent ineffectively and/or unfairly.

In any event my own view is whatever the fuss made about things that doesn't mean you can't do them and that they won't be accepted. Many 'old' people I know freely accept that winter fuel allowance and free bus passes and unreasonable although accepted.

A._Badger

CLAPTON wrote: »

In any event my own view is whatever the fuss made about things that doesn't mean you can't do them and that they won't be accepted. Many 'old' people I know freely accept that winter fuel allowance and free bus passes and unreasonable although accepted.

The prevailing attitude I hear from recipients is: "Everyone else seems to be getting a handout, I paid high taxes for my entire life, so I'm damned if I'll refuse it."

Which is precisely what you'd expect in a 'benefits for all' madhouse.

pqrdef

My aunt isn't short of a bob or two and complains bitterly about benefit scroungers. She also complains bitterly that she can't use her bus pass on the 9:29 and the next bus is an hour later. All hell would be let loose if she had to pay her fare while other pensioners got free rides.

It's not only about relieving absolute poverty. Workhouse gruel did that. To create a more civilised system, we've had to construct a complex myth of entitlement. The trick with any benefit is to be able to pay it without creating resentment.

chewmylegoff

Jennifer_Jane wrote: »

Has anyone got any statistics for how many higher-rate 'pensioners', or even 'people over 65',or perhaps 'over 70' there are? Compared with non-taxpaying pensioners and basic rate pensioners?

Apologies, too lazy to try to find this myself.

i had a quick look and couldn't find anything immediately useful apart to a reference to 100,000 pensioner households with an income of > £100,000, and now i can't find that.

grizzly1911

N1AK wrote: »

I'm 27. Based on government spending more of the tax/NI I pay went on paying for pensions than anything else. I paid £2,500 to fund pensions last year, it'll be even more this year. That's isn't my own pension, that's the pensions currently being claimed. My second biggest cost is healthcare, which the elderly make considerably more than average use of. Welfare is a very distant third.

I don't mind that I lose over £10,000 a year in tax and NI. I would however like to see the money spent effectively and fairly

In 20 + years time you may well find yourself placing a greater reliance on a health service personally despite how well you luck after yourself, stuff happens.

If you have or intend to have a family then you may well be making use of that service much sooner.

In In previous posts you have said that you will provide for yourself through life and don't intend to be a "burden" on the system.

Life isn't as simple as that.

Like you I have paid large amounts of tax an NI into a bottomless pit that's life too.

Don't forget that many pensioners have also continue to pay tax on unearned income (capital already taxed once) and through consumption taxes, if not so much on luxuries on energy and house insurance for example, oh and the toiletries and chocolate;)

Masomnia

chewmylegoff wrote: »

if anyone can come up with a sensible argument why it is a good idea to pay money to rich pensioners (or indeed a person of any age who doesn't need the money) financed by deficit spending, then please, tell me what it is.

Keynesian stimulus, innit?