Only Immigration can save us from Pensioners

zagubov

chucknorris wrote: »

You are absolutely right I couldn't agree more, last time I tried that the combine harvester completely destroyed the bay window.

I like your phasing idea, what criteria would you suggest to fine tune the 'fair age' for individuals?

Whoops- deleted and reposted the whole post in disgust at my poor spelling before I spotted you'd replied.

Demographers must know how much life expectancy is improving as the years go by. Build in an incremental extension to the pension age slowly at first to help people plan/modify existing plans for their retirement and gradually increase it until it catches up with increase in healthy longevity.

PaulF81

Immigration isn't the problem, the problem is the indiginous scum that refuse to work and fund their lives by having 10 useless kids. It's reverse evolution. Send them on a boat to Bangladesh and do us all a favour.

Typically, someone who has the wherewithal to emigrate has the right sort of mindset to do well in this world.

Percy1983

PaulF81 wrote: »

Immigration isn't the problem, the problem is the indiginous scum that refuse to work and fund their lives by having 10 useless kids. It's reverse evolution. Send them on a boat to Bangladesh and do us all a favour.

Typically, someone who has the wherewithal to emigrate has the right sort of mindset to do well in this world.

Basically this, rather than importing workers get the lazy indiginous to work.

Mr_Matey

Good ways to reduce the pension liability are:
(1) Raise the pension age,
(2) Actively encourage working past pension age (perhaps lower tax rates for > 65s?),
(3) Freeze benefits, i.e. don't inflation index them, for a few years and keep the pound low.

Actually, if you think about it, pension liabilities have reduced dramatically over the past few years on a global basis. 1 GBP used to buy 1.5 EUR, now only 1.2 or so, it used to buy 2.5 AUD, now only 1.5. The government could continue to inflate away their pension obligations by debasing the pound... This has the added benefit of old Brits not being able to afford as many overseas holidays, which is great for domestic tourism.

Increasing skilled migrants is a smart idea, one that Japan did not embrace for cultural (racist?) reasons and look at the demographic mess they're in.

But forget about house prices, the big increase in demand will be on medical and health care services. Ideas here? Get more skilled nurses/doctors/care staff from overseas or train locals? I'm not sure, but maybe you'll need a building frenzy of old peoples homes in the next few years, or at least a fair bit of renovating to make existing homes more granny-friendly.

Loughton_Monkey

Personally, I don't buy the "immigration is good" argument unless or until we are getting richer as a country and have virtually zero unemployment.

Otherwise, I find the whole debate as ridiculous as, say, a large company like Tesco being "forced" to take on an extra 20 people each week at each store when they don't need them. We would all understand how ludicrous it is to say "isn't it good for you Mr Tesco? With all these people, you can now grow and expand...."

It's "good" for the hotel trade (and similar) who now have legal access to "self employed" Romanian & Bulgarian room cleaners at £2 an hour. But it is not good when the taxpayer has to give huge handouts to keep these 'workers' in houses and food.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

And again....

ruggedtoast

I can think of a really easy way to solve the pensions crisis regarding all these retiring boomers.

We could do some kind of means test asking questions along the lines of:

"Do you have thousands of pounds of savings in the bank, a private pension and property equity running into the hundreds of thousands?"

If the answer to all these questions is yes then we could take the radical step of not paying them a state pension at all, tell them they have to pay for their bus fares like everybody else and transferring the winter fuel allowance to people who actually need it.

GeorgeHowell

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

Personally, I don't buy the "immigration is good" argument unless or until we are getting richer as a country and have virtually zero unemployment.

Otherwise, I find the whole debate as ridiculous as, say, a large company like Tesco being "forced" to take on an extra 20 people each week at each store when they don't need them. We would all understand how ludicrous it is to say "isn't it good for you Mr Tesco? With all these people, you can now grow and expand...."

It's "good" for the hotel trade (and similar) who now have legal access to "self employed" Romanian & Bulgarian room cleaners at £2 an hour. But it is not good when the taxpayer has to give huge handouts to keep these 'workers' in houses and food.

I think it's better than paying them to lay about smoking, drinking, gambling, and watching Jeremy Kyle all day. Even subsidised jobs in places that don't really need them begins to build a work ethic and may start to lift some of them out of the benefits ghettos. When real jobs start to become available they will be better prepared to seek them. But there has to be carrot and whip in that those who decline to take such jobs or don't perform them with reasonable diligence get their benefits cut to an uncomfortably low level.

BobQ

michaels wrote: »

Could we not outsource all the pensioners to Spain - lots of empty property, cheaper heating bills and lots of unemployed youngsters to do all those caring things.

I know the above is a bit toung in cheek, but one day you too may get to be old and frail and realise that having care provided by a succession of different youngsters who are only doing it because they need a job is far from ideal.

Young people often complain about a shortage of housing but one of things that Government is doing is reducing sheltered housing and stealthily reducing the supporting people scheme through which older people could move out of their family sized homes into smaller flats, knowing that if they needed help there was a resident warden around to help them and where care can easily be arranged. Labour did it, the Tories continue to do it.

It may not suit everyone, but sheltered housing was a help for those who need it and frees up housing stock. Instead of proviiding an incentive we now suggest threatening older people in council houses with compulsory moves or berrate owner occupiers for wanting to stay in houses too big for their needs.

Outsourcing to Spain sounds idyllic to me (I may volunteer one day), of course it will do nothing for the UK economy, wonders for the Spanish economy and put some distance between the outsourced and their offspring, providing more excuses for not helping them. Of course you may find you have to move to Spain yourself to get a job!

GeorgeHowell

michaels wrote: »

Could we not outsource all the pensioners to Spain - lots of empty property, cheaper heating bills and lots of unemployed youngsters to do all those caring things.

Maybe you could, but remember they would sell their properties and take their money with them. All those precious and impatiently sought after inheritances could be even more at risk.