revert the pension age to 60/65

jamesd

redbuzzard wrote: »

Nor would he double the output and increase their wages. Nor could he, because his competitors would undercut him.

Of course he would look to increase output. His halved wage component of the cost of production lets the employer both undercut competitors and make larger profit. Not a doubling of output because wages are not the sole cost of production. But the employer has an incentive from those increased unit profits to increase by a lot more than double and also to use the higher profits to take over competitors with similar businesses to expand use of the new methods.

But it's not a static competition and other firms will also see the higher profits that are available and look to exploit that.

The result would be higher production and higher living standards because the money does have to go somewhere, even though it may start out at the employer. The employer ends up spending money to expand or for extra services like marketing or simply personal services.

redbuzzard wrote: »

Competition means that the benefit ("surplus" in the jargon) will always go to the capitalist, other things being equal.

Only in a short term and narrow view, not looking at a whole economy.

redbuzzard wrote: »

Only factors like unions, competition for labour or skills (hence the obsession with unsustainable growth) and minimum wage legislation temper it.

Unions act to restrict labour competition, competition for labour and skills acts to increase incomes, minimum wage laws act where and when there is insufficient competition for labour, normally the unskilled marketplace at times when unemployment is not low and immigration (and hence growth of the economy) is restricted.

redbuzzard wrote: »

Karl Marx worked that out. That's why we still have quite a lot of people in work doing long hours and still poor.

I doubt that we have anyone working long hours at minimum wage and still poor by the standards of the industrial revolution. We live in paradise by comparison.

Relative poverty, though, is rigged so there will always be someone who can be called poor, though making everyone poorer does work to reduce relative poverty, while increases work to increase it.

Mr Marx would probably consider it to be evil that wealth is concentrated with the people who are 50 and above, who dominate the ownership of businesses, in part via pension funds. The "employer" in large part is us. Forgetting that they will need that to live in retirement, while the younger part of the population have future earnings instead. But it's a nice argument to use to try to encourage the young to riot.

redbuzzard

GwylimT wrote: »

Of course we should revert the pension age back to the original age of 70, no one has forced you to take out a pension, you yourself have just chosen to invest instead of taking your money else where. There are lots of private pensions you could invest in like an elderly neighbour only for the company to go bust 4 years before her retirement.

If that's a reply to the OP then it rather misses his point, as far as I can divine it, which seemed to be that he (or she) had been obliged to pay NI, and doesn't think that he or she will benefit, possibly because he or she expects to stop clogging before reaching the increased pension age.

Hence the proposition to put it back to 60 (women) and 65 (men).

redbuzzard

jamesd wrote: »

Only in a short term and narrow view, not looking at a whole economy.

He he.

I simplify and exaggerate to make a point of course. Real life is more complicated. Too complicated in fact for economists to model at all reliably, or to agree.

But I wouldn't rely on trickle down, though Mrs Thatcher, whom I admired, and her spiritual successor Tony Blair set great store by it. The money goes somewhere for sure. But untrammeled capitalism will always have the effect of keeping sellers of labour poor unless there is a shortage of labour or skills.

I take your point on relative poverty too. But when we are talking about equitable distribution, relativity matters.

A point that is often overlooked about government is that a major part of its purpose in a mixed economy is redistribution, with taxation as the main tool for that. That is why, though I don't blame Google, Starbucks, Amazon, and Philip Green for legally avoiding tax - the market at work again - it urgently needs to be tackled.

There's no dodging the fact that this is the real unacceptable face of capitalism (for which I haven't a better alternative by the way) and whatever you think, there is a significant minority who are what most of us would call very poor, and who are working for minimum wages (or less, where unscrupulous employers can get away with it).

Gordon Brown, for all his faults, understood this but we ended up with a benefits mentality instead of the equitable sharing (witness the recent thread started by the member taking his pensions early - one of the first responses being that he would "lose" his benefits, not that he would "no longer need" them. To his credit, he said he regarded that as a good thing).

That will take a lot of unwinding before the real unfairness can be tackled.

Who doesn't find the widespread poverty in the US incredible?

bigadaj

Interesting development form a fairly ill thought out and dogmatic statement by the OP.

In terms of Sunday trading then it seems a poor solution for almost everyone. The market doesn't grow automatically, Little or no more is being purchased but the costs are elevated by Sunday opening and is no doubt an additional contribution to the death of the high street.

Extending even further then it highlights the problems with online shopping, particularly where no tax is being paid by the ebays, amazons etc of this world and the extra slope on the unfair playing field this demonstrates.

margaretclare

redbuzzard wrote: »

If that's a reply to the OP then it rather misses his point, as far as I can divine it, which seemed to be that he (or she) had been obliged to pay NI, and doesn't think that he or she will benefit, possibly because he or she expects to stop clogging before reaching the increased pension age.

Hence the proposition to put it back to 60 (women) and 65 (men).

I'm glad I wasn't the only one who thought that the original post was a bit garbled and unclear, although Mumps saw fit to assume that I 'hadn't understood it'. I really thought it could have been explained more clearly and exactly what the OP's grievance was. Many people are in the same boat. The people I feel most sorry for are the married women who are only now beginning to realise what a con trick the 'married women's stamp' really was. They did not get away with paying nothing in the form of NI contributions, only paying for 'industrial injuries'. How many industrial injuries are you likely to sustain in e.g. a typing pool? They thought they were housewives, yet the term 'housewife', according to the historian Michael Wood, only applied between 1850 and 1950. The others I feel sorry for are the young, who were promised heaven and earth, especially if they went to university. Not everyone is university material, not because they're any less bright, but because there are people who actually do prefer working with their hands, making things, and they use their intelligence that way.

Well, that's my contribution to this discussion which has branched off in all directions, some more relevant than others, and we still haven't had the benefit of the OP's further views and what he/she thinks would be the effect of reversing changes which have been planned over many years and are taking many years to come into effect.

mumps

margaretclare wrote: »

I'm glad I wasn't the only one who thought that the original post was a bit garbled and unclear, although Mumps saw fit to assume that I 'hadn't understood it'. I really thought it could have been explained more clearly and exactly what the OP's grievance was. Many people are in the same boat. The people I feel most sorry for are the married women who are only now beginning to realise what a con trick the 'married women's stamp' really was. They did not get away with paying nothing in the form of NI contributions, only paying for 'industrial injuries'. How many industrial injuries are you likely to sustain in e.g. a typing pool? They thought they were housewives, yet the term 'housewife', according to the historian Michael Wood, only applied between 1850 and 1950. The others I feel sorry for are the young, who were promised heaven and earth, especially if they went to university. Not everyone is university material, not because they're any less bright, but because there are people who actually do prefer working with their hands, making things, and they use their intelligence that way.

Well, that's my contribution to this discussion which has branched off in all directions, some more relevant than others, and we still haven't had the benefit of the OP's further views and what he/she thinks would be the effect of reversing changes which have been planned over many years and are taking many years to come into effect.

Well you didn't understand it did you? Or did you understand but were being a bit sarky making out you didin't?

At least the women who paid the married women's stamp are getting what they paid for. I don't understand what the con was supposed to be, did they seriously think they were paying less than other women to get the same at the end. What morons we would have been to pay for the full stamp, and plenty of us did so not much of a con was it.

I know plenty of young people making a good living who didn't go to university, carpenters, car mechanics, decorators all in high demand where I live. Some of them earning more than the ones who went to university, not that everything comes down to money but they are happy and enjoying a well paid job.

seven-day-weekend

mumps wrote: »

Well you didn't understand it did you? Or did you understand but were being a bit sarky making out you didin't?

At least the women who paid the married women's stamp are getting what they paid for. I don't understand what the con was supposed to be, did they seriously think they were paying less than other women to get the same at the end. What morons we would have been to pay for the full stamp, and plenty of us did so not much of a con was it.

I know plenty of young people making a good living who didn't go to university, carpenters, car mechanics, decorators all in high demand where I live. Some of them earning more than the ones who went to university, not that everything comes down to money but they are happy and enjoying a well paid job.

Apparently many of the older women didn't realise they had a choice. I always knew what the options were and paid the full stamp, but many people apparently didn't know.

margaretclare

No, many of them didn't know they had a choice. Especially the older ones, to whom it applied from 1948 onwards. In early 1957, for instance, I was told that 'it was just what you did' and I wouldn't have known otherwise except that I went to claim unemployment benefit (as it was called then) that summer and I had it explained to me by knowledgeable friends. Bless them both!

By the 1960s, especially the later years of that decade, women began to be better-informed.

I thought that the original poster could have made himself/herself clearer as to what he/she felt he/she had had 'stolen' from him/her. Many people might feel that paying income tax, which may be spent on things they don't approve of, might feel it was 'stolen' from them in that they didn't have a choice, it just went. No, I was not being 'a bit sarky'. I'm not the one who has been 'sarky' in this discussion - look a bit closer to home, Mumps!

atush

Actually I suspect that Sunday trading hasn't had that effect.

I actually suspect you are wrong on this. If an when I ever go into a M&S, B&Q or grocery store I never see the people I recognize from the other days of the week I go shopping normally. They are different people so more jobs.

OldBeanz

I certainly worked with a female in the early seventies who saw getting married and paying the married woman's stamp as money in her pocket. No thought went into whether there was any downside in the long term. This was after equal pay legislation.
The true inequity of pensions was that women were allowed to draw the pension 5 years before men although they lived longer. Now men drawing their pension at sixty and women at 65 sounds fairer.