Is it really that expensive?

givememoney

PollySouthend wrote: »

Plus all the other benefits - winter fuel, bus pass, free insulation, free boiler and so on.

It's nothing personal, just what the selfish baby boomers have done to the rest of the country and having a name like "give me money" exemplifies what the boomers have done.

Just for the record we paid for our own loft insulation and also for a new boiler put in this year to replace the 33 year old one that was there before.

Why are baby boomers selfish? We paid tax and national insurance up to retirement to ensure a pension at the end of it. By the way you talk you'd think we have any say in the matter, we don't. The government makes the rules, not us.

Your very real anger should be directed to the government and previous governments who have squandered money and raided pension pots over the years not us.

As regards my user name, I try to choose something that is appropriate to any forum I join. You may be too young to know, but `give me money` I sort of borrowed from the Beatles song Money (that's what I want) there is nothing more sinister to it than that. You just choose to read more in than is there.

Trebor16

PollySouthend wrote: »

It's nothing personal, just what the selfish baby boomers have done to the rest of the country and having a name like "give me money" exemplifies what the boomers have done.

Just when I thought it wasn't possible for you to surpass previous levels of stupidity you produce this gem:D

Selfish baby boomers are not responsible for the countries ills and to suggest that they are shows your total lack of comprehension of the subject. These baby boomers have worked, paid their taxes and in retirement many are still paying their taxes either through income tax on their income or by means of VAT on good purchased, fuel duty when buying petrol/diesel for their car and also council tax.

To vilify them in such an ill thought out and erroneous manner just demonstrates how narrow minded and bigoted you are.

Cardew

Trebor16 wrote: »

Just when I thought it wasn't possible for you to surpass previous levels of stupidity you produce this gem:D


To vilify them in such an ill thought out and erroneous manner just demonstrates how narrow minded and bigoted you are.

To be fair since he/she joined MSE last month, I think the sole purpose of posting is to be as rude and controversial as possible simply to provoke a reaction.

Charlton_Taz

givememoney wrote: »

Why are baby boomers selfish? We paid tax and national insurance up to retirement to ensure a pension at the end of it. By the way you talk you'd think we have any say in the matter, we don't. The government makes the rules, not us.

The problem with the baby boomer generation though is that you didn't pay enough tax. The national debt has gone from £50bn in the 1960s to £1.2trn today i.e. as a country we have spent too much. The suckers that will have to pick up the tab are the younger
generations today and out future children. Essentially, baby boomers will take more from society than they ever put in, whilst the younger generation will have to pay for it.

And yes, we should blame the governments who allowed this to happen, but they are elected by all of us...and the baby boomer population (stupidly) opted for government who promised policies of the spend it all now and sod the future generations.

LesU

Charlton_Taz wrote: »

The problem with the baby boomer generation though is that you didn't pay enough tax. The national debt has gone from £50bn in the 1960s to £1.2trn today i.e. as a country we have spent too much. The suckers that will have to pick up the tab are the younger
generations today and out future children. Essentially, baby boomers will take more from society than they ever put in, whilst the younger generation will have to pay for it.

And yes, we should blame the governments who allowed this to happen, but they are elected by all of us...and the baby boomer population (stupidly) opted for government who promised policies of the spend it all now and sod the future generations.

So here we have national debt as % of gdp.


All of those baby boomers were a little late on the scene, apparently leaving their terrible economic and political decisions until 2007.

matelodave

Both my wife and me are baby boomers, we've worked all our working lives, paid our taxes, paid into pension funds and are now paying income tax on what the pension funds pay out as well as VAT on what we spend - we actually would be even better off if a certain stupid chancellor hadn't bu''ered up the pension system so that most funds have gone broke and pulled the companies who owned them down as well.

We lived during & survived the three day weeks, seemingly endless strikes, inflation at over 25% and mortgage interest rates of 15%. We worked hard and saved hard and did without luxuries including not having a telephone for several years.

Both my daughters & their husbands have worked their socks off to get their own houses and are more than paying their way in society and recognising what's important and what's a luxury and prioritising their expenditure. They are teaching their own kids what's important in life as well and the main priority is to not be dependent on others but to help those that can't help themselves, not help them that won't help themselves

We or they certainly didn't vote for governments who took taxes and borrowed so they could give money away like it was going out of fashion. Who have created a dependent society and have carefully managed the country into the state it is at the moment.

Charlton_Taz

Nice graph which rather illustrates that when 'times were good' we still spent too much as we've always been running a debt. Reasons for the massive leap in the last few years though are also related to all this though i.e.

recapitalising (and nationalising) the banks - which was basically converting private debt (i.e. consumer overspending etc on loans, property etc) into public (i.e. government) debt (therefore adding to the national debt)

Trebor16

Charlton_Taz wrote: »

And yes, we should blame the governments who allowed this to happen, but they are elected by all of us...and the baby boomer population (stupidly) opted for government who promised policies of the spend it all now and sod the future generations.

I don't know which planet you are from but it's not Earth. Are you PollySouthend by another name by any chance?

Charlton_Taz

Who the heck is Polly Southend?? I live on this planet and I don't think its a widely unfair thing to say that we tend to vote for governments that promise lower taxes / better services / better benefit and pensions than those who would state the reality which is as a country we have overspent for years, we are still overspending and, to put it simply, we can't afford it! Government do things for the short-term i.e. spend money (and put off difficult decisions like decent pension reform etc) because they want to get voted in next time.

Is it only now that it has got so bad (the financial crisis was the massive wake-up call to the Western world where we all thought we had these great living standards etc - but the reality is a lot of this was all an illusion as we just borrowed to pay for it all) that the chickens have come home to roost and its the younger generation that are going to have to suffer.

Cardew

Charlton_Taz wrote: »

The problem with the baby boomer generation though is that you didn't pay enough tax. The national debt has gone from £50bn in the 1960s to £1.2trn today i.e. as a country we have spent too much. The suckers that will have to pick up the tab are the younger
generations today and out future children. Essentially, baby boomers will take more from society than they ever put in, whilst the younger generation will have to pay for it.

And yes, we should blame the governments who allowed this to happen, but they are elected by all of us...and the baby boomer population (stupidly) opted for government who promised policies of the spend it all now and sod the future generations.

There has never been a Government that has taken a really long term view of economic policy; or indeed an Opposition of any colour. So there was no choice of 'opting' for a Party to deliver the Utopia which you believe was possible.(not that we would have voted for them;)) Every Government, with a maximum of a 5 year term, deals with the present and not the future, or they won't get re-elected.

You also seem to totally ignore global recessions as if we could be immune from their effect.

That said, I think you are correct that many of the baby boomer population are better off than any previous retired generation, and probably, and unfortunately, future retired generations.

That said people who were not lucky enough to have inflation linked pensions have seen their pension pots savaged. Those who depended on their lifetime savings for income, have seen interest rates drop away to little more than 1%. So youngsters can get mortgages at an unheard of rate(for baby boomers) of 3%.

I have just had a 25 year endowment policy(linked to a interest only mortgage) mature , I got a sum 66% of that needed to have paid off my mortgage, and of course no 'with profits' bonus that was virtually a certainty when I took out the policy.

We have now a society that tolerates, indeed encourages, dependence on the welfare state. Perhaps, with justification, you can blame the Baby Boomers for allowing this situation.

I shudder when I read some of the threads on MSE on how to avoid debts by bankruptcy etc and maximise every sort of welfare claim. Look at the outcry when it was proposed to limit all benefits to £26,000.

If you feel that 'your generation' is paying the price for the present toleration of huge welfare spending, perhaps you could opt for a different government - oh silly me, all parties including the opposition don't offer you that choice!