Raising the pension age in order to pay for pensions

CLAPTON

New_and_Improved_Me wrote: »

It’s simple concept 'Plan your retirement'.

Decide what age you want to retire and work/save for it.

BUT (and there is always a but J )

What happens to:-

All those that are on the dole?

All those that live hand to mouth?

All those that are too stupid to plan?

The ‘State’ will always be used as a ‘Free meal’ by some, you cannot change that.

Thus the hard working or just working class will always have to keep paying more and more tax.

I firmly believe that each individual should be responsible for planning their own retirement.

Unfortunately, most are incapable of doing this for one of the reasons mentioned above.

EDIT - If I had a time machine, I would stop all state pensions, educate EVERY young person at the age of 20 that they need to save for retirement.

let the individual reach pension age, if they did not save enough, let them suffer for 1/2 year, then send them back to when they were 20. J

If only J

interesting to consider what would actually happen if everyone actually took this advice and started (say) saving 20% more of their salary for their old age

-sales of goods and service would drop by about 20%
-shops would stop recruiting, stop overtime
- then would start to lay people off
-the people laid off obviously would stop saving
-overall probably unemployment would double, savings would actually be less, government spending would rocket on benefits



also consider what would happen if everyone at pensionable age had made adequate pension/saving provision
-they would all spend on maintaining their lifestyle
-so there would be lots of money chasing goods and services
-so there might well be price inflation caused by all that extra demand


of course if all that pension money was invested overseas so there was a flood of money coming in from abroad then fine: but at the moment, I see no evidence that the UK is buying up china, india, japan, russia, brazil etc but rather the oppose (who owns th UK utilities, the car industry, chocolate, steel etc

Loughton_Monkey

CLAPTON wrote: »

interesting to consider what would actually happen if everyone actually took this advice and started (say) saving 20% more of their salary for their old age

-sales of goods and service would drop by about 20%
-shops would stop recruiting, stop overtime
- then would start to lay people off
-the people laid off obviously would stop saving
-overall probably unemployment would double, savings would actually be less, government spending would rocket on benefits



also consider what would happen if everyone at pensionable age had made adequate pension/saving provision
-they would all spend on maintaining their lifestyle
-so there would be lots of money chasing goods and services
-so there might well be price inflation caused by all that extra demand


of course if all that pension money was invested overseas so there was a flood of money coming in from abroad then fine: but at the moment, I see no evidence that the UK is buying up china, india, japan, russia, brazil etc but rather the oppose (who owns th UK utilities, the car industry, chocolate, steel etc

In other words, every penny gets back into the economy.

All you're talking about, then, is the timing. Either we (a) All spend. spend, spend, while we work and pay taxes to support the old, or (b) we even things out so that even the old (who have saved) are continuing to keep the younger employed...

Loughton_Monkey

N1AK wrote: »

.....We're going to wind up providing the elderly with enough cash to live off regardless of how !!!!less they were, so the only effective option left is to 'force' people to save for retirement so the rest of us don't have to pay for it instead.

Sad, but true.

So we're back to the concept - perhaps - of keeping state pension low (as now), but introduce a compulsory funded scheme on top, for about the same (or even more) than state pension.

Would take 40 years to 'come through' properly. Since no politician can 'think' any longer than the 5 years life of a parliament, any idea such as this is dead in the water!

Thrugelmir

coastline wrote: »

Only 20%..?? were owner occupied in the early 1900's.

Totally different era. A million miles away from where we are today.

Thrugelmir

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

Would take 40 years to 'come through' properly. Since no politician can 'think' any longer than the 5 years life of a parliament, any idea such as this is dead in the water!

Saving is a habit that needs to be ingrained from the very first pay packet. Far better to save from 20 than 40. Compound interest is what makes the difference.

coastline

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Totally different era. A million miles away from where we are today.

I was pointing out a trend which is rising rapidly....up 1m in a decade.
Its also been pointed out that this trend happened in the late 1990's which is years before the banking crisis.

CLAPTON

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

In other words, every penny gets back into the economy.

All you're talking about, then, is the timing. Either we (a) All spend. spend, spend, while we work and pay taxes to support the old, or (b) we even things out so that even the old (who have saved) are continuing to keep the younger employed...

no, not really


we can only all be rich (or at least a little richer) if we produce more goods and services in the future)

if we all simply have more money chasing the existing level of goods and services then that simply leads to price inflation (as countless countries have discovered)


there is no specific evidence that 'saving' more (i.e.not spending) now will provide the capacity to product more in the future


the dilemma is how to produce more per capita in the future and not about taxation levels

obviously from an individuals point of view the more you have saved the more (relative to those that haven't saved) you will be able to consume.

MFW_ASAP

CLAPTON wrote: »

no, not really


we can only all be rich (or at least a little richer) if we produce more goods and services in the future)

if we all simply have more money chasing the existing level of goods and services then that simply leads to price inflation (as countless countries have discovered)


there is no specific evidence that 'saving' more (i.e.not spending) now will provide the capacity to product more in the future


the dilemma is how to produce more per capita in the future and not about taxation levels

obviously from an individuals point of view the more you have saved the more (relative to those that haven't saved) you will be able to consume.

What if you have an emerging markets pension fund that invests in companies overseas (that produce goods and services)?

CLAPTON

MFW_ASAP wrote: »

What if you have an emerging markets pension fund that invests in companies overseas (that produce goods and services)?

yes, as I have already said, if we are investing a lots in overseas countries that will produce dividend and assets for the future then that would at least address the issue of funding a livestyle that exceed our domestic production.


However, it would seem to me (without any real research) that foreigners are investing here (utilities, steel, cars industry, nuclear power etc) and so we are unlikely to have a net dividend flow or net overseas assets to sell in the future.

MFW_ASAP

CLAPTON wrote: »

yes, as I have already said, if we are investing a lots in overseas countries that will produce dividend and assets for the future then that would at least address the issue of funding a livestyle that exceed our domestic production.


However, it would seem to me (without any real research) that foreigners are investing here (utilities, steel, cars industry, nuclear power etc) and so we are unlikely to have a net dividend flow or net overseas assets to sell in the future.

And we're investing overseas, often people paying into company pensions are not even aware that their savings are invested in emerging markets and global funds.

My pension money is invested in the same Chinese, Indian, German, Japanese, French, US companies that are investing in the UK.

Looks like you're coming around to the (correct) viewpoint that fully funded private pensions and fully funded state and public sector pensions (Sovereign funds) solve the demographic problem of having more retired people per tax payer.