Makes my blood boil

agarnett

Hi Jeff,

Very kind of you to volunteer me to update the reports of Record, Hutton, and CASS. Unfortunately I am only just back home part way through my first hot meal today after a day spoiling the wrinklies (my parents) who have over 187 years between them and today, a card from the Queen!

Strawberries champagne and too much cake!

Short answer of course is same as all of yours - I don't know exactly what would be the quickest re-balance that wouldn't create some kind of civil unrest.

However, confiscation of assets is very definitely on the agenda not as any means to fund much but perhaps to set the scene for the real changes.

Assets to be confiscated would be largely those of private sector director crooks in the first instance - those who have bent the rules on their own pension schemes far more brazenly than Maxwell ever dreamed might be possible before he floated so publicly.

Having gone after the private sector crooks we might make a few examples of the biggest public sector crooks also. Perhaps we could offer added years as an incentive to their public sector colleagues to dub them in.

Then what? Well it is pretty obvious that with a low wage low tax economy, we have the wrong model for inclusion and full social responsibility. That is still no excuse for inequality however.

Somehow we need to change it. It may take twenty years with a fair wind. Yet of course it may be impossible with the totally opportunistic culture that defines most Brits thesedays. The way Brits think, we consider a good war as good as any other sort of national economic upheaval. So there may be many who secretly and totally ignorantly hope for more strife to force a change, any change - just a distraction from reality. Then we can call IT reality and start again ... but people die and suffer terribly in wars - collateral damage to some thinkers.

I am sure such people exist. I nosed up behind a DBS today near Canary Wharf driven by some old white guy who looked from the same era as Roger Moore, and dressed similarly. His personal plate spelled LIBYA in almost as few letters. !!!!!!? Who the hell names their extravagant car after one of the most dangerous failed states?

There is very little community spirit in our streets. People die in their beds and aren't found until they are leaking under the door.

Social responsibility is not ingrained into our children via schools in anything like the same way it is in Scandinavia for example.

A significant number of the deferred members in public service pension schemes are ex forces - their entitlements we are told were largely earned over short periods compared to police, whose pensions exhibit some of the most consistent "job for life" patterns.

Both sections of society might become rebellious if we touch their pensions.

NHS we are told is the source of some of the biggest salaries and biggest pensions. My feeling is that if we need to weed out a few crooked examples, that is the pension scheme we should tackle first.

Far too many in NHS are condoning running it as a pseudo private concern. There are too many Don't carers in NHS and that includes at all levels in all roles, not excluding GPs. It is seen as a gravy train by some seriously clever people whose brains are not fully in use to care for patients.

However, I have no doubt that BMA and unions would be mobilised to fight any change.

So - clearly as a country we have an uphill struggle of enormous proportions, and no clear leaders capable of tackling the task.

Someone has ridiculed the suggestion that we might perhaps reduce or stop basic state pension to people who are too old, if my argument is to be extrapolated. Funnythey should say that. That's not quite so daft as the poster intended it to sound.

My parents have an income of around £2,000pm. Their outgoings are extremely modest, and even with some paid help, they don't spend more than half their income! There's about 25 years of service by a manual worker in a private DB pension at the core of their income, but of course that isn't all that people their age receive. They are a little worried about beginning to spend more and more on paid help. I have reassured them that they needn't worry about ends not meeting!

However, not all are so lucky. The local authority has an awfully restricted budget for the elderly and broadly are just waiting until my parents succumb to dementia I think before they step in and ... confiscate assets! They have expended almost nothing on my parents - they are a waste of space not because they have expended nothing on my parents, but because they have expended taxpayer subsidised time and salaried and pension entitlements on so called "assessments" and inspections and they have made a complete faff of it in several visits. They haven't a clue how to handle and truly care for old people unless those old people are as smart as retired civil servants and still remember all the angles sufficiently to rationally declare exactly what they want!

Of course the staff are nice people and they visit old people (once in a blue moon the same old people!). So they must be worthy, right? Not so sure about that, as you can see.

Isn't confiscation of assets from those who haven't spent it all already by the time their mind begins to wander in old age, part of the way this country is now governed ? Or does confiscation of assets only happen to the stupid who have made insufficient plans to hide assets from local authorities and the tax man?

Isn't all tax confiscation of assets?

Isn't 2012 onward Student Loan repayment a form of discriminatory confiscation of anticipated income aimed at a particular group who are forecast to do too well out of the taxpayer if we had extrapolated into the 21st century, the generous free tuition and grants that some of us enjoyed because real education for all was the sort of thing Churchill and others believed in?

As I say, I haven't thought much about this thread or this problem today, but if there is an answer, the above might contain some of the prologue.

Anyway, another busy day tomorrow so may not be able to expand until the weekend begins.

Feel free to get started yourselves - the problems are obvious. You don't need me to remind you further how out of control it is at the moment.

MPD

BobQ wrote: »

I applaud your stamina in reading the AG posts, I have been worn down to ignoring his witterings.

+1
Filler as too message too short

uk1

a,

There is already a well established method of stealing people's assets ..... capital gains tax, inheritance tax etc to name but two, anything new would be just that ie "new".

The opposing converging social trends to your philosophy is that as the world becomes more complex and as welfare states create rather than reduce the acceleration of the costs of increasingly dependent citizens the more you need to wean people into believing that (a) they can trust the state not to do too much to thieve their possessions and assets and (b) that there is an incentive in the first place to acquire those possessions and assets you have amassed and hope to keep mostly to yourself,

The problem with your solution is that whilst it might give you injections of cash today the natural consequence is that increasing numbers of people choose not to bother and you consequently accelerate dependency and make your problems worst. In other words less people seeing the point in bettering themselves and therefore becoming a greater drain, whilst at the same time reducing the pool of wealth for the state to consider taking. A double whammy. Your idea basically would work short-term but would then fail.

The other problem is that it is impractical because no government would do it.

Jeff

agarnett wrote: »

Hi Jeff,

Very kind of you to volunteer me to update the reports of Record, Hutton, and CASS. Unfortunately I am only just back home part way through my first hot meal today after a day spoiling the wrinklies (my parents) who have over 187 years between them and today, a card from the Queen!

Strawberries champagne and too much cake!

Short answer of course is same as all of yours - I don't know exactly what would be the quickest re-balance that wouldn't create some kind of civil unrest.

However, confiscation of assets is very definitely on the agenda not as any means to fund much but perhaps to set the scene for the real changes.

Assets to be confiscated would be largely those of private sector director crooks in the first instance - those who have bent the rules on their own pension schemes far more brazenly than Maxwell ever dreamed might be possible before he floated so publicly.

Having gone after the private sector crooks we might make a few examples of the biggest public sector crooks also. Perhaps we could offer added years as an incentive to their public sector colleagues to dub them in.

Then what? Well it is pretty obvious that with a low wage low tax economy, we have the wrong model for inclusion and full social responsibility. That is still no excuse for inequality however.

Somehow we need to change it. It may take twenty years with a fair wind. Yet of course it may be impossible with the totally opportunistic culture that defines most Brits thesedays. The way Brits think, we consider a good war as good as any other sort of national economic upheaval. So there may be many who secretly and totally ignorantly hope for more strife to force a change, any change - just a distraction from reality. Then we can call IT reality and start again ... but people die and suffer terribly in wars - collateral damage to some thinkers.

I am sure such people exist. I nosed up behind a DBS today near Canary Wharf driven by some old white guy who looked from the same era as Roger Moore, and dressed similarly. His personal plate spelled LIBYA in almost as few letters. !!!!!!? Who the hell names their extravagant car after one of the most dangerous failed states?

There is very little community spirit in our streets. People die in their beds and aren't found until they are leaking under the door.

Social responsibility is not ingrained into our children via schools in anything like the same way it is in Scandinavia for example.

A significant number of the deferred members in public service pension schemes are ex forces - their entitlements we are told were largely earned over short periods compared to police, whose pensions exhibit some of the most consistent "job for life" patterns.

Both sections of society might become rebellious if we touch their pensions.

NHS we are told is the source of some of the biggest salaries and biggest pensions. My feeling is that if we need to weed out a few crooked examples, that is the pension scheme we should tackle first.

Far too many in NHS are condoning running it as a pseudo private concern. There are too many Don't carers in NHS and that includes at all levels in all roles, not excluding GPs. It is seen as a gravy train by some seriously clever people whose brains are not fully in use to care for patients.

However, I have no doubt that BMA and unions would be mobilised to fight any change.

So - clearly as a country we have an uphill struggle of enormous proportions, and no clear leaders capable of tackling the task.

Someone has ridiculed the suggestion that we might perhaps reduce ot stop basic state pension to people who are too old, if my argument is to be extrapolated. That's not quite so daft as the poster intended it to sound.

My parents have an income of around £2,000pm. Their outgoings are extremely modest, and even with some paid help, they don't spend more than half their income! They are a little worried about beginning to spend more and more on paid help. The local authority has an awfully restricted budget for the elderly and broadly are just waiting until my parents succumb to dementia I think before they step in and ... confiscate assets!

Isn't confiscation of assets from those who haven't spent it all already part of the way this country is governed ? Or does confiscation of assets only happen to the stupid who have made insufficient plans to hide assets from local authorities and the tax man?

Isn't all tax confiscation of assets?

Isn't 2012 onward Student Loan repayment a form of discriminatory confiscation of anticipated income aimed at a particular group who are forecast to do too well out of the taxpayer if we had extrapolated into the 21st century, the generous free tuition and grants that some of us enjoyed because real education for all was the sort of thing Churchill and others believed in?

As I say, I haven't thought much about this thread or this problem today, but if ther is an answer, the above might contain some of the prologue.

Anyway, another busy day tomorrow so may not be able to expand until the weekend begins.

Feel free to get started yourselves - the problems are obvious. You don't need me to remind you further how out of control it is at the moment.

MPD

uk1 wrote: »

If I might speak on Einstein's behalf as he was unable to join this thread this evening, he would say, I am sure, that people that agree with you have little to offer you in terms of learning something new. Listening to others who have a contrary view might offer the chance to learn something, however you like the way that they choose to express themselves. It is the points that are potentially illuminating. And remote-control bullying is something I know that Bert would disapprove of.

In his professional life Einstein was famous for ignoring what everyone else said. The one time he did listen he made up the cosmological constant.

If only I had the intellect to make such a mistake.

[Deleted User]

MPD wrote: »

+1
Filler as too message too short

Cheers for that, but I'm now a changed man. I was reading post 242 until I got to the part "However, confiscation of assets is very definitely on the agenda not as any means to fund much but perhaps to set the scene for the real changes. "

Confiscation of assets......

I confess that at that point, I stopped...;). I suspect I'm done with this poster for a while.

WR

uk1

MPD wrote: »

In his professional life Einstein was famous for ignoring what everyone else said. The one time he did listen he made up the cosmological constant.

If only I had the intellect to make such a mistake.

I'm not certain that is entirely true, but he did say "It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed. "

I find it difficult to understand why anyone would continue to read threads that are clearly of no interest to them and simply post messages in the hope of hurting someone elses feelings. Most people do not behave that way "face to face" and I think it reflects badly on posters that are unable to simply ignore threads and let them die a natural death in their own time.

If we're decent people then surely all of us should dissaprove of bullying - irrespective of whether you agree with the person being bullied - if we want forums to be nice places, shouldn't we? I think we should all agree to draw a line where bullying and rudeness is unacccpetable .... full stop.

Jeff

BobQ

uk1 wrote: »

I mean this nicely, honestly, but for someone who chooses to align himself with Einstein, you are I feel a little intolerant of others.

If I might speak on Einstein's behalf as he was unable to join this thread this evening, he would say, I am sure, that people that agree with you have little to offer you in terms of learning something new. Listening to others who have a contrary view might offer the chance to learn something, however you like the way that they choose to express themselves. It is the points that are potentially illuminating. And remote-control bullying is something I know that Bert would disapprove of.

So I ask you and others in all niceness, let him be and let us try and be nice to each other if we can.

Jeff

Not sure why you ask me and others to "let him be" but do not expect the same from him? His posts have not lived up to the ideals that you apparently seek on social media yet you see the need to admonish me.

If you look at this thread you will see that I have read several of his lengthy, often bitter posts, and responded constructively on several occasions. Others have called AG bigoted and envious, and put him on ignore, I have not. It you disliked my reference to his "wittering" you might note that this is a reference to the fact he accused me of wittering (in the middle of one of his longer posts).

BobQ

agarnett wrote: »

However, confiscation of assets is very definitely on the agenda not as any means to fund much but perhaps to set the scene for the real changes.

I think confiscation of assets would be a vote loser. A reason for significant numbers to vote against a government, unlikely to get the support of the rest of the voters apart from the true class warriors like yourself.

A solution that could be adopted is to say that anyone with a salary of more than £100K cannot join the pension scheme. It would raise the salaries they would demand but hey ho nothing is perfect.

Somehow we need to change it. It may take twenty years with a fair wind. Yet of course it may be impossible with the totally opportunistic culture that defines most Brits these days.

It happened when Mrs T was at the helm. She changed several generations into more selfishness and opportunism.

NHS we are told is the source of some of the biggest salaries and biggest pensions. My feeling is that if we need to weed out a few crooked examples, that is the pension scheme we should tackle first.

There are two categories the senior managers and the medical specialists. I am more comfortable about high pensions to well paid consultants and GPs than the managers in the NHS. Not sure why any are "crooked". Do you have the view that accepting a high salary is necessarily "crooked"?

Someone has ridiculed the suggestion that we might perhaps reduce or stop basic state pension to people who are too old, if my argument is to be extrapolated. Funnythey should say that. That's not quite so daft as the poster intended it to sound.

I think it is.

My parents have an income of around £2,000pm. Their outgoings are extremely modest, and even with some paid help, they don't spend more than half their income! ................ They are a little worried about beginning to spend more and more on paid help. I have reassured them that they needn't worry about ends not meeting! ...................However, not all are so lucky. The local authority has an awfully restricted budget for the elderly and broadly are just waiting until my parents succumb to dementia I think before they step in and ... confiscate assets!

Is your concern that you are missing out on an inheritance?

Isn't confiscation of assets from those who haven't spent it all already by the time their mind begins to wander in old age, part of the way this country is now governed ? Or does confiscation of assets only happen to the stupid who have made insufficient plans to hide assets from local authorities and the tax man?

No it is someone who is incapable of looking after themselves being expected to use their assets to fund their care. Personally I would levy a death tax of 10% of all estates to fund free care for all. That would be re-distributive.

Isn't all tax confiscation of assets?

No it is meeting your obligations as a citizen.

Isn't 2012 onward Student Loan repayment a form of discriminatory confiscation of anticipated income aimed at a particular group who are forecast to do too well out of the taxpayer if we had extrapolated into the 21st century, the generous free tuition and grants that some of us enjoyed because real education for all was the sort of thing Churchill and others believed in?

No it is repayment of a debt which is necessary because of the economics of sending 40% of school leavers to university. Free tuition only worked when 5% went to university. Of course you could fund it my more confiscation!

As I say, I haven't thought much about this thread or this problem today, but if there is an answer, the above might contain some of the prologue.

I am not sure you have a clear idea of what you want from the above.

uk1

BobQ wrote: »

Not sure why you ask me and others to "let him be" but do not expect the same from him? His posts have not lived up to the ideals that you apparently seek on social media yet you see the need to admonish me.

If you look at this thread you will see that I have read several of his lengthy, often bitter posts, and responded constructively on several occasions. Others have called AG bigoted and envious, and put him on ignore, I have not. It you disliked my reference to his "wittering" you might note that this is a reference to the fact he accused me of wittering (in the middle of one of his longer posts).

My apologies, if you felt me uneven. I mean well.

Jeff

bowlhead99

agarnett wrote: »

I just set 'em up bowlhead99. So you read it ? But you added very little of your own to the interpretation - pray why not?

a) I didn't read it. It was over a hundred pages. I simply skimmed the contents page to easily find a couple of salient points that didn't support your arguments.

b) I 'added very little of my own to the interpretation, why not?' Are you serious? It's a large book and I have had five minutes to look at it. What am I supposed to do, take a few months off work, perform some original analysis on the decade old document and write tens of pages of my own commentary for you to not care about anyway?

I wrote a few paragraphs on points which were relevant to your earlier arguments. Whereas you just threw out the whole 127 page document onto the thread for us to read without offering any interpretation, opinion or comment as to why we might like to read it or how the authors opinions supported or contradicted your own. Your approach hardly furthers the debate. So it's not particularly useful for you to then criticise others for actually reading what you give us and quoting it back to you with comment.

If I said, "quick, mister agarnett, please go and read the hundred million items in the british library and five billion websites, all my thoughts are probably in there somewhere, come back in half an hour and tell me what you think....." And then if you went away, looked at what I'd asked you to look at, and had a quick stab at commenting on it, and I just replied "oh you seem to have added relatively little of your own to the sum of what has already been published , why is that?". You would write me off as some sort of mickey-taker.

So why am I even entertaining the idea of hitting 'reply' to you on this thread?:rotfl:

For the truly wise amongst us, it should be obvious from that report that the £1tn figure is 10 years out of date AND that it predated the totally unexpected Financial Crisis, AND that if the basis of it is indeed the assumed cost of gilts (in 2006) that would provide the necessary yield (in 2006) to support public service pensions then it is totally incorrect now (in 2016).

One of the ways the report got to the £1tn was by taking the figure they projected to be the government version of the numbers of £0.6bn or whatever, and adjusting it upwards for a variety of things to make it more 'realistic' including using a gilt return of inflation plus one and a bit percent, instead of inflation plus 2.8% or more.

The return of gilts gives some sort of indication of the time-cost of money when discounting back these annual pensioner payments to a present day cost of funding it. We are talking about some future costs being paid in 20, 40, 60+ years time and are just trying to get a broad measure of quantifying these fixed liabilities in current terms.

We are not trying to *actually* invest hundreds of billions of cash today into equities, commodities, properties and bonds etc to produce the returns to settle the liabilities, as 'real' funded pension funds do, or as you and I might use within our own DC pensions. Doing that to produce the future sums of money, if we wanted to entrust these huge amounts of money to a wealth manager, might assume a return of inflation plus 3%+ would be achieved on what we put away today over the multi-decade timescales. But in the actuarial calculations we are just using a gilt-based interest rate to give a conservative cost and are not actually trying to fund it today.

You're right that index linked gilts are now returning rather less than in 2006, credit crunch and QE and all that. But we are talking about a 40, 60, 80 year payment timescale in which the money is needed. Real gilt yields are on the floor at the moment but won't always be. In the long term the cost of gilts or the return from gilts, depending what side you're looking at it from, will probably be 'inflation plus a bit'. Historically over the last century it was.

So a temporary situation where bond yields are the lowest for a century is probably not the time to go and buy gilts to fund the whole 80 years of liability that we currently face. As someone who claims to be an expert in risk management that seems a pretty dumb approach. The 'inflation plus one and a bit percent' from the 2006 report is probably fine for a long term estimate, even if the gilt rates happen to be a bit lower than that today.

As such, the cost of future pension obligations as of now has probably not quintupled from the estimate ten years ago as you seem to infer, especially given the change of terms (worsening from employee perspective) in some of the public schemes.

Funded private sector schemes have mandatory 3 year revaluations for a reason. Many would say that full annual revaluations are necessary these days. Are you therefore satisfied with no revaluation in 10 years?

If you are trying to keep a scheme fully funded then it is worth revaluing every year or three to assess whether as an employer you ought to put more money into it, or whether as an employee it is realistic that the scheme will survive until you can reap the rewards.

However if you are not trying to keep the scheme fully funded because you have adopted pay-as-you-go rather than fund-in-advance, then an expensive full valuation is not practically needed every year. There are no assets being put into the pot, so there is no point revaluing it with a different theoretical discount rate each year and then saying ooh we are over or under. As the report said, "Is there anything inherently wrong in unfunded pension schemes in the public sector? Probably not. The arguments for funding public sector pensions per se are not strong."

something Hutton said about the growth of the problem might be pertinent to note: he said that the number of pensioners the number of pensioners in the five largest (public service) schemes had increased 27 per cent in a decade. We can hardly be surprised at that ... it was the early baby boomers coming through.

So, care to take a guess at what the true measure of public service pensions might be ? Is it perhaps £5tn? Pick a number.

Of course the number of pensioners was increasing over the decade. As you say, baby boomers coming through. Over that period under review, quite a lot of former employees reached retirement and the number dying off was a little lower, relatively, than it had been, because of people living a bit longer.

But the £1tn estimate was already assuming a whole bunch of former employees would reach retirement and that in 2010 people would live longer than in 2000. That is how you do a projection, by forecasting who will retire and how long they will live. The fact that an absolute larger number of pensioners exist in 2010 compared to 2000, whether it is 5% higher or 25% higher, does not mean the projection did not expect that. The Hutton report does not say 25% more pensioners exist now than were forecast to exist now, when forecasting it a decade ago.

So the idea that the £1tn should quintuple to £5tn is somewhat off the mark.

And forget it if so disposed ...

Yes I will forget the made up number you pulled out of nowhere, cheers.

If this was a properly built society with........
... anyway.

Sorry I skimmed and ignored all that because it was 400-500 words, enough to fill a page of A4 with suitable paragraph breaks but you didn't use any so it looked inpenetrable.

Bowlhead99, you did at least acknowledge the report was from 2006, but then oh so limply said there'd been a lot of changes since then. That must be the understatement of the last 100 years!

My comment was an observation that the report suggested some change was absolutely necessary, and that in fact there have indeed been a lot of changes - I have a number of friends in public sector who have had their terms changed to something less favourable than what they were in 2006. This is factual, and not 'limply suggesting'.

Someone else in the thread observed their PS scheme is now based on a lower salary, demands greater employee contribution, and enforces a later retirement age. These are the sort of changes that go some way to addressing the fact that we don't want final salary, early retirement date and low employee contributions, and will help prevent that £1tn becoming more difficult to afford.

Yes, there have been other things going on in the last decade of course. The state of the economy changes all the time.

He was inviting us to take a look, not to start thumping it like some radical bible-basher!

Thats funny, you gave a link (implying we should read some unspecified part of it and presumably inviting comment) and then if some of those comments are not what you were looking for, we are being a thumping bible basher and incapable of free thought??

To me, it seems that you just don't want to hear what doesn't accord with your worldview .

Bit maybe you're just misunderstood. You may wonder why some don't engage with you or truly see the point you are making. The next couple of paragraphs of yours are an example of the way you ramble a very long way off topic while trying to make a clever analogy and effectively put in 200 words of absolutely nothing into the middle of a post, which makes it very difficult to see the wood for the trees. This makes your prospective audience give up on you without hearing you out properly. It probably sounds good in your head but comes across as pretty unfocussed unfiltered detritus.

But even if it is like a bible of a report in some way, what has happened in the intervening period is like Old Testament versus New! Because the habit of stoning (of workers and the generally defenceless) stopped, and because the hoi polloi found special medicinal benefits when swimming pools full of post war German water were turned into refreshing Black Tower Liebraumilch wine for us, the victors (our respective economies might argue for a different description!), and because we then soon developed sophisticated palettes for the even more medicinal Claret and Chardonnay, and even single malts once reserved only for senior civil servants, hoards of us are now still waking each morning with hangovers looking forward to doing it all again at way past three score years and ten! But soon only the public service workers will be the ones who can afford the medicine.

Put another way, we just can't seem to get the same quality loaves and fishes to solve the problem of looking after the massed crowds as they used to! And they did use to look after the crowds, didn't they? Why aren't we so disposed? Are they unworthy?

Do yourself a favour and try to make your points or suggest your solutions without resorting to crazy analogies.

In a later post Jeff had said

I've invited agarnett to state what he thinks a government will actually choose to do so that we can gauge how politically possible his proposed situation is. Constantly repeating that it is unfair I think should now stop as I think we are clear about his statement of the problem, so now it would be interesting to see how far he has thought it through from a practical solutions standpoint.

and I was intrigued to hear what your practical solution was.

The summary you then came up in post #242 was confiscate the assets of private company director crooks, then public sector crooks, and do something about people with personal number plates, and NHS workers who don't care hard enough, and your parents probably have enough money so we could have some of that, but beyond those very practical suggestions you haven't really thought about it so that's just a prelude, perhaps we could go and think about it for ourselves and tell you the answer.

If that's the prelude I don't know that I'm too interested in hanging around for the real show.

So can we please take a quantum leap into the present and get real, please?

If only.