Boomers Pension Gravy Train Finally To Be Derailed

westernpromise

ruggedtoast wrote: »

And there speaks the voice of callous privilege, cast from its ivory tower.

How can a voice occupy a tower, and how do you cast a voice?

ruggedtoast

westernpromise wrote: »

How can a voice occupy a tower, and how do you cast a voice?

And there's another one to join it.

westernpromise

Have you read Orwell's essay Politics and the English Language at all, toastie? You ought to, you're in it.

Malthusian

With state pensions, the reality is exactly the opposite of what you are complaining about. It isn't a case of people who don't work getting it. To get the full state pension - which by the way is by far the biggest benefit in the welfare budget - you need to have made national insurance contributions for 30 years - i.e. you need to have had a job for nearly all your adult working life.

Not actually true - most benefits give you National Insurance credits. Someone who managed to stay on Jobseeker's Allowance or what used to be incapacity benefit for all their working life would get a State Pension.

Even if the State Pension itself has not been means-tested, there have been other pension benefits like Pension Credit which were. At some point in the next few decades, means-testing will be reintroduced. However, it is not 45% taxpayers who have to worry about this, it is people on low incomes. They are the ones who are vulnerable to having their meagre auto-enrolment contributions clawed back by removal of means-tested benefits, just as happened under Pension Credit.

45% taxpayers don't have to worry about such things, they won't be eligible for means-tested benefits no matter what they do. I also don't think there is a significant risk that the State Pension as it currently stands will be removed or clawed back for the well-off, it is simply too great a confiscation of wealth and would be electoral suicide. The means-testing risk relates to new benefits that may at some point be introduced on top of and alongside the state pension.

StevieJ

Is it true that the UK workforce voted to stay in the EU but the jobless/pensioners voted out? Now if that is that is true it is a sign of a divided society (based on exit poll)

• A majority of those working full-time or part-time voted to remain in the EU; most of those not working voted to leave. More than half of those retired on a private pension voted to leave, as did two thirds of those retired on a state pension.

http://lordashcroftpolls.com/2016/06/how-the-united-kingdom-voted-and-why/

Thrugelmir

westernpromise wrote: »

And you think it never will be? I don't.

Will a political party ever dare to ? One suspects not. The administration of such an idea is out of all proportion to the sums being paid as well. Practicalities always need to be considered . The state pension will remain eligible to those that qualify.

What did Browns welfare state reforms involve. An additional 500,000 public sector workers. Sheer lunacy. Easier ways of assisting the less fortunate.

gazter

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Running in both the Guardian and Independent today.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/nov/06/triple-lock-pension-should-scrapped-mps-generational-inequalities

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/scrap-the-triple-lock-on-pensions-mps-say-a7399721.html

Millennials worse off than their parents, retiring boomers living the high life and quaffing expensive drinks while they celebrate their vandalism of the EU.

It seems the country's patience is finally running thin - or, there are now enough younger voters for MPs to consider worth worrying about.

Top comment on the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/nov/06/triple-lock-pension-should-scrapped-mps-generational-inequalities#comment-86951018




An end to free movement, and young people's opportunities devastated by Brexit. All apparently irrelevant to cash rich boomers, flush with housing assets, state pensions, winter handouts and other freebies, not a penny of student loan debt to their name


The month that cruel benefits cuts wipe thousands off the incomes of the poorest. Social mobility lower than in recorded history, homelessness and poverty in the young back to 90's levels. But every year is an inflation busting publicly funded handout for triple locked boomers

Homelessness is less than half what it was in the mid 2000s. With child poverty down.

antrobus

Thrugelmir wrote: »

How sustainable are other countries pension schemes though? ...

Most 'developed' countries face the same problems of an ageing population. Pension reform is a common theme across most of Europe. Or cuts if you happen to be Greek.

Thrugelmir wrote: »

...I'd be interested to see a table of where the UK sits in terms of saving. Germany for example has a very different mentality to using credit.

Eurostat has a table, if you want one.
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init=1&language=en&pcode=tsdec240&plugin=1

The UK doesn't do that well. That has always been the problem with the UK, not enough savings. (Savings equals investment, remember.:))

antrobus

ruggedtoast wrote: »

....Every boomer who walks past a homeless should hang their head in shame.

How would they know? The 'homeless' don't wear badges.

hildosaver

Everybody realises that the vast majority of pensioners (at least the older generation of pensioners) are living in poverty. Right?