Boomers Pension Gravy Train Finally To Be Derailed

Castle

Cornucopia wrote: »

There must be some huge assumptions in there regarding how things will be when a Baby born now reaches 80-90 years old.

Why wouldn't the generations coming after the present new babies pay the upkeep of that generation - that is, after all, how it has been since the inception of the Welfare State.

Here's the original report... good luck understanding it:rotfl:
http://www.niesr.ac.uk/sites/default/files/publications/dp377.pdf

Nick_C

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Obviously there are many more older voters than younger voters, and they / you vote in your naked self interest.

Speak for yourself. I vote for and what I think is in the national interest, not for what benefits me personally.

I would support any move to scrap the triple lock, free prescriptions for all, WFA for all, bus passes for all, TV licenses for the elderly, even though I can expect to benefit from these things in the not too distant future.

As for all the rubbish being talked about pensioners living in poverty, the poverty industry has done a great job in getting relative poverty accepted as the definition. By this definition, you will always have poverty, unless you introduce a Soviet system of income control.

£155 a week after housing costs is not poverty.

westernpromise

I'd vote to introduce the death penalty for envy.

BobQ

ruggedtoast wrote: »

This isn't Logan's Run, Clapton. Obviously there are many more older voters than younger voters, and they / you vote in your naked self interest.

So do most people. I never used to, but I witnessed the triumph of Thatcherism and the self interest it bread.

You have gerrymandered the parliamentary system so that all political parties represent you and then you pour scorn on younger people for not voting for them.

When a candidate does excite the appetites of the young, like Jeremy Corbyn, you pour derision and scorn on their heads and put the full gamut of your propaganda to bear with lies and disinformation. .

I see a moral dilemma for you, the capture of the LABOUR Party by the reactionary forces of the youth has enthused them with policies like this based on jealousy, selfishness and greed. Difficult to reconcile this with socialism eh? And how disappointed they will be when they discover that their fuehrer is unelectable. Even those pesky white working class voters who might agree have gravitated to UKIP who might even get elected in 2015 but who will clearly do nothing to solve their problems. If only Labour had united around a credible centre candidate.

CLAPTON

Castle wrote: »

Here's the original report... good luck understanding it:rotfl:
http://www.niesr.ac.uk/sites/default/files/publications/dp377.pdf

the paper is about accounting
it says NOTHING about what life style you can have or what you can consume or what your health will be.

so maybe you will pay a higher proportion of your income in taxation in 30 years time but it says nothing about what you will be able to buy with what you have left.

100 years ago most people paid very little tax certainly compared to the average today: but only an idiot would conclude that they were therefore 'richer ' or more advanatged than we are today.

there is every expectation that young people today (even toxic toastie) will be better off in their final years than the boomers will be in their final days .

Thrugelmir

steampowered wrote: »

But at some point there does have to come a recognition that the existing system is completely unsustainable. Either the boomers have to accept that more of the wealth they have accumulated should be put towards paying for their own pensions and benefits/services; or we have a situation where the young will be funding boomer retirement benefits at a level far in excess of what will be available to young people when they retire.

The young are the ones benefiting from the new expensive treatments. Wasn't so long ago people went to hospital to die. As cures didn't exist. A baby today has a 1 in 6 chance of living to 100.

steampowered

Cornucopia wrote: »

What form does the £223k take? I have paid vast amounts of tax in the past, and never claimed benefits for much longer than a few weeks (probably less than 3 months in total). If this is some kind of averaging based on a few people who have barely worked, then I want to opt out of that argument, because that isn't me, and I would never have agreed that anyone could have a lifetime on benefits, if I had been asked (which I never was).

It refers to benefits and services. The figure includes schools, the NHS, roads, defence and other public spending items which all need to be paid for.

To give you a reference point, the government spends about £11,707 per person (last year's government spending of £761 billion divided by our population of 65 million people). You therefore need to be pay £11,707 in tax per year to be a net contributor to public finances.

While you may have never claimed benefits you did go to school, use hospitals, use roads, benefit from defence, have your rubbish collected etc. and all of these things need to be paid for.

The fundamental issue for me is that the boomer generation - as a whole - has taken far more from the state than it has put in. £223k more (on average) to be precise.

That is why the current situation is unsustainable. You cannot, in the long term, have a situation where people receive £223k more in benefits and government services during their lives than they pay in tax. No matter what your personal viewpoint is that cannot be sustained simply on economic grounds.

I personally believe that arrangement is also very unfair. How the situation could be remedied is another debate entirely. Possible options include cutting the benefits given to boomers (such as the state pension), raising the state pension age significantly or increasing taxes which hit boomers proportionately harder than younger people (such as property taxes and inheritance tax).

steampowered

Thrugelmir wrote: »

The young are the ones benefiting from the new expensive treatments. Wasn't so long ago people went to hospital to die. As cures didn't exist. A baby today has a 1 in 6 chance of living to 100.

I agree. Boomers benefit from all those treatments too.

BobQ

steampowered wrote: »

I don't blame the baby-boomers. They didn't intend for this to happen. Largely because boomers did not know that life expectancies would increase so much, and failed to make the necessary adjustments (such as increasing the state pension age dramatically) until it was too late.

But at some point there does have to come a recognition that the existing system is completely unsustainable. Either the boomers have to accept that more of the wealth they have accumulated should be put towards paying for their own pensions and benefits/services; or we have a situation where the young will be funding boomer retirement benefits at a level far in excess of what will be available to young people when they retire.

I think this is a fair summary. In reality is up to Government to set the taxation regime to create the balance between generations, which means at least keeping taxpaid minus benefits received calculation within a defined band around balance.

I am not sure if any of the measures taken recently have been included in the calculation, for example changes to the retirement ago and to state and public sector pensions.

What is regrettable is the personal bile directed towards individuals who no fault of their own have benefited.

The people on these threads are the exception in that they have some insight into the facts. But most people, even clever and successful people have not got a clue. You only have to look at the pensions thread and how often someone says: I now have to pay 6% for my DB pension, should I opt out? and another says: I am paying 2% into my DC pension and so is my employer: my friend says I should opt out since my fund is only 100K.

But I agree some more measures are needed. Personally, I favour a death tax meaning that anyone without a dependent or a surviving spouce who died automatically pays a % of their estate to a fund. That could help fund changes in other areas, probably skewed to the younger generation

Linton

westernpromise wrote: »

I don't think so. You're about 5 to 10 years off and they make a big difference.

The ONS produced this chart
http://www.ons.gov.uk/resource?uri=/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationprojections/bulletins/nationalpopulationprojections/2013-11-06/1e03dca7.png

which shows that the end of the boom, the outermost portion of the chart, was among people who were then around 50 and would now be in their mid-50s. Even people a bit older than that are in an economic situation much closer to that of a 40-something than a 60-something in that they bought their first house after everyone older had already bid them up and yet they are still 10 to 15 years away from a defined contribution pension.

The ideal years to be born were the war years. If born after October 1939 you didn't have to do National Service, you bought your house ahead of the rush in about 1965 and you stood a good chance of retiring early aged 55 in 1990 with a final salary pension and the mortgage paid off.

Obviously you can choose your dates to optimise your case, but lets look at a relatively authoritative source....

Baby boomers are the demographic group born during the post–World War II baby boom, approximately between the years 1946 and 1964. This includes people who are between 52 and 70 years old in 2016, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Wikipedia

So if one expands the dates to produce a generation of 25 years one gets 1943-1968 or thereabouts which doesnt make any great change to my point.

Next - if you bought your house in 1965 you werent an average member of the population. Most people left any form of education at 15, lived with their parents until they got married and then perhaps moved into rented accomodation. If they bought, they bought as a couple most likely with a child.
Some data I found shows that in 1964 of all households with a head of family aged less than 30, 36% were owner occupiers and 64% renters.

DB pensions again were for a minority. Most people had no occupational pension provision at all, hence the introduction of SERPs in 1978.