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Boomers Pension Gravy Train Finally To Be Derailed

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  • Cornucopia
    Cornucopia Posts: 16,495 Forumite
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    edited 11 November 2016 at 9:44PM
    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.
    That definitely makes me a net contributor.
    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.
    Everyone does those things, though. That cannot be the sole source of the alleged c. £380k discrepancy (I assume that that is the discrepancy that is being suggested).
    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.
    As I say, I am a net contributor so far, possibly 2 or 3 times over. I had no real say in what everyone else did. That makes it somewhat unfair and unintelligent to try to brand us all as being somehow part of a malign group with consistent behaviours that we never had.

    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.
    At the moment, I'm unconvinced that the £233k is an accurate figure that makes any sense. I'd also need to be convinced that the traditional inter-generational funding of the Welfare State doesn't account for it in an uncontroversial way.

    If the proposition is that the paradigm has changed and that inter-generational funding of welfare benefits has now become unsustainable, then I am prepared to believe that, although it does not seem to be what people are saying, nor does it seem like something that people should be getting quite so angry about.
  • MobileSaver
    MobileSaver Posts: 4,349 Forumite
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    During their life the average 65-year old receives £223,183 more in services and benefits from the state than they pay in tax, while the average new-born child is expected to pay £159,668 more in tax.

    Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/8384449/NIESR-Taxes-must-rise-by-90bn-a-year-to-fund-baby-boomers.html.

    Obviously that report makes a huge number of future assumptions and so to present it as a fact is disingenuous.

    However, clearly the single most material factor is that people are living longer; it does not take a genius to work out that people living longer means higher costs for everyone to pay. Surely even Rugged cannot spin this "problem" to be a "fault" of the Boomers?
    Every generation blames the one before...
    Mike + The Mechanics - The Living Years
  • BobQ
    BobQ Posts: 11,181 Forumite
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    Do we really want a society in which we each have individual accounts of ins and outs?
    Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are incapable of forming such opinions.
  • BobQ wrote: »
    Do we really want a society in which we each have individual accounts of ins and outs?

    That would be a true free market.

    I wouldn't personally advocate going that far, but we should move further towards that way of thinking as a society. Nothing should be an entitlement or free in the way it is now. Vouchers for housing and food, some way of invoicing the government for care for the disabled and infirm, money should never be handed from the government to people to spend as they wish in my opinion. The aim should be to provide shelter, food, education, care and safety. Not a flat screen TV, holidays, iPhones, Nike, etc...
  • BobQ
    BobQ Posts: 11,181 Forumite
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    That would be a true free market.

    I wouldn't personally advocate going that far, but ...

    Neither would I but it is also quite unfair to work on the basis of averages Some older people will still be net contributors to the system. Some younger people will be net beneficiaries by their mid thirties.

    The averages may be accurate but I think it is down to Government to set the tax and pension rates to achieve the balance.
    ..... we should move further towards that way of thinking as a society. Nothing should be an entitlement or free in the way it is now. Vouchers for housing and food, some way of invoicing the government for care for the disabled and infirm, money should never be handed from the government to people to spend as they wish in my opinion. The aim should be to provide shelter, food, education, care and safety. Not a flat screen TV, holidays, iPhones, Nike, etc...

    My usual answer is : should we give out vouchers to middle class parents to stop them saving their child benefits in a savings account so that they can build an extension or something else which child benefit is not expected to fund.

    On the orinal
    Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are incapable of forming such opinions.
  • The chief deficiency in leftist thinking is the habit of stereotyping people on the basis of some characteristic that the left thinks makes them identical. Thus we heard Ed Miliband in 215 talking about how to get out what he called "the Sikh vote" - as though there is one.

    Toastie likewise considers all "boomers" to be the same because it facilitates and excuses hating them. This is simply abject moral incompetence and it should not be mistaken for a legitimate point of view.
  • borkid
    borkid Posts: 2,478 Forumite
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    BobQ wrote: »

    My usual answer is : should we give out vouchers to middle class parents to stop them saving their child benefits in a savings account so that they can build an extension or something else which child benefit is not expected to fund.

    On the orinal
    Only if everyone takes the vouchers. Mine went on my childrens music lessons both at school and privately because it was something the education system didn't provide unless you paid for it. Surely if they were provided as food or clothing vouchers then the parents would reduce their bills and save the money as they liked so really no difference to the family receiving the CB.

    The only way vouchers could help is if they were the only source of income to the family and even then they could be sold on to a 3rd party unless ID were brought in.
  • CLAPTON
    CLAPTON Posts: 41,865 Forumite
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    BobQ wrote: »


    My usual answer is : should we give out vouchers to middle class parents to stop them saving their child benefits in a savings account so that they can build an extension or something else which child benefit is not expected to fund.

    On the orinal

    middle classes are net contributors to the tax system, so 'vouchers' are a bureaucratic, expensive way of taking less from them
  • Linton wrote: »
    Obviously you can choose your dates to optimise your case, but lets look at a relatively authoritative source....



    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.

    I am not sure why you would arbitrarily expand to 25 years, because the span of years these lazy labels encompass is meaninglessly wide already. The point I am making is that anyone born in 1964 arrived on the property market long after prices had been bid up by buyers who had started 20 years before, and thus their position is much closer to that of someone born in in 1975 than to that of someone born in 1945. It is simply silly to suggest that someone who is now 46 is in some way in a uniquely advantageous position versus someone who is now 44, which is where you end up if you insist on hard but arbitrary inclusion points.

    Someone like that probably bought property 15 years ago, doesn't have a final salary pension and won't be collecting whatever s/he does have for another 15 to 2 years. This is streets away from the position of someone born in 1945 who retired early 15 years ago and does have a final salary pension.

    Labelling people "boomers" is a way to demonise a demographic that you hate in order to justify expropriation of them. It is akin to the classic Labour view that you're "rich" if you've got a job.
  • lisyloo
    lisyloo Posts: 30,090 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    CLAPTON wrote: »
    middle classes are net contributors to the tax system, so 'vouchers' are a bureaucratic, expensive way of taking less from them

    Do you have a source?
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