Boomers Pension Gravy Train Finally To Be Derailed

antrobus

Woby_Tide wrote: »

So if they are dropping off a cliff can't be long till we're 27th. Though one has to wonder how the magnificent baby boomer generation that created this system managed to do it so badly. Really doesn't bode well for the millennials as Clapton says if his cohorts couldn't manage it properly

The UK is not the only country with an ageing population. Every other country in Europe has the same problem.

POPPYOSCAR

I really do not get all this vitriol to the older generation.

Our children have much more than we ever had at their age and that is without any financial help from us.

Rich2808

whattochoose wrote: »

Doesn't the UK have one of the lowest state pensions in Europe, which makes the title of this thread somewhat laughable?

So the pension systems in the rest of Europe and the US are unsustainable and unaffordable as well. Living on the never never can't carry on forever - dumping debt on the grandkids.

We forget the cost of health care which rises exponentially for the elderly as they get past 70 plus social care - those are added costs too.

Because we do actually have to think of today's young and middle aged who are paying for this but probably won't gat any state pension at all or have to wait until 75 or 80 to get it. They have much higher housing costs than today's pensioners did given the rise in house prices in the last 30 years.

steampowered

westernpromise wrote: »

Entitlement to a state pension can be withdrawn at any time. The state just goes ahead and does it. What a state website says today is literally worthless as a predictor of what I would actually get in the future.

My experience with state benefits is that I am denied them, essentially for having previously had a job.

Your reference to Labour "destroying pensions" was a reference to Labour withdrawing some of the tax benefits associated with private pensions. It has nothing to do with the state pension. If you don't have a private pension you weren't affected.

The state pension is currently being increased year-on-year under the triple lock. I accept that may not continue increasing in value for all of the next 10-15 years, but the chance of it being abolished completely is surely absolutely tiny. You can at least make a reasonable guesstimate of what you will get by working out what you would be entitled to at today's figures.

Rather than referring to your "experience" of other benefits, why don't you actually check the eligibility criteria yourself at https://www.gov.uk/state-pension.

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. Presumably you meet this criteria if you are complaining about people not working hard enough?

steampowered

POPPYOSCAR wrote: »

I really do not get all this vitriol to the older generation.

Our children have much more than we ever had at their age and that is without any financial help from us.

I think this is why:

While the average 65-year-old has enjoyed a net £223,183 state subsidy above the tax paid, a new-born child will have to contribute a net £159,668 over their lifetime. Source.

I suppose the other point is house prices - when the older generation channels so much of their wealth into houses and buy-to-lets, there is little chance for people on average incomes to have a hope in hell of buying a house (certainly much less chance than their parents had).

markharding557

Any change in the triple lock won't happen until after the next election but expect it to be very soon afterwards.
This election bribe was made by a desperate to cling on to power Cameron, May, faced with the farce which are Labour today and the irrelevant Lib Dems is not in that position.

Loanranger

Don't worry, this can be challenged in the High Court as discriminatory under the Equality Act.
You're welcome.

Nick_C

POPPYOSCAR wrote: »

I really do not get all this vitriol to the older generation.

Our children have much more than we ever had at their age and that is without any financial help from us.

What vitriol? We are simply saying that it is unfair that pensioners have been getting increases higher than inflation while other state benefits and public services have been cut.

No one is proposing a cut in state pensions. We are simply saying that the triple lock - which is costing £6 billion every year - is scrapped in favour of linking state pensions to inflation.

And your children are lucky, and I suspect atypical. I got free higher education and a student grant. I started my working life free of debt at a time when rents were affordable. I bought my first home at the age of 25 for three times salary. I didn't have all the material things that people in their twenties take for granted these days; many of them had not been invented! I wouldn't like to be starting out now.

ukcarper

steampowered wrote: »

I think this is why:

While the average 65-year-old has enjoyed a net £223,183 state subsidy above the tax paid, a new-born child will have to contribute a net £159,668 over their lifetime. Source.

I suppose the other point is house prices - when the older generation channels so much of their wealth into houses and buy-to-lets, there is little chance for people on average incomes to have a hope in hell of buying a house (certainly much less chance than their parents had).

That's rubbish the vast majority of older people do not have but to lets, all they have done is live in houses that have increased in price.

I'd like to see a detailed breakdown of those figures as apposed to a telegraph article.

missbiggles1

antrobus wrote: »

Not really, the additional benefits are means tested. Means tested benefits for pensioners are also available in other European countries. It does not change the fact that the "UK has a markedly less generous public pension system than other EU countries". (As Parliament puts it.)


That's because, in the UK, we also have a private pension system. Although as you see on this thread, it has been suggested that the last Labour government rather b******d those up.



http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN00290/SN00290.pdf

Most other countries have private/occupational pension schemes as well as the state run ones, I don't know why you think the UK is alone in that. The countries with high state pensions certainly don't get housing costs paid on top!

Neither do most people in the UK get only the basic SRP unless they've been contracted out and, in that case, they'll have a private/occupational pension as well. Someone who's never been contacted out will get more than double the basic state pension. (Obviously based on those retiring before 2016 or whose pension rights under the old scheme are protected.)