Are pensioners about to be shafted – again?

Sapphire

Number75 wrote: »

I'm not as negative about the younger adults as you though.
For every 30 year old living at home that you know, I can probably find a 20 year old (my stepdaughter) working hard part time to find her own degree. And I daresay when you were working hard in <insert year!> there were others just bumming around.

I work for a big blue chip and it's full of bright, motivated and hard working "snowflake" millennials.

I agree that automation will have a massive impact on jobs - but there is creation too. More of our children will code - someone has to create the automation! And that isn't all high level project management senior programming roles. I met a guy on a course who saw call centres as the new mines (in that, they could be poorly paid and bad for your health but one of limits options!)

There is great scope for our children in creative industries, technology and (perhaps sadly!) marketing. When I was at school, no-one would have suggested I aim for a job managing a company's social media presence. New types of job are emerging all the time, and I'm actually quite positive that lots of younger people are working bloody hard at those!

I agree. There are people who are managing to find work, but they are generally from backgrounds that you would call 'privileged'. I don't mean that they are necessarily even from affluent backgrounds, but they come from homes that valued the need for people to go out and do their thing, on their own, and instructed their offspring accordingly, as well as sending them to the right schools. One chap I know (well, he did go to Oxford, so does have an advantage in that he has bags of confidence) really, really wants to be a film producer, and has recently left home and set up (so far successfully) on his own, which is not easy in the film industry. Another does photography for estate agents, and is reasonably successful at that, and another buys suits in Italy and sells them in Britain, as well as having bought a couple of properties (both of these people come from exceptionally clever parents, with 'wide-ranging ideas'). There are also people I know who write books successfully. But still, I think the opportunities to find work will be very limited in future, which is why children will be lucky to inherit from their parents (provided that the money is not siphoned away by the government or other possibilities). I don't know about their children, though, unless there is a dramatic reduction in the world's population.

I suspect there will be many, many British people who will not be able to find jobs in future (those who come from backgrounds in the 'old industrial north', for example). That's unless things change dramatically and we do bring back some industry to Britain and employ Britons, though the unions would make it very difficult for us to do that cost effectively, given the competition that exists worldwide…

mgdavid

I propose this thread be moved to the 'Arms' as it appears to be a political and/or sociological [STRIKE]rant[/STRIKE] discussion rather than pension-specific.

fatbeetle

My daughter, age 22, does three jobs, and studies for a degree at Australia's best Uni. She lives independently from us with her boyfriend/partner. She is loving her life, will be holidaying in Japan this year, and has ambitions to train as a doctor.

I think a great deal has to do with the "millennials'" own mindset, and the example set by their parents.

p00hsticks

Sapphire wrote: »

Is it? I didn't know that. I thought many civil servants, MPs, etc., accrued very large pensions due to the work they do in addition to their work in government.

You've been watching too much 'Yes, Minister', The vast majority of civil servants aren't bowler hatted middle aged men in Westminster, they're young people working in places like local Job Centres, Benefit Centres, HMRC Call centres etc .....

Many will be on below average salaries and hence not accruing large pensions

steampowered

The concern of young people being lazier than previous generations is a concern that older generations have had for hundreds of years. It is nothing new.

I also think it is wrong. It seems to me that people are in fact working more hours rather than less.

Certainly in my industry (professional services) the 24 hours, always contactable working culture that technology has allowed means that people work much, much harder than they used to a few years ago.

Furthermore, younger people today are faced with much less secure employment. People no longer have "jobs for life". There is also much more competition to secure good graduate jobs than there used to be. Not to mention that students have to pay tuition fees of £9,250 a year to go to university.

steampowered

Sapphire wrote: »

I take it you don't have to exist on a state pension. :rotfl:

People have to take responsibility for saving for their own retirement. They know it is coming and they have 40+ years of working life to prepare for it. The government also gives enormous tax benefits to encourage people to save for a pension. There is really no excuse for not not having a pension.

Frankly, if you didn't contribute to a pension, and you still want to retire at 65, you can't expect the state to pay for you to have a high standard of living. In my view the state pension should provide a very basic standard of living only.

I would also point out that the state pension is £119.30 per week. This is almost double the £57.90 per week JSA which which young people who are searching for work are expected to live on.

Sapphire

mgdavid wrote: »

I propose this thread be moved to the 'Arms' as it appears to be a political and/or sociological [STRIKE]rant[/STRIKE] discussion rather than pension-specific.

Yes, sorry about that – my fault. I moved onto things I'm thinking a lot about these days…

I'll stay off the thread from now.

Sapphire

steampowered wrote: »

Furthermore, younger people today are faced with much less secure employment. People no longer have "jobs for life". There is also much more competition to secure good graduate jobs than there used to be. Not to mention that students have to pay tuition fees of £9,250 a year to go to university.

'Jobs for life' is something I've never experienced in the profession I worked in, which is publishing, or in any other industry I've been involved in, and I think it is a somewhat mythical concept. Perhaps there were once 'jobs for life' in certain industries, or banking, or the civil service (possibly still are in the latter)? However, I do know there was once great job uncertainty, especially for people like dockers and the like, who led precarious existences and experienced true poverty of the like not seen in this country nowadays.

This was at a time when very few people went to university, though apprenticeships with firms, which led to jobs, were very common. 'Must-have uni degrees for all', perhaps of little use to quite a few who take them, are a relatively recent concept.

Sapphire

steampowered wrote: »

People have to take responsibility for saving for their own retirement. They know it is coming and they have 40+ years of working life to prepare for it. The government also gives enormous tax benefits to encourage people to save for a pension. There is really no excuse for not not having a pension.

Frankly, if you didn't contribute to a pension, and you still want to retire at 65, you can't expect the state to pay for you to have a high standard of living. In my view the state pension should provide a very basic standard of living only.

I would also point out that the state pension is £119.30 per week. This is almost double the £57.90 per week JSA which which young people who are searching for work are expected to live on.

I'm sure pensioners who you no doubt think are very wealthy and should subsist on the amount you suggest (which would give them little enjoyment and a miserable existence and terrible standards of care) after a lifetime of hard work would be delighted with your view. Young people living on JSA need only do so for a short period, and have every opportunity of removing themselves from their position. Retired people do not, though of course with your obvious dislike of older people, you'd not mind if they ended up in the gutter – or better still, in some Soylent Green scenario. Lovely. One can only hope the same thing happens to you one day.

What you say in your first paragraph may be true for the last decade or so, but no one dreamt that their pensions would be messed around with in future before that. People were given to understand that they would contribute a certain amount, then get an assured return for that. To go back on such promises would be truly despicable – fine to make adjustments for future higher rate tax-paying pensioners, but not for those already taking pensions, who would have no way of bettering their financial position.

bowlhead99

Sapphire wrote: »

though of course with your obvious dislike of older people, you'd not mind if they ended up in the gutter – or better still, in some Soylent Green scenario. Lovely. One can only hope the same thing happens to you one day.

Steampowered did not say anything that implied they disliked old people and wanted them to die in a gutter or be blended into food. So, grow the hell up and stop being so bloody childish and wishing that sort of thing back on them. :sad:

What you say in your first paragraph may be true for the last decade or so, but no one dreamt that their pensions would be messed around with in future before that. People were given to understand that they would contribute a certain amount, then get an assured return for that. To go back on such promises would be truly despicable

Nobody who's now a pensioner started their working life with the expectation that the state pension would come with triple locked pension increases, free travel and TV licence etc, as those are relatively modern inventions.

The 'assured return' they receive (especially including pension credits and housing support etc) is is on average rather larger than what someone starting work decades ago and paying a small token stamp each week would have reasonably expected; it is not poverty, and due to life expectancy the pension benefits go on for much longer than it was once expected to last. For many pensioners it may exceed the amounts they paid in over a lifetime of work, in real terms.

– fine to make adjustments for future higher rate tax-paying pensioners, but not for those already taking pensions, who would have no way of bettering their financial position.

Yes, its probably fine to make adjustments for those who currently have more income than you in retirement or who have saved and invested all their lives to make private provision so might draw a higher income from those investments in future, but not fine to make adjustments that affect you, amirite?