Generational Inequality

mrginge

davomcdave wrote: »

There is a conversation about how to measure income.

Is it my gross salary?
Salary less tax?
Salary less tax plus welfare payments?
Salary less tax and housing costs plus welfare payments?
Salary less tax and housing and other assumed necessary costs plus welfare payments?
Something else?

Salary less tax and housing costs plus welfare payments is imperfect as I could live in a castle or a bedsitter but most often used I believe.

As always, it depends what you're measuring and to some extent what answer you want to present

The fact that they even state in the blurb that housing costs are adding to the inequality but the don't quantify it (as far as I can see) is a bit of a cop-out.

MyOnlyPost

Inequality in the generations is largely down to poor long term planning. Although the state pension age has now started to go up it should have been steadily increasing for decades and should currently be over 70 at the very least. Consecutive governemnts have failed to recognise the pension burden of an aging population for at least 50 years and for the first 30 of those at least failed to educate the population in self provision for retirement.

Coupled with that we have an increasingly top heavy population which is increasing the burden on services that have lacked real long term investement for decades as succesive governments continue to appease voters to get elected rather than make the real hard choices.

At some point state pension will be means tested and the NHS will be scaled back with the shortfall in care being provided by the private sector as our current expectations far outstrip what it is able to realistically provid. As more and more expensive treatments are developed it will not be able to cope with the financial burden.

For the first time life expectancy is falling as the nation becomes more obese (myself included) and that may yet be our salvation

Sapphire

davomcdave wrote: »

Reports like this are based on data. You reply seems to be based on prejudice and fear.

I'd love to see the data you base this on. I would imagine that in a world where women are no longer fired for getting married/getting pregnant that families work far longer hours than previously. I'm sure you have data to back this up and I look forward to you linking to it.

Data. My information is based on what I see around me, what I have experienced and what previous generations have experienced compared to current ones. People today are certainly far better off than they were right up to the late seventies (it seems to me from talking to people in their thirties in my family and others that they are wholly ignorant about how their parents and grandparents lived when they were in their thirties). As I said, it takes years to build up wealth, unless you are fortunate enough to inherit – and people in their thirties and younger are in line for inheritances far more than previous generations, providing the money is not taken away by charging pensioners for various things. There are some in my family who have actually assessed what they will be 'getting' once their parents die, something I would never dream of doing.

I would argue, by the way, that £35,000 p.a. (which many pensioners do not achieve) is not that much after four or five decades of work and saving. There are, of course, people who achieve far more and to whom losing some money wouldn't matter that much. However, bear in mind that people have to pay for their own care, since state care is wholly inadequate. There a person in my family who is 90 years old, has dementia (a terrible, terrible disease) and who has been waiting for nine months to be assessed for care (Lambeth council). We care for younger people who are ill, and good care should be allocated to the old as well, especially the ones who have been productive and contributed positively to society all of their lives.

Prejudice and fear. I'm not prejudiced against anyone, but I do believe there is a developing injustice towards the old, based on greed. And yes, I do fear the attitudes of society, which has become increasingly selfish and divisive – but then I suppose we live in a spoiled society, with many believing they should just take what they believe should be theirs, without having to work for it. It will be interesting to see how future generations will feel when they become old, and even more is taken from them.

Many other poorer countries than Britain provide adequate pensions to their elderly people, and have more compassion towards them than some Britons appear to have.

mrginge

MyOnlyPost wrote: »

Inequality in the generations is largely down to poor long term planning. Although the state pension age has now started to go up it should have been steadily increasing for decades and should currently be over 70 at the very least. Consecutive governemnts have failed to recognise the pension burden of an aging population for at least 50 years and for the first 30 of those at least failed to educate the population in self provision for retirement.

True.

Coupled with that we have an increasingly top heavy population which is increasing the burden on services that have lacked real long term investement for decades as succesive governments continue to appease voters to get elected rather than make the real hard choices.

Again true. But hard choices rarely win elections.

At some point state pension will be means tested and the NHS will be scaled back with the shortfall in care being provided by the private sector as our current expectations far outstrip what it is able to realistically provid. As more and more expensive treatments are developed it will not be able to cope with the financial burden.

For the first time life expectancy is falling as the nation becomes more obese (myself included) and that may yet be our salvation

Difficult to expect people to save more for their pension while at the same time handing out more cash to those that don't.

Sounds a bit like the working tax credit fiasco to me...

bugslet

StevieJ wrote: »

Drip, drip, drip - It is all about means testing the State pension.

davomcdave wrote: »

TBH that seems to be the only reasonable outcome, especially after Brexit and the backlash against immigration.

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mrginge wrote: »

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Difficult to expect people to save more for their pension while at the same time handing out more cash to those that don't.
.

Exactly. I've never been in the 40% tax bracket in my life ( 52, so yes, real tail end Boomer).

I do have my own pension and to put into it, I've gone without, precisely 5 holidays in 26 years and all in the UK. Cheap house, I haven't moved up because I can't pay a pension and pay more mortgage.

So if the State Pension is means tested, what was the point of me saving. I should have gone on holidays and bought a bigger house.

I'm not arguing that the thing is unsustainable, but penalising the people who have done what they are supposed to, seems a bit stupid.

Sapphire

Sapphire wrote: »

I would argue, by the way, that £35,000 p.a. (which many pensioners do not achieve) is not that much after four or five decades of work and saving. There are, of course, people who achieve far more and to whom losing some money wouldn't matter that much. However, bear in mind that people have to pay for their own care, since state care is wholly inadequate. There a person in my family who is 90 years old, has dementia (a terrible, terrible disease) and who has been waiting for nine months to be assessed for care (Lambeth council). We care for younger people who are ill, and good care should be allocated to the old as well, especially the ones who have been productive and contributed positively to society all of their lives.

I would add that there is another case I know of, of an Indian lady who has dementia in a severe form, to the extent where she has set fire to her home (which is rented), yet the council refuses to provide care for her. It's all very well to say that people should care for their relatives, but dementia care is beyond the scope of most people (it is a truly terrible disease, involving aggression and many other unpleasant things). Note also that adult care in a home, which someone with dementia requires, sometimes for years, is incredibly expensive – to get it privately costs around £5,000 a month – so bang goes the inheritance. State care is wholly inadequate – even though we do seem to be able to find money to care for people who have contributed nothing to our society, and are unlikely to for many years, if ever.

michaels

Hmm - OPs posting style with photos is somehow familiar....

I can not see why the 2.5% bit of the tripple lock was ever considered fair. I can sort of see why rpi and even average wages indexation is fair but why an arbitary 2.5% that was written as a headline grabber with no anticipation that it would lead to real increases and then became a millstone that could not be dropped. Luckily over the next couple of year inflation will mean it won't come into play. However with other benefits frozen in nominal terms the tripple lock will still lead to increasing inequality amongst the poorest.

I would solve the affordability problem not by means testing but by combining NI into income tax, setting the lower thresholds equal (at the tax theshold) and aboloshing the upper limit - and making sure that other routes of hding income (dividends, captial gains) are taxed at the same rate.

westernpromise

michaels wrote: »

I can not see why the 2.5% bit of the tripple lock was ever considered fair.

It was just another bit of Labour Party hypocrisy. They went from bellyaching about pensioner poverty for votes - hence the triple lock - to whipping up hatred against pensioners for not being poor enough any more. Toastie has actually said on this board that pensioners should be made poorer to benefit himself, and that the state (meaning ghastly little envy-oiks like himself) should decide what level of poverty they deserve.

One of the reasons I have always despised the left is because they turn on everyone they claim to support the instant it's expedient to do so. One moment they're all pro-women, but they voted against Lawson's tax changes that made women independent taxpayers rather than chattels, for example. They're in favour of quota women but if a quotawoman stands for leadership of the Labour Party they snootily say that the time for a quotawoman leader's not right. They were all for gay rights until they realised their favourite immigrants weren't. They sucked up to pensioners when there were votes in it, and now they hate pensioners because there may be votes in it. They sucked up to the white working class until the latter started to object to mass immigration, and so now they hate and despise the white working class. They were ardently anti-racist but now Jewish Labour MPs feel hated by their own party.

Sooner or later, no matter who you are or what you do, the left will decide to hate you and will try to rob you of everything.

mrginge

westernpromise wrote: »

It was just another bit of Labour Party hypocrisy. They went from bellyaching about pensioner poverty for votes - hence the triple lock - to whipping up hatred against pensioners for not being poor enough any more. Toastie has actually said on this board that pensioners should be made poorer to benefit himself, and that the state (meaning ghastly little envy-oiks like himself) should decide what level of poverty they deserve.

One of the reasons I have always despised the left is because they turn on everyone they claim to support the instant it's expedient to do so. One moment they're all pro-women, but they voted against Lawson's tax changes that made women independent taxpayers rather than chattels, for example. They're in favour of quota women but if a quotawoman stands for leadership of the Labour Party they snootily say that the time for a quotawoman leader's not right. They were all for gay rights until they realised their favourite immigrants weren't. They sucked up to pensioners when there were votes in it, and now they hate pensioners because there may be votes in it. They sucked up to the white working class until the latter started to object to mass immigration, and so now they hate and despise the white working class. They were ardently anti-racist but now Jewish Labour MPs feel hated by their own party.

Sooner or later, no matter who you are or what you do, the left will decide to hate you and will try to rob you of everything.

Erm. Didn't Osbourne introduce the triple lock in 2010?

kabayiri

Surely the question is, why aren't the current young generation outperforming the previous generation in the earning stakes?

People bang on about the global economy, so in theory the young; well educated; generation with all the technology tools at their disposal have a potential consumer audience running into hundreds of millions, if not billions.

Increasing automation should allow them to do more with less.

Or....is it that our economy has moved towards lower grade jobs? There are certainly more car washers and coffee shop workers than ever before.

We should work out what is holding back earning opportunities.