The economics of pensions - what should the country do?

kabayiri

Trace it all back to first princples IMO.

As a society, do we value our elderly citizens, and if we do ... should we try and provide a basic but livable income..and are we at that point?

There is going to be a widening gap between rich and poor pensioners, and I don't relish that. I'd like to think we can balance things out a bit without destroying the saving incentive.

Thrugelmir

kabayiri wrote: »

I'd like to think we can balance things out a bit without destroying the saving incentive.

Saw this week that the French have a slightly increased savings rate of 22.9%. The UK needs to maintain incentives and move away from the buy now pay later culture.

kinger101

kabayiri wrote: »

Trace it all back to first princples IMO.

As a society, do we value our elderly citizens, and if we do ... should we try and provide a basic but livable income..and are we at that point?

There is going to be a widening gap between rich and poor pensioners, and I don't relish that. I'd like to think we can balance things out a bit without destroying the saving incentive.

Isn't that broadly the status quo. I think new state pension system is fine. A basic minimum income. On top of that, people should make their own provision, rather than relying on future tax payers. We're largely in this situation because the ball has been kicked into the long grass too frequently.

It would be helpful if the government increased the auto-enrollment contribution levels - even 8% is laughable.

zagubov

kabayiri wrote: »

Trace it all back to first princples IMO.

As a society, do we value our elderly citizens, and if we do ... should we try and provide a basic but livable income..and are we at that point?

There is going to be a widening gap between rich and poor pensioners, and I don't relish that. I'd like to think we can balance things out a bit without destroying the saving incentive.

Nail. Head.

We've a disturbing cultural quirk in our society where the elderly always owe care to the young and we don't always switch to a mode where the young return the favour and bestow care and support on the elderly.

We divide the young and the old as if they were Venusians and Martians colonising somewhere else (:wave: hiya Earth).
The young people are the old people. Well some of them are eventually/get to be, just as some maggots are eventually/get to be, flies.

I spend too long in the housing threads I suppose. Seems that many of the posters there seem to be trying to dodge giving their elderly relatives the financial wherewithal to pick their care to suit them.

As long as mum and dad have gifted us their house so there's no way they can finance their care themselves. And as long as nobody taxes us enough to pay for the support our parents need when they're older.

I'm trying to say, our parents look after us, and bring us up and support us while we learn. They also accommodate us while we look for work and build our careers. they help with childcare and when that becomes necessary and act as the Bank of `Mum and Dad when we need to get our foot on the ladder.

But if you asked me when it is in Britain that we see the time has come to pay them back take them in and do our duty to look after them when they need our support, I don't know when that age is, or whether it even exists. It certainly sounds as if we don't want them to have access to financial support.
:mad: Rant over!

kabayiri

zagubov wrote: »

...
As long as mum and dad have gifted us their house so there's no way they can finance their care themselves. And as long as nobody taxes us enough to pay for the support our parents need when they're older.
...

I have some friends. I'd say they have done well working in the PS and both will retire in their mid 50s.

I'd argue that a work pension of 30K is very decent for someone retiring early from the teaching profession.

Despite this, a lot of focus has gone on shielding the house, as you say. Die hard socialists too..but someone else is expected to pay.

I'm hardly a socialist, but I don't get this. We were set to inherit a chunk of money from a parent, but a majority chunk of this went on care home fees. It was a good care home, and I was happy to pay.

Keeping pensioners healthy and out of hospital makes good economic sense, but when care homes are needed, we should pay...because these things don't come for free.

Sapphire

zagubov wrote: »

Nail. Head.

We've a disturbing cultural quirk in our society where the elderly always owe care to the young and we don't always switch to a mode where the young return the favour and bestow care and support on the elderly.

We divides the young and the old as if they were Venusians and Martians colonising somewhere else (:wave: hiya Earth).
The young people are the old people. Well some of them are eventually/get to be, just as some maggots are eventually/get to be, flies.

I spend too long in the housing threads I suppose. Seems that many of the posters there seem to be trying to dodge giving their elderly relatives the financial wherewithal to pick their care to suit them.

As long as mum and dad have gifted us their house so there's no way they can finance their care themselves. And as long as nobody taxes us enough to pay for the support our parents need when they're older.

I'm trying to say, our parents look after us, and bring us up and support us while we learn. They also accommodate us while we look for work and build our careers. they help with childcare and when that becomes necessary and act as the Bank of `Mum and Dad when we need to get our foot on the ladder.

But if you asked me when it is in Britain that we see the time has come to pay them back take them in and do our duty to look after them when they need our support, I don't know when that age is, or whether it even exists. It certainly sounds as if we don't want them to have access to financial support.
:mad: Rant over!

I so much agree with this. It used to be until quite recently in our society that grandparents were respected and admired (they still are in more impoverished societies). This was certainly the case in our family, but really isn't so much with people in around their thirties and under, many of whom seem to expect to rest on their laurels because of the largesse that will be passed to them. I've encountered this attitude both in my family and in friends' families. Even in 19th-century London, in the poorest of families (which were far poorer than anything encountered nowadays in the UK), the grandparents remained with their families, and often (surprisingly to me) outlived them due to the high mortality rate generally, and/or lived to a ripe old age.

Perhaps it's that when money is involved, people become much more selfish and greed and money-grabbing take over? That's what used to happen in the past in wealthy families. There's a fair amount of written material about people fighting over their inheritances and waiting for their aged relatives to die, etc. And there are currently far more wealthy (by any standards) people in our society, when you take into account the present values of their properties, than there were in the past.

It seems to me that an attitude is currently encouraged in society to regard elderly people as in some way 'evil', despite the fact that many of them have worked incredibly hard all their lives and have done all that you say above. Maybe this is happening in order to make it easier to deprive these people of all they have worked for? Some of the ways in which the old are attacked would qualify for 'ism' status, yet no one is attempting to change attitudes, as they are through the use of all the other other popular 'isms'. Perhaps it's a preliminary to killing off old people (Khmer Rouge style), and leaving only units that are useful to the corporations as ever-cheaper labour. :cool:

zagubov

Sapphire wrote: »

I so much agree with this. It used to be until quite recently in our society that grandparents were respected and admired (they still are in more impoverished societies). This was certainly the case in our family, but really isn't so much with people in around their thirties and under, many of whom seem to expect to rest on their laurels because of the largesse that will be passed to them. I've encountered this attitude both in my family and in friends' families. Even in 19th-century London, in the poorest of families (which were far poorer than anything encountered nowadays in the UK), the grandparents remained with their families, and often (surprisingly to me) outlived them due to the high mortality rate generally, and/or lived to a ripe old age.

Perhaps it's that when money is involved, people become much more selfish and greed and money-grabbing take over? That's what used to happen in the past in wealthy families. There's a fair amount of written material about people fighting over their inheritances and waiting for their aged relatives to die, etc. And there are currently far more wealthy (by any standards) people in our society, when you take into account the present values of their properties, than there were in the past.

It seems to me that an attitude is currently encouraged in society to regard elderly people as in some way 'evil', despite the fact that many of them have worked incredibly hard all their lives and have done all that you say above. Maybe this is happening in order to make it easier to deprive these people of all they have worked for? Some of the ways in which the old are attacked would qualify for 'ism' status, yet no one is attempting to change attitudes, as they are through the use of all the other other popular 'isms'. Perhaps it's a preliminary to killing off old people (Khmer Rouge style), and leaving only units that are useful to the corporations as ever-cheaper labour. :cool:

This is bang on. You don't have to wander far here on this forum to see threads full of complaints about parents not disciplining their kids. It's no suprise that people end up with no respect for their seniors.

We don't even require our leaders to be senior any more, there's a kind of cult of youth creeping into politics where inexperienced newcomers are seen as ideal leaders.

As for "isms", I doubt there is an ism that can answer our problems. I used to teach a child who escaped Pol Pot's megalomaniacal regime. I don't want society to change into a Year Zero dictatorship or a Logan's Run society.

I think Looper was a good analogy for what we're currently doing, where we're required to execute our future selves. According to the latest headlines, we've been killing our elderly in the hospitals we've pretended were there to fix us up and return us to society. Or rather we didn't pretend it; their bosses seemed to think that society required it.:(

MPD

Spidernick wrote: »

(correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Cameron refer to a 'pensions apartheid', as the average worked paid more to fund these pensions than they saved into their own?).

Pensions apartheid is the language of the Daily Mail. Taking one of the darkest and most discriminatory policies enacted by a state and comparing it to the benefits of pension schemes open to all (swallow that pride and work for the state!) is distasteful in the extreme. Are they words one could use in the presence of a victim of actual apartheid?

If the average worker is paying more to fund PS DB pensions than they are into their own pension then that is poor planning on the part of the average worker.

Tromking

MPD wrote: »

Pensions apartheid is the language of the Daily Mail. Taking one of the darkest and most discriminatory policies enacted by a state and comparing it to the benefits of pension schemes open to all (swallow that pride and work for the state!) is distasteful in the extreme. Are they words one could use in the presence of a victim of actual apartheid?

If the average worker is paying more to fund PS DB pensions than they are into their own pension then that is poor planning on the part of the average worker.

Yes, and the evidence grows that the Cameroon PS pension reforms of a few years back are contributing to making a career in the PS less attractive than it once was. 100K vacancies in the NHS anyone?

Thrugelmir

Tromking wrote: »

Yes, and the evidence grows that the Cameroon PS pension reforms of a few years back are contributing to making a career in the PS less attractive than it once was. 100K vacancies in the NHS anyone?

All the experienced senior staff are taking an early retirement thanks to the generous pension scheme. Not only a good pension but also a times pension lump sum. Mere mortals in the private sector can only dream of such wealth.