If this happens...

SouthCoastBoy

It will be very controversial https://www.telegraph.co.uk/pensions-retirement/news/take-state-pension-away-rich-retirees-says-think-tank/

Marcon

The relevant word is 'if'. 

barnstar2077

What would the consequences be though?  People would just put less money away and make sure they stayed under the threshold going forward.  

Albermarle

The devil would be in the detail of assessing someone's assets. Also would be opposite of existing policy, which is to generally encourage people to build up private assets to support themselves in retirement ( on top of SP)
Overall too politically toxic and many other 'easier' pension related targets. Such as 40% tax relief, salary sacrifice, no IHT on pension pots etc , although plenty of devil in the detail with these as well.

SouthCoastBoy

I think it would be political suicide for whichever party implemented such a change. London and South East would take a big hit due to house prices. Db pensions with their current valuation multiple would benefit greatly in comparison to dc pots

Getting_greyer

SouthCoastBoy said:

I think it would be political suicide for whichever party implemented such a change. London and South East would take a big hit due to house prices. Db pensions with their current valuation multiple would benefit greatly in comparison to dc pots

Yep.  Regardless on wether there is any merit in the idea it won't happen.  Older people vote so... 

Universidad

We say "older people do X" rather more than the evidence supports.

Older people NOW vote more. But will older people in 20 years? And will it matter if they do, given they won't have the weight of numbers that the boomers have?

People often say that you get more conservative as you get older. But is that really true? I've seen some suggestion that isn't happening for my generation or those after, at least not to the same degree. There's a theory that you get more conservative as you get richer... not as you get older. And my generation are struggling.

Actually the main thing that's making me "conservative" as I get older is learning how few institutions I've been told to put my eggs in the basket of that I can actually rely on.

So I'm learning the old school "self reliance" style conservatism of the silent generation, while the boomers seem to have gone all out for frankly unconservative populism.

All generalisations of course - just to say that what old people do may not be reliable over time.

Albermarle

Universidad said:

We say "older people do X" rather more than the evidence supports.

Older people NOW vote more. But will older people in 20 years? And will it matter if they do, given they won't have the weight of numbers that the boomers have?

People often say that you get more conservative as you get older. But is that really true? I've seen some suggestion that isn't happening for my generation or those after, at least not to the same degree. There's a theory that you get more conservative as you get richer... not as you get older. And my generation are struggling.

Actually the main thing that's making me "conservative" as I get older is learning how few institutions I've been told to put my eggs in the basket of that I can actually rely on.

So I'm learning the old school "self reliance" style conservatism of the silent generation, while the boomers seem to have gone all out for frankly unconservative populism.

All generalisations of course - just to say that what old people do may not be reliable over time.

You make some good points. 
However I hope this 'forecast' is not true - Older people NOW vote more. But will older people in 20 years? And will it matter if they do.

Only because I agree with Winston Churchill when he said ' “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”

Cus

Isn't this kind of what happens now, in that people with higher incomes pay more national insurance during their working life yet receive the same state pension?

squirrelpie

The complications of implementing such a scheme, together with the enormous political backlash that I see as likely, mean that I doubt the idea will even be entertained seriously, let alone implemented.

There would obviously have to be a tapered region around the cutoff - imagine having £1 more or less than you planned at the magic birthday and discovering you're £10,000 a year worse off or even better off than you had planned.

steampowered

People who are retired now receive, during the course of their lifetimes, on average, about a third more from the government in taxes and benefits (including the state pension) than they paid in tax.

Younger people are going to have to subsidise that - through paying higher taxes; receiving worse services; and retiring at a much older age than the generation before them. 

And that's on top of the younger generation being worse off than the generation before them given that house prices have accelerated many times faster than wages. 

It used to be the case that people had less disposable income in old age than when they were working. Now, ludicrously, the average retired person has more disposable income than the average working person. 

The triple lock is obviously a complete joke. It isn't sustainable to keep inflating the state pension above wages. It's going to have to be abolished at some point - and hopefully soon. 

It has always been the case that older people were more likely to vote. But the subsidy given to older generations has never been larger than it is today. At some point that is going to become unsustainable. Any government with a sense of justice and courage would redress the balance at least to some extent.