WASPI ‘victory’

Grumpy_chap

Pat38493 said:

BlackKnightMonty said:

You’ve nailed the UK fiscal paradox!

Is there a chart like this that shows the situation over people's entire lifetime rather than annual snapshots which this seems to be?

This also neatly highlights that the state pension is considered as a benefit rather than a "right" as it's clearly being considered as a benefits in this chart.  I know a few state pensioners who would be horrified if you suggested that they were on benefits  

Even as snapshots, is that chart surprising?

Does "benefits paid" include the value of services, such as medical care, waste collection etc?

Individuals pay some taxes - Income tax, employees NI, Council Tax, VED, VAT etc.
Companies pay some taxes - corporation tax, employers NI, business rates, some VAT etc.

Does the chart simply show that some of the value of benefits received by individuals is subsidised by the taxes paid by businesses?

atush

In 1995/96 i was in my 30's. I knew about this change, as it was widely reported in the press and TV.  {lus, being born in 1960 i knew that WASPI threw me to the wolves.

I have no sympathy for them, but do agree that the second change in 2011 should have been spread out.

In any case, i will be getting my SP at age 66 and some months, dont remember but its on a spreadsheet.  I have been paying all my voluntary contributions.

I took my US soc sec pension at age 62 and 11 months.  It was reduced accordingly.

atush

BlackKnightMonty said:

My current SP age is 67.

It’s likely to rise before I get there. There’s talk about it being 71.

It’s likely to become means tested before I get there; which means my years of NI contributions count for diddly.

Put’s thick Yorkshire accent on; a SP at 65… “luxury”.

Not so sure of this, as LE has stopped rising.

MarzipanCrumble

xylophone said:

One has to ask how do I know that I qualify for a state pension at all?

Initially, how do we learn  much at all about wages and pensions and managing money? I'd suggest from parents/grandparents.

Mary Brown aged 45 in  say June 1995  would likely have seen  grandmother and mother drawing their state pensions at age 60 

and grandfather and father at age 65.  She could have been paying NI herself for close on thirty years - and people get used to the 

status quo....

The point I was making was that if the government could communicate with all households in 1986, then it was certainly within 

its capacity  in 1995 to organise an information drop to all women born in 1950 or later.

It would certainly have been simple enough to instruct all employers to include a  note or leaflet on the change with the 1996 

P60s and even thereafter?

That said, and as I said, it is difficult to believe that  large numbers of women had no notion that SPA would increase from 6/4/10.

 Even if  publicity in the press/television news etc had passed them by, surely  most had mothers/aunts/colleagues/neighbours who 

would have been affected by the change and commented on it?

Ohh  not everyone has family surrounding them - much less so now than when I was young.  I am in my 70's -  when I was a child parents lived 300 miles away from grandparents, each grandparent set lived 40 miles apart from each other, I left home as soon as I could (18) - not because of parents - just wanted to get back to London.  So no, experienced none of that!

I was always a saver, so invested but not in a SIPP.  Friend who was about to retire told us about deferring SP - wow, 10% interest - mana from heaven!  IFA in early 50's for me and late 50's for OH sorted us out re SIPPS, pensions and annuity.

Not family, but lucky circumstance.  Finance should be compulsory in schools.  Families are much more likely now to live in discrete nuclear groups and not in the same area.

artyboy

Flugelhorn said:

ex-pat_scot said:

My NI on salary around the £100k mark (after whopping pension contributions, to keep out of the high marginal tax rate) is around £6,400 pa.
At 35 years of this it would give c£225,000 total NI contributions. This is rather unrealistic, but serves to show how modest even a high earner's contributions are, when set against the broad equivalent annuity cost of the SP at around £250,000 and also the other notional social benefits such as NHS, welfare etc.
(My actual NI contributions to date are not much more than £100,000 for 33 full years of contribution and a few partial years - I wasn't a v high earner until later in my career).

Isn't there a max NI? most years when I had 2-3 part time jobs I ended up paying over 5K and HMRC used to send me some back - they are just checking on a couple of other years now

Nope, there is a 2% band that starts around the higher rate income tax threshold, and has no upper cap. I've paid as much as £10k NI in years gone by...

BikingBud

xylophone said:

One has to ask how do I know that I qualify for a state pension at all?

Initially, how do we learn  much at all about wages and pensions and managing money? I'd suggest from parents/grandparents.

Mary Brown aged 45 in  say June 1995  would likely have seen  grandmother and mother drawing their state pensions at age 60 

and grandfather and father at age 65.  She could have been paying NI herself for close on thirty years - and people get used to the 

status quo....

The point I was making was that if the government could communicate with all households in 1986, then it was certainly within 

its capacity  in 1995 to organise an information drop to all women born in 1950 or later.

It would certainly have been simple enough to instruct all employers to include a  note or leaflet on the change with the 1996 

P60s and even thereafter?

That said, and as I said, it is difficult to believe that  large numbers of women had no notion that SPA would increase from 6/4/10.

 Even if  publicity in the press/television news etc had passed them by, surely  most had mothers/aunts/colleagues/neighbours who 

would have been affected by the change and commented on it?

From parents and grandparents?

So the people that didn't understand or recognise that things might change took all their advice from people who most likely were born before the Great War and before suffrage, before powered flight, grandparents, and between the Wars, before computers and the internet and much more readily available information, parents.

At what point did they discuss with their older relatives how much the world was changing around them and how everything is different nowadays?

That a sexual revolution was occurring, that women were capable of taking on high paid, high pressure jobs even the Prime Minister was a woman now.

That pay equality was coming in.

That people were living longer, houses were going up in price, perhaps due to women's wages could be counted against the mortgage.

That you could research anything on-line and in amongst many other changes pension age was changing.

Or was it, my dad told me and I trust him? Despite the fact that most of dad's knowledge was now obsolete?

The most important aspect of education is not telling people the answer but equipping them, give them the skills to challenge accepted principles and build the own understanding. The framework and rules will change but the ability to analyse and understand how those changes might affect you will not.

BikingBud

ColdIron said:

Pat38493 said:

I know a few state pensioners who would be horrified if you suggested that they were on benefits

I was shocked when I discovered that all my friends with children were on benefits

None with HICBC?

xylophone

So the people that didn't understand or recognise that things might change took all their advice from people who most likely were born before the Great War and before suffrage, before powered flight, grandparents, and between the Wars, before computers and the internet and much more readily available information, parents.

I think that you are deliberately misunderstanding my point that a woman aged 45 in 1995 had become used to the status quo  and probably had given no or little thought to the fact that SPA might change.

Indeed, if she had been a member of a contracted out pension scheme from 1978, she would certainly have been expecting her SP at 60  because  of the way that increases on the GMP in her occupational pension were expected to dovetail with increases on Additional State Pension.

As for access to information in 1995,  a computer at home was by no means that common and the web not even nearly as sophisticated as it has now become.

I was not saying that it was impossible for such a woman to obtain information about the SPA change - indeed I made the point that it was rather surprising if she had totally missed the boat!

xylophone

Ohh  not everyone has family surrounding them - much less so now than when I was young. 

That is perfectly true - but working women had older female colleagues and those who weren't working for the most part at least had neighbours/friends.

It isn't impossible that  some of the affected women had absolutely no idea of the SPA increase - I just find it difficult to understand how most didn't have some idea.

Pollycat

xylophone said:

Ohh  not everyone has family surrounding them - much less so now than when I was young. 

That is perfectly true - but working women had older female colleagues and those who weren't working for the most part at least had neighbours/friends.

It isn't impossible that  some of the affected women had absolutely no idea of the SPA increase - I just find it difficult to understand how most didn't have some idea.

I think there are a lot of WASPI supporters who say they didn't have any idea when actually they did.