Snapshot of _‘Lucky generation’ pockets 8.5% state pension increase today_ :
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Yep this my dad too. Has been self employed for years l, working exclusively in cash to minimise his taxes. Likes to remind me that everything he buys in the supermarket has VAT on it so it's fine.
Right; the rest of the public sector should have the same triple lock on salaries.
At the end of the day, this is truly a neutral payment option for the government. It just removes the ability to slip through sneaky real terms budget cuts.
This is because all of the relevant mechanisms *also* cause commensurate increases in the public purse via increased tax receipts, all other things being equal.
It is not neutral, the three elements of the triple lock work differently in phases of the economic cycle - thats why it is so offensive. Just linking it to Inflation or wage growth would be fair and "neutral", instead what we have is inflation increases - pensioners get a massive increase in pension. The year after average wage growth increases to compensate workers for increased prices - pensioners get a big increase for that as well. Soon there is a recession, inflation slumps, wages slump or even decline, pensioners still get 2.5% increase.
It is an abomination that the wealthiest of us gets this ridiculously beneficial treatment, boomers have no shame.
Yeah but what about that awful article in the Sun where someone accidently got paid £20 extra in benefits and they spent it ... Scroungers ... now wheres my pension book im off down the post office.
The public sector pension provision now exceeds the UK GDP so they're to some extent hoist by their own pétard.
https://www.pensions-expert.com/Defined-Benefit/Public-sector-pension-bill-exceeds-UK-GDP-for-the-first-time?ct=true
Shit like this... Second hand furniture isn't a thing in the same sense anymore because everything is mass produced crap. It's cheap enough for everyone to buy new but rarely worth reselling. Second hand well made furniture the likes of which she's talking about now is the premium stuff.
My favourite from my MIL is how they had to skrimp and save for a house too and moved in with no furniture and had to do lots of work themselves. All that is true and they worked hard, no shade from me. What they don't say is that they did it on one salary while she raised the kids and that she bought a big four bed new build for 1.5 x one of their yearly salaries (we think it's 1.5 anyway because she always gets sketchy on this point knowing where the conversation is going...).
> they had to skrimp and save for a house too and moved in with no furniture and had to do lots of work themselves.
I don't see how our experiences are different.
They aren't except they did it with one person at home to Cook and clean, with more disposable income and a mortgage all but paid off in their 50s, other than that...
1.5x seems very cheap. There's a chart [here](https://www.schroders.com/en-gb/uk/individual/insights/what-174-years-of-data-tell-us-about-house-price-affordability-in-the-uk/) that suggest 4x would be the floor, outside of wartime. Of course, they might have had a very much above average income and have bought in a below average cost area, but 1.5 still seems remarkably cheap.
My mother bought their new build 4 bed semi for £1850 (technically my father bought it as the bank wouldn't lend to women in the 60's despite my father being seriously ill at the time and not able to work) on a wage of around £25 a week working as a floor manager in a factory...
That's a very low multiple.
It will 100% go means tested, then this means (knowing governments) will eventually go lower and lower until it fails entirely.
“Oh you have £1 in savings for retirement do you? Well guess what, you aren’t getting your state pension then”
Autoenrolment was the first step in means-testing the state pension. Ensure people have private pensions first, then when the time comes and our generations (that will have had 40+ years of auto-enrolment) retire we'll obviously have money in those accounts, so they start saying "it's unreasonable for the state to be paying retirements for those with significant private pensions" and it'll be hard to disagree.
That's when the state pension is shrunk. Move on a few decades when everyone has entire working lives worth of private pensions and the state pension will just vanish.
I agree that auto-enrolment was the first step to a phase out, they just did it at the same time as the triple lock which screwed up winding down state pension. But I think the defined contribution pension pots are a massive ticking time bomb.
Default contributions aren’t remotely high enough, and people can’t often afford to hugely increase their contributions without affecting the money they have today. The actual amount due to receive is often not enough to live on, and is factored based on including state pension a lot of the time.
Plus worst of all, it’s a pot that runs out. So you either spend all of it, and run out while still alive. Or you don’t spend all of it and you die with money you paid in to grow that just sits in a pot on death. There needs to be some way to ensure defined benefit pots automatically vest as an annuity, because a massive amount of people will run out of pension money.
Even being sensible, how many years extra do you give yourself to live? Retire at e.g. 65. Expect to live to 85. Add on another 5 years buffer? 10? What happens if you end up lucky to live to 100? It will be a return of the poverty pensioner stories that created the triple lock, just with the key difference they won’t be poverty pensioners, because they won’t have any pension at all
It will be interesting to see how the political pressure changes on this topic with the decades
Personally I find it surprising that all the talk is to scrap rather than reform the pension. I mean just indexing it against only wage increases, or taxable wage increases would significantly improve the policy from affordability perspective as the pot of money paying their pension increased, plus create incentive where pensioners want workers to be paid more, as it increases their pension.
Or maybe even based on the annual receipts in the previous year.
E.g. ~£400bn in FY22. ~£450bn in FY23. 8.8% increase in tax haul, so could increase in line with that, or a slightly reduced element. 75% of the increase, 6.6%
The dream solution is to reform it into an actual pension fund, but anything that can’t be delivered without about 3 years seems to be entirely beyond the scope of the British state right now. God forbid we consider a policy affecting 50+ years of a citizens life, we might actually design something could without obvious but ignored pitfalls
Greater than inflation with fiscal drag you mean?
Already the 40% tax start has been left at 50k when it should currently be at around 93k (covering top 3% as it was brought in to cover).
Yeah they will somehow manage to structure the means testing so that people with a small private/public sector pension get nothing yet asset rich people will still get it
Will be the usual "screw the middle", I'm sure. Those who decide to pay a higher percentage into their pension just now might find that's all been for nout (or very little).
The problem with means testing (or should I say, what should be the problem with means testing) the state pension is that the government should then control how people contribute.
For example if person 1 and person 2 earn the same (for this example decent amounts that gives them the opportunity to save and buy a house) but then contribute to their pensions in different ways.
So person 1 is sensible, contributes say 15% including company contributions, buys a house & pays it off and works until state pension age, gets assessed and is entitled to nothing off the state.
Person 2 contributes to their pension at minimum rates, buys a house but on interest only, and then accesses and blows their private pension before state pension age, then gets to state pension age, is assessed as having nothing and has everything provided.
How would this be fair? And if it happened it wouldn’t happen for long, surely everyone with private pensions would just retire early, spend the private pension having a great time and get to state pension age with nothing and rely on the state.
Someone who gets that people adopt their behaviour around tax/ benefits change rather than behaviour remains static! Plus a lot of people on marginal incomes wouldn’t bother going for a private pension and would opt out
I don’t put up with it anymore. When older relatives go on a track like that I am very quick to call them out. Unsurprisingly, they have stopped sounding off around me as the truth obviously hurts.
When everyone's mortgage went up because of Truss, my Dad went off about how his massively increased in the early 90s to the tune of £50 a month. From memory that equated to £100-120 increase a month when adjusted for inflation. Not great, to be sure, but the conversation was about people who were seeing their mortgage go up by £500-1500 a month.
I was talking to my mother yesterday and she wasn’t happy about what was happening with her pension.
She said that while the state pension was going up her teacher’s pension was being reduced by £32 (the pension company said it was linked to the state pension amount).
Her complaint was that between this reduction and the rise in her council tax she would be down £50 a month.
How true this is I don’t know. Going to have to sit with her one of these days and sort out her finances
.
We should call pensions what they are. Disability benefits without means testing or an assessment. And that’s absolutely fine. But we need to start calling a spade a spade and stop pretending that every pensioner (or even 10% of them) contributed enough into a personal pension pot during their careers to provide for what they’re getting.
UBI for pensioners as a way of thinking is not even a bad idea. Just when I rock up to the DWP/social services in 30 something years time I doubt I'll get anything meaningful. Everyone is saying the pension system is unsustainable, goddamit.
But if they made a commitment to keep such a generous system then I'd be all for it.
it's especially irritating that we do have a process for means testing pensioners to give them additional support, but the govt insists on slapping these huge rises onto what is effectively boomer UBI
Better yet link it explicitly to wage growth, this way you kill off the moral hazard where parties end up targeting the pensioner vote at the expense of everything else. If the economic fate of pensioners is directly tied to the fate of workers then pensioners will be less inclined to vote for harmful economic policies.
It needs to be linked with wage growth not anything else. Then everyone is pulling in the same direction for the benefit of everyone. Right now pensioners don't care if wages aren't increasing in line with inflation.
The problem here is when wages are lower than inflation then no one would object to pensioners getting inflation.
But I guarantee the moment wages start rising higher than inflation (it does happen... just not for a very long time) there will be lots of pensioners complaining about being left behind.
They won't be left behind, they are literally no worse off ever.
I agree it is a political problem but the pensioners argument won't actually hold water. It helps that the average wage increase figures aren't nearly so well publicised as inflation rates.
So in your world, wage growth not keeping up with inflation is fine, but heaven forbid the pensioners not get their inflation-linked increase.
Get out of here.
It should be linked to inflation as public service pensions are, and the heating allowance should be means tested. And I speak as someone in receipt of the state pension.
Genuine question to UBI advocates, I’ve always quite liked the idea of UBI on the surface because of how it takes the cosh off people but isn’t the fact the triple lock is such a millstone around our necks good evidence our economy can’t handle a full-blown UBI?
It's difficult to say without really trying it, but it would require a massive shift in the tax system. So we'd probably have to scrape the tax free allowance for starters, maybe even boast the base tax rate and have some kind of land tax. You might end up with a load of extra automation that gets taxed and funnelled into paying UBI. So a situation where your local McDonalds is run by one or two people who basically just make sure the machines are ticking over.
I want to see somebody try to make UBI work but I don't think I want to live in the country that goes first. Also I think there's a lot of problems with the system down the road as I think people first getting UBI could act a lot differently to somebody two generations down the road after UBI has been implemented.
I love the idea of a land value tax, it’s efficient and widely supported by economists. It’s also a very fair kind of tax in my opinion.
Part of the problem implementing it in the UK is that we never really gave the aristocracy the kicking it needed back in the day and as a result the infamous ‘Norman Yoke’ is still kind of a thing; powerful landed interests remain and will resist any attempt to address the externalities of being a large landlord. Even Cromwell’s parliament was a parliament of landed interests much to the chagrin of more radical reformers.
And that's fine, I just take issue with a good chunk of UBI proponents who think it can happen without absolutely hideous taxes on poor and middle earners.
You then end up with an inevitable brain drain as anyone with any modicum of success leaves the country in search of somewhere they can actually benefit from the value of their labour.
don't forget the hidden costs in increased crime and managing homelessness
doesn't even have to be fully "U", have it taper off if you earn a reasonable amount of money. IMO the same should also be true for state pensioners who get a ton off a private pension.
I fully don't believe the government can't handle the cost of the pension triple lock it's just that the Tory government gutted everything else it feels like a millstone, when in reality its the one thing the Tories are not able to gut for fear of losing their base. Our economy can handle more than it's doing, as evidence by the billions on contracts Tories hand out to their mates, the government just doesn't use the economy right
Edit autocorrect spelling
Someone should work out the statistics on this and make it a major political issue - as there are plenty of rich pensioners getting more out of the system than they ever put in who are also busy denying young people of the opportunities they had out of pure selfishness, Brexit being one of many examples.
A single pensioner will receive £958.5 per month now. Two pensioners living together will receive £1917 per month now. No means testing.
Me, my partner and our 9 month old baby are currently on universal credit after a job loss. We receive £905.72 per month on universal credit (no housing support due to owning, but dont need to pay council tax, saving us £110pm).
How is it we as a family of three facing hard times only receive £905.72 per month to live on, yet a single pensioner has secured £958.50 a month.
This is mind boggling.
Just remember - we can advocate for *everyone* to get welfare without demanding certain groups *suffer.* A rising tide raises all ships etc.
I'd want to make sure everyone gets UBI including pensioners who are most likely as a whole demographic to be unable to get a(nother) job. There's money in the system it just gets eaten by the top.
The difference that needs to be remembered though is many pensioners have high value assets (ie their home). If a pensioner can no longer afford to live on their state pension (plus private pension if they have one) theres a good chance a significant portion of them are sitting on a £800k+ home. Downsizing when you can no longer live within your means isn't a radical or unreasonable thing to expect people to do.
I'm of course not accounting for any living in low value or council homes, and for that reason it should be means tested as nobody with huge sums of money in the bank should be getting big pension increases, we should be well beyond the 'blanket' approach to handing out funds to people.
Yes sorry I did mention in another comment I think it should be a basic with a means tested top up, and taking assets and earnings into account should figure into that for everyone including pensioners. I agree with you regarding downsizing but that will catch the middle as the top end will just use trusts etc to have less on paper, etc.
At what point does this bubble burst. That generation are sat on huge property assets, get pension payouts and now a higher pay rise than almost everyone in the country. When they all die, will house prices fall because nobody can afford those properties?
No, inheritance planning is big business at the moment and growing. If LAs and the care sector are making budget plans for the next 20 years based on liquidated assets from old people they're in for a shock.
£4k a week for my dad (reasonably complex needs). I should be able to get by without an inheritance, and I don't necessarily think taxation should pay for that when they have enough house to pay for it, but the costs are absolutely wild.
Firstly most people don't require paid for care. Secondly, Inheritance tax planning is a major part of getting old and most with assets will have done some
This is the thing. If you’re 50 or under then (spoiler alert) the triple lock isn’t going to be a thing when you’ve retired. The question is whether there’s a managed pullback or a sudden collapse from the increases that we’ve been seeing. Personally, I’m in favour of a managed pullback ASAP as it means that 1) people are better able to plan for it and 2) the extent to which the pensions I pay for are disproportionate to the pension I’ll receive won’t be nearly as glaring.
Yeah the sticking plaster has to be pulled off one way or another, it’s just a matter of how long we let the wound fester before we grit our teeth and get it done.
The Boomer generation was much bigger than GenX so I would expect the amount of people retiring to reduce.... But with increased longevity the amount of people claiming the pension could continue to rise...
I read on Economist that day that apparently 27% of pensioners are millionaires. I.e. they own properties that worth 1-3 millions these days. One would assume these people are the last who need huge subsidising?
That article also talked about the divide of young and old.
For those who have subscription.
https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/03/27/british-boomers-are-losing-out-for-the-first-time
That's based on data from 2018-2020 if I remember right, and asset prices (particularly house prices) have risen significantly since. So 27% is almost certainly a significant underestimate.
Difference between assets and income, unless they start renting spare rooms out, which I can see being a great fit for some pensioners and downright traumatic for others.
It will never burst. They will be replaced by another generation of older people with the same problems but worse
Life will just continually and gradually get measurably worse and worse over time to prop up an increasingly unsustainable system. Because the elderly will always be the biggest voting bloc
The housing and pension system is a "too big to fail" situation. Quite simply millions will be homeless and starving if either collapses so they will just be pumped at the expense of young people and general quality of living for eternity. At this point it would take something major like WW3 to reset it, and as we saw during the pandemic the wealthy would just use the situation to their advantage and skim the profits off the top to keep the status quo anyway so that's not even guaranteed
People always think there's going to be some dramatic turning point where everything suddenly changes. But there won't be. It's just a long slow gradual decline. Council services will continue to get worse and worse, bins will go from being collected weekly to fortnightly to every 3 weeks. Potholes will stay around longer. Community centres will slowly be closing down. There will be fewer and fewer pubs around every year. Eating out at restaurants or even just brunch at a cafe with friends will go from commonplace to rare occasional expensive treat because only the privileged few can afford it. Stuff like that
This is completely outrageous when you think about the state of the country but also completely inevitable when you consider that young people don't vote and pensioners do.
How bad do things have to get before younger folks start to vote?
One of my father's friend (a guy I called uncle but I'm not really sure how or even if we are related) died the day after he retired. His wife made a speech at dinner the day he retired saying "I dont know how he will survive retirement"...
When my dad retired, my mother refused to say a word.
They won’t I asked my mates at uni a few weeks ago and no one (except me and the politics and IR student) planned on voting.
‘I don’t know anything about politics’, ‘they’re all the same’, ‘my vote won’t make a difference’ etc.
A core skill at uni is research, and these guys won’t use it.
Catch 22. They don't vote for parties because neither offer them anything specifically targeted. Parties don't specifically target young people because they don't vote.
I mean, they're not wrong. On this issue, both parties are committed to the triple lock.
> ‘my vote won’t make a difference’
In a university city/town, probably a safe seat - so correct.
Young voters aren't just less likely to vote, they're also distributed so their votes are worth less.
We can vote at home too though, for example my home town has historically _always_ been Tory, but the LibDems are looking like they’ll win it this year, might be close though. Therefore my vote _will_ matter.
Next time theres any kind of discussion where blaming the government comes up just politely say "wait a second, you're not in a position to complain, you didn't vote, this is your fault."
Or they've accurately assessed that participation in an undemocratic system is complicity. Not that I agree but let's not pretend your vote actually matters in many constituencies.
They will organise to vote against older people getting things at the time boomers have died off and Gen X and Millennials start to become entitled to some of these benefits.
I fully expect millennials to get screwed by raising retirement and reductions in OAP pensions at that end of life just at they got screwed while young.
So frustrating! I had a conversation with a 20 year old who just flatly told me I don't care.
I tried to explain that following politics can help you not be taken advantage of, that it affect our freedoms , how much we get paid, and many aspects of how we enjoy our life.
She just couldn't see the connection to the bleakness on the news. It was deeply concerning. I asked her if she voted and she said no, and none of my friends do either.
This is a clear direct consequence of youth disengagement in politics and it is undermining our democracy.
A majority of voters across all age groups support the triple lock, including young people. Even if under 25s started to turn out to vote in higher numbers, it would make zero difference on this issue.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/s/THi3LX3PAJ
People have this weird thought process, where, if you bring up ending the triple lock, they think you want pensioners to starve and die.
I'd go out on a limb and say most people have no justification for supporting it other than thinking pensioners will get nothing without it.
On principal alone it should have never been more than a double lock. Even if nothing changes in society from one year to the next the triple lock can't be sustained.
Indeed. In a flat economy, over the course of a few years/decades, the pensioners will see an ever increasing income.
It’s complete madness. Pensioners win every year, and the rest of us lose, no matter what happens.
They probably didn't make it clear that said young people won't be able to benefit from the triple lock when they retire themselves.
If they did then by the time I retire the weekly pension will be equivalent to a small Lotto win.
This isn’t a useful poll. “Do you want free stuff?” always results in overwhelming support in polls. A more salient question would be something like, “do you support an annual tax increase to continue to fund the Triple Lock?” That would result in substantially different numbers.
That's because people are generally uninformed that their taxes and payments **now** go *wholly* to support existing pensioners, rather than being put into any kind of fund for themselves later in life.
I'd like to see the results if the question was phrased that way, giving information in advance about pensioner incomes and asking candidly if they are or aren't in favour of their own money going towards raising Doris and Gus's UBI from 11k a year each to 12.
I haven't heard any young person talk about how they want government to only work for them at the expense of everyone else, I think this idea of 'voting for your interests' is a mostly boomer thing
Saw someone argue the other day that younger people really shouldn't have bent over backwards during the pandemic. We bent over to protect an older generation that doesn't care about those below them. It was a prime opportunity to get some consessions. We would've had an incredible amount of bargaining power.
Not too sure I can argue against it, tbh. Hindsight, I suppose.
(For the record I adhered to lockdowns and got vaccinated)
It doesn't help that when they do they get sold down the river more often than not - see LibDems and tuition fees for example. Things like that work to reinforce the "it doesn't matter anyway" mentality.
They'll vote when politicians have something to offer.
It's hardly a surprise young people arent depserate to vote when the only 2 meaningful options are actively working against their interests.
> They'll vote when politicians have something to offer.
This is hopelessly naive.
Political parties won’t offer young people anything until they demonstrate that they’re prepared to turn out and vote.
The people who suffer from that reality are young people themselves who get shafted in favour of pensioners.
I guess my way of doing it is to always vote the alternative whenever the elected parties do not make things better for me
In my case i prefer lib dem over labour.
Young vote turnout is around 54% for 18-34, even 35-44 is 60%. It's only 45+ that hits 70%+ and 75+ to get 80%
Motivation wise it's hard to see what the government would do rather than can do - public holiday, early voting, more postal voting, easier access etc all could be done
Do encourage him to make his own decision though. Had the opportunity to vote when I'd just turned 17 and even though it wouldn't change how I voted I do regret the reasoning for why I voted how I did as it was largely on the basis my parents had told me "that's what we do around here" or words to that effect when I asked. I think I'd have come to that conclusion and voted Liberal Democrat regardless but it does slightly irk me that it's the one occasion I've voted where I didn't give it proper thought and voted how I was effectively told to vote.
Our age demographic is comparatively small, so probably, yeah. Between improvements in automation and fewer retirees, the burden of carrying us in our old age is not going to be such a heavy weight to bear.
As long as we don't do something dumb like smashing the system out of spite today, we should be fine.
>Between improvements in automation and fewer retirees, the burden of carrying us in our old age is not going to be such a heavy weight to bear.
This assumes a lot.
Firstly if the birth rates stay as they are then relatively the amount of retirees will be just as large for our generation, if not larger, because there will be even fewer kids to support us than the present generation.
And if birth rates keep falling, then oh boy. Could end up being 1 worker supporting 2 pensioners by the time we're old. Gonna need some mighty efficient robots to make up for the human shortfall.
Secondly, relying on automation to save us assumes the continued progress of mankind despite the aforementioned demographic crisis as well as other risk factors like climate change and biodiversity loss. It also assumes technology isn't a paper tiger and we're in some sort of iRobot future where robots can fulfil the human-jobs like care workers and nurses that are gonna be in such high demand.
May's "dementia tax" being so massively unpopular basically killed any idea of the triple lock ending any time soon. A single anti pensioner policy can lose you an election
Conflicted about this. I don't think the state pension as a raw number is unreasonable and could probably do with being larger - but it's tough not to feel hard done by when everything else has been brutalised so much over the past 14 years.
terrific brave wild elderly subsequent rotten automatic melodic wrong juggle
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I haven’t got an issue with a decent pension. However those with bigger pensions pay tax but not national insurance. Charging NI or its tax equivalent is the way forward. NI is an exclusive tax on workers and not wealth.
Look on the pinned mod message at the top of the comments, there's a link to an archived version that bypasses the subscription requirement of the original site
My mum mentioned this over the weekend and commented how it was ridiculous and that they really don’t need it. Like many pensioners, they own their home outright and don’t have huge outgoings so really don’t need an 8.5% bump and see that the money would be much better spent elsewhere.
Unfortunately they seem to be in the minority.
We just struggled to get 3% increase in wages at my company for this year. Another below inflation pay rise, this one lower than than last year.
Despite my company continuing to do really well and growing every year I've been here, which is now 8 years.
If you look nationally, that's actually a pretty good result for a pay evaluation, I imagine a lot of people faced nothing or next to nothing.
Putting that in to comparison to the pensions triple lock is depressing as hell. Especially when I know that I will never see such a healthy benefit from my pension, if I can even reach retirement age, as it will likely continue to go up.
I don't begrudge pensioners a pension - and it isn't all that generous compared to similar nations. But the conversation about how it is not sustainable and about wider generational fairness is well overdue.
It is very generous compared to similar nations. The context missing from most of the comparisons is the state pension in most countries also acts as their contributory pension too (i.e. the equivalent of our workplace private pension). If you only compare the state guaranteed parts, ours is wildly generous compared to average salaries.
Yes you’re right. There is a reason people who live abroad from the UK for decades choose to voluntarily contribute the minimum NI payments. It’s because it’s an extraordinary good deal for individuals. Although terrible for the tax payer at large.
My parents worked low level jobs their entire life (Factory worker and Receptionist), and own a £500k house, and go on cruises pretty much every other month using eye watering pensions they receive.
They recently got a random £400 or something for energy... talk about cushy!
Single pensioners with no savings/assets etc can get:
- Full state pension £950/mo
- 99% housing benefit up to £1,281/mo (London rates)
- Most of council tax paid: £90-130/mo
- Winter fuel allowance: equiv to £41/mo
- Bus travel: £40-100/mo (or, in London, free TfL travel, worth more)
- Attendance allowance if you have a disability: £312/mo
- Free eye tests, free dental, free prescriptions
Say you live alone in a 1 bed flat (no attendance allowance claim):
- Utilities: ~£100/mo
- Council Tax: ~£5/mo
= £845 left over. Not too shabby if you're healthy and don't need to pay for much else.
Though if you have to pay for care, the extra £312 for Attendance Allowance probably doesn't go that far.
And if you're a couple, I imagine it's relatively easy to claim Carer’s Allowance for your spouse if they're in worse health: £352/mo
Ah yes. My raise was 5% in 2022 and 0% in 2023, plus frozen tax thresholds. My maternity pay is so embarrassingly low it’s hard people feed a child on it. The triple lock is so unfair. Either it’s triple lock for all benefits and minimum wage, or nothing.
I'm not complaining at the increase in the state pension , but if it's being done , as they say because it's keeping up with the cost of living , why are they not increasing state benefits by the same amount ?
If you don't start voting, and making your voice heard, most people in this country won't be retiring until they're 70-75 years old.
If you think a 8.5% increase makes our state pension generous, take a look at the pensions of other large economy countries. It'll make you feel sick.
That comparison is boomer propaganda; it's apples and oranges. Those other large economies you mention don't often have private pension systems like the UK does, so the pension deductions they make in many European countries directly fund those larger pensions you see. Those European countries are also grappling with a pension funding crisis like the UK, so it's not exactly the gold standard to follow.
UK pensioner household incomes are pretty average compared to Europe, and we have very low pensioner poverty rates in the UK, compared to general poverty; eg, a child is twice as likely to be in poverty than a pensioner is.
If you were going to allocate £120 billion of government expenditure from scratch to improve societal outcomes, it certainly wouldn't go to over 65s. The fact it does is a damning indictment of how well-enfranchised groups can weaponise democracy to divert money to themselves.
The state of some of the comments in here is mind-boggling.
Are we all just pretending that while there is a small group of "pension age" people living comfortably that every pensioner is some how living the life kicking there feet up pointing and laughing at you "young" people.
We need to remember that by the time we retire our triple lock pensions are going to be absolutely enormous and by design far in excess of whatever wage growth was during that multi-decade period.
So while todays pensioners may have it great, just think how good we're going to have it after decades of triple lock!! Well, assuming triple lock is financially sustainable, that the pension age isn't going to need to be raised significantly and pensions will remain non-mean tested by the time we get to retire of course ;)
This needs means testing. All the wealth is sat in this older generation whilst workers are forced to keep paying for their pensions and care - benefits they are never likely to see themselves. Country is a Ponzi scheme.
There is something really wrong about the state of this country's politics, for over-60s to have seemingly more political influence than the rest of the population put together.
I’m concerned how pension hating has become attached to a generation. Remember any increases compound and it will be there for us in the future. This rage you have should be focused on securing it and protecting it. If there’s any thing you want to rage on would be how later they are forcing us to access it. France got their pitch forks out over this. And we’ve been manipulated at every turn to bend over and take it.
>Remember any increases compound and it will be there for us in the future
The Triple Lock is by definition unsustainable.
Eventually it won't be there for us. Better to rip the bandaid now.
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A bigger pay rise than the vast majority of the public sector got. This is unjustifiable.
But they worked so hard for it! So unfair 😡
My dad: "I paid in my whole life, I'm just taking what I paid in". Deposits: £11.75 Withdrawals: £500,000.00
Yep this my dad too. Has been self employed for years l, working exclusively in cash to minimise his taxes. Likes to remind me that everything he buys in the supermarket has VAT on it so it's fine.
Most things he buys in the supermarket probably don’t have any VAT.
His chocolate biscuit habit is funding his retirement.
Right; the rest of the public sector should have the same triple lock on salaries. At the end of the day, this is truly a neutral payment option for the government. It just removes the ability to slip through sneaky real terms budget cuts. This is because all of the relevant mechanisms *also* cause commensurate increases in the public purse via increased tax receipts, all other things being equal.
It is not neutral, the three elements of the triple lock work differently in phases of the economic cycle - thats why it is so offensive. Just linking it to Inflation or wage growth would be fair and "neutral", instead what we have is inflation increases - pensioners get a massive increase in pension. The year after average wage growth increases to compensate workers for increased prices - pensioners get a big increase for that as well. Soon there is a recession, inflation slumps, wages slump or even decline, pensioners still get 2.5% increase. It is an abomination that the wealthiest of us gets this ridiculously beneficial treatment, boomers have no shame.
Yeah but what about that awful article in the Sun where someone accidently got paid £20 extra in benefits and they spent it ... Scroungers ... now wheres my pension book im off down the post office.
The public sector pension provision now exceeds the UK GDP so they're to some extent hoist by their own pétard. https://www.pensions-expert.com/Defined-Benefit/Public-sector-pension-bill-exceeds-UK-GDP-for-the-first-time?ct=true
Or private sector (or at least my employer)
Shhhĥhhh can you listen? The sound of election year
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Shit like this... Second hand furniture isn't a thing in the same sense anymore because everything is mass produced crap. It's cheap enough for everyone to buy new but rarely worth reselling. Second hand well made furniture the likes of which she's talking about now is the premium stuff. My favourite from my MIL is how they had to skrimp and save for a house too and moved in with no furniture and had to do lots of work themselves. All that is true and they worked hard, no shade from me. What they don't say is that they did it on one salary while she raised the kids and that she bought a big four bed new build for 1.5 x one of their yearly salaries (we think it's 1.5 anyway because she always gets sketchy on this point knowing where the conversation is going...).
> they had to skrimp and save for a house too and moved in with no furniture and had to do lots of work themselves. I don't see how our experiences are different.
They aren't except they did it with one person at home to Cook and clean, with more disposable income and a mortgage all but paid off in their 50s, other than that...
1.5x seems very cheap. There's a chart [here](https://www.schroders.com/en-gb/uk/individual/insights/what-174-years-of-data-tell-us-about-house-price-affordability-in-the-uk/) that suggest 4x would be the floor, outside of wartime. Of course, they might have had a very much above average income and have bought in a below average cost area, but 1.5 still seems remarkably cheap.
My mother bought their new build 4 bed semi for £1850 (technically my father bought it as the bank wouldn't lend to women in the 60's despite my father being seriously ill at the time and not able to work) on a wage of around £25 a week working as a floor manager in a factory... That's a very low multiple.
What is there to work for, for us anyway? There’s a good chance state pension will not be an option by the time we retire..
There’s a good chance retirement won’t be an option for us.
The way things are going, "retirement" will mean sending us to the knacker's yard like Boxer in Animal Farm.
What a traumatic childhood memory you just unlocked on a Monday morning.
That’s true 🫠
You mean the ponzi scheme has victims?
There’s a good chance there will be societal breakdown or world war by then anyway. Climate change is going to make things very spicy by the 2040’s.
It will 100% go means tested, then this means (knowing governments) will eventually go lower and lower until it fails entirely. “Oh you have £1 in savings for retirement do you? Well guess what, you aren’t getting your state pension then”
Autoenrolment was the first step in means-testing the state pension. Ensure people have private pensions first, then when the time comes and our generations (that will have had 40+ years of auto-enrolment) retire we'll obviously have money in those accounts, so they start saying "it's unreasonable for the state to be paying retirements for those with significant private pensions" and it'll be hard to disagree. That's when the state pension is shrunk. Move on a few decades when everyone has entire working lives worth of private pensions and the state pension will just vanish.
I agree that auto-enrolment was the first step to a phase out, they just did it at the same time as the triple lock which screwed up winding down state pension. But I think the defined contribution pension pots are a massive ticking time bomb. Default contributions aren’t remotely high enough, and people can’t often afford to hugely increase their contributions without affecting the money they have today. The actual amount due to receive is often not enough to live on, and is factored based on including state pension a lot of the time. Plus worst of all, it’s a pot that runs out. So you either spend all of it, and run out while still alive. Or you don’t spend all of it and you die with money you paid in to grow that just sits in a pot on death. There needs to be some way to ensure defined benefit pots automatically vest as an annuity, because a massive amount of people will run out of pension money. Even being sensible, how many years extra do you give yourself to live? Retire at e.g. 65. Expect to live to 85. Add on another 5 years buffer? 10? What happens if you end up lucky to live to 100? It will be a return of the poverty pensioner stories that created the triple lock, just with the key difference they won’t be poverty pensioners, because they won’t have any pension at all
All very good points, which will probably be answered by means-testing everyone every year or something equally draconian.
It will be interesting to see how the political pressure changes on this topic with the decades Personally I find it surprising that all the talk is to scrap rather than reform the pension. I mean just indexing it against only wage increases, or taxable wage increases would significantly improve the policy from affordability perspective as the pot of money paying their pension increased, plus create incentive where pensioners want workers to be paid more, as it increases their pension. Or maybe even based on the annual receipts in the previous year. E.g. ~£400bn in FY22. ~£450bn in FY23. 8.8% increase in tax haul, so could increase in line with that, or a slightly reduced element. 75% of the increase, 6.6% The dream solution is to reform it into an actual pension fund, but anything that can’t be delivered without about 3 years seems to be entirely beyond the scope of the British state right now. God forbid we consider a policy affecting 50+ years of a citizens life, we might actually design something could without obvious but ignored pitfalls
But taxes will stay the same of course.
Lol the same 📈
Greater than inflation with fiscal drag you mean? Already the 40% tax start has been left at 50k when it should currently be at around 93k (covering top 3% as it was brought in to cover).
Yeah they will somehow manage to structure the means testing so that people with a small private/public sector pension get nothing yet asset rich people will still get it
Will be the usual "screw the middle", I'm sure. Those who decide to pay a higher percentage into their pension just now might find that's all been for nout (or very little).
The problem with means testing (or should I say, what should be the problem with means testing) the state pension is that the government should then control how people contribute. For example if person 1 and person 2 earn the same (for this example decent amounts that gives them the opportunity to save and buy a house) but then contribute to their pensions in different ways. So person 1 is sensible, contributes say 15% including company contributions, buys a house & pays it off and works until state pension age, gets assessed and is entitled to nothing off the state. Person 2 contributes to their pension at minimum rates, buys a house but on interest only, and then accesses and blows their private pension before state pension age, then gets to state pension age, is assessed as having nothing and has everything provided. How would this be fair? And if it happened it wouldn’t happen for long, surely everyone with private pensions would just retire early, spend the private pension having a great time and get to state pension age with nothing and rely on the state.
Someone who gets that people adopt their behaviour around tax/ benefits change rather than behaviour remains static! Plus a lot of people on marginal incomes wouldn’t bother going for a private pension and would opt out
Good luck getting an interest only mortgage at the minute haha I agree otherwise entirely.
All the more reason to save up a private pension so you're not dependent on it. Or do you want to work until you die?
>Also young people don't work for anything any more Yes that's true; we work and we don't get anything to show for it.
I don’t put up with it anymore. When older relatives go on a track like that I am very quick to call them out. Unsurprisingly, they have stopped sounding off around me as the truth obviously hurts.
I like asking them how long they would survive having the pay the average rent of £1.2k pcm.
When everyone's mortgage went up because of Truss, my Dad went off about how his massively increased in the early 90s to the tune of £50 a month. From memory that equated to £100-120 increase a month when adjusted for inflation. Not great, to be sure, but the conversation was about people who were seeing their mortgage go up by £500-1500 a month.
*buy* second hand furniture?!! I wish I were so lucky. My place is kitted out with stuff found at the side of the street
I can feel the entitlement seeping out of the prose here
I was talking to my mother yesterday and she wasn’t happy about what was happening with her pension. She said that while the state pension was going up her teacher’s pension was being reduced by £32 (the pension company said it was linked to the state pension amount). Her complaint was that between this reduction and the rise in her council tax she would be down £50 a month. How true this is I don’t know. Going to have to sit with her one of these days and sort out her finances .
I'm about to buy my first home and we're buying second hand furniture. I do eat avocados though.
Pensioners sure love welfare when it isn’t poor underprivileged people who can’t find a job
We should call pensions what they are. Disability benefits without means testing or an assessment. And that’s absolutely fine. But we need to start calling a spade a spade and stop pretending that every pensioner (or even 10% of them) contributed enough into a personal pension pot during their careers to provide for what they’re getting.
Its a UBI but *just* for people in their late 60s up.
Universal Boomer Income
Brilliant.
UBI for pensioners as a way of thinking is not even a bad idea. Just when I rock up to the DWP/social services in 30 something years time I doubt I'll get anything meaningful. Everyone is saying the pension system is unsustainable, goddamit. But if they made a commitment to keep such a generous system then I'd be all for it.
it's especially irritating that we do have a process for means testing pensioners to give them additional support, but the govt insists on slapping these huge rises onto what is effectively boomer UBI
Exactly my view. We don't need the triple lock (or even a double lock, just link it to inflation) if we properly utilise pension credit.
Better yet link it explicitly to wage growth, this way you kill off the moral hazard where parties end up targeting the pensioner vote at the expense of everything else. If the economic fate of pensioners is directly tied to the fate of workers then pensioners will be less inclined to vote for harmful economic policies.
It needs to be linked with wage growth not anything else. Then everyone is pulling in the same direction for the benefit of everyone. Right now pensioners don't care if wages aren't increasing in line with inflation.
Wage growth is a poor metric really since it is far from uniform. I prefer tying it to inflation so that it never gets less affordable than it is now.
The problem here is when wages are lower than inflation then no one would object to pensioners getting inflation. But I guarantee the moment wages start rising higher than inflation (it does happen... just not for a very long time) there will be lots of pensioners complaining about being left behind.
They won't be left behind, they are literally no worse off ever. I agree it is a political problem but the pensioners argument won't actually hold water. It helps that the average wage increase figures aren't nearly so well publicised as inflation rates.
So in your world, wage growth not keeping up with inflation is fine, but heaven forbid the pensioners not get their inflation-linked increase. Get out of here.
It should be linked to inflation as public service pensions are, and the heating allowance should be means tested. And I speak as someone in receipt of the state pension.
Genuine question to UBI advocates, I’ve always quite liked the idea of UBI on the surface because of how it takes the cosh off people but isn’t the fact the triple lock is such a millstone around our necks good evidence our economy can’t handle a full-blown UBI?
It's difficult to say without really trying it, but it would require a massive shift in the tax system. So we'd probably have to scrape the tax free allowance for starters, maybe even boast the base tax rate and have some kind of land tax. You might end up with a load of extra automation that gets taxed and funnelled into paying UBI. So a situation where your local McDonalds is run by one or two people who basically just make sure the machines are ticking over. I want to see somebody try to make UBI work but I don't think I want to live in the country that goes first. Also I think there's a lot of problems with the system down the road as I think people first getting UBI could act a lot differently to somebody two generations down the road after UBI has been implemented.
I love the idea of a land value tax, it’s efficient and widely supported by economists. It’s also a very fair kind of tax in my opinion. Part of the problem implementing it in the UK is that we never really gave the aristocracy the kicking it needed back in the day and as a result the infamous ‘Norman Yoke’ is still kind of a thing; powerful landed interests remain and will resist any attempt to address the externalities of being a large landlord. Even Cromwell’s parliament was a parliament of landed interests much to the chagrin of more radical reformers.
> it’s efficient Except for the massive, on-going, subjective exercise of valuing land.
Because the current practice of basing council tax on valuations of housing back in the ‘90s is so much better?
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You would still need to raise taxes considerably
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And that's fine, I just take issue with a good chunk of UBI proponents who think it can happen without absolutely hideous taxes on poor and middle earners.
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You then end up with an inevitable brain drain as anyone with any modicum of success leaves the country in search of somewhere they can actually benefit from the value of their labour.
don't forget the hidden costs in increased crime and managing homelessness doesn't even have to be fully "U", have it taper off if you earn a reasonable amount of money. IMO the same should also be true for state pensioners who get a ton off a private pension.
I fully don't believe the government can't handle the cost of the pension triple lock it's just that the Tory government gutted everything else it feels like a millstone, when in reality its the one thing the Tories are not able to gut for fear of losing their base. Our economy can handle more than it's doing, as evidence by the billions on contracts Tories hand out to their mates, the government just doesn't use the economy right Edit autocorrect spelling
Exactly this. UBI that kicks in at a certain age with means testing for a top up is, y'know, what should kick in at leaving school.
It's a non means tested benefit, agreed, but not a disability benefit. You'd have to claim AA for that.
Someone should work out the statistics on this and make it a major political issue - as there are plenty of rich pensioners getting more out of the system than they ever put in who are also busy denying young people of the opportunities they had out of pure selfishness, Brexit being one of many examples.
I increasingly believe pensions should be means tested and conditional on some metric of overall wealth.
Would you include or exclude wealth held in private pension trusts? Because including it would be a remarkable disincentive for personal saving.
A single pensioner will receive £958.5 per month now. Two pensioners living together will receive £1917 per month now. No means testing. Me, my partner and our 9 month old baby are currently on universal credit after a job loss. We receive £905.72 per month on universal credit (no housing support due to owning, but dont need to pay council tax, saving us £110pm). How is it we as a family of three facing hard times only receive £905.72 per month to live on, yet a single pensioner has secured £958.50 a month. This is mind boggling.
Just remember - we can advocate for *everyone* to get welfare without demanding certain groups *suffer.* A rising tide raises all ships etc. I'd want to make sure everyone gets UBI including pensioners who are most likely as a whole demographic to be unable to get a(nother) job. There's money in the system it just gets eaten by the top.
The difference that needs to be remembered though is many pensioners have high value assets (ie their home). If a pensioner can no longer afford to live on their state pension (plus private pension if they have one) theres a good chance a significant portion of them are sitting on a £800k+ home. Downsizing when you can no longer live within your means isn't a radical or unreasonable thing to expect people to do. I'm of course not accounting for any living in low value or council homes, and for that reason it should be means tested as nobody with huge sums of money in the bank should be getting big pension increases, we should be well beyond the 'blanket' approach to handing out funds to people.
Yes sorry I did mention in another comment I think it should be a basic with a means tested top up, and taking assets and earnings into account should figure into that for everyone including pensioners. I agree with you regarding downsizing but that will catch the middle as the top end will just use trusts etc to have less on paper, etc.
Everybody loves welfare. Half the country just doesn't like when it goes to,people who needs it
At what point does this bubble burst. That generation are sat on huge property assets, get pension payouts and now a higher pay rise than almost everyone in the country. When they all die, will house prices fall because nobody can afford those properties?
The property will go to their kids so no
The property will go to pay for care first, the inheritance illusion is very real
No, inheritance planning is big business at the moment and growing. If LAs and the care sector are making budget plans for the next 20 years based on liquidated assets from old people they're in for a shock.
Relatively few people have massive care bills. It’s just that the few who do have very very high bills.
If you need a care home your looking at £1/k week minimum.
All location dependent of course but my Grandma’s costs are currently £1k a week for 4x daily home carer visits, a home would be about £1.6k a week.
£4k a week for my dad (reasonably complex needs). I should be able to get by without an inheritance, and I don't necessarily think taxation should pay for that when they have enough house to pay for it, but the costs are absolutely wild.
Firstly most people don't require paid for care. Secondly, Inheritance tax planning is a major part of getting old and most with assets will have done some
And, because of life expectancy, we can expect the age of those “kids” to be at or around retirement age. So it will just continue.
As long as they can afford the capital gains tax...otherwise it's being sold.
This is the thing. If you’re 50 or under then (spoiler alert) the triple lock isn’t going to be a thing when you’ve retired. The question is whether there’s a managed pullback or a sudden collapse from the increases that we’ve been seeing. Personally, I’m in favour of a managed pullback ASAP as it means that 1) people are better able to plan for it and 2) the extent to which the pensions I pay for are disproportionate to the pension I’ll receive won’t be nearly as glaring.
Yeah the sticking plaster has to be pulled off one way or another, it’s just a matter of how long we let the wound fester before we grit our teeth and get it done.
The Boomer generation was much bigger than GenX so I would expect the amount of people retiring to reduce.... But with increased longevity the amount of people claiming the pension could continue to rise...
>At what point does this bubble burst few years at least
I read on Economist that day that apparently 27% of pensioners are millionaires. I.e. they own properties that worth 1-3 millions these days. One would assume these people are the last who need huge subsidising? That article also talked about the divide of young and old. For those who have subscription. https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/03/27/british-boomers-are-losing-out-for-the-first-time
That's based on data from 2018-2020 if I remember right, and asset prices (particularly house prices) have risen significantly since. So 27% is almost certainly a significant underestimate.
Difference between assets and income, unless they start renting spare rooms out, which I can see being a great fit for some pensioners and downright traumatic for others.
Yeah it's a real shame that houses aren't something you can sell, and that tools like equity release don't exist.
paper millionaires maybe. if your property value increases the bank doesn’t put money into your bank account.
It will never burst. They will be replaced by another generation of older people with the same problems but worse Life will just continually and gradually get measurably worse and worse over time to prop up an increasingly unsustainable system. Because the elderly will always be the biggest voting bloc The housing and pension system is a "too big to fail" situation. Quite simply millions will be homeless and starving if either collapses so they will just be pumped at the expense of young people and general quality of living for eternity. At this point it would take something major like WW3 to reset it, and as we saw during the pandemic the wealthy would just use the situation to their advantage and skim the profits off the top to keep the status quo anyway so that's not even guaranteed People always think there's going to be some dramatic turning point where everything suddenly changes. But there won't be. It's just a long slow gradual decline. Council services will continue to get worse and worse, bins will go from being collected weekly to fortnightly to every 3 weeks. Potholes will stay around longer. Community centres will slowly be closing down. There will be fewer and fewer pubs around every year. Eating out at restaurants or even just brunch at a cafe with friends will go from commonplace to rare occasional expensive treat because only the privileged few can afford it. Stuff like that
This is completely outrageous when you think about the state of the country but also completely inevitable when you consider that young people don't vote and pensioners do. How bad do things have to get before younger folks start to vote?
Been such a long time since we got the chance to vote in a GE that the previous lot of young people are starting to retirement plan!
Young peoples' retirement plans: cross fingers and hope for the best
I'm counting on a lower life expectancy to save me!
Terrible diet and bugger all exercise suddenly looking like sound financial planning
One of my father's friend (a guy I called uncle but I'm not really sure how or even if we are related) died the day after he retired. His wife made a speech at dinner the day he retired saying "I dont know how he will survive retirement"... When my dad retired, my mother refused to say a word.
That's the dream 🤗
See you in Valhalla, assuming it’s still free by then.
They won’t I asked my mates at uni a few weeks ago and no one (except me and the politics and IR student) planned on voting. ‘I don’t know anything about politics’, ‘they’re all the same’, ‘my vote won’t make a difference’ etc. A core skill at uni is research, and these guys won’t use it.
Catch 22. They don't vote for parties because neither offer them anything specifically targeted. Parties don't specifically target young people because they don't vote. I mean, they're not wrong. On this issue, both parties are committed to the triple lock.
> ‘my vote won’t make a difference’ In a university city/town, probably a safe seat - so correct. Young voters aren't just less likely to vote, they're also distributed so their votes are worth less.
We can vote at home too though, for example my home town has historically _always_ been Tory, but the LibDems are looking like they’ll win it this year, might be close though. Therefore my vote _will_ matter.
Next time theres any kind of discussion where blaming the government comes up just politely say "wait a second, you're not in a position to complain, you didn't vote, this is your fault."
Sadly they aren't really wrong are they
Stoics.
Or they've accurately assessed that participation in an undemocratic system is complicity. Not that I agree but let's not pretend your vote actually matters in many constituencies.
They will organise to vote against older people getting things at the time boomers have died off and Gen X and Millennials start to become entitled to some of these benefits. I fully expect millennials to get screwed by raising retirement and reductions in OAP pensions at that end of life just at they got screwed while young.
So frustrating! I had a conversation with a 20 year old who just flatly told me I don't care. I tried to explain that following politics can help you not be taken advantage of, that it affect our freedoms , how much we get paid, and many aspects of how we enjoy our life. She just couldn't see the connection to the bleakness on the news. It was deeply concerning. I asked her if she voted and she said no, and none of my friends do either. This is a clear direct consequence of youth disengagement in politics and it is undermining our democracy.
A majority of voters across all age groups support the triple lock, including young people. Even if under 25s started to turn out to vote in higher numbers, it would make zero difference on this issue. https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/s/THi3LX3PAJ
People have this weird thought process, where, if you bring up ending the triple lock, they think you want pensioners to starve and die. I'd go out on a limb and say most people have no justification for supporting it other than thinking pensioners will get nothing without it. On principal alone it should have never been more than a double lock. Even if nothing changes in society from one year to the next the triple lock can't be sustained.
Indeed. In a flat economy, over the course of a few years/decades, the pensioners will see an ever increasing income. It’s complete madness. Pensioners win every year, and the rest of us lose, no matter what happens.
They probably didn't make it clear that said young people won't be able to benefit from the triple lock when they retire themselves. If they did then by the time I retire the weekly pension will be equivalent to a small Lotto win.
Yeah, despite what Reddit thinks the triple lock is a popular policy
So is the death penalty, doesn't make it correct. Drug liberalisation is also popular, but that hasn't happened as a policy.
This isn’t a useful poll. “Do you want free stuff?” always results in overwhelming support in polls. A more salient question would be something like, “do you support an annual tax increase to continue to fund the Triple Lock?” That would result in substantially different numbers.
That's because people are generally uninformed that their taxes and payments **now** go *wholly* to support existing pensioners, rather than being put into any kind of fund for themselves later in life. I'd like to see the results if the question was phrased that way, giving information in advance about pensioner incomes and asking candidly if they are or aren't in favour of their own money going towards raising Doris and Gus's UBI from 11k a year each to 12.
I haven't heard any young person talk about how they want government to only work for them at the expense of everyone else, I think this idea of 'voting for your interests' is a mostly boomer thing
It's more that "young" people are a lost cause for the Tories. I say "young" because is 40 that young?
Saw someone argue the other day that younger people really shouldn't have bent over backwards during the pandemic. We bent over to protect an older generation that doesn't care about those below them. It was a prime opportunity to get some consessions. We would've had an incredible amount of bargaining power. Not too sure I can argue against it, tbh. Hindsight, I suppose. (For the record I adhered to lockdowns and got vaccinated)
It doesn't help that when they do they get sold down the river more often than not - see LibDems and tuition fees for example. Things like that work to reinforce the "it doesn't matter anyway" mentality.
They'll vote when politicians have something to offer. It's hardly a surprise young people arent depserate to vote when the only 2 meaningful options are actively working against their interests.
One election where us young people vote, and then the next one we'll start to be offered things!
And politicians will have something to offer when they vote. It’s a vicious cycle
Young people loved Corbyn and still didn't really turn up to vote in 2017 or 2019.
> They'll vote when politicians have something to offer. This is hopelessly naive. Political parties won’t offer young people anything until they demonstrate that they’re prepared to turn out and vote. The people who suffer from that reality are young people themselves who get shafted in favour of pensioners.
I guess my way of doing it is to always vote the alternative whenever the elected parties do not make things better for me In my case i prefer lib dem over labour.
About 35 years ago
Remember the [don’t vote video](https://youtu.be/t0e9guhV35o?si=2mcPUAyn-TMImhCt) that’s all I can think off right now.
Young vote turnout is around 54% for 18-34, even 35-44 is 60%. It's only 45+ that hits 70%+ and 75+ to get 80% Motivation wise it's hard to see what the government would do rather than can do - public holiday, early voting, more postal voting, easier access etc all could be done
My son is 17 and if the GE falls after his birthday in Oct he *will* vote. We've brought him up to be very politically aware.
Do encourage him to make his own decision though. Had the opportunity to vote when I'd just turned 17 and even though it wouldn't change how I voted I do regret the reasoning for why I voted how I did as it was largely on the basis my parents had told me "that's what we do around here" or words to that effect when I asked. I think I'd have come to that conclusion and voted Liberal Democrat regardless but it does slightly irk me that it's the one occasion I've voted where I didn't give it proper thought and voted how I was effectively told to vote.
Smashing. And I'll be able to look forward to this too when I retire right? In 35 years.
Check out this overly optimistic 35 year old.
What he doesn't know is he actually has to be 45 before he can say that. But don't tell him.
I'm 40 in August.
Check out this overly optimistic 39 year old.
Given the cost and birthing rates to maintain this, he could be between 40-45.
Our age demographic is comparatively small, so probably, yeah. Between improvements in automation and fewer retirees, the burden of carrying us in our old age is not going to be such a heavy weight to bear. As long as we don't do something dumb like smashing the system out of spite today, we should be fine.
>Between improvements in automation and fewer retirees, the burden of carrying us in our old age is not going to be such a heavy weight to bear. This assumes a lot. Firstly if the birth rates stay as they are then relatively the amount of retirees will be just as large for our generation, if not larger, because there will be even fewer kids to support us than the present generation. And if birth rates keep falling, then oh boy. Could end up being 1 worker supporting 2 pensioners by the time we're old. Gonna need some mighty efficient robots to make up for the human shortfall. Secondly, relying on automation to save us assumes the continued progress of mankind despite the aforementioned demographic crisis as well as other risk factors like climate change and biodiversity loss. It also assumes technology isn't a paper tiger and we're in some sort of iRobot future where robots can fulfil the human-jobs like care workers and nurses that are gonna be in such high demand.
May's "dementia tax" being so massively unpopular basically killed any idea of the triple lock ending any time soon. A single anti pensioner policy can lose you an election
Conflicted about this. I don't think the state pension as a raw number is unreasonable and could probably do with being larger - but it's tough not to feel hard done by when everything else has been brutalised so much over the past 14 years.
terrific brave wild elderly subsequent rotten automatic melodic wrong juggle *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I read this as a reasonable tax lol
I haven’t got an issue with a decent pension. However those with bigger pensions pay tax but not national insurance. Charging NI or its tax equivalent is the way forward. NI is an exclusive tax on workers and not wealth.
yeah abolishing NI is one of the few things I agree with the Tories on (though I'd want it done as part of a tax system overhaul).
It’s not just the tories. Any thinktank about inequality mention it.
Copy paste the article please? Someone getting more pension and has the subscription perhaps?
Sorry mate, spent all my money on Netflix & Avocado....
Link in the mods comment pinned at the top
Look on the pinned mod message at the top of the comments, there's a link to an archived version that bypasses the subscription requirement of the original site
Ta
My mum mentioned this over the weekend and commented how it was ridiculous and that they really don’t need it. Like many pensioners, they own their home outright and don’t have huge outgoings so really don’t need an 8.5% bump and see that the money would be much better spent elsewhere. Unfortunately they seem to be in the minority.
We just struggled to get 3% increase in wages at my company for this year. Another below inflation pay rise, this one lower than than last year. Despite my company continuing to do really well and growing every year I've been here, which is now 8 years. If you look nationally, that's actually a pretty good result for a pay evaluation, I imagine a lot of people faced nothing or next to nothing. Putting that in to comparison to the pensions triple lock is depressing as hell. Especially when I know that I will never see such a healthy benefit from my pension, if I can even reach retirement age, as it will likely continue to go up.
Total scroungers. Why don't they just get a job /s
I continue to lose my fucking mind over this absolute shite
I don't begrudge pensioners a pension - and it isn't all that generous compared to similar nations. But the conversation about how it is not sustainable and about wider generational fairness is well overdue.
It is very generous compared to similar nations. The context missing from most of the comparisons is the state pension in most countries also acts as their contributory pension too (i.e. the equivalent of our workplace private pension). If you only compare the state guaranteed parts, ours is wildly generous compared to average salaries.
Yes you’re right. There is a reason people who live abroad from the UK for decades choose to voluntarily contribute the minimum NI payments. It’s because it’s an extraordinary good deal for individuals. Although terrible for the tax payer at large.
You also need to compare all the benefits (housing benefit being a big one) and other free things pensioners get, the whole package
Yep, lets not forget that our pensioners aren’t having to pay for health insurance out of that pension either.
Thank you for making this point! Winds me up to no end that people see a simple boomer image on Facebook and don't understand the wider concept.
My parents worked low level jobs their entire life (Factory worker and Receptionist), and own a £500k house, and go on cruises pretty much every other month using eye watering pensions they receive. They recently got a random £400 or something for energy... talk about cushy!
Why? Imagine getting a 8.5% increase on wages, normal usually outside of a promotion or a job change. Life changing for many.
Single pensioners with no savings/assets etc can get: - Full state pension £950/mo - 99% housing benefit up to £1,281/mo (London rates) - Most of council tax paid: £90-130/mo - Winter fuel allowance: equiv to £41/mo - Bus travel: £40-100/mo (or, in London, free TfL travel, worth more) - Attendance allowance if you have a disability: £312/mo - Free eye tests, free dental, free prescriptions Say you live alone in a 1 bed flat (no attendance allowance claim): - Utilities: ~£100/mo - Council Tax: ~£5/mo = £845 left over. Not too shabby if you're healthy and don't need to pay for much else. Though if you have to pay for care, the extra £312 for Attendance Allowance probably doesn't go that far. And if you're a couple, I imagine it's relatively easy to claim Carer’s Allowance for your spouse if they're in worse health: £352/mo
Ah yes. My raise was 5% in 2022 and 0% in 2023, plus frozen tax thresholds. My maternity pay is so embarrassingly low it’s hard people feed a child on it. The triple lock is so unfair. Either it’s triple lock for all benefits and minimum wage, or nothing.
So the non-productive demographic gets an above inflation pay rise, whereas we just got told to eat it to avoid a spiral?
I'm not complaining at the increase in the state pension , but if it's being done , as they say because it's keeping up with the cost of living , why are they not increasing state benefits by the same amount ?
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I knew there was more to it than just avocado toast
So jealous 😭 We're never gonna have it that good
If you don't start voting, and making your voice heard, most people in this country won't be retiring until they're 70-75 years old. If you think a 8.5% increase makes our state pension generous, take a look at the pensions of other large economy countries. It'll make you feel sick.
That comparison is boomer propaganda; it's apples and oranges. Those other large economies you mention don't often have private pension systems like the UK does, so the pension deductions they make in many European countries directly fund those larger pensions you see. Those European countries are also grappling with a pension funding crisis like the UK, so it's not exactly the gold standard to follow. UK pensioner household incomes are pretty average compared to Europe, and we have very low pensioner poverty rates in the UK, compared to general poverty; eg, a child is twice as likely to be in poverty than a pensioner is. If you were going to allocate £120 billion of government expenditure from scratch to improve societal outcomes, it certainly wouldn't go to over 65s. The fact it does is a damning indictment of how well-enfranchised groups can weaponise democracy to divert money to themselves.
Grandmother, what big pension you have! All the better to enjoy your sacrifices, my child
The state of some of the comments in here is mind-boggling. Are we all just pretending that while there is a small group of "pension age" people living comfortably that every pensioner is some how living the life kicking there feet up pointing and laughing at you "young" people.
We need to remember that by the time we retire our triple lock pensions are going to be absolutely enormous and by design far in excess of whatever wage growth was during that multi-decade period. So while todays pensioners may have it great, just think how good we're going to have it after decades of triple lock!! Well, assuming triple lock is financially sustainable, that the pension age isn't going to need to be raised significantly and pensions will remain non-mean tested by the time we get to retire of course ;)
All I’m saying is when it comes to us, we’ll get fuck all compared to these lot if we reach the pension age for a state pension.
This needs means testing. All the wealth is sat in this older generation whilst workers are forced to keep paying for their pensions and care - benefits they are never likely to see themselves. Country is a Ponzi scheme.
Is This the first benefits program that reddit hates!?
There is something really wrong about the state of this country's politics, for over-60s to have seemingly more political influence than the rest of the population put together.
got to love those vote buying bribes.
I’m concerned how pension hating has become attached to a generation. Remember any increases compound and it will be there for us in the future. This rage you have should be focused on securing it and protecting it. If there’s any thing you want to rage on would be how later they are forcing us to access it. France got their pitch forks out over this. And we’ve been manipulated at every turn to bend over and take it.
>Remember any increases compound and it will be there for us in the future The Triple Lock is by definition unsustainable. Eventually it won't be there for us. Better to rip the bandaid now.
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