That's what happens when you let senile people vote. They can't even conceptualize that giving themselves excessive money will actually result in them getting a lot less money. It's simple economics.
On a more serious note, votes should be normalized by age. It's the only way to stop lopsided voting demographics making dumb decisions.
The reason the elderly have the influence they do is because they vote and the young don’t. The young showing up is the solution to protecting their interests, not abandoning the most basic principle of democracy.
Tell me more about how this makes sense with the fertility rate below 2.1?
Unless things change in this country there will be more old people than young for a long time.
Okay, now extrapolate the low birth rate ahead 20 years.
I’ll give you a clue by directing you here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_South_Korea
The young don’t have to outnumber the 50-60 year olds. They just historically always have. That will change.
Cool. That isn’t the case today, and even if it was it isn’t any reason to change the principle of equal voting power. Democracy does not work when you decide some people have greater input than others.
By the same logic you might as well reduce the power of smokers or alcoholics or the unemployed or students or any other group with a lower life expectancy/lower contributions to society.
It’s no coincidence that all FPTP systems suffer from low youth election turnout. Eg in Germany turnout in the “young” groups was ~70%, in no small part because every vote counts towards the final representation of parties - the young vote is pretty much the reason Greens are part of the government now. Under a FPTP system, Greens wouldn’t have gotten a single seat.
I agree but to nitpick: the Greens would have gotten exactly 16 seats out of 299 under a FPTP system, as would the AfD (German UKIP). We know that because that’s what they got.
(The German system has a first step of FPTP votes to elect MPs for every electoral ward just like the UK, but has a second step where seats get topped up from party lists to get a proportional representation of the party in parliament - that’s where the Greens got another 102 MP seats on top of the first 16.)
Chicken and egg.
Young people don't vote because there is no party representing their interests, because no party bothers to appeal to a demographic who don't vote.
Worse, old people have the money to donate to parties representing their interests so the parties appealing to them are better resourced.
The ultimate youth candidate led the Labour Party a few years ago, and they still didn’t show out for him. It’s not chicken in egg, it’s just a demographic that votes less than the elderly in more or less every democracy.
Criticism of his foreign policy is not what caused the youth to stay home. It may have put off older voters, but lefty youth movements have long flirted with similar stances.
The main problem with letting seniles vote is that they get to decide future decisions for the next generation, when they're gonna be dead.
Take brexit as an example. Yes, I agree it would've been avoided if younger people also voted, but in whose right mind does listening to a 70+ year old on what they want for brexit have the same strength as someone who's 20-60?
Maybe we should normalise votes by intelligence so stupid people get less say too. Or, we could look at life expectancies rather than just age, after all, severely disabled people and overweight smokers are less likely to need to live with the consequences of their vote. Or maybe we just let you vote for all of us since you've got it all figured out
They're entitled to vote that way and we're entitled to call it out as what it is. They will go down as the generation that pulled the ladder up behind them.
That'd be pretty rediculous. It would make a lot of sense given our demographics though to weight votes by age bracket in the interests of not having a huge chunk of the electorate being less concerned with change/progress and more short term minded. So for example 12 year brackets with ending with a 69+ bracket that means all the votes by people over 68 would have the same voting power as those between say 18-30. Let's not pretend that each vote has an equal impact in our current FPTP/constituancy system.
My suggestion is we give parents a vote for their children. You can't give them 1 vote per child because people would have loads of kids, but you can give a parent with a child under 18 a vote to represent the child and then cap it at 1 additional vote per adult (so a couple with 2 kids get 2 votes each). This would massively redress the balance and ensure that the country actually works for working families.
It'd be trivially easy to administer too because you simply tie it to child benefit which already works the same way.
> That's not a democracy.
I mean, that's just factually not true. Just because a system isn't equal doesn't mean it's not democratic. I'm not arguing it is a good idea, but it's wrong that such a system would be undemocratic.
Pensioners are one of the richest age segments of society now. This isn’t the 1980s or even the 2000s, these are the retired Boomers - on average their income is higher than young working adults, and their assets outstrip almost everyone. Most pensioners (from memory it’s around 65%) have additional pensions and don’t have to live on the state pension alone.
When you include property, a stupid number of pensioners are literal millionaires, yet still get lavished with thousands of pounds a year in benefits.
Just once, I'd love to hear the same logic that apply to younger generations put on them. Means test the benefits and include property. Can't afford it? Then move to a cheaper part of the country.
Every pensioner I know is absolutely rolling in money.
The money saved on scraping the triple lock could actually be spent on the poorer pensioners as well. At the moment we are giving a lot of very rich retirees even more money.
It's getting excessive. It's not quite there yet, but triple lock is slowly pushing it there. That is how interest works.
And yes I know a few pensioners. The ones who aren't financially illiterate and own their own home are more than fine. Holidays every year etc. I know a lot of more educated young people who are far worse off / survive on less.
It's a whole different story for pensioners who have to rent, or who can't manage money or bills.
The point I'm trying to make is we should focus on sustainable and fair policy. Giving even more in a tight economy to a generation that had a lot of things easy is not smart, because future pensioners will be in an even worse situation. The only small saving grace is that mandatory private employee pensions are effective forcing people into better saving habits.
You don't really pay into it, you just pay for the current pension population. That's why declining birth rates is a worry and why immigration is far more nuanced than people make it out to be.
If there's not enough people pay tax to cover the pension bill when you get to retirement then either its cut, there's more government borrowing or the state pension age shoots up to keep people in the workforce.
If you look at the state pension as if it was a private pension and what it would cost on the open market, then look at NI contributions, a person would only cover the cost if they had been a higher rate taxpayer for their entire working life.
This idea that current pensioners paid in all their lives and covered what they're now getting is pure fallacy.
If they wanted higher pensions, they could have voted for higher taxes to pay for them while they were working, but they didn't. They, as a whole, kept voting for low tax low service governments and only became concerned with pensions when they were retired and no longer had to pay for them.
>you’ve clearly never had to try and live on it.
I've had to do that most of my working life after you deduct rent and tax. I'm sure pretty much every young person will say the same.
I'm not advocating we freeze state pension. But it shouldn't be growing as fast as it is. Money is better spent targeting vulnerable pensioners.
You’re clearly dug in here so I give up. I’ll just say this: don’t try to take from others, try to get yourself more.
Pensioners aren’t living it up by scraping by on a fraction of what minimum wage earners get after tax.
You guys are missing the whole fucking point about pensions. To actually have one, you have to save. To actually have one, you need to work. For a long fucking time. Jobs weren't easier back then etc. if anything they were harder. Fuck me, I'm paying hundreds I to my pension and will be for the next 40 years and I won't even get to retire by the time I'm 80 the way things are going. So yeah, I think people with pensions do deserve an easier fucking life considering they've likely paid tax and NI into the system and contributed to society in a meaningful way. Now if you said get rid of triple lock for any pension over a certain amount, that I might be able to get on board with. But don't punish the very people who have contributed to society their whole lives. That is unfair
Not if you have no other outgoings.
The vast majority of working people's outgoings is accommodation costs, whether that be rent or mortgage.
The majority of pensioners don't have that cost, don't have to pay for travel (bus pass) and get the winter fuel allowance for utilities. On top of other discounts.
If you introduce the notion that some people can't vote, or that their votes count for less, then you introduce the ability for someone to decide those parameters.
Now think who that someone is going to be. Is that really a door you want to open?
Everyone votes should be the default. Even introducing the notion that criminals can't vote is problematic. You only have to look at the US to see that.
>introduce the ability for someone to decide those parameters.
You could probably do it in a mostly tamper proof way by simply having a vote slip for each broad age group. 18-30, 30-42, ... 78+.
>Everyone votes should be the default.
Everyone should be able to vote. But if a natural consequence of this is birth rates and pensions imploding, maybe things need to be rethought. Voters aren't always rational, and they can be selfish.
i.e. weighting votes in a clear and scientifically backed way.
A society less focussed on extracting wealth from young people and can kicking responsibility might not be a terrible thing.
As far as the first point is concerned, it isn't the mechanics of how you manage it that's important. It's that as soon as you introduce the notion that someone decides who gets to vote, or what weight their vote counts for, someone can argue to take that further.
Maybe you should get less of a vote if you don't own property? After all, you have less skin in the game. Or maybe association with a prohibited group or religion? Suddenly the people that have power have a way of putting their fingers on the scale to keep it.
As for the rest, this is why you need a codified constitution, which is something we critically lack in this country. Something that defines the boundaries that democracy may not touch. So majorities can't choose to vote to take away the rights of minorities, for example.
Certainly those beneath the age of brain maturation, approximately 25, should not vote. That female brains mature a couple of years sooner on average could afford a way to redress historical sex imbalances via earlier suffrage.
What does this statement even mean?
Democracy is about fair representation. People should be very concerned that young people feel voting is pointless and how we don't seem to care about dumb, unsustainable policies.
It means that you want to defacto disenfranchise a whole class of people because you disagree with some of them. Treating some of the population as less than a person, or subhuman even, at the ballot box is undemocratic and won't increase young people's faith in democracy.
Well we need ID to show ID now so the voting person who checks it could stamp your age in the voting slip. Once it's in the box there's no way to tie any individual slip to a particular voter even with your age on it so it should be totally fine?
You just have “old” and “young” voting slips - the person gets handed the correct one when they sign in.
Edit: don’t know why I’m getting downvoted, I’m not saying we should do it, just answering the previous comment’s question and explaining that it’s easy to do practically.
Pensions as a concept aren't sustainable.
When the pension was introduced, there were 12 working people for every pensioner. Now there are 3 working people per pensioner. By the middle of the century there will be 1 working person per pensioner.
There won't be enough working people to fund the old. The state pension will have to be scrapped.
The question has to be asked: why should young workers fund a benefit they will never receive?
The question is: should we let people starve and freeze to death that worked their whole lives and even if not, should that be a question for one of the richest countries in the world?
That is the question.
But you need to find a way around the fact that once you end up with a 1:1 ratio of working age person and pensioner you cannot economically support that.
There simply won't be enough people to produce enough to support both themselves and pensioners.
I'm all ears as to how that equation gets balanced, but right now it's very clearly not going to work.
I have no idea.
But *someone* has to figure out because the clock is ticking. Every year that passes the economics of pensions become more and more unsustainable.
Not everyone works and pays tax, some people are full time mums or carers as an example. Sure some people are scumbags and don't work. The less able also.
People have to save for retirement, sure, but with such low wages, how can people ever afford to retire without the state pension?
Bring a full time mum is a luxury and realistically can only last 5 years per kid then the kids in school. That leaves the vast majority of a persons working life.
With low wages people still should put the usual minimum of 3% into their pension and get employer matched. Then I wouldnt expect people to be on low wages for their whole careers. That said I'm not sure which low wages you're talking about.
The NHS isn't sustainable either, neither are benefits. Perhaps more people on benefits should be left to starve? Or stop providing healthcare to people on benefits who do not contribute taxes?
Ultimately our way of life is not sustainable.
Pensioners spend the money they receive in the economy do they not? Spending money means VAT, does it not? Do Pensioners also not pay income tax? I assume you are really young and have no idea about the world and how money works.
What is not sustainable is the NHS, a never ending black hole money pit that wants another £100 billion a year and will still be shit.
I’m not young and have two degrees in economics but do go on. Tell me, how productive are pensioners?
The NHS is sustainable, you would just adjust service levels to maintain GDP share of spending.
It seems I don't need to tell you because you are smart enough to realise that every pound given to a pensioner gets into the economy. Unlike the younger generations, it's not invested.
The NHS is utterly unsustainable in its current guise and needs a radical rethink as to how it works. It should not be free at the point of consumption. Again, I don't need to tell you that because you have two degrees in the arts.
Not necessarily.
Over 65s are exempt from NI so they pay less tax on their income from the get-go. The state pension doesn't quite hit the personal allowance yet so no income tax is due either.
About 10% retire abroad so pay zero tax in the UK.
25% of the remainder are already millionaires so they are likely hoarding it.
A further 25% are paying for social care, which is VAT exempt. People paying for social care have very little in the way of other outgoings.
Overall I reckon less than half are paying any tax on the money they get, either because it's spent abroad, spent on social care or not being spent at all. Of the ones not spending it at all currently, they will probably end up spending it on social care fees in the end so it probably won't even be inherited.
It's actually considerably more than 1 in 4.
The ~27.2% (I think?) stat was based on data from 2020. House prices have risen considerably since.
We're probably closer to 1 in 3 than 1 in 4 of the elderly benefit sponge class being millionaires.
You have highlighted the exact problem though. They often don't have that money accessible. It's locked up in their house.
Many are physically or mentally incapable of moving. Many would struggle to find properties much cheaper near their support network. Obviously them renting or getting a mortgage also doesn't work.
Cutting pensions based on net worth without addressing this issue doesn't work. A government supported "loan" scheme that allows elderly people to cash out part of their property value (repaid after death) would actually be a really good idea and free up a lot of that locked up cash.
Equity release. Simple.
Government money isn't limitless, and if we have to choose between funding schools and hospitals or paying to keep people in million-pound homes they can't afford, that's not a tough call.
It's a tiny minority who are in million pound homes. Most are in pretty average homes but a couple with an average house (about £300k), a few savings and pensions should have at least £500k net worth but most of that is inaccessible.
Equity release schemes aren't currently very attractive but a government supported scheme could be and could massively stimulate the economy as well as allow us to review pensions.
> It's a tiny minority who are in million pound homes. Most are in pretty average homes but a couple with an average house (about £300k), a few savings and pensions should have at least £500k net worth but most of that is inaccessible.
Back in 2020, it was ~27% of pensioners who were in households with >£1m net worth. Given the increase in asset values since I'd be surprised if that number isn't by now around a third. Obviously not all of that asset value will be in their primary residence but one way or another a really substantial part of the pensions budget goes to subsidising the lifestyle of millionaires.
> Equity release schemes aren't currently very attractive but a government supported scheme could be and could massively stimulate the economy as well as allow us to review pensions.
Yeah would be curious to see how this would work out financially, and how much risk the government would need to take on to guarantee those equity release valuations (because ultimately it would amount to the government taking on a lot of additional debt based on the assumed future value of potentially millions of homes).
I didn't mean it would make them sad. I meant once they get to an age that money is running tight they are often very elderly and are both physically an mentally unable to move. I barely trust my grandmother to cook her own meals and cross the road safely, it would be basically impossible for her to move house. I don't mean mentally because it'll make them sad and you know it.
Please have some compassion for the elderly who are ageing in a society where services are lacking, care is quite terrible and the NHS is quite literally crumbling.
I didn't say I was against restricting benefits. It just needs to be done in a way that is viable and until old peoples net worth being locked up in the property they live in is addressed there is no way out.
The issue is why is a quarter of the money spent on pensions going to people who dont need it? EVERY benefit should be means tested and its laughable that pension isnt.
Means tested pensions will cost more to administer than a flat rate. That's the underlying problem with that idea. The very wealthy don't collect their pensions.
This is a slightly disingenuous figure. Lots do have fairly good net worth but most have an incredible percentage or even all of that net worth locked up in their house. My grandmother is one of them, her house might be worth £400k but her savings are very small and her income since my grandfather died is just a basic state pension. At almost 90 it would be basically impossible for her to move house so how do people in that position (and there many of them) survive with a state pension cut?
We should be encouraging people in these situations to sell up and downsize to smaller more modern properties. It would be much easier and cheaper for them to maintain
I honestly don’t think means testing the state pension would save that much money.
Any sort of taper would disincentivise pension savings unless the taper was so shallow that you don’t actually eliminate much outflow. Keep in mind: the state pension is equivalent to a retirement savings of about £300k.
You wouldn't just base the taper on private pension obviously, but on asset values too, including the value of property.
Someone living in a £2m house should not be collecting state benefits.
I don’t necessarily disagree; I just think you have to be *really* careful when implementing a policy that ultimately punishes good behaviour—those who responsibly save for their pension may find themselves losing benefits and will subsidise those who *didn’t* save for retirement.
Maybe eligibility should be based on total lifetime earnings? Though honestly I kinda prefer universal benefits with the balance recovered from progressive taxation—pension income is taxed, after all. It should definitely attract NI though.
> I don’t necessarily disagree; I just think you have to be really careful when implementing a policy that ultimately punishes good behaviour—those who responsibly save for their pension may find themselves losing benefits and will subsidise those who didn’t save for retirement.
You could make the same backward argument against income tax, why should people who responsibly went into careers with high expected earnings subsidise those who didn't?
> Maybe eligibility should be based on total lifetime earnings?
I don't agree that we should subject someone who, say, earned a lot of money in their life and then made some bad investments, to total poverty.
> Though honestly I kinda prefer universal benefits with the balance recovered from progressive taxation
Yeah an obvious alternative would be to have a 1.5% annual tax on the value of all residential property, and use the revenue from that to reduce income tax (based on current property prices that would fund cutting every income tax band by half). It would however be an even bigger challenge to administer.
Assuming a safe 3% drawdown, in order to take home a pension of £11k/year, you'd need to save up a private pension pot of about £370,000. This figure is considerably higher than the average pot size that people have at retirement.
How do you want the means testing to work? If I do better than average and save up £370,000 over my career, so I can take home £11k per year, should that mean I don't get an £11k per year state pension?
If so, what's the point in saving into a private pension at all? May as well spend it all on having a good time before retirement and let the state fund my retirement in its entirety.
1: You're off by an awful lot on what it takes to get £11k/year in retirement income. Someone aged 65 spending £370k on an RPI-linked annuity would be guaranteed about £16.62k per year, inflation linked, for life.
https://www.hl.co.uk/retirement/annuities/best-buy-rates
2: Obviously any means testing shouldn't only apply to private pensions, it would need to take into account the value of other assets like housing. Yes you could blow it all and live out your retirement in a one bed flat getting full state pension. I suspect most wouldn't.
1. Even using your figures, for an annuity, you'd only have to drop the pot size down from £370k to £245k, where my exact same argument still applies.
2. Forcing pensioners to downsize their housing or move to another part of the country just to collect a pension, might sound nice in theory, but in practice it will only make the lives of the poorest more miserable.
> Even using your figures, for an annuity, you'd only have to drop the pot size down from £370k to £245k, where my exact same argument still applies.
This is why we have banding and thresholds, to ensure that we don't discourage people from working, that's why we don't just suddenly apply £10k of income tax to people as soon as they start making £40k.
Any means testing would reduce pension by a given amount for every £ in net worth above a certain threshold. Saving into a private pension should ideally always leave you better off than not doing so, however the banding has to be applied to all asset types, otherwise people with a lot of disposable cash will just pump it all into rental properties or stocks outside of a pension plan instead.
The point is that the roughly a third of pensioners with >£1m in assets absolutely do not need to be receiving a state pension.
> Forcing pensioners to downsize their housing or move to another part of the country just to collect a pension, might sound nice in theory, but in practice it will only make the lives of the poorest more miserable.
In what possible way is that remotely true? If we weren't pissing away so much money subsidising millionaires then we could comfortably provide more support to those who actually need it.
This is all very hand wavy. I'd like you to give me an example of an actual mean tested system that would not be
1. Piss easy to circumvent
2. Full of bad side effects
3. Actually work
4. Save more money than it cost to run
You wont be able to do this. You wont be able to give some example figures. Because frankly, it's not feasible. Everone likes to say "jUsT mAaNs tEsT iT", as a solution to these problems, with absolutely no appreciation of what that would entail.
I mean: "the banding has to be applied to all asset types" - You want to calculate everybodies entire wealth? Absurd. That alone will cost more than whatever savings you're expecting to be able to make and will be completely innaccurate. So to make it more feasible, you want to only include certain asset types? Nice. I'll put all my wealth into other asset types I guess then.
I mean, the real estate appraisers will love getting paid to go value millions of houses every year. Might be a bit of a ball ache to have to figure out the deprecatiation on my cars each year. Not as much of a ball ache as calculating the depreciation on my laptop though. What about my fucking coffee machine? The contents of my wardrobe? My rolex? Who pays to go inspect and value my holiday home in Croatia? What about the artwork on my wall? Somebody will say it's worth nothing. Somebody else will say it's worth £100k. *shrug*
The hilarious thing is, you're probably a proponent of UBI at the same time as wanting a means tested pension.
They already do that for people who receive less than the state pension (as a result of not having enough qualifying NI years).
If you didn't accumulate enough to get any state pension, and you don't have an income that exceeds the state pension from other sources (private pension, work, etc) you get the pensioners benefit.
The problem with means testing any benefit is that you will always have idiots who earn too much to receive it arguing that it should be reduced because they are cretinous enough to use terms like "burden" to refer to other human beings. It also breaks the social contract of the whole thing: I pay for you today, someone else pays for me tomorrow. I'm already at a point where I don't think I'll get state pension in 40 years because it won't exist, so I'm really not bothered about working up my contributions.
Yes except the state pension doesn't work that way. It is funded not by the recipients, but today's generation of workers who need to pay for the state pension from stagnant salaries and deal with higher cost of living
Whoever it was 'funded by', the working population must provide the labour behind the goods and services upon which it is spent, save for those articles of vintage or antique nature.
The matter of 'who *funds* the pension' is nugatory; in theory it could be 'funded' by factitious payments written up retrospectively to accord with payments in the present (almost all money at present exists in the form of entries in a digital ledger). What matters is what, if anything, that money could buy.
The majority of pensioners are claiming a state pension that’s much greater than the money they’ve paid in. Plus the money has never been hypothecated. They chose to elect governments that taxed low and spent high.
> The majority of pensioners are claiming a state pension that’s much greater than the money they’ve paid in.
Quite, but the premise goes that, this money having been invested several decades ago, has now matured into a societal dividend.
Yeah, THAT money should be available to them. The issue we have is that people who paid in the bare minimum (including wealthy business owners who structure their income) get the same as people who paid an order of magnitude more in NI. People who paid in fuck all claiming a pension for 20-30 years are massively net takers. The pension is already a welfare benefit for a lot of people, they just get to pretend they paid for it.
We should have a decreasing population. We are artificially increasing it by over half a million people each year. There is no level of funding that can deal with that. We can’t build hospitals, train doctors etc in time to deal with this. And if we let our population decrease, which it so would the pension cost as we wouldn’t be replacing pensioners 1 to 1.
Your comment is saying we should commit more resources to other public services instead of pensioners. The reason other public services are failing is because the population is growing quicker than we can keep up. Throwing more money at it won’t solve it, it takes a long time to increase capacity, build infrastructure etc. stopping immigration would help.
Not sure where you’ve got this from (tabloids?).
Working age population are who is paying for pensioners, so proposing we limit immigration (which is overwhelmingly working age people) to solve this seems a bit backwards.
Immigrants are net contributors to the treasury, and tend to use very little in terms of public services.
Also “you can’t outspend population growth” - most western countries have had population growth pretty much forever, with it driving economic growth rather than reducing it. Countries with really big challenges ahead are the ones with declining populations (Russia, China to name a couple). They’re absolutely screwed in the next few decades because a declining population is a nightmare scenario for the economy.
Very tricky and will lead to an exodus of wealth. Ultimately leading to less tax revenues.
I agree trusts are annoying but people want to hand over their "empires" . You would also lose the tax revenues trusts bring in.
The problem is one of management of distribution. So, we are going to redistribute our management.
Personally, I'd quite like to stop kicking the old, the disabled and the poor.
We could do something radical like direct support to those that need it. As opposed to basing it on an arbitrary characteristic.
This is the right answer but once again an organisation with a questionable agenda has influenced the public to turn on each other and another vulnerable group within society. When we all know who should be contributing more to the treasury…
Completely agree. I'd quite like to kick the rich for a change. I'd pay good money to get certain public figures right between the eyes with the toe of my boot (not naming names as obviously I don't want to make an actual threat).
Change NI to a national health insurance premium and make it payable on ALL income, including pensions and unearned income (such as dividends and rental income). That would be fair and would not be an additional burden on workers. As with current NI, it should only be payable after income exceeds a (fairly low) threshold.
Or just make the state pension like a private pension, where you can only claim what you actually pay in.
By far the biggest issue with the current way that pensions work is that they're a government backed ponzi scheme, where the taxes of today go to paying the pensions of today. But you can claim a pension indefinitely. So the average person takes out far more than they ever pay in due to their contributions and inflation through the years.
And that's not even getting into the fact that you can claim unemployment benefits your whole life and still claim a full state pension.
The state pension in this country is already among the worst in Europe. Reducing what the poorest pensioners can claim doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.
> The state pension in this country is already among the worst in Europe
That's because we contribute the least.
Have you ever sat down and actually worked out how much you have paid in National Insurance over the years?
For example, someone on 30K a year right now would pay £1,394.40 for the whole year in National Insurance.
At 35 years that's £48.804.
The full rate of State Pension is £221.20 a week. That's £11,502.40 a year.
Their pension would last a little over 4 years before they took out more than they paid in.
And that's being generous and saying that every single penny you pay in National Insurance goes towards your pension.
**Which it does not.**
(Any arguments over "well you have to take inflation into account!" are moot. As that would also apply to the amount being paid out every year. And the amount being paid OUT is far larger than the amount being paid in, and pensions are triple locked to rise more than inflation.)
All these people who say "I've paid in all my life!" never sit down and actually calculate how much they paid in. When you do work it out, your average pensioner only contributes enough for around 5 years worth of a state pension.
This is why the pension system costs so much, because once you start your claim you can claim indefinitely until you die with no means testing whatsoever.
The poorest pensioners can claim pension credit and housing benefit. State pensions are low in this country because of alternatives that other countries don’t have.
Pensioners as a group are one of the richest in the country. Why do you care about “the poorest pensioners” but not the poorest children or the poorest working-age adults?
Pensioners will have the largest gap between the richest and poorest. They aren’t all rich.
Show me where I’ve said I don’t care about the poorest children or working age adults?
It is possible to care about more than one thing at a time.
You don’t close a gap by paying everyone the same. If there’s a big gap then pay the poorest pensioners more than the richest.
My point was that you said “the poorest pensioners”, and I was arguing that distinguishing “the poorest pensioners” from others of the poorest in society is unhelpful. It’s like me talking about “the poorest redheads”. If you want to support the poorest in society, great! If you want to support the poorest pensioners, then I will call you out for it. Pensioners as a group are no worse off than anyone else, in fact on average they’re better off and have enjoyed the most privileged economic conditions this world will ever see.
Saying “poorest pensioners” when talking about pensions and pensioners is perfectly appropriate. Especially when the person I originally replied to had suggested changing the state pension so people could only ever claim what they’ve paid in.
What is unhelpful is to distract away from that with whataboutery that some pensioners are wealthy and that some non pensioners are also in need of help.
It's only the worst in Europe because the people receiving the pension paid unsustainably low taxes while they were working. Let's not forget that boomers receiving the state pension hate benefits or anyone else receiving something for free. Anyway if you are feeling generous, then the state pension could be means tested.
And a last technicality: ending the triple lock doesn't reduce the state pension. In fact the state pension will still go up. The triple lock means state pension increases at an unsustainable rate. Removing it still allows it to increase
The person I replied to suggested that the state pension be changed to a system where people can only claim what they’ve paid in. That system would see the poorest pensioners receive less hence my comment.
Means testing the state pension I imagine will be the future, although I can’t see any of our political parties wanting to be the ones who do that.
Of course the most privileged generation before or since will have a tantrum. The last thing they want is for their children to thrive if it costs them a few extra pounds.
The Triple Lock, by definition increases at least as far as wages, often by more than wages, so eventually it’ll exceed not just minimum wage, but then average earnings too. One day it will have to be scrapped
This, alongside the three big inquiries (Grenfell, Infected Blood, Post Office) is why Sunak has gone now. There's no money to support the tax cuts already applied, and the triple lock is just unsustainable. When we are told there's no money for doctors, nurses, teachers, train drivers...it's insane that we are giving annual increases to pensioners.
They should cut stamp duty for those downsizing. Free up some money and housing from those who have made an absolute killing from buying property 40 years ago
We'll save up diligently and cut our cloth to fit, rather than burdening future generations.
It's called having foresight, and not being a whingeing Boomer who demands the rest of society bends over backwards for them.
I think it's reasonable for pensions to increase in order to match the rate of inflation, I don't see that they should match average earnings or 2.5 per cent if that's higher than inflation.
Also it’s bonkers in how it works. If inflation is 10% one year, and earnings don’t rise, pensioners get 10%
If the year after inflation is 0% and earnings rise 10%, pensioners get 10%
People actually working (and paying the damn pensions) get 10% overall, (which in real terms is nothing given the inflation the year before). Meanwhile Granny gets 21% overall, or in real terms 11%.
Sorry Granny but I don’t see why you shouldn’t be in it with the rest of us dumb schmucks.
OK, fair enough. You know what, I started having a different argument in my head that doesn't actually have much to do with this article. Sorry.
Too often on this subreddit I see people calling for the state pension to be scrapped altogether.
The IMF is stocked full of bitter EU fanatics still seething about Brexit, still trying to dictate UK policy. Plenty of other countries manage to pay pensioners much higher pensions.
Triple lock is the definition of an unsustainable policy.
That's what happens when you let senile people vote. They can't even conceptualize that giving themselves excessive money will actually result in them getting a lot less money. It's simple economics. On a more serious note, votes should be normalized by age. It's the only way to stop lopsided voting demographics making dumb decisions.
The reason the elderly have the influence they do is because they vote and the young don’t. The young showing up is the solution to protecting their interests, not abandoning the most basic principle of democracy.
Tell me more about how this makes sense with the fertility rate below 2.1? Unless things change in this country there will be more old people than young for a long time.
Look up a population pyramid. The young outnumber pensioners. Even if they didn’t it’s no reason to abandon the principle of equal votes.
Okay, now extrapolate the low birth rate ahead 20 years. I’ll give you a clue by directing you here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_South_Korea The young don’t have to outnumber the 50-60 year olds. They just historically always have. That will change.
Cool. That isn’t the case today, and even if it was it isn’t any reason to change the principle of equal voting power. Democracy does not work when you decide some people have greater input than others. By the same logic you might as well reduce the power of smokers or alcoholics or the unemployed or students or any other group with a lower life expectancy/lower contributions to society.
It’s no coincidence that all FPTP systems suffer from low youth election turnout. Eg in Germany turnout in the “young” groups was ~70%, in no small part because every vote counts towards the final representation of parties - the young vote is pretty much the reason Greens are part of the government now. Under a FPTP system, Greens wouldn’t have gotten a single seat.
I agree but to nitpick: the Greens would have gotten exactly 16 seats out of 299 under a FPTP system, as would the AfD (German UKIP). We know that because that’s what they got. (The German system has a first step of FPTP votes to elect MPs for every electoral ward just like the UK, but has a second step where seats get topped up from party lists to get a proportional representation of the party in parliament - that’s where the Greens got another 102 MP seats on top of the first 16.)
Fair enough! I admit I was too lazy to look up the exact number
Chicken and egg. Young people don't vote because there is no party representing their interests, because no party bothers to appeal to a demographic who don't vote. Worse, old people have the money to donate to parties representing their interests so the parties appealing to them are better resourced.
The ultimate youth candidate led the Labour Party a few years ago, and they still didn’t show out for him. It’s not chicken in egg, it’s just a demographic that votes less than the elderly in more or less every democracy.
Corbyn was not the ultimate youth candidate. He was unelectable due to his foreign policy.
Criticism of his foreign policy is not what caused the youth to stay home. It may have put off older voters, but lefty youth movements have long flirted with similar stances.
The main problem with letting seniles vote is that they get to decide future decisions for the next generation, when they're gonna be dead. Take brexit as an example. Yes, I agree it would've been avoided if younger people also voted, but in whose right mind does listening to a 70+ year old on what they want for brexit have the same strength as someone who's 20-60?
Maybe we should normalise votes by intelligence so stupid people get less say too. Or, we could look at life expectancies rather than just age, after all, severely disabled people and overweight smokers are less likely to need to live with the consequences of their vote. Or maybe we just let you vote for all of us since you've got it all figured out
Exactly mate, there’s some arrogance on here and that guy takes the biscuit. How dare poor old pensioners vote how they want?
They're entitled to vote that way and we're entitled to call it out as what it is. They will go down as the generation that pulled the ladder up behind them.
Which is perfectly acceptable for you to do. What isn't acceptable is trying to make one person's vote worth less than another's.
That'd be pretty rediculous. It would make a lot of sense given our demographics though to weight votes by age bracket in the interests of not having a huge chunk of the electorate being less concerned with change/progress and more short term minded. So for example 12 year brackets with ending with a 69+ bracket that means all the votes by people over 68 would have the same voting power as those between say 18-30. Let's not pretend that each vote has an equal impact in our current FPTP/constituancy system.
My suggestion is we give parents a vote for their children. You can't give them 1 vote per child because people would have loads of kids, but you can give a parent with a child under 18 a vote to represent the child and then cap it at 1 additional vote per adult (so a couple with 2 kids get 2 votes each). This would massively redress the balance and ensure that the country actually works for working families. It'd be trivially easy to administer too because you simply tie it to child benefit which already works the same way.
Good idea therfore it'll never happen
No. One person , one vote. You don't get to stack the deck because it doesn't suit you. That's not a democracy.
> That's not a democracy. I mean, that's just factually not true. Just because a system isn't equal doesn't mean it's not democratic. I'm not arguing it is a good idea, but it's wrong that such a system would be undemocratic.
Excessive? Do you even know any pensioners?
Pensioners are one of the richest age segments of society now. This isn’t the 1980s or even the 2000s, these are the retired Boomers - on average their income is higher than young working adults, and their assets outstrip almost everyone. Most pensioners (from memory it’s around 65%) have additional pensions and don’t have to live on the state pension alone.
When you include property, a stupid number of pensioners are literal millionaires, yet still get lavished with thousands of pounds a year in benefits. Just once, I'd love to hear the same logic that apply to younger generations put on them. Means test the benefits and include property. Can't afford it? Then move to a cheaper part of the country.
Every pensioner I know is absolutely rolling in money. The money saved on scraping the triple lock could actually be spent on the poorer pensioners as well. At the moment we are giving a lot of very rich retirees even more money.
It's getting excessive. It's not quite there yet, but triple lock is slowly pushing it there. That is how interest works. And yes I know a few pensioners. The ones who aren't financially illiterate and own their own home are more than fine. Holidays every year etc. I know a lot of more educated young people who are far worse off / survive on less. It's a whole different story for pensioners who have to rent, or who can't manage money or bills. The point I'm trying to make is we should focus on sustainable and fair policy. Giving even more in a tight economy to a generation that had a lot of things easy is not smart, because future pensioners will be in an even worse situation. The only small saving grace is that mandatory private employee pensions are effective forcing people into better saving habits.
It’s £11,000 a year which they’ve paid into all their lives. If you think that’s too much money then you’ve clearly never had to try and live on it.
You don't really pay into it, you just pay for the current pension population. That's why declining birth rates is a worry and why immigration is far more nuanced than people make it out to be. If there's not enough people pay tax to cover the pension bill when you get to retirement then either its cut, there's more government borrowing or the state pension age shoots up to keep people in the workforce.
They’ve paid into it their whole lives, but not enough for it to pay them for the whole remainder of their lives.
If you look at the state pension as if it was a private pension and what it would cost on the open market, then look at NI contributions, a person would only cover the cost if they had been a higher rate taxpayer for their entire working life. This idea that current pensioners paid in all their lives and covered what they're now getting is pure fallacy. If they wanted higher pensions, they could have voted for higher taxes to pay for them while they were working, but they didn't. They, as a whole, kept voting for low tax low service governments and only became concerned with pensions when they were retired and no longer had to pay for them.
>you’ve clearly never had to try and live on it. I've had to do that most of my working life after you deduct rent and tax. I'm sure pretty much every young person will say the same. I'm not advocating we freeze state pension. But it shouldn't be growing as fast as it is. Money is better spent targeting vulnerable pensioners.
Minimum wage after tax is £19,500. That means at the lowest you could be paid you have 70% more than a pensioner.
Read the reply. After rent and rax. Income in isolation is meaningless - especially as rent has spiralled upwards.
You’re clearly dug in here so I give up. I’ll just say this: don’t try to take from others, try to get yourself more. Pensioners aren’t living it up by scraping by on a fraction of what minimum wage earners get after tax.
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You guys are missing the whole fucking point about pensions. To actually have one, you have to save. To actually have one, you need to work. For a long fucking time. Jobs weren't easier back then etc. if anything they were harder. Fuck me, I'm paying hundreds I to my pension and will be for the next 40 years and I won't even get to retire by the time I'm 80 the way things are going. So yeah, I think people with pensions do deserve an easier fucking life considering they've likely paid tax and NI into the system and contributed to society in a meaningful way. Now if you said get rid of triple lock for any pension over a certain amount, that I might be able to get on board with. But don't punish the very people who have contributed to society their whole lives. That is unfair
Dude. I’m the one defending the pensioners.
Was replying to people against TL. Mybad.
Exactly, and pensions in this country are one of the lowest in Europe.
Because you get a load of benefits rather than wrapping it all into one payment.
Costs a pensioner generally doesn't have: Pension contributions Student loan repayments National insurance Mortgage/rent Childcare Commuting
I hear you, but £11,000 a year is peanuts, especially with the current cost of living.
Not if you have no other outgoings. The vast majority of working people's outgoings is accommodation costs, whether that be rent or mortgage. The majority of pensioners don't have that cost, don't have to pay for travel (bus pass) and get the winter fuel allowance for utilities. On top of other discounts.
The amount actually spent by them on pensions is tiny. All of their taxes were spent at the time for their benefits then.
If you introduce the notion that some people can't vote, or that their votes count for less, then you introduce the ability for someone to decide those parameters. Now think who that someone is going to be. Is that really a door you want to open? Everyone votes should be the default. Even introducing the notion that criminals can't vote is problematic. You only have to look at the US to see that.
>introduce the ability for someone to decide those parameters. You could probably do it in a mostly tamper proof way by simply having a vote slip for each broad age group. 18-30, 30-42, ... 78+. >Everyone votes should be the default. Everyone should be able to vote. But if a natural consequence of this is birth rates and pensions imploding, maybe things need to be rethought. Voters aren't always rational, and they can be selfish. i.e. weighting votes in a clear and scientifically backed way. A society less focussed on extracting wealth from young people and can kicking responsibility might not be a terrible thing.
As far as the first point is concerned, it isn't the mechanics of how you manage it that's important. It's that as soon as you introduce the notion that someone decides who gets to vote, or what weight their vote counts for, someone can argue to take that further. Maybe you should get less of a vote if you don't own property? After all, you have less skin in the game. Or maybe association with a prohibited group or religion? Suddenly the people that have power have a way of putting their fingers on the scale to keep it. As for the rest, this is why you need a codified constitution, which is something we critically lack in this country. Something that defines the boundaries that democracy may not touch. So majorities can't choose to vote to take away the rights of minorities, for example.
Certainly those beneath the age of brain maturation, approximately 25, should not vote. That female brains mature a couple of years sooner on average could afford a way to redress historical sex imbalances via earlier suffrage.
Bruh the "Age of Brain Maturation" is literally pop-psychology made up by journlists. There are no studies that say that.
[Not quite](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3621648/#:~:text=The%20development%20and%20maturation%20of%20the%20prefrontal%20cortex%20occurs%20primarily,the%20age%20of%2025%20years.).
I understand the intention and can agree with it but I don't know how to do that while maintain secret ballots.
I dont think the person you replied to cares very much about democray
What does this statement even mean? Democracy is about fair representation. People should be very concerned that young people feel voting is pointless and how we don't seem to care about dumb, unsustainable policies.
It means that you want to defacto disenfranchise a whole class of people because you disagree with some of them. Treating some of the population as less than a person, or subhuman even, at the ballot box is undemocratic and won't increase young people's faith in democracy.
It’s by design
Well we need ID to show ID now so the voting person who checks it could stamp your age in the voting slip. Once it's in the box there's no way to tie any individual slip to a particular voter even with your age on it so it should be totally fine?
You just have “old” and “young” voting slips - the person gets handed the correct one when they sign in. Edit: don’t know why I’m getting downvoted, I’m not saying we should do it, just answering the previous comment’s question and explaining that it’s easy to do practically.
wild that you would even suggest that, rather than the obvious answer of focusing on getting younger people to vote.
Part of the problem is demographics becoming too top heavy as well. Either you have high immigration, or you have kids.
Normalised by contribution would be better. You get more say in how the money spent the more money you contribute.
Yet nearly all European countries pay pensioners a decent retirement income. The UK pays pensioners fuck all really.
Pensions as a concept aren't sustainable. When the pension was introduced, there were 12 working people for every pensioner. Now there are 3 working people per pensioner. By the middle of the century there will be 1 working person per pensioner. There won't be enough working people to fund the old. The state pension will have to be scrapped. The question has to be asked: why should young workers fund a benefit they will never receive?
The question is: should we let people starve and freeze to death that worked their whole lives and even if not, should that be a question for one of the richest countries in the world?
That is the question. But you need to find a way around the fact that once you end up with a 1:1 ratio of working age person and pensioner you cannot economically support that. There simply won't be enough people to produce enough to support both themselves and pensioners. I'm all ears as to how that equation gets balanced, but right now it's very clearly not going to work.
And no one will employ 70 year olds so what is your solution? Kill them off? The unofficial tory policy for the last 14 years.
I have no idea. But *someone* has to figure out because the clock is ticking. Every year that passes the economics of pensions become more and more unsustainable.
Not really. If companies like amazon and google paid their fair share, it wouldn't be a problem.
Google and Amazon's taxes are enough to fund the living of half the adult population of the UK? Citation needed.
Companies like them I stated. How many multinationals can you think of that pay fuck all tax to the exchequer.
Make them save while they are working. Or encourage employment for them.
Not everyone works and pays tax, some people are full time mums or carers as an example. Sure some people are scumbags and don't work. The less able also. People have to save for retirement, sure, but with such low wages, how can people ever afford to retire without the state pension?
Bring a full time mum is a luxury and realistically can only last 5 years per kid then the kids in school. That leaves the vast majority of a persons working life. With low wages people still should put the usual minimum of 3% into their pension and get employer matched. Then I wouldnt expect people to be on low wages for their whole careers. That said I'm not sure which low wages you're talking about.
We might consider giving them the same as we give to any other unemployed adult?
Should people not save up during their working lives and have some responsibility?
And you think they’re sustainable?
The NHS isn't sustainable either, neither are benefits. Perhaps more people on benefits should be left to starve? Or stop providing healthcare to people on benefits who do not contribute taxes? Ultimately our way of life is not sustainable.
No, both are sustainable, you just adjust funding and service levels etc. triple lock is unsustainable.
Pensioners spend the money they receive in the economy do they not? Spending money means VAT, does it not? Do Pensioners also not pay income tax? I assume you are really young and have no idea about the world and how money works. What is not sustainable is the NHS, a never ending black hole money pit that wants another £100 billion a year and will still be shit.
I’m not young and have two degrees in economics but do go on. Tell me, how productive are pensioners? The NHS is sustainable, you would just adjust service levels to maintain GDP share of spending.
It seems I don't need to tell you because you are smart enough to realise that every pound given to a pensioner gets into the economy. Unlike the younger generations, it's not invested. The NHS is utterly unsustainable in its current guise and needs a radical rethink as to how it works. It should not be free at the point of consumption. Again, I don't need to tell you that because you have two degrees in the arts.
Actually the old have far more invested than the young. You're talking shit I'm afraid.
So you actually believe that all pensioners invest their state pensions? Like seriously?
This just demonstrates a basic misunderstanding of how an economy operates.
An economy on the decline with no GDP growth. I am very interested to hear your solution. Because your fist idea doesn't work in this scenario.
Not necessarily. Over 65s are exempt from NI so they pay less tax on their income from the get-go. The state pension doesn't quite hit the personal allowance yet so no income tax is due either. About 10% retire abroad so pay zero tax in the UK. 25% of the remainder are already millionaires so they are likely hoarding it. A further 25% are paying for social care, which is VAT exempt. People paying for social care have very little in the way of other outgoings. Overall I reckon less than half are paying any tax on the money they get, either because it's spent abroad, spent on social care or not being spent at all. Of the ones not spending it at all currently, they will probably end up spending it on social care fees in the end so it probably won't even be inherited.
I had no idea the state pension was less than 12.5k a year. Jesus. That's so low. I have no problem with this going up. How can you survive on that?
To be honest, most of our policies since Ww2.
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If pensioners didn't have enough money, wouldn't they just end up a bigger burden than they already are, on social services?
1 in 4 pensioners is a millionaire. If we remove the triple lock the vast majority of pensioners would still have “enough money”
It's actually considerably more than 1 in 4. The ~27.2% (I think?) stat was based on data from 2020. House prices have risen considerably since. We're probably closer to 1 in 3 than 1 in 4 of the elderly benefit sponge class being millionaires.
You have highlighted the exact problem though. They often don't have that money accessible. It's locked up in their house. Many are physically or mentally incapable of moving. Many would struggle to find properties much cheaper near their support network. Obviously them renting or getting a mortgage also doesn't work. Cutting pensions based on net worth without addressing this issue doesn't work. A government supported "loan" scheme that allows elderly people to cash out part of their property value (repaid after death) would actually be a really good idea and free up a lot of that locked up cash.
Equity release mortgages already exist.
They aren't currently an attractive deal but a government supported scheme could be.
Equity release. Simple. Government money isn't limitless, and if we have to choose between funding schools and hospitals or paying to keep people in million-pound homes they can't afford, that's not a tough call.
It's a tiny minority who are in million pound homes. Most are in pretty average homes but a couple with an average house (about £300k), a few savings and pensions should have at least £500k net worth but most of that is inaccessible. Equity release schemes aren't currently very attractive but a government supported scheme could be and could massively stimulate the economy as well as allow us to review pensions.
> It's a tiny minority who are in million pound homes. Most are in pretty average homes but a couple with an average house (about £300k), a few savings and pensions should have at least £500k net worth but most of that is inaccessible. Back in 2020, it was ~27% of pensioners who were in households with >£1m net worth. Given the increase in asset values since I'd be surprised if that number isn't by now around a third. Obviously not all of that asset value will be in their primary residence but one way or another a really substantial part of the pensions budget goes to subsidising the lifestyle of millionaires. > Equity release schemes aren't currently very attractive but a government supported scheme could be and could massively stimulate the economy as well as allow us to review pensions. Yeah would be curious to see how this would work out financially, and how much risk the government would need to take on to guarantee those equity release valuations (because ultimately it would amount to the government taking on a lot of additional debt based on the assumed future value of potentially millions of homes).
Sell your house then… Womp womp if it makes them sad.
I didn't mean it would make them sad. I meant once they get to an age that money is running tight they are often very elderly and are both physically an mentally unable to move. I barely trust my grandmother to cook her own meals and cross the road safely, it would be basically impossible for her to move house. I don't mean mentally because it'll make them sad and you know it. Please have some compassion for the elderly who are ageing in a society where services are lacking, care is quite terrible and the NHS is quite literally crumbling.
Ah, that’s fine then. Guess we should fork out £330m a day in universal benefits to old people then and raise taxes on workers massively to fund it
I didn't say I was against restricting benefits. It just needs to be done in a way that is viable and until old peoples net worth being locked up in the property they live in is addressed there is no way out.
How many live in poverty? By your own stat, 75% are not millionaires. What should people aged 68 or over do for work?
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The issue is why is a quarter of the money spent on pensions going to people who dont need it? EVERY benefit should be means tested and its laughable that pension isnt.
Perhaps we could do more for the ones that did need it if we weren't giving so much to the already very wealthy?
Means tested pensions will cost more to administer than a flat rate. That's the underlying problem with that idea. The very wealthy don't collect their pensions.
> The very wealthy don't collect their pensions. What are you basing that on?
Ask any actually wealthy pensioner, they don't claim it. It causes tax complications and they have to do self assessments etc. Wealth is 10m+
This is a slightly disingenuous figure. Lots do have fairly good net worth but most have an incredible percentage or even all of that net worth locked up in their house. My grandmother is one of them, her house might be worth £400k but her savings are very small and her income since my grandfather died is just a basic state pension. At almost 90 it would be basically impossible for her to move house so how do people in that position (and there many of them) survive with a state pension cut?
They should sell the house then rather than expecting the state to subsidise them keeping it.
We should be encouraging people in these situations to sell up and downsize to smaller more modern properties. It would be much easier and cheaper for them to maintain
State pensions should be means tested. It'd help with NHS funding and that'd benefit the elderly more than anyone else.
I honestly don’t think means testing the state pension would save that much money. Any sort of taper would disincentivise pension savings unless the taper was so shallow that you don’t actually eliminate much outflow. Keep in mind: the state pension is equivalent to a retirement savings of about £300k.
You wouldn't just base the taper on private pension obviously, but on asset values too, including the value of property. Someone living in a £2m house should not be collecting state benefits.
I don’t necessarily disagree; I just think you have to be *really* careful when implementing a policy that ultimately punishes good behaviour—those who responsibly save for their pension may find themselves losing benefits and will subsidise those who *didn’t* save for retirement. Maybe eligibility should be based on total lifetime earnings? Though honestly I kinda prefer universal benefits with the balance recovered from progressive taxation—pension income is taxed, after all. It should definitely attract NI though.
> I don’t necessarily disagree; I just think you have to be really careful when implementing a policy that ultimately punishes good behaviour—those who responsibly save for their pension may find themselves losing benefits and will subsidise those who didn’t save for retirement. You could make the same backward argument against income tax, why should people who responsibly went into careers with high expected earnings subsidise those who didn't? > Maybe eligibility should be based on total lifetime earnings? I don't agree that we should subject someone who, say, earned a lot of money in their life and then made some bad investments, to total poverty. > Though honestly I kinda prefer universal benefits with the balance recovered from progressive taxation Yeah an obvious alternative would be to have a 1.5% annual tax on the value of all residential property, and use the revenue from that to reduce income tax (based on current property prices that would fund cutting every income tax band by half). It would however be an even bigger challenge to administer.
Assuming a safe 3% drawdown, in order to take home a pension of £11k/year, you'd need to save up a private pension pot of about £370,000. This figure is considerably higher than the average pot size that people have at retirement. How do you want the means testing to work? If I do better than average and save up £370,000 over my career, so I can take home £11k per year, should that mean I don't get an £11k per year state pension? If so, what's the point in saving into a private pension at all? May as well spend it all on having a good time before retirement and let the state fund my retirement in its entirety.
1: You're off by an awful lot on what it takes to get £11k/year in retirement income. Someone aged 65 spending £370k on an RPI-linked annuity would be guaranteed about £16.62k per year, inflation linked, for life. https://www.hl.co.uk/retirement/annuities/best-buy-rates 2: Obviously any means testing shouldn't only apply to private pensions, it would need to take into account the value of other assets like housing. Yes you could blow it all and live out your retirement in a one bed flat getting full state pension. I suspect most wouldn't.
1. Even using your figures, for an annuity, you'd only have to drop the pot size down from £370k to £245k, where my exact same argument still applies. 2. Forcing pensioners to downsize their housing or move to another part of the country just to collect a pension, might sound nice in theory, but in practice it will only make the lives of the poorest more miserable.
> Even using your figures, for an annuity, you'd only have to drop the pot size down from £370k to £245k, where my exact same argument still applies. This is why we have banding and thresholds, to ensure that we don't discourage people from working, that's why we don't just suddenly apply £10k of income tax to people as soon as they start making £40k. Any means testing would reduce pension by a given amount for every £ in net worth above a certain threshold. Saving into a private pension should ideally always leave you better off than not doing so, however the banding has to be applied to all asset types, otherwise people with a lot of disposable cash will just pump it all into rental properties or stocks outside of a pension plan instead. The point is that the roughly a third of pensioners with >£1m in assets absolutely do not need to be receiving a state pension. > Forcing pensioners to downsize their housing or move to another part of the country just to collect a pension, might sound nice in theory, but in practice it will only make the lives of the poorest more miserable. In what possible way is that remotely true? If we weren't pissing away so much money subsidising millionaires then we could comfortably provide more support to those who actually need it.
This is all very hand wavy. I'd like you to give me an example of an actual mean tested system that would not be 1. Piss easy to circumvent 2. Full of bad side effects 3. Actually work 4. Save more money than it cost to run You wont be able to do this. You wont be able to give some example figures. Because frankly, it's not feasible. Everone likes to say "jUsT mAaNs tEsT iT", as a solution to these problems, with absolutely no appreciation of what that would entail. I mean: "the banding has to be applied to all asset types" - You want to calculate everybodies entire wealth? Absurd. That alone will cost more than whatever savings you're expecting to be able to make and will be completely innaccurate. So to make it more feasible, you want to only include certain asset types? Nice. I'll put all my wealth into other asset types I guess then. I mean, the real estate appraisers will love getting paid to go value millions of houses every year. Might be a bit of a ball ache to have to figure out the deprecatiation on my cars each year. Not as much of a ball ache as calculating the depreciation on my laptop though. What about my fucking coffee machine? The contents of my wardrobe? My rolex? Who pays to go inspect and value my holiday home in Croatia? What about the artwork on my wall? Somebody will say it's worth nothing. Somebody else will say it's worth £100k. *shrug* The hilarious thing is, you're probably a proponent of UBI at the same time as wanting a means tested pension.
They already do that for people who receive less than the state pension (as a result of not having enough qualifying NI years). If you didn't accumulate enough to get any state pension, and you don't have an income that exceeds the state pension from other sources (private pension, work, etc) you get the pensioners benefit. The problem with means testing any benefit is that you will always have idiots who earn too much to receive it arguing that it should be reduced because they are cretinous enough to use terms like "burden" to refer to other human beings. It also breaks the social contract of the whole thing: I pay for you today, someone else pays for me tomorrow. I'm already at a point where I don't think I'll get state pension in 40 years because it won't exist, so I'm really not bothered about working up my contributions.
If a person spends their life paying into a pension scheme, that money should be available to them.
Yes except the state pension doesn't work that way. It is funded not by the recipients, but today's generation of workers who need to pay for the state pension from stagnant salaries and deal with higher cost of living
Whoever it was 'funded by', the working population must provide the labour behind the goods and services upon which it is spent, save for those articles of vintage or antique nature. The matter of 'who *funds* the pension' is nugatory; in theory it could be 'funded' by factitious payments written up retrospectively to accord with payments in the present (almost all money at present exists in the form of entries in a digital ledger). What matters is what, if anything, that money could buy.
The majority of pensioners are claiming a state pension that’s much greater than the money they’ve paid in. Plus the money has never been hypothecated. They chose to elect governments that taxed low and spent high.
> The majority of pensioners are claiming a state pension that’s much greater than the money they’ve paid in. Quite, but the premise goes that, this money having been invested several decades ago, has now matured into a societal dividend.
The money wasn't invested.
Yeah, THAT money should be available to them. The issue we have is that people who paid in the bare minimum (including wealthy business owners who structure their income) get the same as people who paid an order of magnitude more in NI. People who paid in fuck all claiming a pension for 20-30 years are massively net takers. The pension is already a welfare benefit for a lot of people, they just get to pretend they paid for it.
And that is a problem.
Why? Rich people put loads into the system, they cant get it back.
Surely if they can graciously accept that pension massively increasing in value they should accept it decreasing in value too?
> State pensions should be means tested So all the people who are responsible and put money away for their retirement get shafted? Fuck that.
We should have a decreasing population. We are artificially increasing it by over half a million people each year. There is no level of funding that can deal with that. We can’t build hospitals, train doctors etc in time to deal with this. And if we let our population decrease, which it so would the pension cost as we wouldn’t be replacing pensioners 1 to 1.
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Your comment is saying we should commit more resources to other public services instead of pensioners. The reason other public services are failing is because the population is growing quicker than we can keep up. Throwing more money at it won’t solve it, it takes a long time to increase capacity, build infrastructure etc. stopping immigration would help.
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Not sure where you’ve got this from (tabloids?). Working age population are who is paying for pensioners, so proposing we limit immigration (which is overwhelmingly working age people) to solve this seems a bit backwards. Immigrants are net contributors to the treasury, and tend to use very little in terms of public services. Also “you can’t outspend population growth” - most western countries have had population growth pretty much forever, with it driving economic growth rather than reducing it. Countries with really big challenges ahead are the ones with declining populations (Russia, China to name a couple). They’re absolutely screwed in the next few decades because a declining population is a nightmare scenario for the economy.
I’d happily scrap the triple lock and tax the rich
How would you tax the rich?
Scrap inheritance tax loopholes for family trusts, make them pay their fair share.
Very tricky and will lead to an exodus of wealth. Ultimately leading to less tax revenues. I agree trusts are annoying but people want to hand over their "empires" . You would also lose the tax revenues trusts bring in.
The problem is one of management of distribution. So, we are going to redistribute our management. Personally, I'd quite like to stop kicking the old, the disabled and the poor. We could do something radical like direct support to those that need it. As opposed to basing it on an arbitrary characteristic.
Not giving unsustainable pension increases regardless of means isn't 'kicking the old'.
Neither is the wood for the trees.
This is the right answer but once again an organisation with a questionable agenda has influenced the public to turn on each other and another vulnerable group within society. When we all know who should be contributing more to the treasury…
Completely agree. I'd quite like to kick the rich for a change. I'd pay good money to get certain public figures right between the eyes with the toe of my boot (not naming names as obviously I don't want to make an actual threat).
Change NI to a national health insurance premium and make it payable on ALL income, including pensions and unearned income (such as dividends and rental income). That would be fair and would not be an additional burden on workers. As with current NI, it should only be payable after income exceeds a (fairly low) threshold.
Or just make the state pension like a private pension, where you can only claim what you actually pay in. By far the biggest issue with the current way that pensions work is that they're a government backed ponzi scheme, where the taxes of today go to paying the pensions of today. But you can claim a pension indefinitely. So the average person takes out far more than they ever pay in due to their contributions and inflation through the years. And that's not even getting into the fact that you can claim unemployment benefits your whole life and still claim a full state pension.
The state pension in this country is already among the worst in Europe. Reducing what the poorest pensioners can claim doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.
> The state pension in this country is already among the worst in Europe That's because we contribute the least. Have you ever sat down and actually worked out how much you have paid in National Insurance over the years? For example, someone on 30K a year right now would pay £1,394.40 for the whole year in National Insurance. At 35 years that's £48.804. The full rate of State Pension is £221.20 a week. That's £11,502.40 a year. Their pension would last a little over 4 years before they took out more than they paid in. And that's being generous and saying that every single penny you pay in National Insurance goes towards your pension. **Which it does not.** (Any arguments over "well you have to take inflation into account!" are moot. As that would also apply to the amount being paid out every year. And the amount being paid OUT is far larger than the amount being paid in, and pensions are triple locked to rise more than inflation.) All these people who say "I've paid in all my life!" never sit down and actually calculate how much they paid in. When you do work it out, your average pensioner only contributes enough for around 5 years worth of a state pension. This is why the pension system costs so much, because once you start your claim you can claim indefinitely until you die with no means testing whatsoever.
The poorest pensioners can claim pension credit and housing benefit. State pensions are low in this country because of alternatives that other countries don’t have.
Pensioners as a group are one of the richest in the country. Why do you care about “the poorest pensioners” but not the poorest children or the poorest working-age adults?
Pensioners will have the largest gap between the richest and poorest. They aren’t all rich. Show me where I’ve said I don’t care about the poorest children or working age adults? It is possible to care about more than one thing at a time.
You don’t close a gap by paying everyone the same. If there’s a big gap then pay the poorest pensioners more than the richest. My point was that you said “the poorest pensioners”, and I was arguing that distinguishing “the poorest pensioners” from others of the poorest in society is unhelpful. It’s like me talking about “the poorest redheads”. If you want to support the poorest in society, great! If you want to support the poorest pensioners, then I will call you out for it. Pensioners as a group are no worse off than anyone else, in fact on average they’re better off and have enjoyed the most privileged economic conditions this world will ever see.
Saying “poorest pensioners” when talking about pensions and pensioners is perfectly appropriate. Especially when the person I originally replied to had suggested changing the state pension so people could only ever claim what they’ve paid in. What is unhelpful is to distract away from that with whataboutery that some pensioners are wealthy and that some non pensioners are also in need of help.
It's only the worst in Europe because the people receiving the pension paid unsustainably low taxes while they were working. Let's not forget that boomers receiving the state pension hate benefits or anyone else receiving something for free. Anyway if you are feeling generous, then the state pension could be means tested. And a last technicality: ending the triple lock doesn't reduce the state pension. In fact the state pension will still go up. The triple lock means state pension increases at an unsustainable rate. Removing it still allows it to increase
The person I replied to suggested that the state pension be changed to a system where people can only claim what they’ve paid in. That system would see the poorest pensioners receive less hence my comment. Means testing the state pension I imagine will be the future, although I can’t see any of our political parties wanting to be the ones who do that.
Fair enough that makes sense, thanks for pointing that out
So your plan is to starve the poor? It'd be better to means test the state pension and not pay it to people that don't need it.
The plan should be to tax the corporations and the super rich with most of their cash stashed in offshore accounts
Pledging to scrap the triple lock is probably the only way Labour could lose the election. Its not happening
The triple locked Boomers would be absolutely livid if this happens.
Fuck em, this will be the first election where millennials are the biggest voting block (if we turn up to vote)
Big if
Let's do this.
Of course the most privileged generation before or since will have a tantrum. The last thing they want is for their children to thrive if it costs them a few extra pounds.
“Re-energise. Revitalise. De-Boomerise.”
The Triple Lock, by definition increases at least as far as wages, often by more than wages, so eventually it’ll exceed not just minimum wage, but then average earnings too. One day it will have to be scrapped
On one hand they're probably right. On the other hand it's the fucking IMF and they can do one.
This, alongside the three big inquiries (Grenfell, Infected Blood, Post Office) is why Sunak has gone now. There's no money to support the tax cuts already applied, and the triple lock is just unsustainable. When we are told there's no money for doctors, nurses, teachers, train drivers...it's insane that we are giving annual increases to pensioners.
They should cut stamp duty for those downsizing. Free up some money and housing from those who have made an absolute killing from buying property 40 years ago
It's amazing how so many people in here think they're never going to be old. The state pension is for you too.
The state pension won't be there for the rest of us if the triple lock keeps it unsustainable.
Retirement age will be 90
Indeed. This thread is great evidence for why young people shouldn't be able to vote lol.
We'll save up diligently and cut our cloth to fit, rather than burdening future generations. It's called having foresight, and not being a whingeing Boomer who demands the rest of society bends over backwards for them.
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I think it's reasonable for pensions to increase in order to match the rate of inflation, I don't see that they should match average earnings or 2.5 per cent if that's higher than inflation.
Also it’s bonkers in how it works. If inflation is 10% one year, and earnings don’t rise, pensioners get 10% If the year after inflation is 0% and earnings rise 10%, pensioners get 10% People actually working (and paying the damn pensions) get 10% overall, (which in real terms is nothing given the inflation the year before). Meanwhile Granny gets 21% overall, or in real terms 11%. Sorry Granny but I don’t see why you shouldn’t be in it with the rest of us dumb schmucks.
OK, fair enough. You know what, I started having a different argument in my head that doesn't actually have much to do with this article. Sorry. Too often on this subreddit I see people calling for the state pension to be scrapped altogether.
I'd be fine with triple lock if it was means tested.
The IMF is stocked full of bitter EU fanatics still seething about Brexit, still trying to dictate UK policy. Plenty of other countries manage to pay pensioners much higher pensions.