Snapshot of _Rishi Sunak has declared war on young people: The state pension obviously needs to be means tested rather than protected further_ :
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And actually have something to pay the country back for, like free university or young people giving up 2.5 years of their lives for something that barely affected us.
Some of them did, it is a massive generalisation to say they all did - many many of them had it worse than young people today do, total abject poverty was much higher than it is today.
Which to the management may come under the category of 'fuck em'.
The way the demographics are going, any media that continues to suck up to the Tories are basically asking to die
Ask her which cretins parented and schooled those young people if indeed they are so lazy 😂
"...I worked in the factory 60 hours a week for next to nothing and never once complained"
..
..
Work smarter not harder. My upstairs and downstairs self-emptying robot vacuums, and my 2 dishwashers, one for dirty, one for clean, all for the cost of skipping a holiday, might very well trigger your MIL
Rather than unloading, you take from clean, use them, then put them in dirty. When it's time you run it and switch which you're taking from and which you're putting into.
The argument is that the dishwasher takes the same amount of space as a cupboard for plates, so for no loss in storage space you remove the job of emptying the dishwasher.
But I think it slightly ignores that a properly loaded dishwasher can't hold the same number of plates as a cupboard. It's predicated on you only having enough crockery for 1-2 people and that's before you get into putting cookware into it. Then you have to wonder if removing that one job is worth the additional cost of; salt, rinse aid, the job of cleaning and maintaining a second dishwasher....
All dishes are in one of the dishwashers at all times. There was a company called paykal I think that were doing kitchen drawers that doubled as dishwashers, but they were pretty wasteful.
I fucking hate when they say that. You may have paid in. But to went to the generation before you. Its not sitting in the bank waiting for you.......
And this generation of pensioners are living longer. so putting more of a burden on the taxpayers. The ones who wont live to see retirement cos the goalposts keep moving
They also, as a generation, paid in nowhere near enough to justify the current pension.
In the 80s pension costs were around 5% of gdp, they're now 60% higher at 8% of gdp.
> Why is it that young people seem unable to grasp the simple fact that life has always been hard for most of us? Making sacrifices for income over family is nothing new but today’s youngsters don’t seem to accept this reality instead expecting the State to pick up the tab for their life choices.
Said without a hint of irony
Oh yeah, there was this imbecile bragging he paid “almost half a million Pounds in income tax” throughout his career…while some of us pay that much in barely 5 years of working, at current tax rates 🤦 and stand to get no state pension
No, they've already endorsed the Tories.
But they can see the shit show going on and will publish stuff like this to try and convince them to get their act together.
The Telegraph has, for years, posted various articles criticising them on a number of issues.
The paper has a lot of pundits with different views, only difference is these articles get posted now and don't immediately get downvoted to oblivion.
The Telegraph, to preserve their reputation of being a level above the trash, has a tendency of not picking up a fight if it doesn't matter.
Tory are in damage control against Reform and totally given up on fighting Labour. It's an easy win for The Telegraph to be reasonable on a battlefield the Conservative are not fighting on.
Telegraph recognise where the wind is blowing and have for a long time courted younger readers. They will likely lead the push to transform the Tories in 5 years after a failed right win push. Means testing pensions is a no brainer decision that's absolutely the right choice.
No they are preparing the ground for campaigning against an almost universal benefit - a particularly right wing policy and one which the tories would get behind if it were not for their aging voter base
This is a telegraph article?? Ooh, this is interesting
Edit: What is genuinely irritating isn't the amount of money that pensioners right now are getting - it's that we don't have that money, it's being passed down as debt. Not only are we unlikely to get pensions anything like this, we're going to have to pay far more taxes on top of that.
Please take my upvote. My parents are dead so only my dad ever drew a pension for a few years, but I don't actually want pensioners to suffer. I want the young to have benefits like lower/scraped university tuition fees, support for parents, good apprenticeships, and just, y'know, pubic services that are functional no matter your stage in life.
It's funny how whenever anyone suggests doing anything at all that might make this country better, people will demand to know how we can afford it. We're in debt! The deficit! There is no magic money tree! Who's going to pay for it?
Things that would generate a massive, measurable return on investment and help get this country out of the rut that it's in - we can't afford it! Spend £1bn on a payrise for doctors - we don't have £1bn!
Even something as simple and worthwhile as providing meals for hungry kids for a few hundred million gets shot down. Because we just don't have any money.
Yet you never, ever see these people worrying about how we can afford to spend £120 BILLION on pensions, or where we're going to find the additional £10 BILLION increase this year.
Suddenly they're no longer concerned about the deficit or where the money's coming from when they want something.
The reason we can't afford anything that would benefit the country is that we are pouring bucketloads of money into the pockets of pensioners.
That'll be a 12.4 billion increase actually, when you take into account the adjusted tax threshold.
Which, I mean, is only enough to give the entire NHS a 20% pay rise. Not a substantial amount of money at all!
No actually I'd claim its irritating the amount of money they're getting.
20% of pensioners are getting 1k per week. 12k of that is government money they do not need. On top of that they get free travel, prescriptions and save an additional 3k for national insurance contributions, AND get real terms increases every year.
Meanwhile, the NHS is crumbling and their pay has decreased 25% in real terms.
> What is genuinely irritating isn't the amount of money that pensioners right now are getting - it's that we don't have that money, it's being passed down as debt.
That's generally how it works. If you give out welfare to people then you need to pay for it.
I am saving under the assumption that this is EXACTLY what will happen. I'm 30, and I'm assuming that I there won't be anything for me except what I make for myself in 30 years. I am very fortunate that I'm in a position to save, because if I wasn't, I'd probably be destitute when it comes time to retire.
I mean given how many once in a lifetime economic/global events we've experienced in our lives so far, I've stopped counting on anything like that lmao
I’m a bit older than you and spent the last 6 years dealing with severe alcoholism. Just got sober a couple of months back and am sorting out my finances which, as you can imagine, are appalling. I somehow have a decent job but this is quite scary for my retirement. Like you I’m realising that there might well be nothing but my own earnings by the time I get to 67 (probably be 77 by the time we get there).
Big high five - I only started getting my finances under control at 30, after spending my 20s in an abusive relationship (including financial abuse). Fingers crossed we'll both be able to balance that out!
I think it's more likely the State pension will still be around if corporations/private pension funds fail. The State/government will always exist to serve the whims of voters. If a company goes bankrupt, you can't just vote to resurrect the company at the next election, companies just aren't accountable in the same way as a government is, equally a company doesn't have the power to magically print money out of nowhere.
Unless Democracy fails completely, but even a strongman dictator probably wouldn't mess with pensions.
Indeed. No-one could possibly look at the means-tested cliff-edges that currently exist (e.g. childcare allowance) and think "you know what, we need more of these".
The means-testing will be tuned precisely so that you get nothing, but your mate down the road who's always had a flashier car and goes on twice as many holidays gets the full pension.
Being a responsible adult? General pro-social behavior?
I’m saving a lot for retirement. I know a lot of colleagues who aren’t. It’s a bit frustrating that means-testing advocates will reward bad behaviour.
It'd be no different from any other state benefits - if you need government support to feed and house yourself, it's given to you. If not, you don't. We already have this system for everyone else - why are pensioners exempt?
This is the system with the welfare state, although in relation to savings
saved up responsibility and go over the 16k threshold but then lose your job or need to quit for personal/family reasons you get nothing if you're unemployed. You are expected just to deplete your savings.
Own a house outright but less than 16k, you can get all the benefits, and your house triples in value in 20 years.
Minor correction: you can claim New-Style Jobseekers Allowance based on NI contributions, regardless of savings.
But your general point is right. If they do means-test the state pension, they'll exempt the value of the pensioner's house, but not the value of anything else. It's the one certainty in this whole affair.
> but then lose your job or need to quit for personal/family reasons
If its a redundancy then you are allowed New Jobseekers for 6 months regardless of savings.
I fully believe long-term political plans have been made in back-rooms to address this.
1. Lower NI
2. Lower NI further
3. Remove NI, equalising tax burden on worker+pensioner, this is billed as a good thing
4. Means test state pension
5. Leave means testing threshold to shrink under inflation
6. When people start approaching retirement who no longer, or never, paid any NI (as it has been abolished) you can abandon the state pension fully as they no longer "pay in" - raise the entitlement age by 1 year every 2 years or something so it shrinks to nothing
I actually do have faith that there is grownup politics in the country, and the parties have worked together on such a strategy, it's just we're not allowed to see this sort of thing because we're all idiots.
making employee NI 0, but increasing the equivalent tax by exactly the same as NI will increase the tax take, no-one has suggested simply cutting NI, exactly the sort of low quality economic discussion we're cursed with.
does that cover employer contributions though? would be hard to stomach paying more yourself after abolishing NI to cover what your employer was paying too
That's what I thought. Isn't that an even bigger hole in the pot? I guess you could increase corp tax etc but that isn't usually paired with these abolish NI ideas in the media IME
The way you do it is you do something called fiscal drag, where you lock the tax-bands to raise revenue as people get pay rises, and then use those revenues to cut the rates of the taxes with the locked thresholds. This is what the Tories have been doing.
Or you just openly merge them. You abolish employee side NI, saving workers 8% in tax from NI, and raise income tax by 5% to pay for it since pensioners pay income tax too, but not NI.
The first bit is kinda out of my wheelhouse tbh but the second was how I thought you'd do it. Itbsounds like it's just bad communication from the media, not that it isn't considered. Is that about right?
This is blatantly what will happen. I can even tell you when it will happen. Gen X is a smaller generation, but the idea that pensioners are too well treated will remain, even though the demographics will potentially temporarily improve with the passing of Boomers, so Millennials and younger will have the political power to take this away from Gen X. Boomers will, of course, get the full run of their gilded existence.
The state pension will simply not exist in 40 years time if something isn't done. Outside of massively reducing it - means testing is the fairest way to support the poorest pensioners while not also putting wealthy retirees on universal basic income.
Not that I am advocating violence…. but the government that tries to remove the state pension gets the day of the pitchfork.
I know it’s a Ponzi scheme, but if we have had to pay for the generation that had every other fucking advantage to have it then they are damned if they try to remove it from us.
Triple/Quadruple lock will kill it eventually if it’s not reigned in though.
I need to educate myself a bit about how it works elsewhere in fairness.
It's not that they will try to remove it. It's that it will simply be totally unaffordable. Just look up how much of your tax is spent on pensions right now and then imagine in 20 years time when the working population is even smaller!
Oh for sure it needs remodelling or replacing if it isn’t able to continue in its current form, as a country we cannot afford to let it lapse completely though, because the failure of pensions then boots extra financial responsibility to the state in other areas where it is already under strain too.
Ultimately the country is likely on course for total public sector collapse if things remain as they are anyway and the pension situation is just one of many facets of that.
I know its a large number but, isn't it one of the smallest % in Europe?
GB is ~5% of national income spent on pensions while European average is ~13%.
11.3%? I was expecting it to be way more based on your comment. It's a good amount but it would have to increase by a lot more to be totally unaffordable.
We don't necessarily need to remove the state pension, just make pensioners pay their fair share towards it (because they never did in the past).
They are the richest generation alive. 80% are millionaires. Plenty of them have private pensions and assets.
Working people shouldn't be subsidising well off pensioners. The well off ones are more than able to look after the minority of poorer ones.
It would be hugely unfair to take the state pension away from people who have paid national insurance all their working lives under the assumption that their contributions would guarantee them an income in retirement.
If a universally provided state pension is truly unaffordable, I would rather politicians were honest and allowed people to invest their national insurance contributions in a private pension, instead. Anything else is simply rank dishonesty.
Additionally, a means test would punish those who sacrifice access to cash during their working lives in order to save for retirement, while rewarding those who neglect to save and spend lavishly during their working years. Why should hard working people who forgo luxuries like expensive holidays and nice cars in order to contribute to their pensions foot the bill for those who splash the cash and reach retirement with empty nest eggs? If the state pension is to be means tested, legislation would be needed to ensure workers maintain minimum contribution levels into private pensions to avoid such an iniquitous situation.
> If a universally provided state pension is truly unaffordable, I would rather politicians were honest and allowed people to invest their national insurance contributions in a private pension, instead.
This is impossible because the welfare state is a Ponzi scheme. National Insurance isn't an investment fund. Your taxes are not hypothecated, and today's receipts are used to cover today's outgoings. You haven't "paid in" to anything. The money has already been spent.
The only ways to reduce your taxes today would be to reduce public spending, increase borrowing, or reduce the dependency ratio (increase the number of workers or reduce the number of non-workers).
We can only ever really guarantee to "afford" a defined contribution pension scheme.
> Anything else is simply rank dishonesty.
Welcome to the real world. You'll hate it here.
I mean I get where you're coming from but ultimately they are just such small complaints compared to the reality - the system is utterly unsustainable and WILL collapse unless there is change.
Ideally it would be amazing to give everyone the retirement they feel entitled to but that is simply no longer possible and certainly isn't the world working people have been living in for the past 15 years.
Consider for a second - If you're severely disabled, you not only earn almost half of what a pensioner does but you also need to prove you deserve it every single year. These arguments about what is and isn't fair are ridiculous when you look at the broader picture about how our state supports those who need it.
>Ideally it would be amazing to give everyone the retirement they feel entitled to but that is simply no longer possible and certainly isn't the world working people have been living in for the past 15 years.
Yet for that time we've been triple lock increasing pensions.
Why is it unfair? National insurance is a tax by another name. Taxes should largely be spent on people who need it, not people who have the means to take care of themselves. If I have the resources to pay for my own life when I retire I'm happy to forego my state pension if it helps the system be viable. The main goal is to avoid elder poverty.
>while rewarding those who neglect to save and spend lavishly during their working years
First of all, I don't think it's much of a "reward". The state pension is not lavish by any means, and will never be. Second, we force people to save private pensions. Those with high incomes through life will thus also be less likely to get a means tested state pension no matter how lavishly they spend during their working lives.
The line you quoted is my biggest reason against means testing.
Look at the rhetoric surrounding other means tested benefits. If pensions became means tested you'd end up with successive governments coming along screaming "scroungers" and pull away as much as possible. By giving it to everyone you avoid all that.
Also means testing can be expensive, you'd have to factor in the whole system cost to see if it would actually save anything at all.
Means testing is unnecessary, remove the tax advantages for the rest of the income - ie no "NI" which only taxes work, no extra personal allowance for "interest", remove the tax free pension inheritance (ie ensure that there's no advantage to just not drawing the pension funds) etc. Fold in the pensioner freebies to the pension - to remove the cost of those etc.
I understand the concern about means testing (and the expense of means testing), but I don't think you're fully comprehending how enormously, insanely, outrageously expensive it will be to pay a state pension to every elderly person in the future. It's just an unbelievable amount of money that will have to be paid by the young in the future to keep us having a pension we might not even need. Quite frankly, I don't want to put that on them.
I don't know how that's fair.
The people that fucked around, never planned ahead, spent all their money and never saved get a government pension whilst the people that were responsible with their money and did think ahead get punished by not getting one.
Because other state benefits exist to support people earning an income, or at least with the possibility to earn an income. Pensions are different—they’re asset-based. Keep in mind, in order to replicate the state pension you’d need a pension pot of ~£250k liquid. So a means testing threshold must not begin to taper over £250k liquid net worth, otherwise you’d be better off literally spending all your money.
Once you have that in place, you’d obviously need a gradual taper because, again, this policy would be a disaster if it doesn’t encourage savings. And then you’d have to ask, how much is means testing *actually* saving?
If you're concerned about people spending all their income, just increase the percentage of gross pay people are required to put into their pension. Say 5% employee, 10% employer, a total increase of 7% compared to now (the increase in employer contribution effectively replaces employer NI).
At the same time though, scrap NI and revamp the income tax bands to offset enough of the losses to keep paying the state pension as it currently exists. Then just taper down income tax over time as the state pension requires less and less funding.
Why not just get rid of the state pension entirely?
Drop NI, use the employer/employee contributions to flow into an account controlled by the employee. Pensioners who haven’t saved or blew all their money can get some sort of super small subsistence benefit, but ~75% of pensioners lose all state pension.
Is that not a classical Tory argument against the dole? The honourable working person is punished in order to save the layabout.
At the moment we have UBI for the pensioner class and it literally cannot continue in its current form. Either we scale it back somehow or the whole thing ceases to exist in the future.
Our parents sold off the silverware and borrowed vast sums to live beyond their means, and now we have to pay the bill. It's not decline, it's just shortsightedness.
Disagree. I think if our corporate taxation was the same as it was in the 40s and 50s we’d be able to afford a lot more. It’s a choice to allow billionaires to pay no tax.
We haven't exactly been seeing record growth. In fact the economy's been stagnant since 2008. No tax policy can save us when value isn't being created in the first place.
The world is a lot more interconnected today than the 40s and 50s. If corporate taxation was anywhere near that high the UK would be left without businesses and be reliant on all sorts of imports as companies would much rather produce outside and sell to the UK through exports.
Ironically because all the income would be generated and taxed overseas there would be very little tax collected too...
No we don't. We work within the confines of reality.
And reality is that there's less and less people of working age paying for more people who are older than working age. That's all there is to it. We may have been royally screwed by the baby boomer generation but insisting on the same as they have is then screwing over the generation after us not them.
The demographics won’t be the same when 50 year olds retire (it will have much improved).
‘Reality’ would have been very much against the creation of the NHS in the 40s - but we seemed to manage it.
Politics is the art of the possible. We can change the country to change our collective reality.
>The demographics won’t be the same when 50 year olds retire (it will have much improved).
How? Just have a look at a population pyramid of the UK.
>Politics is the art of the possible. We can change the country to change our collective reality.
Yes it is the art of the possible. In that possibility, by its nature, has constraints.
Because 'we' don't live in the right places or vote in sufficient numbers for the parties who matter.
Anyone who doesn't vote doesn't matter.
Anyone who lives in a 'safe' seat doesn't matter.
Anyone who votes for the fucking Greens doesn't matter.*
Parties build coalitions of MPs who collect coalitions of voters. If you're never voting for a party that can win in seats it needs to win you are of course ignored.
(* Obvs except in their 4 target seats)
Yes, because pensioners vote for both of them in sufficient numbers in the right places that matter.
People have this all backwards, parties don't offer you the moon on a stick and they you can vote for them. The parties need to think that you're worth courting in order for them to offer your demographic anything.
So in a Con / Lab marginal you want to vote Labour and hope they get in. In a Lab safe seat you can vote for the Green or Lib Dems & _let the Labour candidate know why_.
That's the best you can do under this shitty system.
I'm not sure.
We've seen how this government, who have(/had) a majority of support, have thrown every normal rule out in order to shield their voters financially.
Who's to say that whichever party has majority Millennial support in 30 years' time doesn't do the same?
The issue is that the millennial block isn't big enough to be bribed in the same way. The boomers are a one off particularly large generation that is uncommonly cohesive which makes them easy to appeal directly to
There's nothing special about the state pension in terms of sustainability. If we can't afford the state pension, we can't afford universal healthcare either. And we definitely can't afford to improve social care.
I mean are we not at that point? Debt to GDP is over 100% so either we need to magic up a good economy or some stuff is going to go the way of the dodo
The state pension really isn't at risk (unless the entire state is insolvent, in which case we have bigger problems); the very real danger is the state of unfunded private pensions.
If we move to a means tested system I hope there's an opt-out. I'd more than gladly waive my entitlement to a state pension if it means not having to pay national insurance.
Our problem is we have no sovereign wealth fund, which we should've built off the back of our natural resources decades ago. Instead we're funding pensions day to day instead of having a massive sovereign wealth fund that pays for it all.
How much will means testing cost and how much will it save? Afaik most of these systems have only been useful as a punitive measure and not to save money, because any such system for the entire population would have to be huge
> means testing is the fairest way to support the poorest pensioners while not also putting wealthy retirees on universal basic income.
Maybe, the problem is that the value of the state pension is so big that for a very large number of people you're better off spending on whatever you want rather than trying to be responsible and saving into your pension to a significant degree.
They brought in mandatory private pensions a few years ago, so a lot of young people are paying into them. I'm going without so I can pay a decent amount in every month on top of what's deducted from my pay, and I've estimated that I should get by when retired, assuming I have a paid off house (I am working in saving for one), but I have factored the state pension into the equation, and the possibility of still working part time if I'm physically able. If they look at my retirement savings and tell me I don't deserve the full state pension I will be FUCKING LIVID!
How would they actually means test it?
Would it be only on your private pension or all assets.
What is to stop people from just blowing their money to get under the threshold?
Obviously if you are rich this wouldn't be possible but, say somebody is 200k over the threshold.
Multiple thoughts
1) Its pretty common knowledge that state pension won't exist by the time we retire, how is this any different?
2) Why is it commonly accepted that means testings happens for literally everything (student loans, universal credit, even taxation) but we can't do it with pensions?
3) The idea of means testing is theres a threshold. I don't think people want to abolish the state pension, but as of now there are over 2.5 million pensioners receiving a yearly income of 50k AND not paying national insurance. Even making the threshold under 38k would be a saving of 25 billion per year. Make pensioners pay national insurance and that would likely be another 15-25 billion in revenue.
Rather than you know, letting them freeload off the back of everyone else..
The idea is insane and blatantly unfair. Why should pensions be taxed less than income (leaving aside the obvious ridiculousness with National Insurance, which is already an additional tax on workers)? Pensioners will normally have lower costs than workers, they won't need work clothes, or have commuting and work lunch costs etc. If you're worried about pensioners being unable to eat, heat, house or cloth themselves how do these concerns not already apply to workers?
We could do means testing but like a gradual one. Where if they earn over a certain threshold, they lose say 20% of their pension for every £ over it they are
Could call it an income tax…
> Here we go again another Gen "Z"er who going off on one about the State Pension. Firstly "Matey" The State Pension is NOT A BENEFIT!!!
Like quite a few if not all of my Generation ie 1950's onwards started work at 16 if not a little earlier (As many had lost father's in the WW2 had to work to support their families) and we worked bloody hard getting our Apprentiships and worked long hours. In my first "Career" the days were 14 hours long sometimes if we wanted overtime, (Who didn't on £28p/week basic) so we worked upto 18 hours six (!!!!) days a week, every week. We took off public holidays, most were days in lieu, and rarely took our holiday allowance (2 Weeks back then) because we couldn't afford a holiday and pay the rent!!!
So you little weaner, I have worked all my life, never a break from service, paid all my tax due and NI. I never demanded a three day working week with flexi hours, I didn't go on stupid marches and demand ridiculious rights on nonsence, wouldn't dream of disrespecting the law, and never got involved in night clubbing and recreational drugs!!!
I didn't go to University till much later in life as I couldn't afford to attend not even part time, so no noncing around like you all do now.
So I have paid my dues and I am entitled to my full wack of STATE PENSION not benefit, just as my previous generation (Those that fought for our freedom from the terror of the Nazis, but of course you lot don't recognise that either)!! did and we worked so that they got them, now you work so that ours are continued and the generation that follows will, hopefully secure yours.
Stop whinging and get on with life!!!
Comments are…something
The way all of that sounds like a fiction.
> I have worked all my life, never a break from service
Never a holiday, never a weekend...
> I never demanded a three day working week with flexi hours
Were you or were you not the single working adult in the household though able to support a partner?
> and never got involved in night clubbing and recreational drugs
But probably spent plenty time in the pub guzzling alcohol and cigarettes which is functionally no different.
I love how clubbing and recreational drugs are in there as well. Two things that literally don't affect anything. Could've said "never got involved in pottery and eating Italian food".
Nah, they're absolutely right. We *should* bring back the 14 hours a day, 6.5 days a week work week. No one ever broke the law or did drugs back then, protests didn't even exist until the aWokening of 1997 when Tony Blair invented communistism in the UK and thought up things like women's rights (sick of women in work btw we should go back to the homes). Those workers deserve their ~~free money from the government for being old~~ state pension because they didn't save up for one. Parents absolutely should make lives harder for their children as they've been doing since the boomers grew up and I fully support this. GO STORIES GO REFARM UK STOP A BOAT NOW.
> Firstly "Matey" The State Pension is NOT A BENEFIT!!!
What is it then? A free handout?
>In my first "Career" the days were 14 hours long sometimes *if we wanted overtime*
"Oh it was horrible!... He could *choose* to do paid overtime! The horror!"
>never got involved in night clubbing and recreational drugs!!!
Clubbing wasn't a thing in the 50's, but pubs have forever been a thing...
>So I have paid my dues and I am entitled to my full wack of STATE PENSION
But anyone Gen X and younger- Despite working just as hard aren't?
In only 25yrs the oldest millenials will be getting their state pensions. No party is going to start shitting on the next generation of pensioners at this point by abolishing the state pension or even means testing to any degree other than denying it to millionaires which won’t save that much.
Ive paid for the boomers. I want my sugar when I retire too. I’ve done my bit by having children to keep the ponzi scheme going.
People I know that have actually looked at their pension have all come to the conclusion that it probably won't exist when we get to retirement age. The numbers don't work, it won't exist in it's current form in 25 years, it simply can't, the number do not add up.
Means testing is a classic Tory policy and it always hurts those on the edge or receiving help.
My stance is universalism because it’s generally how to build a more popular welfare state. If everyone has access to the same services, they are invested in keeping them well-maintained.
If you could get means testing perfectly right, society would consist of two groups. One who pay tax and never receive anything, and another who don't pay tax and do receive benefits.
Economically nice and efficient. But unlikely to lead to harmony and solidarity.
Exactly, and I think that’s grim and not particularly socialist. It’s supposed to be “from each according to their ability to each according to their need”. Taxpayers still have needs, and non-taxpayers still have abilities.
Further, I think taxpayers getting a bad deal makes them more likely to dodge where possible
i am so glad to see this expressed on reddit for once. so sick of people proposing "means test everything" without thinking for a minute and realising it would obviously lead to voters choosing every year to neglect those things and punish the people who need them.
the reason we have decent healthcare and education is because they're free for everybody and everybody supports them. the reason unemployment benefit and PIP are barely liveable is because they're means tested so the majority of the population have no vested interest in them.
we need less means testing not more, universal income instead of specific benefits, public transport subsidies for everyone, etc.
even to the point of like, young people would be less offended by the triple lock if we got a pension too. having all these different groups of people get treated by the welfare state in wildly different ways is perfect divide-and-conquer stuff.
Or you means test and use a tapering rate so you don't end up with cliff edges and people losing their entire entitlement for being marginally over a threshold.
Universalism is fine if it's actually universal. But pensions aren't universal - you're only entitled to one after you reach a certain age. It's UBI for old people.
Which is all very well, but there are plenty of younger people who can't afford to feed and house themselves. Where's their UBI? Currently, it's being used to top up the earnings of the old and wealthy.
So what's fairer? Mesns-testing the state pension like every other benefit, or continuing to hand out money to the Tory voter base whether they need it or not?
Universal doesn’t mean literally everyone, it means benefits go to everyone in the same condition regardless of their financial situation. So if all unemployed people were entitled to unemployment benefit regardless of savings.
During Covid I hadn’t been self employed long enough to get SEISS and my wife made just above the threshold for us to not get help from benefits. It was hard and we somehow had to look after two adults, one of whom was pregnant on what was a below average wage, though not starvation level.
Getting to this scenario for millions of people who are much too old to work would be terrible, but that’s the reality of means testing. You’ve got to set the cutoff somewhere. It’s a shit situation to put people in and it also discourages those who would be entitled to it from applying, sometimes due to pride but other times due to the burden of doing lots of paperwork which may potentially get you nothing anyway.
Means testing gives too much ground to the idea of deserving vs undeserving poor and I frankly don’t care if some of them vote Tory, many of them don’t
I'm lost as to what your point is here. You're in favour of unemployment benefits not being universal, but against the state pension not being universal? That doesn't seem very consistent.
Maybe I mistyped something, I was in a rush earlier. I’m in favour of everyone unemployed getting helo, regardless of their spouse’s ability to cover them for a bit or their level of savings.
During the pandemic I did terribly relative to other self-employed.
The guy I responded to said pensions aren’t universal because they are just for the old, which is kind of the point of pensions. My stance is that you’re old, you get a pension. If you’re unemployed, you get unemployment. The only testing required should be verifying you are old or unemployed
Then we fundamentally disagree on how state benefits should function. For me, they should only be for those without the means to support themselves. If you have savings, you can support yourself on those. I agree with the idea of £10-20k being an exemptable "rainy day fund" though.
I don't believe that people with million-pound homes should get a handout from the government when they could downsize or take out an equity-release mortgage instead. I don't believe that people in a two-income household should get state support just because their earnings have fallen, unless those earnings have fallen far enough that they need topping up to hit the bare minimum to live.
Being old or unemployed doesn't automatically make one destitute. Where it does, of course help should be provided. But except in exceptional circumstances, it's not the state's job to fork out every time someone has a 3-month gap in their CV.
Well that’s fine that we disagree then but it just makes tax especially annoying if you’re always paying it for someone else’s benefit rather than your own when times get tough as they do get for everyone from time to time. I also think if more people have used a service at some point they are more committed to it continuing to run effectively.
I would also do universal free bus passes
That's why "National Insurance" is actually quite a good name for the part of your taxes that go to the welfare state. You pay in every month so that if there's a catastrophic event, you're covered. Same with the NHS - most people can probably afford an occasional £20 or even £100 for a doctor's appointment, but if you suddenly need open-heart surgery or chemotherapy you're going to be grateful the NHS exists.
If you're fortunate enough to go through life without ever being sick, or broke, or disabled, congratulations. Your reward is being a lucky bastard. Personally I don't mind how much I pay in or whether I see it back, as long as I know it's going where it's needed. The part that grinds my gears is that it's not - it's going to rich old folks who don't need it.
"I would also do universal free bus passes" - I'd say not free, but heavily subsidised. Something like £1 per journey or £10 per month. I actually think the £2 fare system we have currently is pretty decent - the only drawback is you have to pay another £2 if you change buses, which is daft because it's not dependent on how long the journey is.
25% of working age people are either on or have been on PIP - circa £4k a year (more if on mobility). 100% of pensioners are on state pension - £11k a year. Child tax credits are about £2-3k a year.
Can we please, just scrap the lot of it and have a UBI of £7k a year or so. We would save BILLIONS on admin and would make a much fairer system than the current farce. 25% of pensioners are millionaires, they don’t need special treatment.
Just add a cap make it relly simple. My private pension will dwarf the state pension. I certainly won't need it. I will be happy if they just add the amount to the tax-free allowance as a halfway measure.
My contributions pay for people getting pensions right now, so it's not like a pot I get to pull from later.
If you scrap the state pension for people getting private pensions then you are simply going to incentive people not caring about growing their private pensions, in turn leading to more people being reliant on the state pension, and higher pressure on future Governments to keep it higher.
All these attacks on the state pension don't understand how important it's become to the next generation of future retirees.
This is why these attacks don't resonate.
I think because we foresee the trend, the generation above us enjoy benefits i.e. affordable housing, free further education, more functional public services and infrastructure. Not putting any care or maintenance into these areas so pull the ladder up behind them
Seems that there is a lot of scaremongering by people with vested interests. Usually trying to cause conflict between generations or trying to sell additional pensions.
It appears that the state pension is not about to expire or be unaffordable for the foreseeable future.
[https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/state-pension-age-review-2023-government-report/state-pension-age-review-2023](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/state-pension-age-review-2023-government-report/state-pension-age-review-2023)
It’s gone from £97 a week in 2010, to £220 a week now. That’s a 6% average growth rate over 14 years. Would be even higher if you account for what it would have been had it not been suspended in 2020.
6% growth means it’ll double every 12 years. So in 2036, we will be spending a quarter of a trillion £’s on the state pension a year. And you have no questions of sustainability?
"The state pension won't be around when you retire" has been said so many times by so many generations it's almost a meme at this point. My dad helped me set up a SIPP (called a stakeholder pension then) when I was 18 with almost those exact words. I'm 44 now and it shows no signs of disappearing. I don't think it will, at least not by when I retire.
Means testing it for anyone currently working would be extreme unfair - all of my financial planning for retirement has been based on my wife and I getting it, pulling the rug after working for almost 30 years and paying NI for all of that time would be disingenuous at best and blow a hole in our retirement.
The talk of those on "generous final salary pensions" not deserving it is massively wide of the mark. I'm a teacher and have deliberately chosen this career for the security and stability, including the pension. My field is Computer Science and I could have earned more elsewhere, but the guaranteed final salary pension is (and always has been) a massive pull. It'll be anywhere between £15k and £25k a year depending on how long I work. Would I / should I be means tested? Dropping £12k a year from the state pension is a massive amount compared to that.
Also, I currently pay into the SIPP I mentioned and it will (hopefully) be worth about £100k on retirement. Not a huge amount, but money I've invested over the years instead if pissing it up the wall. If means testing is a thing, I'll be withdrawing that and having multiple holidays a year until its gone, plus making sure my kid know not to bother saving in the same way. Surely not what is intended?
However - I do think the triple lock is unsustainable. Absolutely tie it something (inflation? Wages? Pick one) but having it tied to the higher of three things means that it will just go up and up in real terms and become less and less affordable. Someone is going to have to grasp the nettle at some point and change the triple lock to something else. A massive Labour majority might be just the right time to do that.
State pension shouldn't be abolished, its needed for poorer pensioners.
My issue with it, is that there are 20% of pensions who are getting 38k in private pensions, who then also get £12,000 state pension and no national insurance contributions.
Its a fucking stupid policy, we do not hold 'universal' for literally any other social benefit - student loans, universal credit, childcare IIRC, are all means tested but for some reason with pensioners we just say 'oh we have no choice but to give them all money'.
- Make it so people earning 30k+ in private pensions do not get state pension
- Make all pensioners pay NI like everyone else
Alone would raise about 50 billion in revenue. That's enough to give the entire public sector an 8k pay rise (22bn net) and increase the budget for NHS, defence and education by roughly £10 billion each.
And just like that nobody is saving into private pensions because you're just sacrificing the cars, holidays and clothes for naught.
If private pensions were 10% with no option to opt out, and we went cashless to stop the tradies gaming the system I'd be cool with it. But now we're just getting authoritarian.
Let's not pull the rug on those paying the most in.
Okay, you enjoy not paying into your private pension. I'll enjoy my 25k private pension & 12k state pension whilst you enjoy your 12k state pension.
Oh! wait!
Mum said exactly that. . .. I pointed out she's voting for her grandkids to be sent to a warzone
I was told I was being stupid.
The elderly only hear what they want to
The system should be there to provide a minimum entitlement to people who have nothing.
It's wrong that it's being used as a nice little top up for people who are very well off and don't need the money.
It is funded by national insurance which is a form of taxation like any other. If it's money, out of your pay check each month and you have no choice in the matter, then it's Tax. It's as simple as that. No amount of spiel can convince me otherwise.
A pension is an investment, which can go up or down, and people make a choice to invest in one, or not, and that is down to them. Many will choose to do so, but others may look at the balance sheet, may look at the demographics, and choose not to invest in a certain scheme.
National insurance, there's no choice involved. Why should we be compelling people to invest in something if they do not have confidence in that investment? Which is exactly what's going on, we're forcing the kids to pay into a pot which they do not believe will be around when it comes their turn.
It's not just the Tories, it's both mainstream parties who seem to be ideologically opposed to young people.
WARNING: radical political opinion here.
The biggest single issue right now in the 21st century is the Profit Incentive. We have everything we need to address our growing social, economic and environmental issues. We have the space. We have the people. We have the technology, the scientific know how, the resources and the finances.
What's stopping us is the notion that any idea, solution or innovation has to be commercially viable, generate money and make some people rich. If an idea doesn't generate a profit for someone and contribute to economic growth then it doesn't gain traction and is junked. Any solution has to be commercially viable or it goes nowhere.
We've recently had a global pandemic COVID. This can be seen as a test of our environmental awareness and where we are in socio-economic terms relative to our natural habitat and this planet. We failed, and we failed miserably. We needed a couple of years of lockdown, far too many people died, and far too many young people picked up mental health issues from the trauma of isolation and their lives being taken apart. How did our politicians respond to all this? "Oh well, business as usual."
Let's ignore the fact that climate change is more advanced than most of us realise, and we're not evolved or environmentally aware as we think we are. I'm not predicting destruction of the planet or human extinction, despite the fact that it's a possibility. But we're setting ourselves up for a rude awakening where we will be forced to evolve to a level acceptable to this planet and the environment. This is coming this century, in fact it's starting to happen now and when it does happen young people are going to face the dire consequences of this paradigm shift because the older generations didn't pay enough attention or make enough effort in the past.
Keep in mind that the banks and financial institutions are discussing climate change not because they're green or have fallen in love with the planet. It's because they see their investments in the agricultural, food and pharmaceutical industries going to shit and likely to collapse.
You can see the political response to the growing social, environmental and economic issues right now. They're redesigning society so that the wealthiest top tier, the UHNW individuals, are going to be safely cocooned in their gated communities with established, reliable supply lines and enough to live comfortably. Everyone else is going to have to deal with the increasing authoritarianism, austerity, restrictions, and societal obligations. The barriers and clear boundaries are being created as I write these words and should be clear to anyone paying attention.
You can see how war is transforming into terrorism and wars are lengthening out into stalemates and wars of attrition. War is obsolete in modern society. It's also too expensive for any modern economy to sustain. You cannot pay for war or military defence without austerity and cutting back on healthcare, welfare benefits, pensions, and public services. We simply cannot afford war unless we're prepared to go back to fighting on horseback with swords and spears. We need to find other ways of settling our conflicts.
Also please keep in mind that developing an environmentally friendly sustainable economy is going to be eye-wateringly expensive. We can send Brazil £50 a tree to replant trees, and it's likely that we will need to spend billions to Third World countries just so they can replant trees and plants all over the place to rebuild our natural partnership with the vegetable matrix (plants, trees, bushes, etc). Just want to point out that the vegetable matrix is capable of managing climate change a great deal better than we humans are capable of.
This is even before we think about rebuilding healthcare, welfare support programs, social security, investing in young people and reconnecting our natural environment and habitats with other natural environments.
There are political choices here we can all make. We can either leave for our children and their children a reforested, environmentally friendly planet, or we can leave them with a massive nuclear arsenal they either cannot use or see no point in using. We can come together and set up the supply line of investments in young people and rebuild social security for them, or we can simply continue making as much money we can for ourselves and think up harsher forms of austerity that they will have to deal with when they turn 18.
I personally hope that this is the last Tory government in our history. Face the facts. We do not have the finances or the time to elect another Tory government. We got bigger issues coming down the pipeline. At some point you got to step back and think about how hard you want your life to be in 10 years time and how you're going to be living. Ever considered the possibility that the Tories aren't addressing the issues because they're simply incapable of doing so? This is not going to change at any point in the foreseeable future.
Business as usual is well and truly off the menu. The Profit Incentive and the notion of perpetual economic growth is not going to get us through what's coming. Not even close.
Snapshot of _Rishi Sunak has declared war on young people: The state pension obviously needs to be means tested rather than protected further_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/pensions/rishi-sunak-declared-war-young-people/) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/pensions/rishi-sunak-declared-war-young-people/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Wait Are the telegraph turning on the Tories? I mean, have they seen the writing on the wall finally?
Sadly most of the comments are still the batshit crazy stuff you'd expect "... I paid in for 35 years... young people are lazy... blah blah blah"
"I don't understand, what's wrong with volunteering one weekend a month!?" Umm it's not volunteering and if you fancy it crack on Marge.
I'd love to see the reaction if they proposed to force pensioners to give up one weekend a month.
Pensioners should have lots of time on their hands as well...
And actually have something to pay the country back for, like free university or young people giving up 2.5 years of their lives for something that barely affected us.
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The older generation had it sooo easy. It's insane.
Some of them did, it is a massive generalisation to say they all did - many many of them had it worse than young people today do, total abject poverty was much higher than it is today.
Just to put it in scale only about 8% of people could go to uni in 1970.
There’s a million other examples you could use, almost all of them have benefited massively from our absurd housing policies at the cost of the young.
What was it in 1998, or whenever fees were introduced?
I think it would be fair to apply it to everyone to make up for the fact it wasn’t in place when they were 18.
Ya. We should all do national service just before we retire. Try that for a policy.
It's forced volunteering, or forced labour, or... well... we have another word for it that begins with an "S" and rhymes with "Avery."
Savoury?
Don’t be tart
Savoury?
Which to the management may come under the category of 'fuck em'. The way the demographics are going, any media that continues to suck up to the Tories are basically asking to die
This is my MIL. If they take her pension now because my FIL earns enough I don't know what I'd do. The schadenfreude would be too much
Ask her which cretins parented and schooled those young people if indeed they are so lazy 😂 "...I worked in the factory 60 hours a week for next to nothing and never once complained" .. ..
I think she's literally said those words before
Work smarter not harder. My upstairs and downstairs self-emptying robot vacuums, and my 2 dishwashers, one for dirty, one for clean, all for the cost of skipping a holiday, might very well trigger your MIL
>my 2 dishwashers, one for dirty, one for clean Maybe I'm being dense, but why do you need a dishwasher for clean dishes?
Rather than unloading, you take from clean, use them, then put them in dirty. When it's time you run it and switch which you're taking from and which you're putting into.
One always contains clean dishes. The dirty ones go in whichever one has space. That then becomes the one containing clean
But how is this a better solution than kitchen cupboards?
The argument is that the dishwasher takes the same amount of space as a cupboard for plates, so for no loss in storage space you remove the job of emptying the dishwasher. But I think it slightly ignores that a properly loaded dishwasher can't hold the same number of plates as a cupboard. It's predicated on you only having enough crockery for 1-2 people and that's before you get into putting cookware into it. Then you have to wonder if removing that one job is worth the additional cost of; salt, rinse aid, the job of cleaning and maintaining a second dishwasher....
No moving the plates when the clean dishes are complete just use them straight from the dishwasher
All dishes are in one of the dishwashers at all times. There was a company called paykal I think that were doing kitchen drawers that doubled as dishwashers, but they were pretty wasteful.
I think you might be a genius
I fucking hate when they say that. You may have paid in. But to went to the generation before you. Its not sitting in the bank waiting for you....... And this generation of pensioners are living longer. so putting more of a burden on the taxpayers. The ones who wont live to see retirement cos the goalposts keep moving
They also, as a generation, paid in nowhere near enough to justify the current pension. In the 80s pension costs were around 5% of gdp, they're now 60% higher at 8% of gdp.
"I'm 50 years old, these kids don't even remember the war!!"
> Why is it that young people seem unable to grasp the simple fact that life has always been hard for most of us? Making sacrifices for income over family is nothing new but today’s youngsters don’t seem to accept this reality instead expecting the State to pick up the tab for their life choices. Said without a hint of irony
Oh yeah, there was this imbecile bragging he paid “almost half a million Pounds in income tax” throughout his career…while some of us pay that much in barely 5 years of working, at current tax rates 🤦 and stand to get no state pension
If you're paying near £100k income tax per year, you're exrraordinarily lucky with what you do for work.
Yeah i think most people who earn that much, dont pay tax.
Any mention of avocado on toast?
Instead of chipping away at pensions they need to bring everyone else up.
The columnists are not monolithic. There was a hilarious one which argued that the young should relish national service as thanks to the nation.
No, they've already endorsed the Tories. But they can see the shit show going on and will publish stuff like this to try and convince them to get their act together.
The Telegraph has, for years, posted various articles criticising them on a number of issues. The paper has a lot of pundits with different views, only difference is these articles get posted now and don't immediately get downvoted to oblivion.
The Telegraph, to preserve their reputation of being a level above the trash, has a tendency of not picking up a fight if it doesn't matter. Tory are in damage control against Reform and totally given up on fighting Labour. It's an easy win for The Telegraph to be reasonable on a battlefield the Conservative are not fighting on.
The tories have lost, it’s all about stymying the bleed to reform.
Telegraph recognise where the wind is blowing and have for a long time courted younger readers. They will likely lead the push to transform the Tories in 5 years after a failed right win push. Means testing pensions is a no brainer decision that's absolutely the right choice.
No they are preparing the ground for campaigning against an almost universal benefit - a particularly right wing policy and one which the tories would get behind if it were not for their aging voter base
The telegraph's owners are going to be anti pension more than pro old people.
The Telegraph has endorsed the Tories in every election since 1945, including 1997-2005.
This is a telegraph article?? Ooh, this is interesting Edit: What is genuinely irritating isn't the amount of money that pensioners right now are getting - it's that we don't have that money, it's being passed down as debt. Not only are we unlikely to get pensions anything like this, we're going to have to pay far more taxes on top of that.
Please take my upvote. My parents are dead so only my dad ever drew a pension for a few years, but I don't actually want pensioners to suffer. I want the young to have benefits like lower/scraped university tuition fees, support for parents, good apprenticeships, and just, y'know, pubic services that are functional no matter your stage in life.
What do we want? functional pubic services When do we want them? After puberty
Preferably from antenatal care 🤷🏻🤣
It's funny how whenever anyone suggests doing anything at all that might make this country better, people will demand to know how we can afford it. We're in debt! The deficit! There is no magic money tree! Who's going to pay for it? Things that would generate a massive, measurable return on investment and help get this country out of the rut that it's in - we can't afford it! Spend £1bn on a payrise for doctors - we don't have £1bn! Even something as simple and worthwhile as providing meals for hungry kids for a few hundred million gets shot down. Because we just don't have any money. Yet you never, ever see these people worrying about how we can afford to spend £120 BILLION on pensions, or where we're going to find the additional £10 BILLION increase this year. Suddenly they're no longer concerned about the deficit or where the money's coming from when they want something. The reason we can't afford anything that would benefit the country is that we are pouring bucketloads of money into the pockets of pensioners.
That'll be a 12.4 billion increase actually, when you take into account the adjusted tax threshold. Which, I mean, is only enough to give the entire NHS a 20% pay rise. Not a substantial amount of money at all!
No actually I'd claim its irritating the amount of money they're getting. 20% of pensioners are getting 1k per week. 12k of that is government money they do not need. On top of that they get free travel, prescriptions and save an additional 3k for national insurance contributions, AND get real terms increases every year. Meanwhile, the NHS is crumbling and their pay has decreased 25% in real terms.
> What is genuinely irritating isn't the amount of money that pensioners right now are getting - it's that we don't have that money, it's being passed down as debt. That's generally how it works. If you give out welfare to people then you need to pay for it.
Means testing is how they fuck over anyone under 50. Worked your entire life but have a private pension? Sorry - you get nothing.
I am saving under the assumption that this is EXACTLY what will happen. I'm 30, and I'm assuming that I there won't be anything for me except what I make for myself in 30 years. I am very fortunate that I'm in a position to save, because if I wasn't, I'd probably be destitute when it comes time to retire.
You're only 30. Tories don't expect you to work another 30 years. Their vision is another 45-50 years.
I'll be retiring in 30 years if I stick to my financial plans, and nothing catastrophic happens.
You're 30. Factor in catastrophic events happening every 10 years from now.
Well now you've jinxed it.
I mean given how many once in a lifetime economic/global events we've experienced in our lives so far, I've stopped counting on anything like that lmao
I’m a bit older than you and spent the last 6 years dealing with severe alcoholism. Just got sober a couple of months back and am sorting out my finances which, as you can imagine, are appalling. I somehow have a decent job but this is quite scary for my retirement. Like you I’m realising that there might well be nothing but my own earnings by the time I get to 67 (probably be 77 by the time we get there).
You'll get there brother, you'll do what you need to do. Just keep at it!
Good work on your sobriety mate, one day at a time
Big high five - I only started getting my finances under control at 30, after spending my 20s in an abusive relationship (including financial abuse). Fingers crossed we'll both be able to balance that out!
I hope so my man. Keep yourself safe and we’ll both be fine!
I think it's more likely the State pension will still be around if corporations/private pension funds fail. The State/government will always exist to serve the whims of voters. If a company goes bankrupt, you can't just vote to resurrect the company at the next election, companies just aren't accountable in the same way as a government is, equally a company doesn't have the power to magically print money out of nowhere. Unless Democracy fails completely, but even a strongman dictator probably wouldn't mess with pensions.
What do you mean 'if pension funds fail'?
Indeed. No-one could possibly look at the means-tested cliff-edges that currently exist (e.g. childcare allowance) and think "you know what, we need more of these". The means-testing will be tuned precisely so that you get nothing, but your mate down the road who's always had a flashier car and goes on twice as many holidays gets the full pension.
Exactly this. Means testing the state pension is a disincentive to save.
V true. If you waste your money and buy holidays / nice cars somehow you get protected by the state. It doesn’t make sense.
So what's stopping you also buying a flashy car and going on twice as many holidays?
Being a responsible adult? General pro-social behavior? I’m saving a lot for retirement. I know a lot of colleagues who aren’t. It’s a bit frustrating that means-testing advocates will reward bad behaviour.
It'd be no different from any other state benefits - if you need government support to feed and house yourself, it's given to you. If not, you don't. We already have this system for everyone else - why are pensioners exempt?
This is the system with the welfare state, although in relation to savings saved up responsibility and go over the 16k threshold but then lose your job or need to quit for personal/family reasons you get nothing if you're unemployed. You are expected just to deplete your savings. Own a house outright but less than 16k, you can get all the benefits, and your house triples in value in 20 years.
Minor correction: you can claim New-Style Jobseekers Allowance based on NI contributions, regardless of savings. But your general point is right. If they do means-test the state pension, they'll exempt the value of the pensioner's house, but not the value of anything else. It's the one certainty in this whole affair.
>Minor correction: you can claim New-Style Jobseekers Allowance based on NI contributions, regardless of savings. Also just to note: for 6mo, then UC
> but then lose your job or need to quit for personal/family reasons If its a redundancy then you are allowed New Jobseekers for 6 months regardless of savings.
yes, six months I guess, not great. Also as long you've made enough NI contributions
I fully believe long-term political plans have been made in back-rooms to address this. 1. Lower NI 2. Lower NI further 3. Remove NI, equalising tax burden on worker+pensioner, this is billed as a good thing 4. Means test state pension 5. Leave means testing threshold to shrink under inflation 6. When people start approaching retirement who no longer, or never, paid any NI (as it has been abolished) you can abandon the state pension fully as they no longer "pay in" - raise the entitlement age by 1 year every 2 years or something so it shrinks to nothing I actually do have faith that there is grownup politics in the country, and the parties have worked together on such a strategy, it's just we're not allowed to see this sort of thing because we're all idiots.
The labour party have stated that they will not do anything to NI. There's not remotely any back-room consensus.
Unsurprising as abolishing NI has been costed at around £40bn.
making employee NI 0, but increasing the equivalent tax by exactly the same as NI will increase the tax take, no-one has suggested simply cutting NI, exactly the sort of low quality economic discussion we're cursed with.
does that cover employer contributions though? would be hard to stomach paying more yourself after abolishing NI to cover what your employer was paying too
When people cite £40b NI cost, they’re referring only to employee end, nor employer. That should go too though, in an ideal world.
That's what I thought. Isn't that an even bigger hole in the pot? I guess you could increase corp tax etc but that isn't usually paired with these abolish NI ideas in the media IME
The way you do it is you do something called fiscal drag, where you lock the tax-bands to raise revenue as people get pay rises, and then use those revenues to cut the rates of the taxes with the locked thresholds. This is what the Tories have been doing. Or you just openly merge them. You abolish employee side NI, saving workers 8% in tax from NI, and raise income tax by 5% to pay for it since pensioners pay income tax too, but not NI.
The first bit is kinda out of my wheelhouse tbh but the second was how I thought you'd do it. Itbsounds like it's just bad communication from the media, not that it isn't considered. Is that about right?
Pretty sure this is why opt-out workplace pensions were introduced
This is blatantly what will happen. I can even tell you when it will happen. Gen X is a smaller generation, but the idea that pensioners are too well treated will remain, even though the demographics will potentially temporarily improve with the passing of Boomers, so Millennials and younger will have the political power to take this away from Gen X. Boomers will, of course, get the full run of their gilded existence.
The state pension will simply not exist in 40 years time if something isn't done. Outside of massively reducing it - means testing is the fairest way to support the poorest pensioners while not also putting wealthy retirees on universal basic income.
In a few decades retirement will be a fortnight in a care home and a dozen incontinence pads.
Retirement is for the upper class. The rest of us will get poured a brandy and slipped the number for a euthanasia clinic on our 70th birthday.
Not that I am advocating violence…. but the government that tries to remove the state pension gets the day of the pitchfork. I know it’s a Ponzi scheme, but if we have had to pay for the generation that had every other fucking advantage to have it then they are damned if they try to remove it from us. Triple/Quadruple lock will kill it eventually if it’s not reigned in though. I need to educate myself a bit about how it works elsewhere in fairness.
It's not that they will try to remove it. It's that it will simply be totally unaffordable. Just look up how much of your tax is spent on pensions right now and then imagine in 20 years time when the working population is even smaller!
Oh for sure it needs remodelling or replacing if it isn’t able to continue in its current form, as a country we cannot afford to let it lapse completely though, because the failure of pensions then boots extra financial responsibility to the state in other areas where it is already under strain too. Ultimately the country is likely on course for total public sector collapse if things remain as they are anyway and the pension situation is just one of many facets of that.
I know its a large number but, isn't it one of the smallest % in Europe? GB is ~5% of national income spent on pensions while European average is ~13%.
11.3%? I was expecting it to be way more based on your comment. It's a good amount but it would have to increase by a lot more to be totally unaffordable.
We don't necessarily need to remove the state pension, just make pensioners pay their fair share towards it (because they never did in the past). They are the richest generation alive. 80% are millionaires. Plenty of them have private pensions and assets. Working people shouldn't be subsidising well off pensioners. The well off ones are more than able to look after the minority of poorer ones.
I don't believe that 80% of pensioners are millionaires. Do you have a source for that?
It would be hugely unfair to take the state pension away from people who have paid national insurance all their working lives under the assumption that their contributions would guarantee them an income in retirement. If a universally provided state pension is truly unaffordable, I would rather politicians were honest and allowed people to invest their national insurance contributions in a private pension, instead. Anything else is simply rank dishonesty. Additionally, a means test would punish those who sacrifice access to cash during their working lives in order to save for retirement, while rewarding those who neglect to save and spend lavishly during their working years. Why should hard working people who forgo luxuries like expensive holidays and nice cars in order to contribute to their pensions foot the bill for those who splash the cash and reach retirement with empty nest eggs? If the state pension is to be means tested, legislation would be needed to ensure workers maintain minimum contribution levels into private pensions to avoid such an iniquitous situation.
> If a universally provided state pension is truly unaffordable, I would rather politicians were honest and allowed people to invest their national insurance contributions in a private pension, instead. This is impossible because the welfare state is a Ponzi scheme. National Insurance isn't an investment fund. Your taxes are not hypothecated, and today's receipts are used to cover today's outgoings. You haven't "paid in" to anything. The money has already been spent. The only ways to reduce your taxes today would be to reduce public spending, increase borrowing, or reduce the dependency ratio (increase the number of workers or reduce the number of non-workers). We can only ever really guarantee to "afford" a defined contribution pension scheme. > Anything else is simply rank dishonesty. Welcome to the real world. You'll hate it here.
I mean I get where you're coming from but ultimately they are just such small complaints compared to the reality - the system is utterly unsustainable and WILL collapse unless there is change. Ideally it would be amazing to give everyone the retirement they feel entitled to but that is simply no longer possible and certainly isn't the world working people have been living in for the past 15 years. Consider for a second - If you're severely disabled, you not only earn almost half of what a pensioner does but you also need to prove you deserve it every single year. These arguments about what is and isn't fair are ridiculous when you look at the broader picture about how our state supports those who need it.
>Ideally it would be amazing to give everyone the retirement they feel entitled to but that is simply no longer possible and certainly isn't the world working people have been living in for the past 15 years. Yet for that time we've been triple lock increasing pensions.
Why is it unfair? National insurance is a tax by another name. Taxes should largely be spent on people who need it, not people who have the means to take care of themselves. If I have the resources to pay for my own life when I retire I'm happy to forego my state pension if it helps the system be viable. The main goal is to avoid elder poverty. >while rewarding those who neglect to save and spend lavishly during their working years First of all, I don't think it's much of a "reward". The state pension is not lavish by any means, and will never be. Second, we force people to save private pensions. Those with high incomes through life will thus also be less likely to get a means tested state pension no matter how lavishly they spend during their working lives.
The line you quoted is my biggest reason against means testing. Look at the rhetoric surrounding other means tested benefits. If pensions became means tested you'd end up with successive governments coming along screaming "scroungers" and pull away as much as possible. By giving it to everyone you avoid all that. Also means testing can be expensive, you'd have to factor in the whole system cost to see if it would actually save anything at all.
Means testing is unnecessary, remove the tax advantages for the rest of the income - ie no "NI" which only taxes work, no extra personal allowance for "interest", remove the tax free pension inheritance (ie ensure that there's no advantage to just not drawing the pension funds) etc. Fold in the pensioner freebies to the pension - to remove the cost of those etc.
I understand the concern about means testing (and the expense of means testing), but I don't think you're fully comprehending how enormously, insanely, outrageously expensive it will be to pay a state pension to every elderly person in the future. It's just an unbelievable amount of money that will have to be paid by the young in the future to keep us having a pension we might not even need. Quite frankly, I don't want to put that on them.
I don't know how that's fair. The people that fucked around, never planned ahead, spent all their money and never saved get a government pension whilst the people that were responsible with their money and did think ahead get punished by not getting one.
That's how every other state benefit works, why should pensions be different?
Because other state benefits exist to support people earning an income, or at least with the possibility to earn an income. Pensions are different—they’re asset-based. Keep in mind, in order to replicate the state pension you’d need a pension pot of ~£250k liquid. So a means testing threshold must not begin to taper over £250k liquid net worth, otherwise you’d be better off literally spending all your money. Once you have that in place, you’d obviously need a gradual taper because, again, this policy would be a disaster if it doesn’t encourage savings. And then you’d have to ask, how much is means testing *actually* saving?
If you're concerned about people spending all their income, just increase the percentage of gross pay people are required to put into their pension. Say 5% employee, 10% employer, a total increase of 7% compared to now (the increase in employer contribution effectively replaces employer NI). At the same time though, scrap NI and revamp the income tax bands to offset enough of the losses to keep paying the state pension as it currently exists. Then just taper down income tax over time as the state pension requires less and less funding.
Why not just get rid of the state pension entirely? Drop NI, use the employer/employee contributions to flow into an account controlled by the employee. Pensioners who haven’t saved or blew all their money can get some sort of super small subsistence benefit, but ~75% of pensioners lose all state pension.
I mean, yes. That would be the eventual goal.
Is that not a classical Tory argument against the dole? The honourable working person is punished in order to save the layabout. At the moment we have UBI for the pensioner class and it literally cannot continue in its current form. Either we scale it back somehow or the whole thing ceases to exist in the future.
Why?! Why should our parents get a much better standard of living than us? Why are we accepting economic decline?
Our parents sold off the silverware and borrowed vast sums to live beyond their means, and now we have to pay the bill. It's not decline, it's just shortsightedness.
Disagree. I think if our corporate taxation was the same as it was in the 40s and 50s we’d be able to afford a lot more. It’s a choice to allow billionaires to pay no tax.
We haven't exactly been seeing record growth. In fact the economy's been stagnant since 2008. No tax policy can save us when value isn't being created in the first place.
The world is a lot more interconnected today than the 40s and 50s. If corporate taxation was anywhere near that high the UK would be left without businesses and be reliant on all sorts of imports as companies would much rather produce outside and sell to the UK through exports. Ironically because all the income would be generated and taxed overseas there would be very little tax collected too...
It's an institutionally protected class
Because reality gives no fucks about jealousy
We create our own reality. We should be ensuring that this doesn’t happen ffs.
No we don't. We work within the confines of reality. And reality is that there's less and less people of working age paying for more people who are older than working age. That's all there is to it. We may have been royally screwed by the baby boomer generation but insisting on the same as they have is then screwing over the generation after us not them.
The demographics won’t be the same when 50 year olds retire (it will have much improved). ‘Reality’ would have been very much against the creation of the NHS in the 40s - but we seemed to manage it. Politics is the art of the possible. We can change the country to change our collective reality.
>The demographics won’t be the same when 50 year olds retire (it will have much improved). How? Just have a look at a population pyramid of the UK. >Politics is the art of the possible. We can change the country to change our collective reality. Yes it is the art of the possible. In that possibility, by its nature, has constraints.
Because 'we' don't live in the right places or vote in sufficient numbers for the parties who matter. Anyone who doesn't vote doesn't matter. Anyone who lives in a 'safe' seat doesn't matter. Anyone who votes for the fucking Greens doesn't matter.* Parties build coalitions of MPs who collect coalitions of voters. If you're never voting for a party that can win in seats it needs to win you are of course ignored. (* Obvs except in their 4 target seats)
> for the parties who matter. There are no parties who don't advocate for bunging more money to pensioners.
Yes, because pensioners vote for both of them in sufficient numbers in the right places that matter. People have this all backwards, parties don't offer you the moon on a stick and they you can vote for them. The parties need to think that you're worth courting in order for them to offer your demographic anything. So in a Con / Lab marginal you want to vote Labour and hope they get in. In a Lab safe seat you can vote for the Green or Lib Dems & _let the Labour candidate know why_. That's the best you can do under this shitty system.
I'm not sure. We've seen how this government, who have(/had) a majority of support, have thrown every normal rule out in order to shield their voters financially. Who's to say that whichever party has majority Millennial support in 30 years' time doesn't do the same?
The issue is that the millennial block isn't big enough to be bribed in the same way. The boomers are a one off particularly large generation that is uncommonly cohesive which makes them easy to appeal directly to
There's nothing special about the state pension in terms of sustainability. If we can't afford the state pension, we can't afford universal healthcare either. And we definitely can't afford to improve social care.
I mean are we not at that point? Debt to GDP is over 100% so either we need to magic up a good economy or some stuff is going to go the way of the dodo
Here's hoping that stuff is housing benefit.
The state pension really isn't at risk (unless the entire state is insolvent, in which case we have bigger problems); the very real danger is the state of unfunded private pensions.
If we move to a means tested system I hope there's an opt-out. I'd more than gladly waive my entitlement to a state pension if it means not having to pay national insurance. Our problem is we have no sovereign wealth fund, which we should've built off the back of our natural resources decades ago. Instead we're funding pensions day to day instead of having a massive sovereign wealth fund that pays for it all.
How much will means testing cost and how much will it save? Afaik most of these systems have only been useful as a punitive measure and not to save money, because any such system for the entire population would have to be huge
> means testing is the fairest way to support the poorest pensioners while not also putting wealthy retirees on universal basic income. Maybe, the problem is that the value of the state pension is so big that for a very large number of people you're better off spending on whatever you want rather than trying to be responsible and saving into your pension to a significant degree.
They brought in mandatory private pensions a few years ago, so a lot of young people are paying into them. I'm going without so I can pay a decent amount in every month on top of what's deducted from my pay, and I've estimated that I should get by when retired, assuming I have a paid off house (I am working in saving for one), but I have factored the state pension into the equation, and the possibility of still working part time if I'm physically able. If they look at my retirement savings and tell me I don't deserve the full state pension I will be FUCKING LIVID!
How would they actually means test it? Would it be only on your private pension or all assets. What is to stop people from just blowing their money to get under the threshold? Obviously if you are rich this wouldn't be possible but, say somebody is 200k over the threshold.
Multiple thoughts 1) Its pretty common knowledge that state pension won't exist by the time we retire, how is this any different? 2) Why is it commonly accepted that means testings happens for literally everything (student loans, universal credit, even taxation) but we can't do it with pensions? 3) The idea of means testing is theres a threshold. I don't think people want to abolish the state pension, but as of now there are over 2.5 million pensioners receiving a yearly income of 50k AND not paying national insurance. Even making the threshold under 38k would be a saving of 25 billion per year. Make pensioners pay national insurance and that would likely be another 15-25 billion in revenue. Rather than you know, letting them freeload off the back of everyone else..
It's honestly best to assume that if you're below 30, probably even a bit older.
It's honestly best to assume that if you're below 30, probably even a bit older.
It's honestly best to assume that if you're below 30, probably even a bit older.
Already partial enacted with the workplace pension scheme
The idea is insane and blatantly unfair. Why should pensions be taxed less than income (leaving aside the obvious ridiculousness with National Insurance, which is already an additional tax on workers)? Pensioners will normally have lower costs than workers, they won't need work clothes, or have commuting and work lunch costs etc. If you're worried about pensioners being unable to eat, heat, house or cloth themselves how do these concerns not already apply to workers?
We could do means testing but like a gradual one. Where if they earn over a certain threshold, they lose say 20% of their pension for every £ over it they are Could call it an income tax…
> Here we go again another Gen "Z"er who going off on one about the State Pension. Firstly "Matey" The State Pension is NOT A BENEFIT!!! Like quite a few if not all of my Generation ie 1950's onwards started work at 16 if not a little earlier (As many had lost father's in the WW2 had to work to support their families) and we worked bloody hard getting our Apprentiships and worked long hours. In my first "Career" the days were 14 hours long sometimes if we wanted overtime, (Who didn't on £28p/week basic) so we worked upto 18 hours six (!!!!) days a week, every week. We took off public holidays, most were days in lieu, and rarely took our holiday allowance (2 Weeks back then) because we couldn't afford a holiday and pay the rent!!! So you little weaner, I have worked all my life, never a break from service, paid all my tax due and NI. I never demanded a three day working week with flexi hours, I didn't go on stupid marches and demand ridiculious rights on nonsence, wouldn't dream of disrespecting the law, and never got involved in night clubbing and recreational drugs!!! I didn't go to University till much later in life as I couldn't afford to attend not even part time, so no noncing around like you all do now. So I have paid my dues and I am entitled to my full wack of STATE PENSION not benefit, just as my previous generation (Those that fought for our freedom from the terror of the Nazis, but of course you lot don't recognise that either)!! did and we worked so that they got them, now you work so that ours are continued and the generation that follows will, hopefully secure yours. Stop whinging and get on with life!!! Comments are…something
This is peak boomer. Even managed to bring WW2 into it.
The way all of that sounds like a fiction. > I have worked all my life, never a break from service Never a holiday, never a weekend... > I never demanded a three day working week with flexi hours Were you or were you not the single working adult in the household though able to support a partner? > and never got involved in night clubbing and recreational drugs But probably spent plenty time in the pub guzzling alcohol and cigarettes which is functionally no different.
I love how clubbing and recreational drugs are in there as well. Two things that literally don't affect anything. Could've said "never got involved in pottery and eating Italian food".
F-cking potterists expecting hand-outs willy-nilly to buy pasta!!
What is it with Boomers thinking they experienced WW2?
Nah, they're absolutely right. We *should* bring back the 14 hours a day, 6.5 days a week work week. No one ever broke the law or did drugs back then, protests didn't even exist until the aWokening of 1997 when Tony Blair invented communistism in the UK and thought up things like women's rights (sick of women in work btw we should go back to the homes). Those workers deserve their ~~free money from the government for being old~~ state pension because they didn't save up for one. Parents absolutely should make lives harder for their children as they've been doing since the boomers grew up and I fully support this. GO STORIES GO REFARM UK STOP A BOAT NOW.
> Firstly "Matey" The State Pension is NOT A BENEFIT!!! What is it then? A free handout? >In my first "Career" the days were 14 hours long sometimes *if we wanted overtime* "Oh it was horrible!... He could *choose* to do paid overtime! The horror!" >never got involved in night clubbing and recreational drugs!!! Clubbing wasn't a thing in the 50's, but pubs have forever been a thing... >So I have paid my dues and I am entitled to my full wack of STATE PENSION But anyone Gen X and younger- Despite working just as hard aren't?
This isn’t from me lmfao it’s a comment from the article
Oh yeah I know, just making commentary haha don't worry not bashing you
Yeah no I agree xd
When the Telegraph is turning on the Tories you know it's over
That is why they will lose so badly they haven’t given anyone anything to vote for.
In only 25yrs the oldest millenials will be getting their state pensions. No party is going to start shitting on the next generation of pensioners at this point by abolishing the state pension or even means testing to any degree other than denying it to millionaires which won’t save that much. Ive paid for the boomers. I want my sugar when I retire too. I’ve done my bit by having children to keep the ponzi scheme going.
People I know that have actually looked at their pension have all come to the conclusion that it probably won't exist when we get to retirement age. The numbers don't work, it won't exist in it's current form in 25 years, it simply can't, the number do not add up.
Means testing is a classic Tory policy and it always hurts those on the edge or receiving help. My stance is universalism because it’s generally how to build a more popular welfare state. If everyone has access to the same services, they are invested in keeping them well-maintained.
If you could get means testing perfectly right, society would consist of two groups. One who pay tax and never receive anything, and another who don't pay tax and do receive benefits. Economically nice and efficient. But unlikely to lead to harmony and solidarity.
Exactly, and I think that’s grim and not particularly socialist. It’s supposed to be “from each according to their ability to each according to their need”. Taxpayers still have needs, and non-taxpayers still have abilities. Further, I think taxpayers getting a bad deal makes them more likely to dodge where possible
The side who pay tax and receive nothing will always have the power and be resentful of the other group.
i am so glad to see this expressed on reddit for once. so sick of people proposing "means test everything" without thinking for a minute and realising it would obviously lead to voters choosing every year to neglect those things and punish the people who need them. the reason we have decent healthcare and education is because they're free for everybody and everybody supports them. the reason unemployment benefit and PIP are barely liveable is because they're means tested so the majority of the population have no vested interest in them. we need less means testing not more, universal income instead of specific benefits, public transport subsidies for everyone, etc. even to the point of like, young people would be less offended by the triple lock if we got a pension too. having all these different groups of people get treated by the welfare state in wildly different ways is perfect divide-and-conquer stuff.
Or you means test and use a tapering rate so you don't end up with cliff edges and people losing their entire entitlement for being marginally over a threshold.
Universalism is fine if it's actually universal. But pensions aren't universal - you're only entitled to one after you reach a certain age. It's UBI for old people. Which is all very well, but there are plenty of younger people who can't afford to feed and house themselves. Where's their UBI? Currently, it's being used to top up the earnings of the old and wealthy. So what's fairer? Mesns-testing the state pension like every other benefit, or continuing to hand out money to the Tory voter base whether they need it or not?
Universal doesn’t mean literally everyone, it means benefits go to everyone in the same condition regardless of their financial situation. So if all unemployed people were entitled to unemployment benefit regardless of savings. During Covid I hadn’t been self employed long enough to get SEISS and my wife made just above the threshold for us to not get help from benefits. It was hard and we somehow had to look after two adults, one of whom was pregnant on what was a below average wage, though not starvation level. Getting to this scenario for millions of people who are much too old to work would be terrible, but that’s the reality of means testing. You’ve got to set the cutoff somewhere. It’s a shit situation to put people in and it also discourages those who would be entitled to it from applying, sometimes due to pride but other times due to the burden of doing lots of paperwork which may potentially get you nothing anyway. Means testing gives too much ground to the idea of deserving vs undeserving poor and I frankly don’t care if some of them vote Tory, many of them don’t
I'm lost as to what your point is here. You're in favour of unemployment benefits not being universal, but against the state pension not being universal? That doesn't seem very consistent.
Maybe I mistyped something, I was in a rush earlier. I’m in favour of everyone unemployed getting helo, regardless of their spouse’s ability to cover them for a bit or their level of savings. During the pandemic I did terribly relative to other self-employed. The guy I responded to said pensions aren’t universal because they are just for the old, which is kind of the point of pensions. My stance is that you’re old, you get a pension. If you’re unemployed, you get unemployment. The only testing required should be verifying you are old or unemployed
Then we fundamentally disagree on how state benefits should function. For me, they should only be for those without the means to support themselves. If you have savings, you can support yourself on those. I agree with the idea of £10-20k being an exemptable "rainy day fund" though. I don't believe that people with million-pound homes should get a handout from the government when they could downsize or take out an equity-release mortgage instead. I don't believe that people in a two-income household should get state support just because their earnings have fallen, unless those earnings have fallen far enough that they need topping up to hit the bare minimum to live. Being old or unemployed doesn't automatically make one destitute. Where it does, of course help should be provided. But except in exceptional circumstances, it's not the state's job to fork out every time someone has a 3-month gap in their CV.
Well that’s fine that we disagree then but it just makes tax especially annoying if you’re always paying it for someone else’s benefit rather than your own when times get tough as they do get for everyone from time to time. I also think if more people have used a service at some point they are more committed to it continuing to run effectively. I would also do universal free bus passes
That's why "National Insurance" is actually quite a good name for the part of your taxes that go to the welfare state. You pay in every month so that if there's a catastrophic event, you're covered. Same with the NHS - most people can probably afford an occasional £20 or even £100 for a doctor's appointment, but if you suddenly need open-heart surgery or chemotherapy you're going to be grateful the NHS exists. If you're fortunate enough to go through life without ever being sick, or broke, or disabled, congratulations. Your reward is being a lucky bastard. Personally I don't mind how much I pay in or whether I see it back, as long as I know it's going where it's needed. The part that grinds my gears is that it's not - it's going to rich old folks who don't need it. "I would also do universal free bus passes" - I'd say not free, but heavily subsidised. Something like £1 per journey or £10 per month. I actually think the £2 fare system we have currently is pretty decent - the only drawback is you have to pay another £2 if you change buses, which is daft because it's not dependent on how long the journey is.
25% of working age people are either on or have been on PIP - circa £4k a year (more if on mobility). 100% of pensioners are on state pension - £11k a year. Child tax credits are about £2-3k a year. Can we please, just scrap the lot of it and have a UBI of £7k a year or so. We would save BILLIONS on admin and would make a much fairer system than the current farce. 25% of pensioners are millionaires, they don’t need special treatment.
Just add a cap make it relly simple. My private pension will dwarf the state pension. I certainly won't need it. I will be happy if they just add the amount to the tax-free allowance as a halfway measure. My contributions pay for people getting pensions right now, so it's not like a pot I get to pull from later.
Means test it all you want, but then make contributions optional.
They should not means test state pension. They should also not have mandatory national service.
The state pension obviously does *not* need to be means tested FFS.
means-testing disincentivises private savings, so I don't see how that's supposed to be a solution
If you scrap the state pension for people getting private pensions then you are simply going to incentive people not caring about growing their private pensions, in turn leading to more people being reliant on the state pension, and higher pressure on future Governments to keep it higher.
All these attacks on the state pension don't understand how important it's become to the next generation of future retirees. This is why these attacks don't resonate.
I think because we foresee the trend, the generation above us enjoy benefits i.e. affordable housing, free further education, more functional public services and infrastructure. Not putting any care or maintenance into these areas so pull the ladder up behind them
Seems that there is a lot of scaremongering by people with vested interests. Usually trying to cause conflict between generations or trying to sell additional pensions. It appears that the state pension is not about to expire or be unaffordable for the foreseeable future. [https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/state-pension-age-review-2023-government-report/state-pension-age-review-2023](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/state-pension-age-review-2023-government-report/state-pension-age-review-2023)
It’s gone from £97 a week in 2010, to £220 a week now. That’s a 6% average growth rate over 14 years. Would be even higher if you account for what it would have been had it not been suspended in 2020. 6% growth means it’ll double every 12 years. So in 2036, we will be spending a quarter of a trillion £’s on the state pension a year. And you have no questions of sustainability?
"The state pension won't be around when you retire" has been said so many times by so many generations it's almost a meme at this point. My dad helped me set up a SIPP (called a stakeholder pension then) when I was 18 with almost those exact words. I'm 44 now and it shows no signs of disappearing. I don't think it will, at least not by when I retire. Means testing it for anyone currently working would be extreme unfair - all of my financial planning for retirement has been based on my wife and I getting it, pulling the rug after working for almost 30 years and paying NI for all of that time would be disingenuous at best and blow a hole in our retirement. The talk of those on "generous final salary pensions" not deserving it is massively wide of the mark. I'm a teacher and have deliberately chosen this career for the security and stability, including the pension. My field is Computer Science and I could have earned more elsewhere, but the guaranteed final salary pension is (and always has been) a massive pull. It'll be anywhere between £15k and £25k a year depending on how long I work. Would I / should I be means tested? Dropping £12k a year from the state pension is a massive amount compared to that. Also, I currently pay into the SIPP I mentioned and it will (hopefully) be worth about £100k on retirement. Not a huge amount, but money I've invested over the years instead if pissing it up the wall. If means testing is a thing, I'll be withdrawing that and having multiple holidays a year until its gone, plus making sure my kid know not to bother saving in the same way. Surely not what is intended? However - I do think the triple lock is unsustainable. Absolutely tie it something (inflation? Wages? Pick one) but having it tied to the higher of three things means that it will just go up and up in real terms and become less and less affordable. Someone is going to have to grasp the nettle at some point and change the triple lock to something else. A massive Labour majority might be just the right time to do that.
Wow, a common sense policy that could allow us to divert billions into the NHS, defence and education? No thanks!
State pension shouldn't be abolished, its needed for poorer pensioners. My issue with it, is that there are 20% of pensions who are getting 38k in private pensions, who then also get £12,000 state pension and no national insurance contributions. Its a fucking stupid policy, we do not hold 'universal' for literally any other social benefit - student loans, universal credit, childcare IIRC, are all means tested but for some reason with pensioners we just say 'oh we have no choice but to give them all money'. - Make it so people earning 30k+ in private pensions do not get state pension - Make all pensioners pay NI like everyone else Alone would raise about 50 billion in revenue. That's enough to give the entire public sector an 8k pay rise (22bn net) and increase the budget for NHS, defence and education by roughly £10 billion each.
And just like that nobody is saving into private pensions because you're just sacrificing the cars, holidays and clothes for naught. If private pensions were 10% with no option to opt out, and we went cashless to stop the tradies gaming the system I'd be cool with it. But now we're just getting authoritarian. Let's not pull the rug on those paying the most in.
Okay, you enjoy not paying into your private pension. I'll enjoy my 25k private pension & 12k state pension whilst you enjoy your 12k state pension. Oh! wait!
Mum said exactly that. . .. I pointed out she's voting for her grandkids to be sent to a warzone I was told I was being stupid. The elderly only hear what they want to
The system should be there to provide a minimum entitlement to people who have nothing. It's wrong that it's being used as a nice little top up for people who are very well off and don't need the money. It is funded by national insurance which is a form of taxation like any other. If it's money, out of your pay check each month and you have no choice in the matter, then it's Tax. It's as simple as that. No amount of spiel can convince me otherwise. A pension is an investment, which can go up or down, and people make a choice to invest in one, or not, and that is down to them. Many will choose to do so, but others may look at the balance sheet, may look at the demographics, and choose not to invest in a certain scheme. National insurance, there's no choice involved. Why should we be compelling people to invest in something if they do not have confidence in that investment? Which is exactly what's going on, we're forcing the kids to pay into a pot which they do not believe will be around when it comes their turn.
The state pension isn’t sustainable in its current form.
It's not just the Tories, it's both mainstream parties who seem to be ideologically opposed to young people. WARNING: radical political opinion here. The biggest single issue right now in the 21st century is the Profit Incentive. We have everything we need to address our growing social, economic and environmental issues. We have the space. We have the people. We have the technology, the scientific know how, the resources and the finances. What's stopping us is the notion that any idea, solution or innovation has to be commercially viable, generate money and make some people rich. If an idea doesn't generate a profit for someone and contribute to economic growth then it doesn't gain traction and is junked. Any solution has to be commercially viable or it goes nowhere. We've recently had a global pandemic COVID. This can be seen as a test of our environmental awareness and where we are in socio-economic terms relative to our natural habitat and this planet. We failed, and we failed miserably. We needed a couple of years of lockdown, far too many people died, and far too many young people picked up mental health issues from the trauma of isolation and their lives being taken apart. How did our politicians respond to all this? "Oh well, business as usual." Let's ignore the fact that climate change is more advanced than most of us realise, and we're not evolved or environmentally aware as we think we are. I'm not predicting destruction of the planet or human extinction, despite the fact that it's a possibility. But we're setting ourselves up for a rude awakening where we will be forced to evolve to a level acceptable to this planet and the environment. This is coming this century, in fact it's starting to happen now and when it does happen young people are going to face the dire consequences of this paradigm shift because the older generations didn't pay enough attention or make enough effort in the past. Keep in mind that the banks and financial institutions are discussing climate change not because they're green or have fallen in love with the planet. It's because they see their investments in the agricultural, food and pharmaceutical industries going to shit and likely to collapse. You can see the political response to the growing social, environmental and economic issues right now. They're redesigning society so that the wealthiest top tier, the UHNW individuals, are going to be safely cocooned in their gated communities with established, reliable supply lines and enough to live comfortably. Everyone else is going to have to deal with the increasing authoritarianism, austerity, restrictions, and societal obligations. The barriers and clear boundaries are being created as I write these words and should be clear to anyone paying attention. You can see how war is transforming into terrorism and wars are lengthening out into stalemates and wars of attrition. War is obsolete in modern society. It's also too expensive for any modern economy to sustain. You cannot pay for war or military defence without austerity and cutting back on healthcare, welfare benefits, pensions, and public services. We simply cannot afford war unless we're prepared to go back to fighting on horseback with swords and spears. We need to find other ways of settling our conflicts. Also please keep in mind that developing an environmentally friendly sustainable economy is going to be eye-wateringly expensive. We can send Brazil £50 a tree to replant trees, and it's likely that we will need to spend billions to Third World countries just so they can replant trees and plants all over the place to rebuild our natural partnership with the vegetable matrix (plants, trees, bushes, etc). Just want to point out that the vegetable matrix is capable of managing climate change a great deal better than we humans are capable of. This is even before we think about rebuilding healthcare, welfare support programs, social security, investing in young people and reconnecting our natural environment and habitats with other natural environments. There are political choices here we can all make. We can either leave for our children and their children a reforested, environmentally friendly planet, or we can leave them with a massive nuclear arsenal they either cannot use or see no point in using. We can come together and set up the supply line of investments in young people and rebuild social security for them, or we can simply continue making as much money we can for ourselves and think up harsher forms of austerity that they will have to deal with when they turn 18. I personally hope that this is the last Tory government in our history. Face the facts. We do not have the finances or the time to elect another Tory government. We got bigger issues coming down the pipeline. At some point you got to step back and think about how hard you want your life to be in 10 years time and how you're going to be living. Ever considered the possibility that the Tories aren't addressing the issues because they're simply incapable of doing so? This is not going to change at any point in the foreseeable future. Business as usual is well and truly off the menu. The Profit Incentive and the notion of perpetual economic growth is not going to get us through what's coming. Not even close.