To resent the U-turn on winter fuel allowance?

Read my last post.

WW2 debt paid off 2006
WW1 debt paid off 2015.

As a Boomer I paid off 2 wars not of making for 37 years.

So the tax burden was still high.

That's fine as long as you remove employee NICs. So that everyone pays the same level of income tax on their incomes, regardless of the source of income. Someone earning £50k from wages should pay the same as someone with £50k of pensions or property letting etc.

Which generation are you, and which data are you looking at when you say you subsidised the generation above?

The easiest way to grasp this, big picture, is to look at trends in national debt. When debt goes up, costs are being passed to future generations. When it goes down, it's the reverse. Which bit of the graph is your bit?

The Boomer generation was an unusually large one. We should therefore expect to see debt decreasing a lot (money being put aside, basically) as it hits its prime earning age around the 1980s. That money will be needed later, because that large cohort will age out, and become expensive like we all do.

Instead, as soon as we get to the 1980s that line plateaus. Nothing's being saved. That's extraordinary for a period with a large bulge in the working-age part of the population. Then as the Boomers age out, debt rockets, in large part because of old-age costs (the state pension is the single biggest state cost, and NHS costs are age-skewed too).

There is nothing new or surprising about old people costing more than they did in their youth. What's unprecedented in the 20th century is for a generation that is costing so much to have, collectively, put so little in the kitty to cover it.

Nail on the head. HMRC have the data, so would be able to use it if a sensible system was put into place. I.e. pay all state pensioners the WFA, but take it back via the PAYE code for people who have taxable incomes over £x. Just as they do to take away the tax free personal allowance for people whose incomes are over £100k. It's really not rocket science.

Nail on the head. But the "boomers" don't let facts get in the way of a rant.

I have POA for my elderly mum (who is in a care home due to dementia and other ailments) and sort her finances. Until it was stopped even she received the WFA whilst in the care home!

Also all DMs private pensions are PAYE, and her state pension is know by the HMRC so as to give her the correct tax code. So her income is known, and there’s a digital record of it, everyone’s income is know (pensioners more than the working age population) so i can’t see why it’s difficult to means test any benefit.

They pay much more tax in Europe. How about we up the basic rate of tax from 20% to 30%? I’m up for it as I want better public services. So many people don’t want to pay money for better services / welfare state. They just want a magic money tree.

My family isn’t an outlier, it’s pretty representative of two generations. I can’t comment on the veracity of your data as you didn’t supply any links to it.

It will if you are able to make 40 years of contributions, which many of today's pensioners (particularly women) were not.

Yes, you get tax relief on contributions, but I'm missing what that has to do with means-testing.

@blossomtoes I couldn't base my analysis on your family specifically. I looked at the overall national data instead. That's the only sensible way to discuss this.

When you say it's bollocks, which data are you are referring to?

It's not more expensive to means test it. This may have been true years ago, but as technology evolves and more government departments are synced, this is no longer the case.

And if it were true...why are we means testing any benefits?!

Well I am a pensioner and I mix with plenty of them none of whom seem to be particularly struggling.
I have been saying ever since the WFA was removed it could easily be means tested using the tax information they hold on every one, I have seen others suggest the same but I have never seen anyone explain why this is not feasible.

The war debt wasn’t paid off until 2006.

Alistair Darling sent the last payment.

And also, we subsidised the generations above us.

Yes, we pointed this out to our relatives who basically used the winter fuel allowance to pay their cruise holiday drinks bill.

Why pay into an occupational pension if doing so will mean that you are denied PC and the benefits that go with that, because you are deemed to have more than you 'need'?

Because what you gain from 40 years contributions will significantly outweigh the benefits of pension credit. And, of course, you get tax relief on those contributions.

@BlueEyedStarling

My solution is that this could be a benefit that should be applied for. Then means tested [properly] with other income and outgoings assessed. Decades ago I worked for what might have then have been called the DSS. Benefit claimants were interviewed at home and documents seen.

It's more expensive to means text it than it is to pay it. People should be able to opt out.

The triple lock was put in place becasue our state pension rates were so scandalously low compared with other European countries. We still haven't caught up, so it should stay in place.

I'm 75, and I still work part time. I could (just) live on my pensions, but I don't want to spend my later years, especiall;y while I'm still fit and healthy, living hand to mouth.

Yet again, you are attacking without knowing the detail.

I am one year younger than you, and have had exactly the same experience of (lack of) benefits and pensions. I wasn't allowed to join one until I was 37.

That's not the point though, which is that, in my opinion, means-testing keeps people down. Why pay into an occupational pension if doing so will mean that you are denied PC and the benefits that go with that, because you are deemed to have more than you 'need'? Why work overtime or go for promotion if it means that you won't get CB? Your opinion may differ, which is fair enough, but you are responding based on assumptions, not what I have written.

I repeat - I am not saying that older people should or should not get WFA. I am saying that deciding who gets it based on whether or not they have £X from a pension they have contributed to, or that a working couple should not get CB because between them they earn more than a family with one working parent is not the right way to do it. If we want to encourage people to be self-reliant there has to be an advantage to being so, and that means not setting a baseline of 'need' and keeping everyone on it by denying those who have worked and saved the benefits given to those who haven't. I would make CB and WFA universal, and get it back in a much more progressive system of taxation.

I completely disagree. My parents were born in 1916 and 1918 respectively. They had two children with all the education and health care costs associated with that and paid tax on one unspectacular income. My mother, who never did any paid work after her 35th birthday, drew her state pension for 37 years. My father drew his for 34 years.

Contrast this with me. I worked for 45 years, over 20 of them as a higher tax payer, and had one child. I’ve paid for two previous generations’ pensions and three generations’ education. Don’t try and tell me that my parents’ generation took less from the state than mine because it’s utter bollocks.

@BlueEyedStarling i agree with you in the sense that not everyone needs it. It should be means tested - I think the goal posts should be maybe moved but not everyone needs it and it’s a waste of resources

My parents were very vocal about it being taken away. They live in housing where the electric is included in their rent and have the heating on all the time regardless .They also go on mini breaks at least once a month. You're not wrong OP

You are right that we need to consider what a particular generation has contributed or cost throughout its whole projected life, not just as a snapshot.

That's what I meant by intergenerational unfairness. When you look at the numbers one specific generation, the Baby Boomers, sticks out a mile.

The generations before and after were either slight net beneficiaries or a slight net contributors to public finances over their lifetime (i.e. they more or less paid for themselves), and the more recent generations are likely to be large net contributors even once their aging costs are accounted for.

By contrast, the 1946-65 generation (the bulk of today's winter fuel payment recipients) are huge net beneficiaries. In fiscal terms, they were subsidised by the generations before them and their debts will be carried by the generations after them.

You can see it also in the national debt figures over time. The debt comes down rapidly until about 1980 as the earlier generations paid off war debt. Then as the Boomers hit their prime working age it flatlines (i.e. even in their prime contributing age when their generation outnumbered the one before, debt did not decrease, it stayed stable). And debt has shot up again as the Boomers age out. They are, as a cohort, taking out what they haven't put in, in contrast to every other modern generation.

There is a fairness issue there, and it's not mean-spirited to raise it (because the numbers have to balance somehow and future generations matter too).

I'm a pensioner & I'll be damned if I'd let myself freeze; I hate being cold! I'm not wealthy (£15.5k pa) & I don't have any direct housing costs. However, I can pay all my bills & afford a few treats. Most pensioners I know are in the same boat.
The problems are:
a) energy costs are too high
b) this type of universal grant should not be used at all. They're designed to win votes.
c) The 'old pension' is much too low for anyone to live on.
d) the top line for claiming pension credit is much to low.
I would expect the government to address d) rather than just 'u turning'; I thought they would have to do this at the time. We shall just have wait until next week & see what happens.

And you have completely misunderstood my point which is that for the vast majority of us there were precious few benefits, no overtime or pensions to pay into. You are judging todays pensioners based on todays entitlements, most of which did not exist. Your post was very clear - you specifically said that means testing people, young and old, prevents them from being more ambitious and self-reliant.

I am 67, I have worked all my life barring a short period out of work, when benefits levels were such that you could not afford to live on them at all, and after 13 weeks on benefits you had to take any job offered by the benefits office. There was no pension in many of my jobs when I was younger, and I earned just about enough to live. There were no free childcare hours. Etc. Etc. So if you want to object to older people being means tested then you are consigning people who have lived through very different circumstances to poverty because they weren't, in your opinion, self-reliant enough in 1970 or some such date.

Equally, if you abolish means testing for people of working age you do not make them more self-reliant or ambitious. A hard cut off point for beneits doesn't make people more inclined to work. If you lose everything and end up worse off in work then yoiu simply won't work. That is why means testing was introduced. It may be an imperfect solution, but there isn't a better one. The problem is not means testing. The problem is, excepting those who cannot work, laziness. On that we probably agree. If you were only going to be £50 a month better off if you worked full time, you might decide not to bother working either. I am not saying that is a good choice, but it is the choice that many people are making.

Means testing isn't what determines that choice. Having a guaranteed income - however low - is what makes that choice possible. For many years of my life we - society collectively - did not have that choice because with few exceptions you ran out of benefits and worked or starved. We have plenty of work that needs doing in this country. Work is better for people. And if you don't like the job that you are given, there is a clear choice. The one we had. Get a better one.

Agreed @Badbadbunny. This is the point I was making above. I think we need people to spend, rather than save, but the fact remains that means-testing just keeps people down, whether it is applied to pensions, CB or anything else.