Economically inactive people……

Whereas now students all seem to swan off on holiday every time the term ends
Do you have any evidence for this?

Student nieces and nephews, plus working for a business which used to have lots of students each summer and now has none.

Stay at home parents are very economically active.

No, they aren't. Spending money does not equal economic productivity.

Economic productivity is the value of you work beyond you getting paid - its your output, what you produce, services you deliver. It does not include the basics of human beings surviving as a species eg caring for offspring.

Added in their are swathes of people who start out as a sahp then 15 years later the kids are teens who do not need childcare 9-5 yet one parent is still not working.

Whereas now students all seem to swan off on holiday every time the term ends

Do you have any evidence for this?

I think that actually students need to be looked at as well.
The push to extend education and make people get university degrees for jobs where they are not actually required takes a huge number of people out of the workforce during what could be some of their most economically useful years.

Agree

Also students don't seem to work any more? Most people i knew either had a term time job or worked every vacation. As a uni student worked long hours in a factory every summer, pub shifts over Christmas and Easter. Whereas now students all seem to swan off on holiday every time the term ends.

The government need to make is easier for business to hire 16 year olds too. The ones i know are all desperate for part time jobs but no one will hire them. Why is this? When i was 16 everyone worked, in shops, pubs, petrol stations, anywhere.

Do you have any evidence that older people have this view about not being able to find a job?
What kind of work do you have in mind for the physically and mentally impaired in their 60s? You state it as if it were universal and undisputed that this happens to them?
Who would want such people looking after their grandchildren?

Stay at home parents are very economically active.
in an equal relationship and I mean equal: one parent works to earn the family money the other one run the home and the kids. The person who runs the home usually does the spending as more time.

so whilst they havent earned, they are very economically active so I hope they havent included them. That d be stupid.

A lot of older people will say they can't find a job because they are expecting to stay at the same seniority and high pay they attained in their 40s.

We need to normalise the last decade or so of our working lives being a shift back to lower responsibility work as we can manage less. Like it or not we become more physically and mentally impaired in our 60s but that doesn't mean we need to do nothing paid at all.

It would be better if early retirees cared for their grandchildren freeing up their DC to work, for example.

In their eyes I'm economically inactive as I'm a carer for my youngest DD. A place to get me back to work would be economically stupid given what it would cost to have her in full time care.

You are getting confused. You are thinking of the financial benefit to your own family being limited if you returned to work (due to cost of care). For most sahp/carer, its more economically productive for you to be in paid work, producing more for the economy, and for children to be in group childcare (employing more people).

Many people are not working for different reasons. I think RR was trying to target neets those youngsters who are not in employment or work
Older people maybe too.DH has retired I am in remission from Cancer so get tired.lots of appointments too.befote I was ill he looked for a job after 40 years at work! Mostly no reply.general feeling too old.he had a private pension and pays tax

Its not hard maths

We need a higher proportion of the population to be in paid work, paying NI contributions. The government don't care who the extra people to work are we need more people in paid work.

Less people to be:

• off sick
• retired early
• underemployed
• neets
• sahp - especially anyone with older children who is really a housewife
• living off hobby businesses that bring in little money topped up by benefits

and also as if they’ve been economically inactive they’ve clearly been very economically active to abv even able to save so much so young

🤦🏻‍♀️

Because no doubt she’s paid into a pension for years that’s why she’s in that position
nobody has given her anything

Very odd to be trying to push people that have retired early back into work

as if they have any chance of that

and also as if they’ve been economically inactive they’ve clearly been very economically active to abv even able to save so much so young
what a load of shite

The truth is we all need to pay more tax from the poorest to the richest but no government would dare suggest it. That tax also needs to be spent wisely and not given to private companies.

Higher earners on PAYE here pay similar taxes to other European countries. It's the middle & lower earners who don't but the issue is we spend more on housing, utilities etc so lower earners don't have the capacity to pay more tax. Making housing the main economic driver has fucked up so many things.

I love the way so many posters are replying to my post that they retired early because they are rich. That's great but it's not the majority....this is why these debates are pointless & everyone gets defensive or wants to blame someone else.

i have a friend who retired at 55 on a generous final salary and earns more than I do. I work full time and so pay national insurance. She does not.
Somehow this does not seem fair.

You need to wake up if you don't think people are playing the system.
It will get worse until Labour are kicked out as well as people realise due to an unfair tax system and high cost of living it doesn't pay to work.

Meanwhile the government are throwing millions of pounds down the drain every day housing and feeding illegal immigrants.
If you go to a doctor tomorrow and say you are stressed or suicidal you will be signed off work. And I say well done and good luck to them

If you don’t work and let’s say your neighbour has to cut back and give you money every month, that’s not adding anything to the economy

What on earth do you mean? Why would a neighbour give you money?

Who is to say the neighbour would have spent their money, they might save it.

A person who has retired early, is not working and is living on their private pensions and savings is spending what they've earned.

You are not being unreasonable.

The mass abuse of the system is causing the social contract to break down. Net contributors are basically saying f this system. Those abusing the system, aka, Turkeys voting for Xmas will find out the hard way once they have spent other people money.

If you don’t work, you don’t produce anything. If you don’t produce anything, you are not adding anything to the economy.

Taking the emotion out of it, that’s how money and the economy works.

If you don’t work and let’s say your neighbour has to cut back and give you money every month, that’s not adding anything to the economy. You’re just spending what your neighbour would have spent. If you earn your own money and spend it, that’s where value is added.

DH and 6 of our friends have all taken voluntary severance or voluntary redundancy over the last couple of years, I had already retired early at 55. We were all between 55 and 60. We all took our pensions and I have another friend who is going to take her pension early later this year. Apart from 2 they were all higher rate tax payers. Almost all pay tax on their workplace pensions and all mortgage free.

@bindin I think hell would freeze over before any of us returned to paid employment, we just don’t need to for financial reasons. Five of us do voluntary work.

@NaicePeachJoker we just bought a Motorhome and our friend bought a small yacht. In the first few years of retirement better off pensioners often spend a lot of money. DH and a few of our friends workplaces would have gone to compulsory redundancies eventually, my old workplace will probably be doing this soon as they need to shed 20% of their staff. Better us leaving than younger staff with mortgages and small children.

I feel enraged by this. I’ve suffered my whole life with debilitating OCD and anxiety, but every weekday I get up at 5.30am, get to work for 7.30am, work until 3.30pm, stay for a pointless meeting and get home around 5pm. I earn every penny of my money and wish I got to only contribute to the economy by spending, but the one time I was out of work, I hadn’t made sufficient NI contributions to receive any benefits like job seekers, so had no choice but to struggle and look for another job. It took about 6 months and my husband supported me (just and by using a credit card and going into debt).

I hate this country. I hate my job. I hate it all so much, and all the people who think that I’m having a whale of a time earning my money, that I try not to spend hardly anything all year. I live frugally. And then I employ the services of American Airlines to take me to the US for the summer (hello from FL) and I buy all the clothes, shoes, coffee creamer, tech, jewellery and whatever else I like from the States, contributing to their economy, going out for all the meals I’ve missed out on in the UK. 6 glorious weeks spending my hard earned dollars $$$$$, and Every. Single. penny of my savings. Not all on stuff, but on meals and days out and car rental etc.
Then I come home to the UK and start all over again.

Screw the UK economy. I couldn’t care less anymore. Both DH and I will retire early with a lump sum in the same year and spend 6 months a year in the states rather than 6 weeks.

Sorry it wasn't meant as a personal attack on anyone just that the government knew those further down the economic ladder were more likely to spend money out of nesseceity or other reasons.

I was exactly the same as you obeying the rules holed up in my home too

We were holed up in our homes not spending because we were told to stay at home. I'd have loved to have been allowed to go on the two planned holidays that were cancelled and do all the things we normally did. You make it sound like it was a choice.

Retired people still pay income tax though.