45% of working age people not saving toward a pension at all

I have already acknowledged that the State Pension sits within welfare spending in accounting terms. My point is that it is not the same thing as means-tested welfare like Universal Credit.

The State Pension is based on qualifying National Insurance contributions built up, by the individual, over decades and subject to qualifying years. Todays NI payer pay fir tidays pensioners. That is materially different from benefits based mainly on current financial circumstances.

People are perfectly capable of understanding those differences. Not everything under the welfare budget is interchangeable or works in the same way just because it sits under the same Treasury heading.

👏

You missed mine too. What age are you?

Sadly predictable

Completely agree. Mine has gone to 67 too.

That bitching and blame reminds me of the poem. “First They Came” was a warning about the danger of normalising selective blame. Increasingly, it feels as though we are seeing a modern economic version of that mindset being normalised.

First it was landlords. Then pensioners. Then savers. Then homeowners. Now even students and graduates are increasingly being folded into the same narrative.

More and more people are being framed as “the problem” for doing exactly what society encouraged for decades: study, work, pay taxes, save into a pension and try to build some long-term security so you are less dependent on the state later in life. Yet the moment many people finally begin to achieve some of those things, the rules increasingly seem to change around them.

The cumulative effect matters. Income tax. National Insurance. Student loan repayments. Housing costs. Pension contributions. Frozen thresholds and fiscal drag. And that is before many of the full effects of incoming measures and tax rises have even filtered through.

Those pressures disproportionately fall on ordinary working professionals, dual-income households, graduates, private pension savers and homeowners: broad sections of the economically productive middle / those that have lifted themsrlves from poverty are already contributing heavily through work, taxation and long-term self-provision.

At the same time, the language shifts as well. Landlords become “economic units”. Pensioners become “fiscal burdens”. Savers are framed as “wealth hoarders”. Homeowners are portrayed as sitting on “unearned wealth”.

People do not live in “housing stock”. They live in homes, families and communities.

Perhaps most worrying of all is how resistant many people now seem to serious engagement with these issues. Complex structural problems around housing, demographics, productivity, growth and long-term economic strategy are often reduced to simplistic moral narratives about “greedy pensioners” or “privileged homeowners”. I guess its's easier to direct anger towards visible groups than confront deeper structural failures.

The UK already struggles with weak productivity growth, strained infrastructure and extremely high housing costs relative to earnings. Should policy not be far more focused on growth, investment and long-term economic sustainability rather than continually revisiting the same broad groups for additional revenue whenever fiscal pressures emerge?

A serious economy cannot endlessly rely on redistribution and blame while neglecting productivity, investment and growth.

"Welfare spending is the biggest source of AME spending, with pensioner spending the biggest item in the social security budget (accounting for 48.1 per cent of the total in 2023-24). The state pension is the largest single item of welfare spending, forecast to make up 42 per cent of the total in 2023-24. The system for pensioners who retired before April 2016 comprises the basic state pension (paying up to £156.20 a week in 2023-24) and the state second pension which is mostly related to prior earnings. Since April 2016, these have been replaced by a ‘single-tier’ (flat-rate) state pension for newly retired pensioners (paying £203.85 per week in 2023-24)." From the office for budget responsibily.

The state pension is classed as a benefit because of the way it is money that is given to pensioners by the government and the government is wholly within its power to increase or decrease payments or decide you are no longer eligible for it and stop giving it to you by changing the eligibility criteria without needing your consent to do so, because it's not actually yours the way your private pension is. Pensioners need to understand they have not saved their own pension with the government, when they worked they paid for pensioners of the times pension through their tax payments and the workers of today are paying for their pension now through tax payments.

There are many benefits where you have to meet certain age limits or complete certain activities to be entitled to claim them. That doesn't make them "Not welfare".

Do you not realise that a 4.8% rise on the meagre state pension (already much less than other European countries) - £184.90 for people who retired before 2016 and after 2016 retirees £241.30 per week does not equate to living the high life. In comparison minimum wage is now £487.88 per week. Out of their pensions, people still have to pay the going rate for Council Tax, Energy, Water bills and food as people who are working. Even with the triple lock pensioners are falling behind in what they can afford. And there aren’t as many pensioners being the richest in society as you like to imagine. Here’s a challenge for you all: try to live on £184.90 per week for three months and see how you fare.

There is money in the general system available to one group of people that isn’t available to another group of people
So if we’re taking an average number, one particular group of people has a lot and the other particular group of people has a little, but everybody is paying the average.
I hope that was basic enough for you, but there are lots of ChatGPT apps available. That could probably break it down further.

oh, and I missed it because you didn’t quote me in it. Today is a big day of learning for you.
If you’d like an answer so you need to let the person know you’re asking a question.

No it's not like all other benefis. To be entitled to a pension you have to have achieved a certain level of contributions over a specific number of years. It is a cintributions based entitlement. For accounting cinvenience it may sit under welfare but it is not a welfare benefit.

Even Rachel Reeves is careful to distinguish between the two types of benefit.

Here you go. You must have missed it.

pensions along with the state pensions are contributing to inflation which is pushing up the prices for ordinary people that don’t have unearned income

Are they? Can you explain a bit more about how that works?

Terrible way to live. 😪

Given to me?

Apparently it IS welfare now. Weird.

I know.

I suspect it is all part of pushjng a narrative of blame to whip up support for a "redistribution is all we need" crusade. Political? yes. Economically sound? No.

This is all very well to complain about, but are people on minimum wage supposed to save when their wages barely cover essentials? They are not being irresponsible there simply isn’t any money to save. So how do all you lucky 74% people who are presumably able and are saving for retirement propose to solve that problem? You sound like a bunch of entitled ‘Pull the ladder up Jacks’.

That’s a shame. I don’t remember you.

You haven’t asked me any questions blossom toes what would you like to know?

State pensions are part of the welfare state. It is a benefit given to you from the government like all the other benefits in the welfare state.

@DrRylandGraceI think you and I are in agreement on some points. I’m politically homeless also, and I think triple lock needs to go, and I think free prescriptions need to go. However when you account for increasing amounts of tax on pensioners and the inheritance tax expected, especially when it captures pensions now which is new, I don’t think the shortfall gap is so big as that.

The reality is you can’t blame pensioners now. Everyone is just trying to get by, you can’t blame people for previous government actions. Right now the data is showing that 45% of working age people aren’t making ANY pension contributions. And these aren’t people that were promised ‘cradle to grave’ support - it’s been well publicised now for decades that we need to make provision for ourselves. People aren’t, and we can’t support this almost half of the population in the future when they come to retire. Means testing the state pension just means loads more people won’t bother saving. We already have a ludicrous system in place where those that didn’t save get pension credit, which makes them better off than those that didn’t save try to make provision for themselves. The government needs to ensure it’s compulsory to save into a pension. With 25% or working age people not working though, that’s 25% presumably that won’t be saving at all. I don’t know what the resolution is

Please could you answer my question?

I hardly post on benefits threads. What age are you as a matter of interest?

I’m remember you. On every single benefits thread explaining why handouts are justified in your mind at least

Thanks.

I have been waiting patiently for their informed solutions. Instead, it has been one strawman argument after another, all used to prop up a very selective and condescending narrative.