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

I’d love to see your source material because those figures don’t seem credible to me.

You seem to be very confused. The welfare figures from the DWP include state pension, pension credit, winter fuel allowance etc. They do not include social care costs or the NHS costs (the vast majority of which are also spent on the over 65s) as these are not part of the DWP’s budget but distributed by the Department for Health and Local Councils. I have amalgamated all of the data on spending on each cohort by the different Government departments into one graph to reach the totals for the over 65 cohort. Likewise, I have included the education spending on children in the costs for children, and the share of social care and health costs in the totals for children and working-aged adults which are attributable to those cohorts, as well as the amounts distributed by the DWP, so that there can be a meaningful comparison between different age cohorts and what the state spends on each specifically (over and above its provision that relates to all citizens such as justice costs, defence, infrastructure etc).

Yes. Economic analyses show that as a cohort people in the Boomer generation have a shortfall of over £200k of tax per person over their lifetimes i.e. they are withdrawing from the state £200k more per person in welfare (such as pensions) and services like the NHS etc than they contribute in tax over a whole lifetime, when adjusted for inflation.

In contrast, those of Gen X and the Millenials will be paying £300k more per person over the whole cohort to the state than they receive over their lifetime in services/ welfare. I.e. there is an enormous transfer of wealth going on through extortionately high tax rates to pay money for the pensioners who failed to put sustainable funding systems in place to cover their own costs in retirement, which is impoverishing the generations behind them who are subsidising them despite the retirees having more wealth than any other cohort and a large percentage of them being perfectly capable of funding these costs themselves.

As a result, all other state services are vastly underfunded, hence our crumbling infrastructure and education systems (leading to low productivity and declining growth rates and falling standards of living) alongside sky high tax rates.

A huge redirection of public spending from the old to the young is required and needs to happen imminently if there is to be any prospect of economic growth in the UK and living standards relative to our comparator countries recovering: currently they are dropping like a stone for this precise reason.

The only way to raise growth and living standards is to raise productivity and there is no possibility of this happening while over 50% of public spending (growing annually) is siphoned off to pay for 15% of the population to be kept in comfort that many people working full time and raising children have no prospect of achieving.

But the 55% already includes housing and heating and winter fuel allowance, so are you double counting those? It’s all benefits going to pensioners according to Gov UK

cant afford it can barely heat and eat as it is hopefully I will die by then as I wont want to be alive

Have you tried factoring in the amount of tax those people pay?

Exactly this. Those of us who are self employed and barely treading water cannot “save” anything, because every penny we have is already being stretched as much as possible.

Pensioners are 55% of the “welfare bill” when you only include state pension, pension credit etc paid to pensioners by the DWP. In my analysis I have included welfare such as the state pensions, winter fuel allowance, free prescriptions etc, housing costs paid by the state, social care costs etc - it still comes from our tax money regardless of whether it’s paid from the budget of the DWP or NHS or Local Authorities from an administrative perspective. Therefore, to ensure a proper comparison pulled together the total cost per head of population for welfare and healthcare and represented this in a graph as a percentage of GDP by age cohort.

The regulations absolutely do stop business owners ‘doing a Maxwell’. I thought everyone knew this? And then there’s the pension protection fund that guarantees to pay out virtually all of the pension you would have got if anything does go wrong.

Figures are from ONS, DWP etc. The graphs I posted even stated specifically the proportions of costs such as NHS/ social care costs that are attributed to each cohort which again are validated from the official published data.

I agree with most of what you say except "they need to redirect investment to younger generations". The younger generations need to think for themselves and decide where their best interests lie. Good decisions are shared decisions. Unless there's a significant buy in to a plan, it won't succeed.

Pensions are a massive ticking time bomb which no political party will touch as the older generation are the main voting pool.

They need to re direct investment to the younger generations in this country. There is massive changes with work coming as AI is going to take lots of white collar jobs and we are absolutely not prepared.

Politicians have completely failed in preparing our country for the ageing population and it is the younger generations that are going to suffer due to this.

There is, as has been pointed out endlessly, a post ww2 bulge in the population. It was the largest cohort ever born, and it coincided with a science and medical boom in knowledge, not least because of the skills and education given to the baby boomers. Idiots in government destroyed the grammar school education model, and those behind them decided social justice was more important.

My grandfather left school at 14 in Coventry and retired as chief standards engineer at the aero-engineering company that is now BAe, via a broom, the drafting office, night school and a lot of work and some good fortune, being the right person with the right skills in the right place. It's an impossible leap now.

This is a scam, not a pension fund going bankrupt

Sadly they are not down and out yet, so the older family home is still in their sights.

I just wondered where your figures are from? Working age benefits are 4.2% of GDP as of 2025 aren’t they? And then non pension incapacity and disability is 1.7% to 3.2% of GDP on top of this. Pensioners are 55% of the total welfare bill. Which is just over 10.8% of GDP.

I hate to bang on, but I was an analyst/marketing person at one of the largest pension funds on Wall St in the 1980s, and then worked very close to the City for the rest of my work life. I'm not an economist or even very numerate, but I was very good at my job, and I heard the ins and outs and ups and downs of big companies' decision making processes from the lips of the people taking those decisions. Across all sectors of the market, from pharma to property to retail to construction, media and telecoms, banking and insurance.

Your late grandmother was an exception because in the 1920’s pensions weren’t regulated and workplace pensions weren’t universally offered to female employees. Where they were, the majority were subject to being rendered worthless if an employee left the job or got married.

The point that resonates with me is that Governments should not retrospectively rewrite the accepted rules to encourage pension savings just because they can't make their spending plans work without doing so.

All my pension savings are DC because I was self-employed from age 35 to retirement. I started planning it 25 years ago, and until November 2024, it was both the family pension and a safe haven for money to cover our care in our dotage, with the residue left to our kid.

We didn't need/intend to take a lump sum, but when it was endlessly discussed that DC pensions would lose the right to take out 25% tax free, and that anything left over would be subject to IHT, we took the money and instantly gifted it down a generation.

It's buying a modest house from a landlord quitting the market because the Renter's Rights Act imposes too many costs and burdens. So in under two years, this government has managed to damage its voters (the insecure lower-paid working people) twice-over. Fewer houses for rent, and a failure to scalp the sensibly self-providing middle class professional. Two own goals. Bronx cheer.

Possibly as a result of claiming pension credit ? If on the old state pension with no other income she would have qualified for PC, which entitles the claimant to help with council tax.

Please could I nominate @DrRylandGrace for Secretary of State for Work and Pensions...

More seriously, some jobs need much more skill, statistical nous and intellect than the run of the mill Party hacks (whatever rosette) can muster. In tough times, we need them more than ever.

To make what’s happening to the UK economy and why services are underfunded now even clearer, I’ve replotted the data in my graphs above to show spend per person as a percentage of GDP, to reflect the numbers of people in each age cohort (and included children this time).

It’s pretty clear that disabled children or allegedly lazy adults of working age aren’t the problem here…

Spare me. I’m a lone parent to my children and have been since they were babies. Both have disabilities, as well. I still work, and still pay into a pension, and wouldn’t dream of making the excuse that I can’t possibly do so until a man comes along to save me.

It still goes on. You might find this interesting reading:
Thousands of pension scam victims receive compensation in £80 million payout https://share.google/iSOWuVxZmgSpRNFJ1

Work shy? You haven’t seen the data on the number of very keen graduates desperate for work then who can’t get any job at all because so many employers are hugely cutting their numbers of employees at entry level because of a combination of: poor UK economic performance relative to peers therefore lack of investment (Brexit); AI consuming entry-level roles; punitive Government taxes and UK political instability meaning there’s a “moron premium” on UK borrowing costs and it’s more expensive and risky to invest here now, with a far smaller easy-to-access market than 10 years ago, and with much higher employment costs?

Economics, eh? Never mind.

Just that “they’re all lazy”, I’m sure.

As stated earlier in the thread the proportion of GDP spent on all working aged benefits combined has not changed substantially in decades. It’s moved between just under 3% and 4% of GDP depending on economic cycles. The percentage of GDP spent on welfare for the over 65s however, although they are only 15% of the population, has moved from under 6% GDP to nearly 9% (an increase of nearly 50%) and is expected to continue to rise further. And that’s without even including the 85% of NHS cost that is spent on this small proportion of the population…

When we include the expenditure on the NHS the working aged expenditure on health and welfare has risen from 2.5 to 5% GDP over this time period (mainly due to medical advances, since the welfare expenditure has been largely static), and the amount on health and welfare spent on over 65s has risen from 10% GDP to 18% since 1985, despite the over 65s being 15% of the population.

Nobody in this age cohort has any excuse for the false claim that the country’s economic problems are because of the younger generations of working age because the data proves categorically that this is not the case.