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

Aye, so they are silent generation, not boomers.

No, but there are ever increasing numbers of people either taking early retirement from occupational pension schemes (or personal pension plans) or simply opting out of work and living on savings (or inheritances or a partner) for the intervening years until state pension age.

By "opting out", they're not paying income tax/NIC on wages, and not contributing to the economy via work productivity etc thus contributing to the stagnant/falling GDP. In the case of certain professions/occupations such as within the NHS there is the knock on effect of causing staff shortages and thus delaying services, i.e. increasing NHS waiting lists etc., which in turn means more people unable to work etc.

No they both went through the war as children. I wasn't a teenage pregnancy baby. My parents were married when they had me but they had three of us when my mum was 22 and my dad was 23.

Rich people taking our their private pensions before state pension age.

Thick or just ignorant?

Young people have not always been poorer. In the 80s young people on average were more likely to own a home than over 55s. No coincidence that the young people then were BOOMERS (a common thread that runs) and the old people were ww2 veterans and their spouses, largely empoverished and deserving of the elderly discounts they never received but their bratty children did (Winter Fuel Allowance, Triple Lock, Free bus passes)

In 2000 over 55s owned 55% of the GDP and now is closer to 80%. Likewise for under 35s it was once closer to 40% of the GDP now closer to 10%.

FWIW I am 35 with two kids not some stroppy teenager. The "young" milennials now include the borderline middle aged with families.

What are ‘early pensioners’ please ? You can’t, and never have been able to claim state pension until you reach the prescribed age.

It’s not true anyway.

👏👏

You conveniently forgot to mention that research of the time and since, highlighted that the heavy use of leaded petrol in the mid-20th century exposed millions of children to neurotoxins linked to behavioural and impulse-control issues. As lead was phased out in the 1970s, it led to lower delinquency rates by roughly two decades later.

Another major factor is that the legalisation of abortion in the 1970s resulted in fewer unwanted births and children raised in unstable environments, significantly reducing the numbers of ‘at risk’ youth by the 1990s And the 980’s and 90’s saw a massive increase in the size of police forces and stricter laws leading to more crimes attracting jail time, which removed high rate offenders from the streets.

It's normal for 20% to be economically inactive. Housewives, early pensioners (below state pension but early enough to claim), some self employed are essentially considered this if not doing so well, students. Also lots of boomers who make money off property speculation, no need for them to work is there.

Is the age bracket 16+ or 18+? Because if 16+ vast majority of 16-17 will be economically inactive for tax purposes. The vast majority of 16-17 who work on top of school aren't taxed and rightfully so, they only make a few thousand and work weekends on top of school.

Problem with self employed is that they'd have to pay at least twice as much to get the same kind of pension as an employee, as the employee gets an employer's contribution paid into their pension scheme on top of the employee's own contribution. There's no such equivalent for self employed, so they'd have to pay the equivalent of employer AND employee contribution to match.

Many don't bother at all because they can't put enough aside to make it worthwhile, especially when their business is just starting out (i.e. when they're young) so get less impact from compound interest too.

When I talk to clients, it's always a very hard sell to get them to start putting money into pensions, when they have so many other demands on their limited funds, i.e. growing their business produces better returns from marketing, buying better equipment, etc., and many, especially after covid, are barely surviving and don't have spare money for anything, neither business development nor pensions.

Complete nonsense.
The pension is going to disappear in 20 years or so? Engage brain.
You are right - young people have no money. They never have any money. There is nothing unique about today's young families having no money. It was ever thus.
So who is going to bail your generation out then?
Because on one hand there is baying for pensioners to be punished for relying on the state pension, yet on the other you are excusing younger people for not making any of their own arrangements.

Most of history people have been more fortunate than their parents. When they have been less fortunate, it has been to a long term change in living conditions (e.g. early industrialisation in the 1810s which actually worsened conditions for the working class in the short term, before improving them in the long term by the late 1800s), and so the people before them also did not do better than their parents. The boomers are the ONLY group to do vastly better than both their parents and kids.

BTW, by saying your parents were boomers, you are saying they were born after WW2, correct? That would mean you are a teenage pregnancy baby, which is nothing to be ashamed of, but a lot of people misuse the word to just mean, "old", when it doesn't, in fact the people born during and before the war are some of the best to ever live, and gave us all the social benefits and reforms of the 20th century. Especially those born before the war.

Also BTW fwiw '63 barely counts as boomer. Although a lot of people born around them still behave in that obnoxious way. It depends. And in my experience most of boomers entitled behaviour comes from being children of WW2 vets who gave them everything due to being traumatised wanted them to have lives they didn't have, so wouldn't apply to you if your parents genuinely are boomers.

I think that's unemployed people though, i.e. claiming unemployment benefits.

There are 9.1 million "economically inactive" people, being 20% of the workforce.

I think that’s untrue. There’s a nice little graph in the link.

www.murdermap.co.uk/statistics/homicide-england-wales-statistics-historical/

I’m a boomer. Distinctly remember the bombed out buildings that were everywhere for a very very long time after the end of WW2. They were a constant reminder, as were the frequent historical TV documentaries of the time. Conscription didn’t end until the mid 1960s and those who had served could, and frequently were, called up to other conflicts.

It’s only on MN I’ve ever encountered the opinion that we were all self centred shitbags who had everything we could possibly want handed to us on a plate. Everything is relative. Housing costs were a lot lower, so was the cost of living. But then so were wages. And it’s often forgotten that the changes in the law leading to things like maternity leave and pay, workplace pension provision for women, better childcare provision etc, were pioneered by my generation. Most of us, like myself were just trying to do the best we could in the economic climate of the day.

Quite seriously, I haven't inherited anything life changing. Enough to commission a sturdy garden table from one grandparent and a holiday in 2004 from another. DH and I earned the rest. We are 70 now, and as we were old parents to a single child, the choices we are making are to send our (substantial) assets down to our kid. Who will pay IHT on the money we leave.

Ok. I was born at the end of November 1963. Just after President Kennedy was murdered. Am I a boomer? I have ALWAYS been against right to buy. It probably is one of the biggest causes of the housing crisis we face today.

I have two adult children and worry about their futures, however, thankfully they are both working and paying into LA pensions like me and their dad did.

My parents were actual boomers. They have both passed away. BUT, I agree they were luckier than me and my husband. But what can you do? We can't unmake it.

Well, murder, serial killing and crime in general reached an epidemic in the 70s when the boomers reached young adulthood and started declining in the 90s when boomers started to become too old to commit violent crimes easily. Take from that what you will about that generation.

Oh dear. I’ve been busy swimming with my children this afternoon and return to find that still not one of the posters who has made personal attacks on me has posted any evidence to refute the data I’ve posted, not one has bothered to provide a response the my post stating what actions I’d take to fix the UK economy and posting a better plan they have devised, and instead they’ve been busy getting comments from me deleted which objected to them insulting me and accusing me of being psychotic?!

How utterly pathetic.

This thread exemplifies precisely why UK society and our economy is collapsing.

That’s simply not true, unfortunately.
I can think of at least six relatives that are giving it a damn good go - deliberately, they will quite literally die trying to leave nothing.

Do you seriously think a healthy society people's finances are based on parental donations not their own work

If this is the case why work at all, live on UC, your parents money will always dwarf yours so why not. And their gifts exceed your salary lost SLC repayment so why not!

You just look worse.

Frankly, I think boomers like it this way because it makes them powerful, and they have sovereignty over their adult children's futures not whoever they're working for

So then again, you’re going to cause an enormous divide again - between those whose parents are actually decent human beings and pay forward the inheritance probably like we did in the Victorian times consider the money to be family money that needs to stay in the family
Versus those who don’t
And if you’re in one of those families who feel absolutely no moral obligation to forward the money that our grandparents actually really did work their fingers to the Bone for, then those young people are going to be screwed.

The amount of money boomers have is impossible to piss away unless deliberately out of spite.

I don't even think boomers are inherently evil like this.

Rather, unlike their parents, they were never faced with catastrophe and possible premature death of dozens of young people they knew, including themselves (WW2), and were never shown the value and dignity of pain, suffering and sacrifice. Everything is always about them as a result.

Their children (millennials) were thus raised to be depressed and apathetic.

Don't be silly. Of course some young people have money, because the boomers are gifting it down to them. My DC is days away from buying a small 2 up 2 down Victorian house in a Midland town, outright. They have inherited a bit from two grannies, and in view of changes to IHT rules on the treatment of pensions, we've dobbed in the rest, while we can still expect to live seven more years.

There's no boomer fraud here. The boomers are paying for the party.