To think we can't afford the triple lock

It’s not ‘do pensioners deserve adequate pensions’ it’s can we afford the pensions ditto UC etc - answer we can’t and are running up so much debt we can’t even cover the interest payments

Oh of course. Why didn’t I think of that. Let them eat cake.

The state pension is a benefit.

Each generation - during their working years - pays for the younger generation's childhood (including £112k at today's prices for their schooling, £25k for 18 years of child benefit, and other family subsidies) as well as pays for the older generation' old age state pension (worth about £250k).

In addition they pay for every generation's specific needs like hospital treatment and disability subsidies. Because they are the ones working and paying tax.

That's not generational theft, and it's not unfair.

It's how society deals with the fact that we're all productive for only a limited part of our lives- book-ended by dependency in childhood and in old age.

I find it so weird that people complaining about paying out pensions seem to have completely forgotten that these same pensioners subsidised their childhood including school education (school for 14 years costing about half the lifetime cost of the state pension per person). Or that their own pensions will be paid by the generation younger than them (whose childhood they are currently paying for).

I also suspect that people conflate the triple lock with the pension. The generation who would lose most from the triple lock being removed is those currently working who feel so hard done by when they reach a pension which has already been eroded by many years of inflation - and then continues to erode through their entire 20-30 years pension - not current pensioners, who will be at the end of their lives before the inflation really bites.

There's also generous means-tested support for working age adults on council tax, free prescriptions, free NHS dental, eyes tests and credits for eyewear It's certainly not only pensioners.

I'm not retired, by the way. Still very much in the 'subsidising everyone else' stage of life. But I can see that removing inflation-linking from pensions hits younger peopke far more than older people!

I do think that at some point we need to lose the ratchet effect of the triple lock, but we absolutely must keep meaningful inflation linking g.

Making the state pension means-tested - excluding those who have contributed the most in tax during their working lives - would be unforgiveable theft.

Redistribution in our society is already incredibly high, and is driving our most productive young people away. Breaking that promise would be the final nail in the coffin.

Because they bought the home.

If we keep the triple lock will pensioners stop complaining? Because it would be worth it then.

The boomer generation are, and probably will be for the foreseeable future, the wealthiest generation we will ever see. They benefitted most from the housing market, their children had free university education, the NHS had been established, we were part of the European trading block, then had years of EU membership, not home conflicts, an earlier retirement age, final salary pensions. They had it good, still have it like really good.

Which wasn’t their fault it was luck.

Yes there will be members of that generation who didn’t take advantage of any of this, didn’t plan for their old age, thought the good times would last forever, didn’t work as hard as they should etc etc like there is in all generations but on the whole (because you have to make government policies not on an individual basis) they had it good, still do in fact most are mortgage free, most of the rest are on social housing very very few privately rent.

If they can’t understand how much harder financially subsequent generations have it then fine, whatever live in that bubble, but stop complaining.

If you live in an expensive house but only have the state pension to live off and you choose to shiver away in your castle that is your choice. You have the option of liquidating some of your asset, you could downsize or take out equity from it. Your choice. At least you have that choice.

The state pension of course isn’t minimal wage, it is assumed that you don’t have the expenses of working, housing costs and raising a family. Plus it assumes you saved a bit during decades of work.

So really pensioners moaning about money is water off a ducks back. You get the state pension the triple lock is safe for now, just stop whinging. It’s enough to survive it never promised to be anything else. Cut your cloth etc etc

I honestly have no idea why benefits clsimants are so untouchable on MN, yet pensioners are treated as objects to be shifted around and expected to be happy to potentially lose the benefit they think they have paid into all their working life (NB I KNOW there is no pension pot per person, no need to point this out)
Benefits claimants may have never paid s penny into the system yet are defended and any suggestion that their package should be looked at are greeted with outrage. I am nit talking about disabked people here.
I can only assume that most posters are younger (so UC age) and don't have the empathy and sense to realise they will be pensioners one day themselves. Future pensioners will probably be better off personally as private/workplace pensions are so much better and accessible now, but this was not always the case so berating pensioners today for not taking advantage of something that largely didn't exist is ridiculous.
You know those much-berated £1m homes? All being well, they will be inherited by younger people. This iswhat happens. Their parents will have struggled when they young parents too, it has always been the case.
What is new is the expectation that 30-somethings should have the same standard of living as someone who has built up assets over decades and the objection to paying for today"s pensions they way it has alwsys been done. TLDR: People are more selfish and self-obsessed now

None of us will have pensions soon enough.

The triple lock is unsustainable.

We are about to get a lot poorer.

Who’s going to pay for my pension? I’m mid 40s and am pretty sure the state pension won’t be around for me. It’s unaffordable now and the triple lock is making the whole situation much worse. There’s no way anyone with any other savings will be getting it in the future.

The triple lock means the pension increases by 3.6-ish% this year. That reflects average wages. Average public sector wages went up 5.8% this year with private sector going up 2.9% on average. Who thinks public sector workers deserve double the pay rise that private sector workers do? What’s that all
about?

Atleast if means tasting comes in it will be the public sector workers they are hardest hit, to make up for the wildly generous pension is in the private sector are funding for them.

The upcoming medication shortage will help to reduce the number of pensioners we have.

The problem with the Triple Lock is it cherry picks the best measurer on a short term basis. When in reality the wage increase generally lags inflations.

If there ids inflation one year of 3% but wages don't move, and then following year wages catch up by 3% and inflation is static. The average employee has an increase in line with inflation of 3% over two years. However, the triple lock would have given an increase of 6%.

The triple lock will also grow the pensions bill at a rate much faster than the wage bill that supports it.

If inflation was constant over time the whole thing would be more stable but in the last decade it hasn't been.

And there are precious few apprentice places. Most tradesmen don’t take on apprentices anymore due to the increase in cost, regulation and bureaucracy. Colleges tell prospective students to find their own job/apprenticeship as they won’t organise it. Loads of youngsters want to become a tradesman but can’t get an apprenticeship. Lots end up working as dogsbodies often cash in hand working for dodgy scaffolders, roofers, etc rather than actually learning a regulated trade like electricians or heating engineers.

And greedy.

The generous public sector pay awards are their reward for voting in Labour!

You realise that the triple lock isn’t applicable to private pensions?

I hope that’s meant to be funny?

No they are a reward for all the years of austerity when they got SFA. It essentially to make up for years of pay cuts.

I was in government I would think laterally on this. I think more people are attached to the idea of a triple lock than actually understand how the mechanism works, I think you could probably keep the name and change some of the mechanism to something that would mirror average living better.

Nowhere did I say people had 'failed' to plan.
My post was in answer to the large numbers of people who jump on any suggestion that we remove the triple lock with the answer "but I paid my NI/stamps for my whole life". Yes they did, but they weren't paying under a system that promised a lock for most of that time.
The geometric progression implied by both the design of the lock and the aging population means it that it is unsustainable even mid-term, and needs to be replaced with something that means pensioners receive a fair deal, but not one that is unfairly skewed in their favour at the expense of other public services and investment.

I'm deadly serious unfortunately.

Theres going to be a massive energy crisis. It's already starting and what happening now is going to have some pretty significant implications for some time.

The UK already has medicine shortages for some products and is holding an extremely low inventory.

The entrance to the red sea has been closed by Yemeni rebels. With suggestions that it has been mined. It either means insurance will go through the roof on cargo ships or they will have to go round the cape and that will cost a huge amount more.

India where we get most of our cheap generic medicines from, is going to be particularly hard hit by fuel shortages. That's going to affect their production capacity.

Genuinely we should all be massively concerned. This is not being reported on the news cycle as highly as it should be.

We are facing massive problems ahead. Like COVID level concerns if not bigger.

Pensions staying as they are with these massive changes about to happen isn't sustainable. It's gone. It isn't going to be a choice.

Burnham's options are going to be hugely limited to keeping the lights on, keeping things moving and making people don't go hungry. That's it. Benefit reform is not going to be a choice.

My sources for these things are not some conspiracy but job on social media. I am talking Reuters and SkyNews who are talking about energy prices and global shortages. Once you start tracking from those points it gets scary pretty quick.

People are having yesterday's conversation about what we should do. The conversations we should be having should be about how we manage this crisis. We need to start doing this NOW. Not in two or three weeks time.

That’s worrying. I have a DT1 son.

Do you see what I was reacting to?

A post saying that young people shouldn't have children or education if they find the costs hard.
So I've asked whether the poster was really suggesting that paying for (the guaranteed increase of) pensions should have higher personal priority than having a child.
On the personal level it is absurd suggestion, on the system level it is even worse in a different way.

Many posters just see that the tripple lock increases will have to go at some moment. There is no chance that this system will continue for several decades. Not with living longer, not with decreasing number of children, the money just won't be there.

It is hard to be sure whether more posters are not differentiating between scraping tripple lock increase vs taking pensions away on the side of "we need to do something, this is unaffordable" or on the side "don't touch poor pensioners".
Just don't assume that the younger people are stupidly unable to understand that tripple lock gone would decrease their future pensions. Everyone would love to have a nice increasing pension. We just know it won't happen for us. And the later some action is taken (like replacing tripple lock with single lock), the bigger the cut will have to be.

Mine is self funded.