Why don’t Labour get it?

I am a baby boomer and still working full time. Everyone I know of my age is either working full time, running parish councils and charities or caring for grandchildren 3-4 days a week.

You need to stop your generalising.

Lets also not forget that there was no family allowance for the first child til 1977. DD was 7. Don’t forget income tax was over 30%, and mortgage interest rates got to double figures. We had a council flat in the early 70s, it cost more than the slummy house with an outside lav we rented from a private landlord in 1970. We moved a long way in the UK, no local connection, meant no chance of a council house.

If one adult in a household was working, that was deemed enough to live on. DH had some very basic wage jobs until he established himself in self employment, there was no help via benefits. For a short period he was unemployed, and the dole was about £13 a week. We survived. You couldn’t choose to work 16 hours, get a UC top up and all the things that go with getting a means tested benefit. You either got a second job, like DH, or both parents worked and shared childcare.

Lastly, as a state pensioner, I’d support the pausing of the triple lock, but only if the basic pensions are equalised. Post 2016 basic new state pension is almost £60 a week more than the old basic and the gap continues to increase. Very unfair on those older people with small extra pensions who are not entitled to any means tested top ups.

increasing the pension age for people retiring in the future
I don't think that that is PP's point. Women used to retire at 60, it was raised to the male age of 65 and has been gradually increasing since then. That is years of pension that the existing cohort expected but have not received. Triple lock increases - compared to multiple years' worth of missing pension - is chicken feed.

The impact of these changes on retirement planning is what the WASPI women's protest was all about.

But increasing the pension age for people retiring in the future didn't have any impact on the existing cohort of pensioners. They're the ones benefiting from the triple lock.

There is a finite amount of tax receipts in a year. The amount of expenditure on pensioners has been going up in real terms year after year for decades. Between 1990 and 2019 the amount spent on pensioner benefits in real terms has doubled. This is in part due to the triple lock, in part due to more pensioners living longer. So when you say “God knows where all that money is going” - it isn’t going anywhere - there isn’t any money!

Well they did pause pension for a good number of years -by increasing the age you receive it - God knows where all that money is going

@upinaballoon higher earners (on PAYE) already pay proportionately high taxes. Lower & middle earners don't but the issue is housing & don't forget the frozen tax bands which has dragged a huge swathe into higher bands.

It's like he has completely forgotten that his campaign slogan was change. Unless we all misunderstood and he actually meant "change" to mean ministers every few months for corruption.

And smoking. The government persuaded too many people to stop smoking and now we are paying the price.

The problem is that we expect a decent state pension, but people are living longer, and taxpayers don’t want to pay for it.
Do you really think that £11,973 p.a. counts as 'decent'?

Then reform come along and blatantly lie about how easy problems will be to solve and the electorate falls for it all.
It's pretty much what Starmer did. He was very light on detail before the election - apart from the no rise in PAYE, NI and VAT - and let people believe their own versions of what they wanted to hear. He sticks to impossible-to-pin-down waffle like 'change' or 'modernise'.

One of the reasons for us living longer is that we have central heating. I'm not joking.
Another is that loads more medical/surgical things can be done than were known in 1948. It's amazing, and costly.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think the basic rate of Income Tax is 20% and it has been for quite a lot of years. I have been shouting at the telly for a good long time to raise it a bit - 21%/22%. What rate were we paying in the late 70s - 27% or more? It can be checked on Google, anyway. I am not suggesting for a moment that the basic rate only should be raised.
It was ridiculous for the Labour and the Tories to keep on saying they wouldn't raise Income Tax, in the run-up to last year's election, but neither dared to say that they would.

I understand that. My grandfather lived for two years after his pension age.

I keep waking up every morning and I'm grumbled about because I do.

Then reform come along and blatantly lie about how easy problems will be to solve and the electorate falls for it all. It’s the biggest problem facing the country, not people on boats

I think a lot of the reform voters know it's bullshit. They still prefer the bullshit though, I want to believe we can have low taxes and excellent services too!

Sorry my language about that the triple lock wasn’t good. The problem is that we expect a decent state pension, but people are living longer, and taxpayers don’t want to pay for it. Politicians can’t be honest about how much it costs to keep the triple lock because voters want something for nothing. Then reform come along and blatantly lie about how easy problems will be to solve and the electorate falls for it all. It’s the biggest problem facing the country, not people on boats

@senua
As encouraged by Tony Blair. I know several teachers who were offered early retirement at 55 years old, about 20 years ago. It was made so tempting that they would have been fools to turn it down.

Absolutely. My father is a prime example. He was encouraged to take early retirement at 55 despite working in a profession which had a shortage of qualified people. He took his 2/3 final salary pension, a lump sum and then went back to work 1 week later because there was such a shortage of people in his job. And he was not alone.

Or maybe my parents were in their 50s when they retired but much older now. Obviously there are exceptions, but baby boomers are so called due to the post war population boom. Combined with better health and housing and medical advances this generation is far outliving previous generations but with increasingly complex health and care needs. This is placing an ever increading burden on a smaller number of taxpayers. That is a demographic fact.

It is not possible to find a solution because, as Labour discovered, they are politically untouchable due to their numbers and that they will vote for their own benefit.

Or perhaps your parents are the exception.

I'm sitting in an office where 3 out of the 12 people are over 60 and still working full time including myself.

My parents retired in their late 50s - that is a pretty unique period in history. Never before or since will so many people be able to retire so early with so much capital and such big pensions. Their demographic benefited from a once in a generation set of circumstances (baby boom with longer than ever seen before life expectancy) that we are now all paying for.

Until you are a pensioner, then the younger workers will pay for you. Again, there is nothing unique about this

The demographic changes are unique though @Katypp why don't you think that will have an impact on future pensioners?

Really? I don't think so. You are being ridiculous, sorry.

You really are being very unpleasant on this thread. There's just no need for it.

Until you are a pensioner, then the younger workers will pay for you.
Again, there is nothing unique about this

But I am constantly amazed that younger workers seem convinced that they are the only ones who have ever had to pay for the current pensioners. It has always worked like this, you are not unique

tbf they are probably unique in ratio terms & the fact their pension age has moved out despite no increase in healthy life expectancy age.

As it always has been.
I totally agree with scrapping the triple lock. But I am constantly amazed that younger workers seem convinced that they are the only ones who have ever had to pay for the current pensioners. It has always worked like this, you are not unique

Because when you started paying 39 years ago people lived on average 10 years after retirement
Ah. Got it. I've broken the social contract by not dying off.

This was made worse by the slew of early retirements in the 90s and 2000s.
As encouraged by Tony Blair. I know several teachers who were offered early retirement at 55 years old, about 20 years ago. It was made so tempting that they would have been fools to turn it down.
Blair and Brown also invented PFI i.e. infrastructure paid for on the never-never. They got the credit for building schools and hospitals but passed the cost on to future generations. Just like the post-war Labour government who introduced pensions and the NHS but didn't fund it properly.
Labour love 'buy now, somebody else pay later'.