If you can work you should... But why?

[Tryingtokeepgoing]

So, Rachel Reeves is of the opinion that if you can work you should. However, there are millions of us in the 50+ bracket who can work, but don't need or want to work. We are financially self sufficent, happily (ish) paying tax and spending money supporting the services economy on which so much of the country depends. Why should we work? Altruistically, I see my choice not to work as creating opportunities for progression for others...

Why should we work?
What is achieved by encouraging us to work?
If there are benefits to us working, how can she incentivise us to do so?

caveat - I am not a fan of the Telegraph, but it is a direct quote

“If you can work, you should work,” she said after official figures showed worklessness in Britain rose to its highest level in more than a decade.

I'd classify myself as economically underactive - I could work more but don't really need to. One incentive to get me to work more than my current 1-2 days a week would be some sort of Labour Exchange or Recruitment Agency that deals with the more tedious aspects of matching me to a job. (Though I'd always have in the back of my mind that I might be taking a role from someone who needs it).

Looking for vacancies, tailoring a CV / covering letter, filling in an application form, preparing a presentation (if the interview requires it) and doing interviews - are all fairly un-exciting and ...if you don't really need or want to then... well you wouldn't bother would you?

I'd quite like to be assigned a job, after some sort of preliminary and centralised stuff done to check my CV, preferences and pre-interview me. I want to outsource the cognitive effort and tedium of applications, though I am more than happy to work very hard and make excellent widgets (or whatever I'm assigned to do) once in post :)

• Everything you do IN a job is hopefully productive for that job.
• Everything you do to GET a job is only productive if it results in a job, so there's a lot of time and effort wasted. (I accept that there's a benefit to getting some interview practice in etc).

Jo

There is also the issue of wage stagnation & we are heading in the direction of a two tier society where you have younger people working, much of their income going in housing costs facing an older pension age vs older people in housing with significant gains who can retire early. The only way it’s sustainable is with a shed load of immigration which again isn’t popular. And you will see more skilled young workers here move abroad for better QOL which will exacerbate things. The NHS will not be able to cope.

telegraph is an awful paper
this quote
The biggest driver of the increase in inactivity since 2019 is long-term sickness: people who say they are too ill to work. The number of students has also risen sharply.

I think this only works if you have a functioning society. Which we don’t.

Poor healthcare, poor education poor public transport etc.

We know the government gives no shits about us. If I become ill there will be no help. I will have to wait months or years for substandard treatment for which I have paid for all my life.

Why should we put ourselves out to support a failing societal system ? Sadly I no longer care about contributing to society. Society doesn’t give a fuck about me.

I think a lot of the "harm" has been done by the message of paying x number of years for state pension entitlement, i.e. 30 years, 35 years or 40 years according to the ever changing rules on retirement ages. That's sent the message that people have "paid for themselves" after as little as 30 years of working, or even as little as 40 years. We were heading in the right direction back in the 80s and 90s with SERPS and S2P where the state pension had elements of "earnings related" pension, based on how much you earned and paid in NIC (also affected by how many years), but for some crazy reason, those schemes were scrapped and replaced by the "fixed amount state pension" for all again, only dependant on a number of working years which is less than the number of potential working years.

It's resulted in the mindset of people thinking they've "earned" their state pension even if they've not worked all their lives and mostly who havn't paid in anywhere near enough in NIC contributions to finance potentially 2/3 decades of state pension.

Quite simply, for lots of people these days, there's no "benefit" in them working for more years once they've already hit the required number of qualifying years for state benefit. Made worse by relatively high tax/nic rates on workers earnings, especially for higher earners..

It's all a mess really. Sadly RR has no better idea as to how to solve it than previous Chancellors, so it is indeed just a different cheek of the same arse!

I am in this category. Retired early, now in my early 60s and my husband in his early 70s.

I worked long hours in a stressful job and had a 3 hour commute on top. I was exhausted and decided that if I didn't leave it would make myself ill. Had I known Covid was coming, I might have stuck it out for longer, as I'd have been able to work at home, but obviously I didn't.

My husband and I both have decent occupational pensions on which we pay tax. We don't receive any benefits, unless you count his state pension. I will get mine when I'm 67 and am paying voluntary NI contributions to make up for the few years I missed.

I did wonder whether to do something less stressful locally, but we don't need the money and I don't see any need to.

Do I feel guilty? Well yes, a bit. I am obviously not paying nearly as much tax or NI as I used to - or as I would do if I took a less well paid local job. But on the whole I don't feel guilty enough to do anything about it, especially as I get closer to 65.

@FiddlyDiddlyDee well I’d say it’s less than 50% although not sure why it’s relevant to my point, do you have any evidence that the majority of early retirees don’t use the NHS?

and this
Bosses are desperate to hire more staff – but as British-born adults drop out and stop seeking employment, companies and the public sector are forced to offer jobs to those born elsewhere instead.

I don't think she's taking about you though

What they need to do is tackle low wages in this country. Too many people are better off on benefits than they are working full time. Companies know that they can offer the minimum wage and then the Government (ie the taxpayer) will top up that wage.

Or you can have someone working 16 hours a week and getting tops up but if they increased their hours they would be worse off so they stay working part time. It's madness. Working should always pay more than being on benefits but it doesn't. This is what needs to change.

Well they have to get a pension from somewhere and they’ve paid in for it.

They haven’t though which is the point. You pay pensions forward.

Do you? You made the statement that very few retirees fund their own care. Not up to me to do your research for you.

I think her problem is with people who choose to rely on others or on benefits rather than work, and not with people who have already saved enough through their working lives so they are self-sufficient without working.

In general I agree people should contribute to society by working, in whatever form that takes for them. I really don't like laziness.

Dh has worked for 50 years. Hes absolutely earnt it.

Who made you the judge of who has or hasn't earned their state pension?

All well and good but people like my poor mum can’t get a job as she’s in her mid 60s and after not being able to physically do age care anymore ha struggled to get anything other than short term casual work. That combined with her UNPAID and UNVALUED contributions of caring for two elderly parents (keeping them out of tax payer care homes).

discrimination and social expectations prevents many people on benefits who WANT to work from doing so

It makes you wonder what happened in say 2020 which impacted on people’s health and ability to work!

Well in my public sector job l paid in a fairly hefty amount each month for my pension. And the retirement was agreed by the trustees of the pension.

So didn’t actually do anything criminal to get my pension.

Yh I think it's a slightly odd development and I'm not sure I like it.

Tbh I think we are living through the death throes of the welfare state. I don't think it will be financially viable in the future with the way demographics are changing and I think my generation (I'm early 30's) will have to work full time into their fifties and beyond whether we want to or not.

@taxguru so many don’t understand that though!

“According to population projections from the Office for National Statistics, the number of people in the UK aged 65 or over is expected to increase by 35% from 12.5m in 2020 to 15.9m in 2040. This contrasts with a projected 2% increase in those aged between 20 and 64 over the same period (38.9m to 39.5m) and a projected fall of 11% in those aged under 20 (15.6m to 13.9m).”

These stats are insane!

“Research by the Nuffield Trust has found that NHS spend per person rises sharply after age 50, with the ‘85 and above’ bracket needing NHS spending of £7,000 a year on average. In particular, medical care for men in that age group costs about seven times more than for the late-30s cohort. ”

How can we fund it?

Sorry I’m just cracking up at this one 🤣

Sure I believe some of those like firefighter/ train driver is going to have on job training. But the professional roles super rare. I believe accountancy is easier to get an apprenticeship with.

But the others like law, architecture, engineering etc. these aren’t usually apprenticeships (though I imagine very rarely one may exist). These are intermediary roles as the professional final qualification has so many stages with requirements for degrees, experience, exams etc. So those are not apprenticeships like your imagining. These are roles in an often 10 year training period. And highly competitive fields. None of these employers are complaining people don’t have basic literacy.

There were massive shortages of dentists and doctors before Covid, so you can't blame it for everything.

It IS about money though. Lots of these people retired early to avoid punitive tax charges on their healthy pension schemes. Lots of these people were already working part time to keep their earnings under £100k to avoid the tax cost of losing the tax free personal allowance, losing free childcare entitlement etc.

This is exactly what happens when you "tax the rich till they squeak" - they can usually afford to cut down their hours or retire, especially when facing a marginal tax rate of 70% + !

It's far cheaper to keep older dentists and doctors working a few years more than to train lots of extra new ones or bring in immigrants (who often bring in their dependant families too!). It's madness to have a counter-intuitive tax and benefits system that penalises people for working and encourages behaviour such as reducing hours and retiring at the prime time in their careers!

I agree with this, I had a well paid, full time job before I had my daughter, I went back but it made my life hell, I was paying a fortune in childcare, constantly chasing my tail working for someone who expected me to put my job before my child.

I'm now part time in a hybrid working role, I don't pay much tax as my PT salary is much lower, but I'm not really any worse off financially now I'm not paying for childcare - I could work full time, pay much more tax but I'd lose a big chunk of my pay in childcare and I'd have to juggle so much more than I do.

Until employers have a reasonable expectation of their employees, and childcare doesn't cost a small fortune, a large population of working age people are the same, and as you say not fulfilling their duty to pay taxes and grow the economy by not working full time and at their maximum ability.

Take the money out of it and think about contributions to society instead. Everyone who can, should put in effort to add value to their society. None of us exists independently. Having money can give an illusion of self sufficiency but we always need each other.

I believe it’s unhelpful to measure contribution or work simply in monetary terms. A person who works to raise their children is doing something hugely important without earning money for it. A person who volunteers in local politics or charities makes a valuable contribution to society. Caring for elderly relatives, supporting others to raise their children, all useful and all unpaid. As long as you are capable, you should contribute something. In my opinion, that’s a moral imperative and part of being human. Whether you earn money for it is much less important, much more related to your needs.

I doubt that’s what RR meant though.

Maybe the NHS needs to be more in line with other EU countries like France and Germany?