Is ending the triple lock to fund a care service fair....

[mids2019]

To me this is actually not a hugely left wing proposal as middle classes with occupational and private pensions will not notice the reduced increases in state pension significantly.

However poorer pensioners with little other pension provision may be impacted a lot to essentially fund a care service that will be disprotioanrly help the middle classes as their life expectancy is greater.

Is it fair that our poorest pensioners get less to support a care service which would mean a millionaire pensioner would not nèed to sell their assets to access it?

I am working full time but in my early sixties. We have been told all our life we will get a state pension and encouraged to save for a private pension to top this up. I have been pretty poor at times where paying rent is a real struggle, but always saved a bit.

If the state pension disappeared I would give up work and cash in my pension and go travelling. Because there will always be benefits for those who have paid in nothing. I am not struggling to be left no better off than those who did nothing.

I also know a lot of people who have taken a lot of money out of their pension to help their adult children. You are delusional if you don't realise how many people cash in pensions early or give significant amounts of pension away to children.

On the other hand - windfalls from privatisations, demutualisations and endowment policies. Council house tenants using right to buy at heavily discounted rates and re-selling at huge profits. Ever reducing income tax rates. Ability to get a decent professional job without having to get £50k in debt by going to Uni. Housing generally far cheaper in proportion to wages. It's all swings and roundabouts.

By "cashing in early", I presume you mean the 25% tax free lump sum aged 55 (now risen to 57) and/or drawing down their pension (subject to tax) from aged 55/57 onwards. It's not a savings account, there are limits as to what and when you can draw down the limited lump sum.

I actually think its more common to get degrees on day release or block release now than it was 30 years ago.
4 days in work 1 at uni.

It is, but of course the older you are, the more plus/minuses you will have acquired over your longer lifetime.
I'm 59 and that list all happened in my lifetime. Someone who is 30 has no idea what is going to happen in the next 50 years, yet speak as if their lifetimes are set, signed and delivered now.

For people who thought they paid in, they have my utmost sympathy. I really do feel bad. But they really have not paid in. They paid the pensions of the generation above them. I think it's outrageous that successive governments have encouraged this belief that National Insurance isn't a tax, but they did.

NI contributions are not different to tax - and paying tax now does not guarantee you the same level of government services. I don't understand why we think that pensions is this one area of tax where if you pay it, the government services are somehow locked in.

I do agree that multiple governments have misled the public. But I'm not sure why you think that people foolishly believing the government is everyone else's problem.

I also just don't believe that a significant fraction are unable to make contributions. Countries that have mandatory saving systems, that are also much poorer than the UK, somehow manage. You need an explanation for how Chile, with roughly a third of the UK's GDP and greater inequality, manages to make a self-contribution system work, but in the UK people simply can't contribute.

Yeah that annoys me. I left school during the highest youth unemployment ever. Commentators were saying on the TV that many of us would never work. Now I am being told I am the lucky generation

Read any thread on here about pension contributions and you'll be lucky to get to the end of P1 before the bleating about the cost of living, credit crunch, childcare etc starts.
People are very happy to point the finger at pensioners who haven't saved enough (even though a lot of the schemes did not even exist when they were in the workplace) at the same time as declaring that young workers can't psooibly save themselves.
Apart from the usual MN crowd piling ££££s into their £1m pension pot of course!

I think it’s fair as it’s pensioners and the elderly who will need the support. I’m sick of hearing ‘but I worked all do my life I deserve this’, mate, the younger generation will also pay in equal amounts to you but guess what?! There will be no pension by the time we get to 65! IF there is a state pension then we won’t be 65 when we receive it it’ll be more like 85 the way things are going.

Plus the younger generation have everything harder because of prices. Houses are so ridiculously expensive that there is no contest over who will have it harder over their lifetime.

Don't forget for many it was leave school at 15/16 because the family needed the income.
Only families who had a bit of spare cash could afford to encourage children to stay on at school and go to uni.

For many it was get a job in the local factory, mine or steelworks.
And thats part of the issue we don't have lots of big works soaking up 100s of school leavers every single year.

No contest? Says who? You sound very sure.
Do you have a crystal ball?

If its 85 most will be dead.
And currently a third retire with ill health so the government do actually need to balance the ill health sickness benefits & the pension

We've had decades of "smoke and mirrors" re our dysfunctional tax system.

Decades of voters voting for parties promising lower taxes hence the reduction in income tax rates, but blind to the ever increasing types and rates of indirect taxation.

Look at Brown increasing NIC twice (first time to "save the NHS"), because he didn't want to increase income tax as he wanted to maintain he wasn't a "tax raising" Chancellor. The extra 2% IS tax and ISN'T any contribution towards state benefits such as state pension. There is no logical reason why he raised NIC rather than raising income tax when it was supposedly ring-fenced to "save the NHS" - it would have raised a hell of a lot more money than raising NIC which only hit workers.

We've also had politicians (of both parties) extolling the virtues of "tax free" saving, i.e. ISAs, EIS, Pensions, etc., which give the impression that not paying tax is something to aspire to - that causes people to believe in that mindset. We should be doing the opposite, i.e. encouraging people to pay tax because of the benefits of public services but that's hard when so much of our public sector is also dysfunctional. People don't see "value for money" anymore.

We do indeed have a "mindset" problem in the UK when it comes to paying tax and public services/benefits etc., but that's been caused by decades of crap politicians playing games for their own self-interest.

Having things better doesn't mean things were perfect all the time. That's just not realistic. So it might have been difficult to buy a house say 30 years ago for many but now it's is factually harder. The same goes with youth unemployment. If so many young people weren't being manipulated and outright forced to stay in education then unemployment statistics would be even worse than the 1970s and 1980s and we have AI on the horizon.

We have had 20 years of no economic growth. We haven't seen this since the inter war period. This is objectively a really difficult time for young people now. Conversely old people are much wealthier now than they have ever been in history when compared to working aged and young people.

Don't let the facts get in the way!!

Also a lot of the money raised through taxation goes on welfare which is a hard sell. We have an lot of people contributing and awful lot in terms of effort, time, skills and of course money through taxation and then other people literally contributing nothing at all and taking more than their share. It feels unfair because it is unfair but we don't seem to be able to work out how to solve the problem. It's almost an unsolvable issue as there has always been the worthy and unworthy poor. Where you drawn the distinction may be subjective but I believe most people can understand that some people are lazy, selfish and frankly don't deserve the assistance that other poor people do deserve.

I always think that actually most people could get behind "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." What do we do though when people don't or won't do the former but are very keen on milking the latter?

Nothing really. It wasn't that I “felt” you were levelling an accusation at me. You explicitly said you thought I had made my mind up before he opened his mouth.

Just making the point that it wasn't a perception problem on myside, just a backtracking one on yours.

It's all good, we took different things away from the conversation.

That’s very fair - and you’re right, I think I sometimes forget how easy it is to perceive things differently, especially when we’re communicating online.

I think people should save now, and people in the past should have saved too. You know that retirement is coming, it is knowable that the state pension relies on taking money from other people. I think the only moral course of action is to do absolutely everything in your power to ensure that money won't be taken from other people on your behalf.

And i assume this posters own fees were paid for by the taxpayer too.

I agree with you a lot here. Although I also think there is a problem in delivery. It's really hard to make people enthusiastic about paying tax, when they see how investments in the UK seem to buy a lot less than investments in similar countries (e.g., the UK invests more per capita in infrastructure than France, and I don't think anyone would guess that, based on looking at the infrastructure in each country)

Good thing your views are rather niche.

When you compare like for like and which generation has it harder financially there isn’t a dispute! Even renting a house these days is difficult with several bidding for one overpriced house or flat.

Wow, I had no idea the triple lock was so lucrative. We've just sold my poor old ma's house to pay for her care (so no inheritance for us, by the bye, and no cushty state pension either if we live long enough). Would we really not have needed to do it if we'd just set aside the extra fiver or whatever she got every week thanks to said lock? Because her care fees right now are £8k a month. Hence selling the house - she's run through everything else she ever put by.

Over their whole lifetime? Comparing the lifetime of an 80-year-old with the lifetime of a 30-year-old is odd, to say the least.
It's the complete opposite of 'like for like'
I don't imagine people who were in their 30s during the three-day weeks and strikes of the 70s felt that fortunate at the time, but they are the people who are now told they are lucky.
There is a dispute. That's why I asked if you had a crystal ball.