To be raging at Dispatches "rich and on benefits"

[crashdoll]

It's talking about pensioners and all they get from the welfare state regardless of income or savings. Cue clip of David Scameron saying he won't touch their benefits.

I spoke to my dad about this last night. His view of the golf crowd was the same as mine, ie they grew up in a time when if you didn't like the job, you could tell them to stick it on a Friday and on Monday work somewhere else for £5 more per week (and he did). They have no concept of what life is like now, how expensive housing is, how small pay rises are (even I remember people asking for 20%, getting 12% and being happy at that).

Life has progressed so quickly in the last 30 years that employment levels at companies are no where near where they were, so the companies have the upper hand, so much more can be computerised/automated. I'm not being a Luddite, but life really IS different now than then and harder to get to the 'golf crowd' level. And the sad thing is, they'll never understand this, and call the younger generations lazy/wasteful for not being able to do what they did.

I regretfully agree with Kazooblue. Pensioners who can afford it must share the pain - otherwise the generational inequality will get even worse. It's bad enough anyway.

And an awful lot is going on treating the elderly on the NHS,we're living longer and more diseases need treating.

If you want the care you're going to have to pay for it,you can't waste money on benefits that aren't needed and expect there not to be shortfalls elsewhere.

I guess they'd prefer the rest if us got squeezed even more.

Lots of pensioners aren't well off as illustrated by the fact that 50% of them aren't eligible to pay tax which means they have an income of less than £10k a year - I suggest that there are very few people who could live on that figure without assistance.

Pensioners are the main group who DON'T claim what they are entitled to which is one of the reasons why they don't want to make these benefits means tested.

I agree that the babyboomers have done well as a group and from now on it's only going to get worse. My retirement age has been changed three times and gone from 60 - 66 - not sure how individuals are meant to plan for their retirement when they don't know when it is - I still won't be suprised if mine is changed again even though I don't have that long to go.

At least those with massive mortgages are having a great time at the expense of anyone trying to save for their retirement!

Rant over.

Oh how I wish some of those golf club pensioners could start from scratch again in this day and age.
I talk to some older people and they simply don't want to believe how bad it has become.

"At least those with massive mortgages are having a great time at the expense of anyone trying to save for their retirement!"

What do you mean?

Procrastinating I mean that people with mortgages are paying the lowest interest for years at the expense of savings rates so more and more people heading towards retirement are finding saving to bolster their potential pension difficult.

At the risk of sounding like one of the golf club crowd when I took out our first mortgage in 1979 the rate was an eye watering 15.75% compared to low single figures now. We've not always had it so good.

But how much did your house cost? What was that relative to your income?

You do sound like the golf club crowd I'm afraid.

Bloody hell. I thought the benefit-bashing threads on MN were full of ridiculously biased generalisations, but this is just more of the same.

As ToastToppers said:
Less vitriol and hatred towards pensioners and more towards successive governments who created the mess were in today because of their policies

The notion that all pensioners are rich is as flawed as the notion that all benefit claimants live the life of riley. Seriously, people... get a grip. A few obnoxious people in a golf club (a fucking golf club for goodness sake - what does that tell you?!) is not representative of an entire generation.

This thread is about rich pensioners, not pensioners in general.

Some people don't seem to make a distinction.
If you read the thread, it's all 'babyboomers this...', 'pensioners that...', 'pulled the ladder up after them...', 'don't care...', 'refuse to believe...'

Means test it all, stop giving the wealthy hand outs, they don't need it!

Also I love the phrase David Scameron!

I kind of want to say "yes, they don't need it + make it means tested".

Otoh, I went without "nice stuff" as a child - read pony + nice clothes + toys etc., because my dad saved.

Those who went out and bought a new Capri ( ), package holidays to Spain, new clothes for the children - are still being "rewarded with benefits".

So the feckless are rewarded still - why should my m&d be penalised for saving?

Yes, yes, of course I know they rode the crest of the biggest boom ever.

if it was soooo easy to make in the past, how come 30% of pensioners are in poverty?

I mean, it was easy, all you had to do was work and it all fell in your lap, or maybe not....

A SAHP on benefits can't really be said to be contributing can they? They might do stuff for their community, but it's not going to equal what they take out. Whereas a SAHP supported by their spouse can do the same things for the community, but be making a genuine contribution, because they aren't taking cash out of the pot. What they contribute is an actual contribution

They can't win really can they?

If they do nothing, they are scum, if they do contribute, well, they aren't really contributing are they?

What a load of shit.

Thanks for that Pro!

My first house a 1 bed property in a cheapish area cost 11k including a 10% saved deposit. In those days mortgages were 2x main salary plus 1 2nd salary.

So about the same as a pair of first time buyers today earning 30k between them and buying a property for 90k - not easy but doable.

Off for a round of golf!

i don't understand why this is controversial. it just seems like a no brainer to me. No one has said ALL pensioners, but just like everything there are extremes. I feel dreadful that ANYone has to use food banks etc, including those 30% of pensioners living in poverty - it's fucking heartbreaking. Which is why the money should go to them, not the type of pensioner this thread is about.

Yes, i understand it all seems like anecdote, but i suppose when you grow up in leafy west London it is just the norm. I think there may be a north/south divide or suburb/rural or something. ExPils are from Liverpool, they were royally fucked in the 80's, went thru some shocking hard times. They never recovered. They are now scraping by. THEY need the benefits and more. My parents (chiswick/richmond) do NOT. Ring fence it and redistribute it to those who need it. As the gulf is widening between rich and poor (of any age or description) surely the entire thing needs an overhaul.

MrsKoala I don't understand either, although I take the point that if benefits were means tested, some pensioners would not claim which is a huge worry, although the same across the board. As a student social worker, I experience it on my placement in a very deprived area and make it an important task to ensure individuals get support with applying for all they are entitled to. This thread was not an attack on pensioners. It was an angry attack at the government who have ring fenced pensioners benefits when everyone else is feeling the strain. Are we really all in this together or are some groups exempt?

I can remember 40 years ago thinking i would never be able to get on the housing ladder and that things would never get better - country was bankrupt, there was no money for building societies to lend out to prospective house buyers and unemployment was sky high. 40 years on now own 2 properties - our children now live in one of them - with money in the bank etc etc good pension - unfortunately we cannot see into the future and in a few years time hopefully people will look back and wonder what they were worrying about

Fussychica, where is that possible in the south east?
Me and DH earn roughly 25K between us, a possible mortgage available of up to 70-80K, one bed properties around here in the SE are roughly 130K.
Oh and how do you save when you are paying £700 rent for a poorly maintained one bed flat paying 300 in council tax and utilities s month, then food, contence insurance, travel for jobs etc, etc.

The truth is that the handul of our peers who have got onto the property ladder either had extensive help from parents or received a large inheritance.

Agree OTT - I have been made redundant twice and the most i can earn now is 22k. I am mid 30's and uni educated (still have the loan to prove it). Not many people i know of my age earn in the 30k's and most live in London. One bed flats rental £800-1000 per month in skanky areas. You couldn't buy much for £90k. The only people i know who own property had a lot of help. Apart from DH who was in the army, so heavily subsidised housing allowed him to save for a deposit.

DH was offered a job somewhere for 75k once but the logistics of moving to London meant we would be worse off. We could only get a £350k mortgage even with savings of £50k and then most of the salary would go on mortgage repayment. How shocking is that? if we can't do it on that money and be comfortable, then how the fuck can other people on 30k. It is so soul destroying.

OTTMummA - you could buy in the North.

My issue with the baby boomers is not that they have done well - good luck to them.
Nor that they receive a few benefits they don't need - it'll probably cost more to work out who does need them and then there will always be losers.

No, my issue is their attitude... they seem so certain that they dserve their good fortune. They seem so certain that they have paid their dues (most won't have). And they seem in complete denial as to how difficult it is for young people today.

The cost of living is through the roof. House prices are ridiculous. You can't get a mortgage for love or money. Tertiary eductaion is eyewatering. Unemployment is high. Final salary pensions are a distant memory. There is bugger all social housing.

Yet they yap on about how easy young people have it! They talk about scroungers not working while conveninetly forgetting all the ahrd working families that will never have what they have had.

Yeah, I don't think some people get how unaffordable properties are, especially in London and the South East.

For e.g., DH has a colleague who was applying for a mortgage in a non-fabulous area of London (North East, quite deprived area). He has a good, stable, very well paid job and his wife is a teacher. They have a lot of savings (tens of thousands) and two young children.

They were turned down for a mortgage for a three bedroom flat in non-fabulous area because:

• Part of their savings came from bonuses that he had earned through his job, and he could lose his job and/or not get any more bonuses and this was too risky
• They have two children in nursery, which is expensive and if he loses his job, they would still have this expense.

The mortgage provider didn't think that the nursery expenses would be gone within about 3 years (freeing up more income) and that pretty much anyone at any point in time could lose their job.

It's gone so extremely the other way - for first time buyers, if you want to pay a non-ruinous interest rate, you have to put at least a 20/25% deposit. Given that the average house price for Greater London is around £450k, that means before you even try getting a mortgage you have to have over £125k savings. If you try the HSBC mortgage calculator, for a capital repayment 30 year mortgage, your monthly repayments will be £1,5k.

How on earth are people supposed to afford that?

And yes, say your job is dependant on living in London, you could move to the commuter belt where property is marginally cheaper. But then you need to take into account around £300 pm commuting costs (for the train) + transport in London (£117 per month). You also then need to take into account longer journey times which may also mean higher childcare costs, or reducing the hours of one parent to part time or to stop working at all, but that means less income.

Or, you could move further north - only problem is, there's a shortage of jobs.

So pretty much anyway you look at it, you're screwed.