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.

Does there need to be three generations that have never worked? Surely anyone that has never worked, or who has worked very little, despite being able to is enough?

Yes, but there are very few people who have never worked, is what I am saying. We get all of this rhetoric in popular media and even in Parliamentary debates about it but in fact it is very rare, and in the cases where it does happen there are other factors - addiction, chaotic lifestyles, disabilities and chronic conditions in the families etc. What the JRF found is that there are people who go on and off benefits throughout their working lives, due to short-term contracts, zero-hours contracts, caring responsibilities etc. People who couldn't find permanent work, often because of the way that employers run their businesses. But they found very few people who had never worked.

And by the way, employers are only able to run their businesses using zero-hours and short term contracts because politicians have ensured that unions are fucked and employees have fewer rights now than they did in for example the 70s, so they have set up an economic environment where people will dip in and out of benefits during the course of their working lives. And then those same politicians will castigate them for it!

An anecdote is a story. That's all. So if someone tells a story about a benefit scrounger, that's an anecdote. All I'm commenting on is that one type of benefit receiver is pilloried and another defended. I don't kmow the figures on pensioners or pensions. I just had a general impression that their lives were often hard.

For all I know, Dispatches has just found a bunch of obnoxious wealthy pensioners who sneer at everyone else. They might not be typical. Statistically typical I mean. Not like someone or other's father in law.

being subsidised by the state. It doesn't matter that much if plenty of women didn't work, they were being subsidised by their husbands, not other taxpayers. Whereas a single mother on benefits is being entirely funded by other people.

The more you try and take from the state, the more you have to lose.'

What Clouds and trees said plus I would add those SAHMs contributed massively to a stable society/voluntary work

There is a right load of old shit being spouted on this thread, like this:
DH's parents retired at 50, although his mum never worked. They have good final salary pension
Okay... his mum never worked, but has a final salary pension scheme.
And the bit about all pensioners shopping in Waitrose etc.
Yep, it's the old divide and rule hard at work.

Sure. But what I'm trying to do is point out that anecdotes about benefit scroungers are misleading and indeed irrelevant, because statistics and studies show there are very few people who have never worked, so it doesn't add much to the debate to start banging on about them

I agree with you though that anecdotes about rich pensioners are also misleading, when as you (or someone else, I forget now) point out, many of them lived and worked through the lean eighties, with massive interest rates etc.

However, I do think looking at the broader picture, when the era of the baby boomers is studied in the future they will be seen to have had it better than people before and after them.

Above is a copy and paste that ive taken from uks post (posted too soon)

Can anyone else see the glaring contradiction?

Haveing a mysogynistic go at single mums on benefit because they arent working and then saying that SAHMS contribute massively

Well Which is it????!!!!!!!

Baby boomers are defined as people born between 1946 and 1964.
Many of you ranting about the BBs surely realise that a lot of these people are still in work (some on NMW), struggling to pay huge mortgages/rents, will not retire until they're 67 etc. etc.
There are as many blinkered people on this thread as you'd find on any benefit-bashing thread...

two fingers i DONT begrudge the pensioners their benefits. NOT at all. But my issue was the ATTITUDE of the golf club pensioners featured in the programme.

For all I know, Dispatches has just found a bunch of obnoxious wealthy pensioners who sneer at everyone else. They might not be typical. Statistically typical I mean. Not like someone or other's father in law.
I think this is probably the case. Just like the Daily Mail hunting out the single mother with 18 children by 25 different dads who is having a house built of gold especially to accommodate her brood...

I got annoyed by the first half. Michael Buerk at a golf club with a load of white middle class men. Didn't seem entirely representative to me. And I knew Stringfellow would turn up at some point.

People born in 1964 are not generally paying huge mortgages. At least, they aren't paying nearly as much for their houses as people born in 1984. Or 1994. They're more likely to be owning the houses that people born in those years are living in, with the younger generation paying extortionate amounts in rent!

two fingers both my parents are still working at 77

We wouldn't need ctc or wtf if employers paid a liveable wage.
These 'benifits' bridge the gap between what companies want to pay you and what you actually need to survive!

I don't think most people would feel so enraged if the majority of Baby boomers acknowledged that that had it a lot easier and were very lucky benefit from a booming economy, attainable house prices in relation to wages, free education and access to better pension options.

But nope, according to some they earned all this, they ate better than the other filthy scroungers who live on benefits!
Who are they kidding?
Not only did they live in a golden era, lucked out on booming house prices have free education and better opportunities , they then think they actually are owed WFA and free bus passes because they paid in?
It is a fact that pensioners have taken out of the pot, including free education up to degree level and NHS care more than they have ever paid in.
At my generations retirement age (67) we would of paid in more than what we have taken out, we will also be fucked over on pensions which is just the icing on the cake.

LaurieFairyStory, LOL all you like about our not doing it on purpose, but actually quite a lot of us oldies did not vote for Thatcher, or strike breaking, or the other things you accuse us of. Absurd generalisations contribute nothing to this arguement.

People born in 1964 are not generally paying huge mortgages. At least, they aren't paying nearly as much for their houses as people born in 1984. Or 1994. They're more likely to be owning the houses that people born in those years are living in, with the younger generation paying extortionate amounts in rent!

If you say so. Can't beat a good generalisation after all... It has occurred to you, I suppose, that some people born in '64 may have bought their first property AFTER some people born in '84? It does happen like that sometimes, you know... I know plenty of people in their fifties who have never been able to buy a house and never will.
The only BTL landlord I know is 32 years old, brought up on 'Property Ladder'...

Of course not all of you did but a sufficient majority did or we wouldn't have had those governments.

I don't think most people would feel so enraged if the majority of Baby boomers acknowledged that that had it a lot easier and were very lucky benefit from a booming economy, attainable house prices in relation to wages, free education and access to better pension options.

THIS. Back in the late 90s/early 2000s i was unemployed. And my parents REFUSED to understand why i couldnt afford to work in a part time job. They really thought that 40 pounds a week could pay for food rent and council tax gas electric water etc. (no working tax credit back then for people without kids.)

two fingers both my parents are still working at 77
From choice or necessity? I think there's a difference.

Absurd generalisations contribute nothing to this argument.
Spot on, HintOfBream.

Some real venom here towards us so called baby boomers . Not all of us are playing golf and riding around on free bus passes .

I pay for my prescriptions and dental care ......my oh doesnt . He is ill .
I have enough savings to pay for two funerals . As long as that cost doesnt go up . No more . But those savings take me above the free care. Fine by me

We have always supported our adult children with money in the past and with time which we have now to facilitate childcare /animal care etc . Happily .

I hugely empathise with the younger generation today. Why would I not? Awful to struggle . But recession and redundancy happened to us too .
Why oh why the nasty comments .

I sure do not shop at Waitrose .

One day you will be older and it is hard to envisage .

My pension age changed last year to 7 years ahead for what I had planned .
No time to start saving really any more funds. I am not complaining . just maybe my contribution to the recession after all those contributions made in good faith . And the help I give my sons when I can .

please do not be so nasty in your obvious hatred for my generation .

two fingers my DH says its cos they cant stand each other. But my DM says its cos they cant afford to retire.

Funny how they expected me to work in some non existent part time job and live on a lot less and for it to keep both me and DH though.

THIS. Back in the late 90s/early 2000s i was unemployed. And my parents REFUSED to understand why i couldnt afford to work in a part time job. They really thought that 40 pounds a week could pay for food rent and council tax gas electric water etc. (no working tax credit back then for people without kids.)

Back in the 80s, during Thatcher's reign, millions of baby boomers people were unemployed, too...

basset you sound like a lovely person. My DH is a baby boomer too You sound like you have same attitude as him