… to think that no one wants to speak up for the younger generation?

[SnowBells]

I don't know what it is. Maybe political correctness gone mad.

Pensioners who are already wealthy get winter fuel allowance, etc. Each time this kind of stuff gets mentioned on things like Question Time or something, people shout and whistle, showing complete disregard for the subject, and no real debate can happen.

I am not talking about the pensioners who aren't well off. But a huge proportion of pensioners did profit from the higher house prices - something not likely to happen for the younger generation.

Our kids have to pay to go to uni. My generation will retire much, much later. We also have to pay for inflated house prices.

And yet, there will be people who say 'but we've paid our taxes'. Well, we pay taxes and our kids will, too, but we are likely to get A LOT less back. I just feel there's a huge generational wealth divide. And I wonder why no one wants to discuss this properly? Why do people want to stop a debate before it has even had a chance to happen?

Everyone will die. Your legacy is the next generation. So why not speak up for what essentially will be your only legacy?

Train, it is pretty daft for 40% of kids to be going to University anyway, there just aren't that number of degree level jobs.
It was about 15% when I went. Much more sustainable.

Donna it is true that a majority of boomers did not go to university; but a majority of them did receive some form of
funded tertiary, technical, skilled or semi-skilled education or training, which is also no longer free nowadays (a great many at polytechnics or further education colleges, and a great many as apprentices or trained by employers in the workplace. Employers no longer train workers the way they did: they expect employees to arrive having trained and qualified themselves. The numbers of jobs where you can be hired as a 16-year-old and be taught on the job what to do are so vanishingly small these days as to be negligible.)

Moomin, Maybe the younger ones realise that asking people already paying through the nose to cough up even more money to pay for exorbitant public sector pensions beyond the dreams of the vast majority of the working public is only going to lead to tears in the long run?

I feel like this country has completely screwed me over (I'm 24) so I moved abroad.

I still pay NI contributions, but how old will I be when I'm allowed the pension? Will there even be a pension?

I look at my friends, all very intelligent people with degrees in Economics, Law, Philosophy etc who are unable to get jobs, will probably never be able to afford a mortgage, let alone savings to put our children through university.

Most of us will be paying off student loan for the next 30 years.

People who work in the public sector have always earned less than they would have done in the private sector. They did so because they were promised decent salary linked pensions by way of compensation. If you had worked there for 30 years and someone changed the deal wouldn't you protest?

Moomin - it was actually Major's govt who thought up the 50% target before it was adopted by Labour; and it never was 50% at university but 50% "having had some experience of tertiary level education", including everything from degrees to diplomas and higher level NVQs to short workplace-based courses.

When you look at the proportion of boomers who had the equivalent, the figure is actually not that far off.

BTW the target was because our competitor countries worldwide (including the US and large parts of the Far East) send a much greater proportion of the youth cohort to tertiary education - 50% was a low target in comparison with some countries who are sending up to 80% of their youth cohort to tertiary education. Now that is one of the reasons behind the rise of China and other countries, like you mentioned. Are you suggesting that to compete with economies like China and the US we should send less than half of the number of our children to tertiary education than they do? If so, what kinds of jobs are we going to be providing to compete?

Well unless your mates earn above a certain amount they won't have to pay their loans back will they?
For what it's worth I agree the university system is messed up. There are too many graduates, degrees have been devalued.

Public sector workers have been earning more than private sector workers for some time now. If I had worked somewhere for 30 years I'd feel lucky I had had a job somewhere for 30 years, how many people in the private sector can say that? If a private sector business was run as badly and uneconomically as some areas of the public sector, they'd have gone bankrupt years ago, and said pensions would be kaputt.

Mass political protests - many many more at the Iraq war and tuition fee protests than there ever were at Greenham Common or the Poll Tax riots (I suspect you are rather romanticising those: in most places they were more opportunistic rioting than political movement).

Moomin the PAYE threshold for current student loan payments is around 10k. Are you suggesting that singapore's friends get jobs paying less than 10k as a solution?

Oh come on Train, you are talking rubbish. People used to go to work at 15. To say 50% of them had the equivalent of a degree is pushing statistics too far into the realms of nonsense.

No train I'm saying that if you earn £21000 a year you pay back £34 a month of your loan.

How old did you say you were again Train. Were you there? The anti poll tax thing was a massive and ultimately successful campaign of public non compliance. Greenham common resonated far beyond the number of women camped out. And I sure as hell am not romanticising the miners strike.
Yes the anti war march was big but there were certainly plenty of baby boomers there.

Moomin those are the arrangements for the new fee structure which will start being payable in a year's time, and they are the fee loans, not including the maintenance loans as well. Someone who is 24 now will be paying on the current PAYE thresholds.

I was there, actually and actually in Toxteth at the time, interestingly

Donna, I fear you have been reading the Daily Mail too much.

Again - the 50% target was not "degree level" but could include eg. week-long skills courses funded by an employer

And Donna is right actually: public sector pay outstripped private sector for a sustained period in the 2000s

First of all to say that pensioners/boomers have not been affected by benefit reforms are actually rubbish.

My Mum is 59 this year she has worked and paid full NI stamps for 44 years, she should be retiring next year, thats what she was promised when she started work pension at age 60.

Now she will have to work until she is 66 and by then will have paid full NI for 51 years.

Now people keep saying that even if she has paid in all that time she will always be taking out more then she put in when she does get her pension again not actually true.

My Mum got a future pension statement and yes will be entitled to a full pension at age 66, HOWEVER there is a second pension, for every extra year she pays - not you or I HER full NI she will get an extra 1.75 per week or £21.00 per year.

On her Salary she pays £989 per year so thats a payment of 5,934 to get £126 extra over the 6 years.

Even if she draws her pension for 20 years she will only take £2,520 extra pension.

So thats £3,414 extra she will be paying in without actually getting any of it back.

Whilst we are on the subject of NI contributions we forget that a persons employer also pays NI contributions does that money not also go towards paying for pensions.

If it does then I don't see how people can actually say that a pensioner on full NI contributions and whose employer also pays NI on their behalf can always be in a position to take out more then they put in.

My friends all went to top universities, all in good subjects and we would have been in that top 15% of people that attended university when you went, Moomin

A lot of my friends wish that they could pay back 34 quid per month, most are earning 13-14k, living in the North of England with their parents or in flat shares to try and save to move out.

We are going to be mid 40s by the time student loans are paid off, trying to also support families in most cases, mortgages AND save for retirement. With no guarantee of a state pension.

Those who have moved to London are living in shared flats, spending all their money on commuting and not being able to save.

It is a real, real shame that these bright people do not see a way of being able to buy a house, save for a rainy day and for their future.

But that sounds pretty normal to me for 24 singapore. When I was 24 DH and I were both postgrads earning buttons in sideline jobs living in shit accommodation. Why assume that's it forever? Only 4 years later we were married, had a house and a baby and another on the way with DH in a good job and me as a SAHM. 10 years from now, who knows? We might be wealthy, we might be stony broke. That's just life. There are far greater things to fear than not being rich.

Totally with you, Train. Even my baby-boomer father is appalled at how things have degenerated for his children's generation. And not all pensioners have "paid in", by a long shot. We will pay a lot more over our lifespan.

moonmin agree with all of your posts and think some posters who claim to have been around in the 80s were in fact children as they seem to know fuck all about how things were.

however that said what a shame that we have here generations of working classes setting against each other.

this economic situation is nothing to do with the baby boomer generation or the pensioners? what should we take pensions and benefits if these old people in a race to the bottom!! really.

no the economic situation has been made as usual by the greedy rich who haven't changed in centuries.

who runs the country? Eton educated Tory boys.

social mobility stopped with the scrapping of the grammar schools, when I went they really were full of working class kids unlike now.

I have kids in their 20s who have huge uni debts and no prospect of buying a house here and are set to go abroad.

don't kid yourself it's the fault of the pensioners though.

the NHS will go next.

To those who keep on saying my dad did not go to uni, but he still did well right out of school, etc. - that does NOT work anymore these days. Again, that was a luxury of the previous generation.

When you see job ads for a freaking travel agent requiring a university degree, that's when you just now that SOMETHING is going really wrong. In Continental Europe, that job is done by someone who passed GCSE!!!

Seriously - does no one care???

I know you lot love your parents, etc. But ask yourself this: if I travelled back in time, took your parent as a youngster and put him into this generation… how would he/she fare? Well, it seems they did not have uni degrees, and there aren't many mines or something anymore to work in these days…

What would he/she do in the current world, and would he/she be able to afford a house on his/her new income?