To think all the targeted pensioner benefits ie bus pass, TV and winter fuel should be abolished...

[Figmentofmyimagination]

.... And the equivalent amount added to the pension credit of low income pensioners. That would overcome the logistical/cost based arguments against means testing these benefits.

Thyme - no, I'm really not. I'm talking to people who have houses worth well in excess of the IHT threshold (and who achieved that without inheriting anything themselves, mostly). My house also falls into that bracket, incidentally.

Has MN developed a policy on the inbred now too?

I do agree about name calling - it's really not helpful, probably not true, and doesn't help solve the situation but entrenches animosity.

Society is deeply deeply riven and it is mainly because of inherited wealth - either we are cool with the deep structural inequalities we now have, or we aren't. If we aren't then something radical needs to be done to rebalance it all. I'd actually be relatively fine with earning less IF society was rebalanced and everything was more equal. We currently have high earners, people with capital (those groups have an intersection but I doubt it's huge) and the people who have way too little. The high earners pay most of the tax but live precariously because of their lack of capital. The people with capital may pay little or no tax (and generally speaking aren't wealth creators either - they are savers) and live comfortably and threaten to go live in spain or wherever if the state should ever dare to level the playing field - and the people with little or less become more disengaged (and thus don't vote etc). It's not a recipe for a healthy society. I'd happily listen to suggestions for other ways to rebalance it, that didn't involve (a) a war or (b) a depression/crash or (c) taxing employment income till the pips squeak which will raise revenue but not actually get rid of imbalance if IHT remains as it is or becomes even less - but it seems to me that revolutionising IHT might be the quickest and least painful fix we could find (because the people whose estates will be taxed will be dead so they won't care).

I think IHT is fairer than income tax. Taxing income too highly is a disincentive to work, whereas inheritance was never earned by the inheritor. I say this as someone who probably will inherit money at some point in my life.

If you told my dcs they grew up in an affluent household they'd roll on the floor laughing. I was a teacher and a single parent. They were all state educated and work hard in the public services. I was glad to pass some of the money I inherited from my dp's because they have young families and I'd rather they have the money now when they need it.

The only inheritance I've had are a share of a teacher's and a nurse's life savings. I passed on half of it through a deed of variation - and now discover I was a 'tax avoider'. I thought I was just doing what my mother would have wanted. She made her will before her gcs were born.

I didn't grow up in an affluent household either. My parents struggled to buy a house in 1953 - when my df was 40. The first homeowners in the family.

Handing over their hard earned money would feel as if I'd let them down.

I do agree about name calling - it's really not helpful, probably not true, and doesn't help solve the situation but entrenches animosity.

Well, you did call me outrageously selfish just a few posts ago.

I am empathetic to your position (I don't think you're able to see mine, but fine) and I agree the UK is seriously wanting in social inequality. I don't think the answer lies with more taxation of high-rate payers - does it really make sense to demand more than 45%?

I have grown quite a bit more conservative in the past five years for reasons that would take me a really long time to explain and I'm pretty sure that no one wants to hear them- but suffice it to say that I could have written your post five years ago. I doubt one of us is right and one of us is wrong.

Thyme - you are affluent! Amazingly so. I was the first homeowner in my family, in 1993. Owning a home in 1953 definitely makes your family one of the few. It might not feel like that (it never does) - but it's the case.

Well, you did call me outrageously selfish just a few posts ago.

That was a reasonable evaluation of the views you had expressed (and a quite mild one too). Not the same as calling you inbred.

That was a reasonable evaluation of the views you had expressed (and a quite mild one too). Not the same as calling you inbred.

I suggest that if you were to canvas the UK and ask parents whether they would prefer to leave 1M GBP (a figure I've pulled out of thin air) to their children or the government, the former would win in droves. If the majority of people are "selfish", then you have to re-define "selfish".

No. But I think the qualifying age should be raised to 70 or 75. A lot of the better off pensioners never get on a bus. And they can only use them at off peak times. And the state pension is not something you get by default. You will have to have contributed a set number of years NI.

Well - it didn't feel like 'affluent' growing up, I can tell you. It was a real struggle for my parents. My father did two jobs. Worked in a Sec Mod during the day, taught night school 5 evenings p.w. I had to wear my school blazer to see 'Rock around the Clock' because it was the only summer coat I had. (Oh -the shame!)

It's ant and grasshopper. Other families made different choices. Cars and holidays in Spain. We went to Devon and stayed in a caravan. But home ownership gradually increased over the next 20 yrs. It didn't mean you were rich.

You have to reward the ants some time. Or we'd all be grasshoppers and fall back on the State when anything went wrong.

The majority of people are selfish. That's why we have the government we have, and why the country is in such a mess.

How would any of you describe the income of a 'well off' pensioner? £12,000? £20,000? £30,000?

'Wealthy' or 'well-off' is a description but it doesn't really tell us anything, does it? What's 'wealthy' to some is not to others.

Yes, people are selfish. They will look after their children before they will look after others, this is a sort of fundamental human impulse. I gather GentlyBenevolent you are different and if you had the choice to leave 1M GBP to your children or the state you would choose the state?

I do think having a social conscience has gone out of the window. Especially when it comes to children. It's 'my kid first and who cares about the rest', used to justify shenanigans over school places.

'There's no such thing as society', as someone once said?

The thing that I was about was the bit about fighting wars. By definition this can only possibly apply to those over 85. And a fair proportion of 'pensioners' weren't even born by the end of ww2. These people are no more likely to have fought in a war than a 30 year old.

How - no, you're right. It was Osborne's pledge to raise the threshold to £1 million that prompted Brown, a couple of weeks later, at the LP conference, to introduce the married couple's £650.

Otherwise, we would have had to pay IHT on that family home bought in 1953. No savings because we'd used them all up maintaining it so my mother could live there till she died.

As I said, it was never intended to hit 'ordinary hard-working families'. And no party is now going to lower the threshold because it would be a massive vote loser. As well as its social and economic effects on the fabric of society.

tobysmum - I agree with you, tho' many of the younger pensioners had their lives directly affected by the war and the Age of Austerity that followed, which made Osborne's austerity look like a summer holiday on the Riviera.

But they will eventually die off. It's just emotive rhetoric. Better to justify benefits for the elderly on the grounds that being old is expensive, as is being a parent, or disabled and all these groups should have extra help. And the rich elderly, parents and disabled will pay for this in their taxes, like everyone else.

Even being selfish most of our DC would be better off if inheritance were done away with.

If you can leave your DC £300k that privileges them compared to your sister who can leave her DC £500, and to all the people who can leave next to nothing however your DC is still disadvantaged compared to the DC who are left £1 million and more.

Put it all in the pot to pay for better services to those who need them and the DC from middle income families are on a level playing field with the DC of the mega rich (aside from old school tie network stuff).

If you " only" have £10k to leave each DC they'd gain more than they lose by a total removal of inheritance.

Nobody wants to leave their DC nothing if other people are leaving asmuch as they can - it's like an arms race; if nobody was allowed to do it it would be a better world, but as soon as someone has nuclear weapons those without are at a huge disadvantage.

The 100% inheritance tax idea was inresponse to Dido asking how the adult children of well off pensioners would feel if they had nothing to inherit btw - I thought it would be a bloody good idea if instead of means resting everyone's accumulated wealth just went back into the pot at the end of their "turn" - nobody is entitled to a sudden sum of money they have done nothing to earn and that varies wildly from nothing at all to vast sums based on how much wealth somebody else who has died accumulated in life.

The money for universal - or any - benefits has to come from somewhere, dead people don't need it, and I disagree that unprovable or provable claims about what the living think the dead "would have wanted" trump the greater good :o