To think stopping the pension triple lock and bus passes would reduce inequality

[feellikeahugefailure]

Yes it would be great to give everyone free bus travel and put up their money each year. But the country is already in a financial black hole.

Most other benefits have been frozen for years but pensioners protected. Also the bus pass is given universally and not means tested, where as the bus pass for the unemployed was axed years ago.

There are many people like my wealthy ex in-laws who used the bus pass to avoid paying parking and getting the BMW scratched. The state pension they always called peanuts - as it was compared to their final salary pension. These changes would not affect their lifestyle one bit.

Ideally I'd like unemployed people and poor pensioners to get some help with bus travel (as it can be super expensive) and increases each year in money to allow people at the bottom to live their life with dignity, regardless of age.

jobhap.com/bus-passes-and-state-pensions-triple-lock-threat-on-brexit/

why are we all being distracted by a bus pass?

Because Somebody is getting something that I am not entitled to. I want it stopped immediately. While you're at it could you also please stop allocating all the most convenient parking spots to blue badge holders; it's really not fair that those of us who can walk should have to. (Somebody did actually say that to me in all seriousness the other day, then strode off vigorously before I could collect my jaw from the floor. Perhaps as I'm reasonably mobile myself he assumed I would agree. I'm not quite horrible enough to have wished that his leg would fall off.)

or should that have been

They've just stopped rural buses on a Sunday round here.

I would imagine that the majority of pensioners benefiting from free bus passes, winter fuel allowance and free tv licensing today, are the very people who have paid into the system their whole life, unlike the next generation of free loaders who have scrounged off the state as a career. A bit of a generalisation, so no offence intended.

On average, wealth is highest amongst the 45-64 year old age group

Could this be mainly because some people save up for retirement, then spend down their savings? So it is a statistic that has always been more or less true, and always will be, and represents a good thing?

The 45-64 age group is the time for most when you no longer have dependant kids, but are still working. So unsurprising that it is a time that many people are better off. Imagine your income with no expenditure on children.

You do realise that we are talking about pensions and old age benefits entitlements, don't you? And that they only continue to be paid because people have children? And that yours will be paid for by other people's children?

The part I've highlighted is wrong, see below.

And the reason Japan have negative interest rates at the moment and are offering cash incentives to have more children is....?

Japan has a falling population. The UK has one that is rising at an arguably uncomfortable rate. People having children in the UK are not doing the country a favour.

The UK population is rising because of migration. Without it, we to would have a falling population.

... or more houses

... or a smaller benefit bill

... or fewer people in lower paid jobs

... or fewer cars washes (according to Dave)

I'm not 100% certain that is true, or would be in the long term, carryam. Logic suggests that with more jobs etc more people will feel able to have more kids!

We still don't know. And those who do/should know many reliable facts and figures are bereft or simply hiding them from us!

The UK population is rising because of migration. Without it, we to would have a falling population.

Yes, exactly. For pensions to be paid is not economically necessary for children to be born. People can be imported. Compared to growing our own, imports don't have to have their costly and unproductive child-years paid for by us, and whereas home-grown children are of random quality, immigration rules allow us to select above-average humans, raising the average quality and productivity of the UK population above levels that could have been achieved using traditional methods of population replacement.

So, Theoretician, why are the older generations overwhelmingly keen to vote leave the EU because of migration?

Yes, we could import workers to pay pensions. However the sheer scale of immigration needed to replace the indigenous population would be politically implausible, given that most of the UK population seem to be against migration. And....the key flaw in your plan: economic migrants also have babies (and at higher birth rates than the indigenous population....)

So you are arguing that instead of people in the UK having children, we should import migrants into the economy instead to pay for the pensions burden? Do we ban them all from reproducing? Because importing labour of working and reproductive age would actually lead to a population rise greater than people in the UK having children in the first place. Unless you sterilise everyone here and then insist that all the migrants also get sterilised before they cross our borders

There is no getting around it: if you are aged 50+ now, the people who will be paying taxes to fund for your pension and healthcare when you are 75 will be today's young people, including many not yet born.

Your "paying into the system" goes straight out again to the current pensioners. It isn't saved up somewhere in a magical savings account. If you want your pension in 20 years' time, you will only get it if those future taxpayers are able and willing to pay it.

There is no getting away from it: current pensioners and boomers will take out more from the tax and benefits system than they put in. This is all well and good when the economy is growing over time in real terms. The whole pensions pyramid was based on an optimistic assumption of postwar continual GDP growth. But that is not happening. Add massive housing bubbles to the mix, and the situation is economically disastrous.

You can all repeat the fantasy stuff about ageism and getting politicised all you like, but it won't change the situation. Or are you suggesting that all the people below are wrong about the demographics and pensions timebomb, and everything is just ticketyboo - the economy is growing strongly, younger generations are getting wealthier and powering an economy that will bear higher and higher working-age tax rises, and be more than happy to keep paying out more and more as time goes on? Are all the articles below just a load of guff?

www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/lords-select/public-services-committee/report-ready-for-ageing/demographic-situation/
www.resolutionfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/DW-slides-for-website.pdf
www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/07/generation-y-pay-price-baby-boomer-pensions
www.theguardian.com/business/2011/mar/15/babyboomers-welfare-politics-tax
www.independent.co.uk/voices/its-not-the-baby-boomers-who-osborne-will-make-suffer-but-we-need-older-people-to-keep-working-for-a6747341.html

Georgette... so you can see it all from the perspective of younger generation and gemerations to come... all of who have 40ish years to change something, do something.

But you can't see anything from the perspective of people who have paid into a mandatory taxation for 50+ years who have no way to increase, improve or change their finances?

You persist in the mistaken belief that all people over 50 are wealthy, financially settled, well off. Objections to that perspective are not 'fantasy' or 'ticketyboo' selfishness.

I, and others, aren't trying to say that the current financial situation is fine. But the extremely determined efforts of some posters, like yourself, to blame one sector of society for all financial ills is undermining anything of value you may be saying. You just sound bitter, hung up n somethng you cannot control and eager to find A N Other to blame.

Are all the articles below just a load of guff? Some are, yes! Maybe for others it is your interpetation that is lacking...

The demographics info shows we have an ageing population... yes... and it starts with The UK population is ageing rapidly, but the Committee found that the Government and our society are woefully underprepared

David Willetts - babyboomer blamer of some epic proportions, he had a book to sell!!!

GenY paying for boomers - yes, as boomers paid for the previous geerations in tax and in extended family living, multi generational homes etc... nothing new in that concept.

NIESR (and a bit more of WiIletts) - boomers will get 18% more than they aid in... so my parents will have payed for 40+ years, I will have payed for 50+ years (Oh, look, I got to work for longer than I was promised and longer than my parents, should I hate and blame them?), the next generations will pay, currently for the same 50 years I will.

That Indy piece - well its starts off stating that boomers own more than 50% of the nations wealth - a figure that has already been challenged here... so I am not sure that is a balanced piece... but it is feeding the fire!

If that isn't working VOTE for someone who will make it work... STOP SHOUTING. If you truly think that getting politicised won't change anything WHAT DO YOU THINK WILL?

I have 0 respect for anyne who states that the current political/social situation is 'not fair' yet states that they won't engage politically as it 'changes nothing'. You are not a child... stop thinking like one!

I have 0 respect for anyne who states that the current political/social situation is 'not fair' yet states that they won't engage politically as it 'changes nothing'. You are not a child... stop thinking like one!

I was about to say exactly the same thing. Probably not as eloquently though

Not all people my age (over 50) will pay less in that we take out. I have paid higher rate tax from as long as I can remember (and lucky me that I enar enough to do so of course and can afford to house children within the M25 etc) and already have 35 years of continuous NI contributions. i will get my state pension if it still exists when I am nearyl 70. My parents died in their 70s so probably statistically I will not get it for very long despite the 48 years of paying in I shoudl have by then and I don't really have nay other kind of pension and will work until I die.

I work locally quite a bit with people over 70 due to something I do (and these are fairly well off people). The biggest difference between them and my yougner generation is that they tend to have had a non working wife and they tend to have retired at 55 or 60 (sometimes 65 for the men) and have a long retirement ahead of them.

I am not jealous of anyone as the only thing that matter in life is health, not wealth. However we have been a bit too generous with the triple lock and the other pensioner benefits should remain universal but start at 75 or 80 years or 85. We shoudl however bear in mind that plenty of pensioners house their adult chidlren and grandchildren in their home, provide childcare and are cashing in their pensions at age 55+ in order to give the money to the children for a house deposit.

Yes I will pay in for 48 years to get my pension (although remember the new system required 35 years of NI including 10 at home with children if you have that break - I had no maternity leaves - things are different now for mothers).

I would support abolition of the state pension as a contributory benefit and abolition of national insurance entirely and a straight flat tax rate of say 33.3% which is virtually the current employee lowest tax/NI rate anyway. No state pension but if people fall on very hard times when older and a new statutory duty on their family to support them does not work as they have no family then some basic provision. I suspect we could afford that more easily than the current system. NI is a bit weird really.

Most states in Europe either have very very high contributions and higher benefits for those who pay in and very very little and only paid for short periods for those who haven't paid in or else no contributory benefits but jsut a basic minimum for those in dire hardship. We have the usual British muddle of both systems. I remember when if you'd paid in your unemployment benefit was quite high compared to what you got in supplementary benefit if you had no NI paid - big difference. We became more generous with housing benefits and benefits for the non workers who had never worked and that differential between the skivers and strivers disappeared. That disappearance got rid of Beveridge's original plan for a welfare state for hard workers.

See... it is possible to discuss it sensibly, without bitter rhetoric.

I would only quibble with one aspect, user: (although remember the new system required 35 years of NI including 10 at home with children if you have that break - I had no maternity leaves - things are different now for mothers).

If you assume that the ridiculous target of everyone gets a degree disappears and many start work at 18, then that leaves 49 years working and 35 years of NI allowing every mother and/or father 15 years of SAHPness, if they so choose. So there is no less possiibility fo any parent getting a full pension - and you get NI contributions 'comped' whilst at University... as far as I am aware they haven't nicked that (yet).

There are also people who pay in and don't get anything out. My husband worked and paid in until the day before he died, so never received a pension and I don't qualify for a widow's pension - and doubt that I will when I finally retire.

The UK population is rising because of migration. Without it, we to would have a falling population

Nope, we also have a high birth rate - among White British families as well as immigrant families.

I do think that money spent in bus passes would be better spent on subsidising public transport for everyone. When I visited my parents recently I was shocked that it cost £8 for ds and I to go into town (20 mins) and even more shocked that out of about 12 people on the bus we were the only ones paying.

The full pension is £150 a week so it's not exactly massive even for those people who were lucky enough to buy a home and no longer have any rent to pay. It would not pay my current council tax plus gas/elec bills for example.

My parents manage on it.