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/

I don't see dislike of older people on this thread.

I do dislike the ones with 'I paid in' and 'I worked hard' attitudes though. There seems to be a fair amount of ignorance among older people about the circumstances younger generations are in now. (Some of whom work a lot harder for a lot less.)

Child benefit is (effectively) withheld if you pay higher rate tax. Afaik no other forms of wealth are taken in consideration for that. I think it should be the same for pensioner benefits. Even if some others don't need the heating allowance and the free buses, those paying higher rate tax most certainly don't need them. So seems a no brainer as a place to start to me.....

The boomer mortgage interest rate stuff is largely a myth. You can see all the historic data on interest rates from the BoE and it was only ever 15% for about 9 months at the most.

So am I lying when I say I lived through it? When I say that friends who were sold many multiple mortgages at rates over the BoE rates had to hand in the keys to their homes?

I have been through this argument before... I have said clearly that whatever the analysis might say, for some then 20 years olds with new mortgages, those 9 months were utterly deadly. They were sucked in by the freer lending and then left high and dry by the sudden shift in economics.

For every "Oh hose prices quadrupled" story you can trot out to support your pov there will be others here who can tell you the opposite end of the spectrum, from the same time.

That is why all this baby boomer shite is so stupid. Not every over 50 year old is looking at getting a huge pension.. you can make glib, global statements like that until the cows come home - they still won't be universally true!

Stop blaming people of a certain age... look at the politics of the situation, work out why such shit happens, stop scapegoating!

I have been unemployed in the past and have never heard of free bus passes for the unemployed. I live very rurally, DH was offered on when he was on JSA... they put his postcode in, offered him a pass. It was no use to him at all... there were absolutely no buses to or from the village we lived in.

So they do/have offered them very selectively, in our experience.

FaFoutis - yes: an example on another current thread is someone suggesting that a student "just claim JSA" in the summer holidays - something that hasn't been possible for 25 years. There is a lot of ignorance amongst older people about things like student loans and fees, the current job market and so on (and this is positively encouraged by some sections of the media).

The reality is that the welfare state, and particularly the state pension, has always relied on the presumption of ever-increasing national wealth and (as was the case during the times it was set up) on a gently ever-increasing population, with a slightly larger younger generation of workers always coming up behind, earning more in real terms than the generations before, so comfortably able to fund generous entitlements for people older than them. The population boom of the baby boomers and the unprecedented economic booms of the postwar period made it look like that would always be the case, but this was based on pure chance and good luck events (no major home wars, plus lots of one-off happy economic boosts like periods of high wage inflation, north sea oil, end of communism, technology dividend, antibiotics dividend, globalisation, women re-entering the workforce).

All those things are coming to their end or can't be repeated. The fiscal pyramid that the state pension was based on has inverted or gone into reverse (at least in the UK). Younger workers are less numerous, paid less, and face higher costs than previous generations. How are the pension entitlements sustainable? Serious suggestions required. They can only continue to be paid out if younger workers earn more money in real terms. But those workers are facing reduced, not increasing, income.

Where is it going to come from?

Blanche, you haven't answered my question. The politics of the situation is in the economics. Where is the money going to come from? How are younger workers going to out-earn their predecessors so that they can support older generations' pensions and benefits? Will there be massive wage inflation, and if so, where from and why? Will there be mass immigration to support a new manufacturing boom and increase the ratio of younger workers to pensioners?

YY to claiming back pensioners benefits from those paying higher rate (490%) of income tax or whose partner is paying the higher rate of income tax. If it can be be done for child benefit...

If it can be be done for child benefit...

Having children is a lifestyle choice. Getting old isn't.

Child benefit is for the child. Being a child isn't a lifestyle choice.

Having children is a lifestyle choice. Getting old isn't.

This is quite possibly the most daft post on this thread. 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?

State pensions are the "lifestyle choice". Pre state pension, pre modern contraceptives, your own children were the only people who supported you in old age. The WHOLE POINT of the welfare state was that other people's children would collectively support you instead.

Having a child is. Can't afford it? Don't have one.

Where is the money going to come from? Sorry... I assumed that was a rhetorical question. Given that consecutive governments and fiscal planners haven't found an answer it is highly unlikely that I, or anyone else on MN, will!

My point isn't about furnishing a trite answer, it is about stopping the blame game and remembering that if we all refuse to be diverted from the realities we might be able to find a solution. That won't happen whilst an easy scapegoat is being both offered and accepted.

Please read "you" as the French multiple noun - vous!

Like this: you say boomers have sucked the goodness: I say in the past some wealthy politicians managed to pull the wool over peoples eyes

You say: Ah! Bit they knew it would benefit them in the end: I say "Yes, that's why anyone ever votes, self interest.

You say: "Bastard BBs have taken everything and are riding roughshod over the young of today: I say" yes,that happens with every generation, stop with the rhetoric, start doing something about it

I had a longer version of that exchange about a year ago. I was told that I could mock the lax political nouse of others when I lifted my own... I explained, I am active locally, always have been. I have always voted, been politically active in national campaigns, feminist and otherwise. I don't just spout off here, I try to do something!

I really am concerned that the BB rhetoric of hate is so invidious, the BB's are greedy shots message is seemingly taken as a truism, it is so ubiquitous. All that means is that younger people feel that they have no control, become more apathetic, less politicised.

FUCK THAT! Stop believing the trite crap, get up, get out, get politicised! Otherwise They will always win... and in about 20 years time all the BB bemoaners will be the new They

Apostrophes -- I presume you will be refusing the state pension, and have made provision for your retirement by saving up every single penny that you will need to support yourself for the total of your retirement, including enough to pay privately for every single bit of medical consultation or treatment you will need until you die? I hope you had some good actuaries to model that risk for you, because I can't honestly imagine how much it would cost to insure yourself for up to 30 years of all costs at some unknown rate of inflation.

Because otherwise other people's lifestyle choices are going to be paying for your "lifestyle".

You have to be very well off not to need the state pension. For most people a private pension is a top up. The average private pension is around £4,000 a year.

Having children is a lifestyle choice. Getting old isn't.

Yes it is.

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

Ah. To pay for pensions due to there being so many pensioners...

Oh.

If they get rid of state pensions for all except the destitute, it makes sense for older people simply to raid and spend their pension funds. Most private pensions are small. Remember MN is full of unusually wealthy people, so everyone you know may have a large private pension. But the stats show us that that is not the experience for most people.

So, okay, so some baby boomers sit there benefitting from the cheap housing and comparitively higher wages which allowed them to afford to have children and has now left them rich - something achieved by the younger generation having things (houses in particular) snatched away from them.

And then they tell the younger generation that as well as not being able to have a decent or secure home, decent wages, opportunities and savings, they can't have children either. Because the boomers are just having too much fun sitting on their piles of cash to care.

carryam - exactly. Unless you are honestly unimaginably wealthy, you ought to be worried about how other people's children are going to manage to pay for your future pension. In fact, if I was about to retire soon, I would be desperately worried that the really difficult situation of today's young people would mean that they would find it rather difficult to pay for my pension in ten or twenty years' time.

Blanche - apart from becoming politicised, how exactly do you think we should collectively address the problem? Are the older generations going to accept massive immigration, massive wage inflation causing a collapse in their living standards, higher rates of tax forcing them to sell up and consume some of their housing wealth to support their pensions, a non-free NHS, having to sell their houses to pay for care/healthcare? What is the solution? Never mind the amorphous "they": what would you do if you were in charge?

Lucky you having the time and energy to DO SOMETHING Blanche. That really is not how most younger people's lives are now.

carryam
exactly
If I did not have the state pension for which I paid 39 years of NI (yes I know it was not set aside for me and used to pay for the pensioners of the day - just as the younger generations are paying for mine - that is how it works)
I would be living on a meagre personal pension annuity of £5k per year and would get pension credit and all the freebies that go with it - and I would pay no tax and get people considering I am poor
we are called the name 'baby boomers' (which is hateful) not because we lived in such booming times that we are all rich and freeloaders but because the population went in for having babies after the war - so blame them.

Yeah, lucky me. Made homeless at 17... bedsitland and 2 jobs for over a decade, plus some active politicking... loads of time, loads of energy.... not at all how young people's lives are now!

Don't make assumptions...

Blanche - apart from becoming politicised, how exactly do you think we should collectively address the problem? Are the older generations going to accept massive immigration, massive wage inflation causing a collapse in their living standards, higher rates of tax forcing them to sell up and consume some of their housing wealth to support their pensions, a non-free NHS, having to sell their houses to pay for care/healthcare? What is the solution? Never mind the amorphous "they": what would you do if you were in charge?

And if this happens the young need to plan for their own future based on that change.

Given that pensions are based on compound interest, if you have to pay to save because interest rates are negative, then a year or two of negative interest is going to have a huge effect.

We don't win here. No one wins. But I don't see where money is going to be suddenly be generated from.

And just had a look at Government statistics. They look at those over and under 75. Those over 75 have a smaller income, because by this age few work. I know plenty of people of pension age still working part time, and so still earning. That distorts the general stats.

Agreed, we are all pretty much up the creek. The money has, effectively, run out. We had a golden chance during the boom years to improve our living standards as a society, and we pissed it all away it all selling the same houses to each other at higher and higher prices each time (That's a collective we there; I personally didn't!) There is not going to be any pleasant way out as the situation unwinds.

But younger people IME tend to know they are up the creek; whereas many boomers and pensioners seem not to realise the economic situation is quite as bad as it is, and continue to rely on the comforting fantasy that if the feckless yoof just stopped buying their iPhones and coffee, then everything would be fine, and we could all keep pretending that houses are special magic money pots that double in price every couple of years even though no-one under 30 has a decent permanent job.

I will work until I die. I very much doubt there will be much of a pension for me. That is not the case for most older people,. Also plenty of women got a state pension at 60 or shared their husband's whereas many of us will be nearly 70 when whatever is left of the state pension will be paid but we';ll probably have to work until death. (My father worked full time until 77).