to be annoyed that so many on mn seem to begrudge pensioners?

[Slartybartfast]

for mainly being too rich
so many of you seem to think that those who have retired at 65 and are likely enough to have a good pension have somehow cheated

thehogfather
The problem with the idea of asking the ‘older retirees’ to take some of the hit is they have most likely cut their cloth already according to their income. Take some pension away and they could have difficulty meeting their own housing and care costs. Many are spending what they have, not wanting to take out new loans (not available to them anyway). Some also are just trying to have the holidays and outings they never had in their working lives ~ and should be begrudged that.
The changes should have been brought in under a new scheme altogether ~ start your job and know your pension contribution will be higher.

The social care system is being dismantled brick by brick ~ shamefully. People on this thread turning on each other. Resentment is a hideous thing. The older people are not responsible for all societies ills. Some must wonder why the scrimped and saved and did without in the first place!

PFI contracts are for 30 years. We're ALL paying for them.

People of working age pay more taxes. Many pensioners are paying little or no income tax and obviously no Ni.

You're always telling us how rich pensioners are. If their income is over £11,500 they (we) are paying tax. You can't have it all ways, much as you'd like to.

An income of £11'500 with no mortgage or rent does make them wealthy along with all the perks. Someone of working age could be on 30k and after rent, national insurance and bus fares have the same amount left over to bring up a family on.

The reason why we pay little or no income tax is that for many of us our income is below the threshold to attract income tax. I paid NI from 15-60 or it might have been 18-60 but nevertheless I paid what I supposed to pay. Us pensioners didn't demand bus passes, heating allowance etc. Be careful what you want taken from us. It will never be returned to tomorrow's pensioners.

LI81 If people of working age pay more tax than pensioners because they earn more. there's no special deal for pensioners -they pay tax if their income is above the tax threshold. Their state pensions are based on 40 years of NI contributions (with a sliding scale reduction if they didn't meet the 40 years), which have recently been reduced to 35 years for younger people. I think there are a lot of myths around pensions and pensioners.

And anyway your are missing my whole point is that working age people pay a higher amount of tax as a percentage of their income and have far higher outgoings.

Pensioners not paying NI very much is a special deal.

I won't mind if something unaffordable is taken away if it benefits society as a whole. I'd rather live in a fair society than just worrying about feathering my own nest.

LI81 The reason why our outgoings are lower is because by and large our families have fled the nest so obviously we have less outgoings. But I'm sure most of us were in the same boat as you are now. It took a good 35 years to reach the stage in life where we are now. Please don't begrudge us what we have. I had my first holiday abroad when I was 66. Prior to that it was a week in The Lakes or Cornwall. You will get old too.

An income of £11'500 with no mortgage or rent does make them wealthy along with all the perks.

Someone who has worked since 16 and paid NI and tax all that time deserves it. Why on earth are people grudging people who have worked, contributed etc for fifty years in many cases a decent dignified retirement. they deserve it

The younger generation deserve a better deal on work conditions, pay and many things. But life isn’t a zero sum game - takingfrom pensioners who have worked their whole life isn’t helping younger people.

The ONLY thing that will help younger people and generations going forward is to work towards a more sustainable and equal society. Vote for whichever party you feel has that, rather than having a go at pensioners.

Want2besupermum

You missed my point re you being an emigrant/immigrant. Yes uk has people coming to the uk - there are also people leaving.

Sounds like you have vague recollections of seeing thatcher repercussions on news etc, that's not the same as living it, seeing friends/family go through it.

"Also, a policy decision in the 80s doesn't take generations to fix." Depends on the policy and the legislation around it. Plus for all intents and purposes we've had a tory/right wing govt since 1979, that's almost 40 years - all your life?

"The longer you let problems continue the bigger the problem gets and big problems are harder to fix than small problems."

"I think a lot of this is a south east and London phenomenon- houses up north are still pretty affordable" unemployment is higher, wages lower in poorer parts of the country (not just "up north" either, just ask those in the south west). I'm in Scotland as are my wealthy pensioner parents, their house is worth almost £200k they bought it for less than £50k (and they had help with the deposit)

"Jobs that didn't need degrees in 1960 now do." I'm starting to see it happening for the generation below me that some jobs that used to not need a degree are starting to need masters/PhD - not as an official requirement as yet but the young folk applying are realising certain jobs they are highly unlikely to even get an interview without postgraduate qualifications.

The pension hike I see personally particularly affecting my uncle. He works in construction, late 50's, he's not "ill" so wouldn't get disability help, but he is struggling physically to do a VERY demanding outdoors manual job, if he left he wouldn't get anything for 6 months, he doesn't know how to use a computer (he can barely text) and honestly I think he'd struggle even learning how to operate a till (they're a lot more complex now), he doesn't get his pension now until I think late 60's, I honestly think this situation could make him very sick even kill him. He's also got the stress of job insecurity, even though he works for a big company, so were carillion!

"The rise in retirement ages have shut down job opportunities for young people too" yes my mum notes that too, if the people that WOULD have been retiring at 60/65 are still working it stops creation of vacancies for new entrants to the job market.

My dd (just 17) is honestly really worried she'll be expected to work until 80!

Your point was that PFI was a burden for future generations. I pointed out that all taxpayers including a lot of pensioners are paying for it. Now you've changed tack completely and are trying to tell us that some families exist on the same income as pensioners. It's impossible to argue with someone so illogical. As I said, you want it all ways.

But don't you understand how unaffordable it is to have people retired for more years than they worked for and how it won't continue?

If it was sustainable and wasn't disadvantaging others in society I would say good on them.

But when I get old there won't be any of this for me (mid 30s). Should I just be happy to fund lifestyles for others that I don't have a chance of having because I wasn't born into a lucky generation?

Bluelady it's a complicated discussion with many layers that overlap, if only it was as simple as you like to suggest it is.

I’m from a small pit town in the north. Thatcherism destroyed the place. Her legacy benefitted some but it left huge swathes of the north utterly devastated and nothing ever grew up to replace he industries that were gutted. There was no investment to change industrial focus, just destruction.

I vividly remember the miners strike (family worked down the pits.) it was a hard time.

I'm not entirely sure. I'd leave the group that took the last age hit, but make it known that it was going up for everyone else younger on a sliding scale. Off the top of my head, maybe freeze or cut state pension for those that just escaped the recent age hike. So eg you might work till 67, but by 75 will have received the same amount of state pension as those slightly before you got between 60 & 75. With the saving going towards the younger generations retirement.

Charge for care, regardless of where or why it's provided. I wouldn't want anyone to be forced from a large home in old age, but nothing wrong with recuperating the cost from their house when they pass away.

Increase tax on pensions above a certain highlevel, and for large lump sums that are in addition to continued private pension payments.

Treat state pension increases the same as wages etc, that way politicians can't go for divide and rule, we'd all be on the same team.

And probably unpopular, but treat state pension as a means tested benefit, including for those already well into retirement. That wouldn't really effect the group hit by the age hike and those above that in my scheme have had theirs reduced, because both already aren't receiving the expected amount between 60 & 75.

And seriously reconsider all the extras like fuel payments etc.

And some general changes that would hit pensioners and working age people alike, such as anyone in social housing who can easily afford private given notice, and anyone in a family home they don't need moved to a smaller property, regardless of whether they pay hb.

Obviously they would all need a decent government to implement. My idea of means testing or high private pension isn't anyone scraping by, like the government think. And it would need a decent general welfare system so pensioners on the now lower state pension aren't left worse off.

An income of £11'500 with no mortgage or rent does make them wealthy along with all the perks. Someone of working age could be on 30k and after rent, national insurance and bus fares have the same amount left over to bring up a family on

Some huge generalisations and assumptions flying about. If a pensioners roof leaks or they need a new cooker, it costs them the same as anybody else to get it sorted. A lot of these pensioners could only dream about salaries of 30k ( rounded down to the financial equivalent ‘in their day’) but had to bring up their families as best they could. A look at Call the Midwife gives a lot on insight to how things were for so many.

I often read on Mumsnet with amazement as some young people talk about how much their weddings cost (or will cost) and how much they spend on children’s parties and Christmas gifts. I don’t assume everybody is as daft as them, or as wasteful with the household money. Nor would I make an assumption pensioners are living the life of Riley.
If they are ~ they must have worked bloody hard over their lifetime and saved a heck of a lot for their rainy days.

If I were young now I'd be getting angry about huge multinationals not paying their phenomenal tax bills, not picking on pensioners living on less than the tax threshold.

If I were young now I'd be getting angry about huge multinationals not paying their phenomenal tax bills

Well start another thread on that rather than trying to distract, two wrongs don't make a right.

Much fairer for some of the already retired to share that change so it's milder for all. They have shared a little bit, in the sense that everyone retiring from now onwards on a full NI contribution record is getting £155pw pension, still one of the lowest in Europe.

But older pensioners will continue to get only £122.

Have heard too many references on the radio to "state pension of £155" - think a lot of people think it's gone up for everybody.

But it's a complicated discussion with many layers that overlap. It's not as simple as you seem to think.

But don't you understand how unaffordable it is to have people retired for more years than they worked for and how it won't continue?

That’s the deal they got. It isn’t going to change. Think of the demographic changes that occurred over their lifetimes. When they were born the average person where I grew up left school at 14, got a job in one of our factories or pits or steelworks and worked physical, hard jobs. The chances of living much past retirement age were slim. That is the set up they paid into. No one had any idea life would change so much

Over their lives the early years of rationing (which actually lead to healthier population) and then advances in medicine and technology and hygiene have meant that generation probably had the biggest jump in living standards. And this is a good thing, when you started off with a tin bath in front of the fire.

It’s now apparent that we can’t sustain that. No one in power is interested In truly making us sustainable over generations (ie zero population growth) they just import cheap labour to prop up the pyramid. And kick the can down the road.

There’s plenty of money - it’s just going on the wrong shit. A few percent of the planet own wealth that’s not in circulation, it just sits doing nothing squirrelled away offshore. Huge corporations pay almost no tax. We spend two million quid on a fucking tomohawk missle to blow up some poor sod in the the third world.

And the media and all those rich squirrels LOVE this kind of argument, because while you’re bitter at some random pensioner in Surrey they can continue squirrelling, continue wrecking the planet and continue to do whatever the fuck they like.

Incidentally, the male life expectancy in bits of Glasgow is still in the fifties.

I retired after almost 51 years aged 66 so I doubt I'll be retired for anything like 51 years.

tap it's tough really if they've already cut their cloth. Those who expected to retire at 60 had to recut theirs. I bet there are plenty of people age 50 who are planning retirements based on the current system, and if we wait till they're 67 to change the goalposts they'll suffer a lot more than the older retirees loosing out on some holidays.

My generation are fucked either way, I'm prepared for it to be 85 and a means tested soup kitchen

I'd also like to clarify I'm not talking about cuts to those on £11k or below tax threshold. Although my thoughts on property after they are gone for any care still stand.

And I'd completely agree with your point about care if it didn't just apply to one condition.