Triple lock remains

[triplelock]

Name changed as I understand this probably won't be a popular opinion.

AIBU to think it's not exactly fair for the working population to have their tax thresholds frozen for 4 years while pensions get to keep their triple lock?

I understand some pensioners struggle on the state pension alone. But a lot of families also struggle on minimum wage.

I know I'm seeing it through the eyes of pensioners I know who are able to afford nice holidays, coffees out, and sky subscriptions. Which are things I could only dream of being able to afford.

After well over 40 years of working, paying tax, paying National Insurance, paying towards their own private pensions, how very dare the oldsters have a coffee out. Such profligacy!

@lidoshuffle

I know I'm seeing it through the eyes of pensioners I know who are able to afford nice holidays, coffees out, and sky subscriptions. Which are things I could only dream of being able to afford.

After well over 40 years of working, paying tax, paying National Insurance, paying towards their own private pensions, how very dare the oldsters have a coffee out. Such profligacy!

Neither of my grandmothers worked beyond their early 20s. Both my grandfathers retired before 60. A luxury that is not available to today's working populations.

It's not that I don't think they should have these things, it's purely highlighting that a lot of pensioners aren't worse off than the working population.

The ageism on this thread is shocking. You will all be old one day. The protections for today's pensioners are protections for a future you.

It's not that I don't think they should have these things, it's purely highlighting that a lot of pensioners aren't worse off than the working population

But about a third of them are, and badly so. And then a further half are less well off, but not in poverty. And then there's about a sixth, who are better off than some of the working population.

And very, very few who are actually rich.

Now, should debate around pensioners have more regard for the needs of the many? Or should the rich few be held out as the norm?

It's a similar pattern to assuming that as some working age population earn over £100k pa, all social and welfare provision for those in work should be geared to that as the typical level of earning.

@Wiredforsound

Pensioners are most likely to vote, and to vote conservative. Remember when Theresa May threatened to remove the lock in her snap general election? Tories ended up having to suck up to the DUP just to have a working government. Piss off the pensioners at your peril.

Exactly. Politics is about votes.

Pensioners who are comfortably off pay tax and so will be affected by the tax band freezes on the same basis as everybody else.
The triple lock is just there to keep pace with inflation. It doesn't quite achieve this as it follows the lower CPI and no longer RPI. Also it only applies to the state pension, which isn't very generous compared to other western nations. The amount is way below the tax threshold.

I agree that it shouldn't be a race to the bottom.

Don't forget that pensioners will also be affected by the freeze in personal allowance too.

The "average income" comparison does show that there is little difference in the average incomes of pensioners and working aged families. Though pensioners don't generally have costs of caring for children or working. Averages hide a wide range of extremes though. For every pensioner off on cruises, there is another struggling to adequately heat their home. And the same scenario for families.

We all benefit from a safety net and that safety net should be adequate.

The problem is that pensions are a giant ponzi scheme and can only be paid out as long as people are continuing to pay in. Pensions are not paid from the 40+ years of NI contributions that the pensioner may have paid in. They are paid from current contributions that the working population are paying in.

Continuing to increase pensions above the increases in earnings is unfair. My hope is that earnings will increase at a higher level rather than pensions reduce.

Yanbu.

@campion

It may not have occurred to you that many of today's pensioners also struggled to bring up a family on a low income and with very little state support.

Absolutely. My late parents, who reached pension age in the late '90s, couldn't afford to run a car or buy new furniture until they were in early middle-age, and that was only because my father's career took off in quite spectacular fashion, and because he was prepared to work overseas for months at a time.

Since the state pension was introduced in the UK, every generation has paid for the pensions of those who worked before them. Those of us who were working in the 1970s paid tax at a basic rate of 33%, so we paid heavily for it.

My parents' generation paid even more - 42.5% in the mid-60s.

And those pensioners who own their homes quite probably bought them when interest rates were cripplingly high.

I agree. All of a sudden we're not all in this together. Shocker.

@pinkearedcow

The ageism on this thread is shocking. You will all be old one day. The protections for today's pensioners are protections for a future you.

Ha! Like hell will any of us under 50 get a state pension. I'm 25, there will be nothing for me to retire on unless I put it there myself.

Ha! Like hell will any of us under 50 get a state pension. I'm 25, there will be nothing for me to retire on unless I put it there myself.

Indeed, like the way most pensioners today have saved into private pensions from their own money, sacrificing other things over 40 years.

The state pension is only £9,000 pa; I'm sure the pensioners purportedly living the life of Riley by having coffees out etc are doing it from their own private pensions that they've paid for over a lifetime of work.

@pinkearedcow

The ageism on this thread is shocking. You will all be old one day. The protections for today's pensioners are protections for a future you.

Exactly.

Don’t fret pet. Apparently the government pension payments for 2021-2022 are due to fall by £600,000 due to pensioners obligingly dying of Covid.

I think that will go some way towards mitigating the triple lock retention.

Sorry, I missed off some zeros £600,000,000

@Ariela

Pension age has increased, but still not by enough. It was set at 60 for women and 65 for men for years and years even though the average age of dying had increased considerably. I was supposed to retire at 60 (this year) but it is now 67. I can quite see this increasing to 70 before I get there.

I'm in the first tranche of women who had to wait till 66 to get their pensions.

At today's SRP rates, I've lost out on over £50k. By the time I get my pension in August, I'll have worked for over 49 years, 51 years if you count 2 years of Saturday and holiday jobs.

Of course, I'll be loaded, having a gold-plated public sector pension. That extra £300 a month will almost cover the bills, although it won't meet the cost of the help I'll have to buy in now that I'm on my own and my knackered joints make lots of household jobs impossible.

@viques

Don’t fret pet. Apparently the government pension payments for 2021-2022 are due to fall by £600,000 due to pensioners obligingly dying of Covid.

I think that will go some way towards mitigating the triple lock retention.

And don't forget the care cost savings, many of them will have been in care homes at public expense.

mylittleorangutan at least count yourself lucky that the government has made it quite clear that you will need to save towards a private pension. You have got years to make adequate provision for your retirement.

There are a few million women in this country who got less than six years notice that their pension and retirement plans were being drastically revised.

@JumpingFr

Yanbu. We're in a lockdown to save the pensioners, then the working population are expected to pay for it. Of course the triple lock should go. Pensioners have had a lifetime to save for retirement.

We are in a lockdown to save people of all ages, the NHS and try to have a country that can carry on afterwards. It's not everyone getting shafted to look after old people, that is ageist and pathetic.

@scaevola

But pensioners do not have a time machine, and cannot go back to the circumstances which led to them being on pension credit (as so may are).

Pensioner poverty is appallingly high in this country.

If the state pension were not so low (compared to other European countries) in the first place, then a double lock would probably be just as good a policy (because the risk of erosion otherwise is just too high)l. But when it's so low, the triple lock is the slow way to increase it, rather than making actual increases - something which would be increasingly difficult to resist as the proportion of those on pension credit rises.

The lockdown was primarily to stop NHS being overwhelmed (see also statements from say Germany about their lockdown and the need to prevent their healthcare being overwhelmed) and to have planned lockdown is better than chaotic collapse without mitigations in place. The alternative to propping up society, rather than letting it collapse in awful weeks of such high levels of sick absences that supply of goods and services collapses, is not just inhumane (to the whole population) it's also the more expensive option

Agreed

@DdraigGoch So now that you have established that the post tax/housing incomes of pensioners and working families are near identical, compare their outgoings. Which category has got kids to feed? Which category has to keep buying clothing as kids grow?

What it does prove in any case is that pensioner incomes can be tied to inflation and average incomes and no longer need the 2.5% third lock.

The answer to this is not to impoverish pensioners at the expense of working age people though. It's to address the scandal of wage stagnation perpetuated by a race to bottom Tory mentality. Pitting ages against each other is great for the Tory government - they cans shaft us all and we blame each other, not them.

lakielady

Very true. And while we are at it let’s add in the many millions that will be saved on free prescriptions, bus passes and fuel allowances.

You would almost think Covid was a blessing in disguise for a Chancellor looking to make savings on public expenditure.

If you start to take away the rights and income protection of the retired now, all that will happen is that the generation who have struggled to become home owners, have had to tolerate zero hours contracts, who have accumulated student loans... Will now also have to face poverty in retirement because you did not keep the protections for the group that rely only on the value of their state and personal pensions because they can no longer work or earn. Yabu.

30% increase to pensions sounds like a lot - what is it in real terms? a couple of quid?

Yes, public sector pay should rise, yes pensions are too small, yes families on low wages are struggling.

And yet the anger is against... pensioners? The problem in the UK is that you have fallen for it and keep voting the wrong party in. They don't care about low waged, they LOVE having low wages and a vast pool of desperate unemployed who will suck up minimum wage non-unionised jobs. (so many threads here with work problems and nobody mentions unions until they want help)

But apparently nobody in the UK wants to pay tax and then vote in a government that spends it efficiently to increase the wealth of the nation as a whole. So what are you going to do about it? Moan. And continue to vote Tory is my guess.

Neither of my grandmothers worked beyond their early 20s. Both my grandfathers retired before 60. A luxury that is not available to today's working populations.

well. There are plenty of threads here about SAHP (usually the women) and how they don't want to work. Why complain about women who lived in a very different world (lots of whom had to give up work when they married, let alone had children)?