Gutted about NI rise

[CarryOnNurse20]

I know we need it and we have so much money to pay off. But we have been scrimping and saving after a hard couple of years. Every penny is accounted for from pay day to pay day. I’m a nurse and my pay has been capped/below inflation my whole career. And now the NI rise means any savings etc we have made will now be gone. I’m gutted.

[quote weresouth]@Slingsanderrors I don't understand your point. Do you think younger generations are paying less tax & NI then you did? Do you think young people aren't nurses who work hard? do you think young people don't volunteer? do you think NHS staff now aren't facing similar pension shortfalls? Mortgage rates at 15% ignores cheaper house prices & better savings interest. [/quote]
I agree and younger people will be working until they are 70 not 60. Age 70 isn’t a great age to start cruising the world whilst 60 is still young. My Fil got his gold plated British Petroleum final salary pension at the age of 52. That enable him and his wife to buy a caravan and travel Europe for 18 years until he was 70.

not at all, I would just like it if they stopped voting in governments that neglect the poor and disabled. Is that wrong of me?

But this tax does benefit people with disabilities - and yet you're vehemently against it.

I'm happy to pay a bit more tax to go towards social care and the NHS, but only as long as it's fair and everyone is contributing equally according to their means and I suspect most people here feel the same.

That's not the case currently (and arguably never has been).

There is a serious danger of the social contract that binds us all to together as a society falling apart and the more blatant the unfairness becomes, the more the rich avoid paying tax and obviously profit from the existing system at the expense of those actually doing the work, the more government clearly works for the ones at the top, the worse it is going to get.

I don't believe there is a cabal of elites with some intricate nefarious plan, but it is becoming clear that the people in charge have given up all pretence of fairness and are now desperately lining their own pockets before the world slides into the conflicts that climate change and ever decreasing global resources mean are now inevitable.

@lllllllllll why does it only flow one way? Why aren’t the elderly happy to pay more care fees to ease the burden on the skint working poor and disabled people?

@weresouth

I do hope this will stop “normal” people voting Conservative. They always shaft these people

Too many don't see themselves as "normal" & aspire to more which means they don't vote for things they think may penalise them if they achieve these aspirations. The trouble is they make it harder for themselves.

This is the nub of much of the seeming 'turkeys voting for Christmas' which we have observed in the UK and US in the last decades. A lack of class/social idenity or solidarity on one hand - partly due to the collapse of much traditional working class employment and its associated unions, opportunities for political learming etc. - combined with the belief that being a 'winner' in society was only a lottery win/house flip/reality show away.

Eh? I'm very happy to pay more tax to help older people get the better social care they deserve and to improve the NHS. Are you?

I'm not happy for poorer people to pay more to protect the assets of others who are wealthier than them. Why are you comfortable that?

Plus this money isn't even enough to fix it.

Furlough cost £68 bn and that went directly to workers not pensioners

The NI reform is costing workers £ 36bn and will benefit nonworking pensioners (the reform includes making pension age workers pay NK when they didn’t have to before)

Pretty good deal. Paying back £1 for £2.

Seriously, you have demographic wave of baby boomers that mean current NHS and social care are underfunded. The millennials are an even larger demographic, why shouldn’t they pay a bit more? The children of today will be paying a bit more when the millennials turn comes.

@weresouth

Older people have paid taxes and National health for years, I’ve read that women now have to work till they are 66 at the earliest to get the pension, they have paid into for years, expecting to retire at 60!

How's that different to young people who will retire at 68 or later?

The increase in state pension age has affected women disproportionately though, firstly because many women have historically had less time to build up private pensions if they have taken time out to raise children or worked part time, and secondly because in the rush to equalise pension ages for men and women (no objection to that ) the government pushed through the increased retirement age for women without giving much thought as to how women could adjust their pension planning. Yes , announcements were made, but they were fairly low key and not much advice was given. Many women as you say have found themselves either unexpectedly working more years than they planned, not easy if you are in a physically demanding job, or having an uncomfortable gap with a very reduced income before their state pension kicks in. I very much doubt that any other generation will ever have a six year increase slapped on their working life.

Women have often been shafted by pension legislation. There are about 200,000 women who have missed out on pensions that they are entitled to, the government probably knows who most of them are because they pay out derisory , miserable dribs and drabs of pension to them, but they are not contacted because the government expects them to dig out the information themselves , while sitting on the billions of pounds the women are owed of course!

I've never ever voted for the Conservatives but many of my friends , family , dh , my inlaws ( who had nothing ) old friends I've lost touch with all have done as it was always ' anyone but Labour' and stories of the 70s and the miners strikes and high unemployment, if you didn't vote for them.
The tories are just good at taping into the traditional working class votes and keeping them on side.
It's just a shame the Labour Party are good at losing their votes.
All this will blow over in time I'm sure. Plus the ones benefiting from it won't be paying the higher NI anyway , so won't really care that much either way.

@Realyorkshiretea
They would never have done that because they need to keep their voting base (pensioners)alive

The inference from this is that the vast majority of people under voting age don't vote Tory. If that were the case, the Tory party would have died out with pensioners years ago. Unless when you turn 65, everyone has a Damascan conversion. In which case you too will soon be voting Tory

What really irritates me is that people constantly (and rightly) complain about how the NHS is being run into the ground, how salaries are too low, how it desperately needs extra funding. Then as soon as the government increases taxes to raise some extra funding, they're fuming. Where do people think the extra money is going to come from?

People say that the government should invest in and grow the economy, which is all very well and good, but that sort of thing takes years. We need the extra billions now.

The 15% mortgage rates precluded being able to save. You paid the mortgage and the bills and hoped to have enough to get through the rest of the month without going too much into the red.

For some & how long did those interest rates remain that high?

My aunt paid 60k for her house in the 80s on an interest only mortgage. The same house would sell for 1.8m. I know which rates & prices I would prefer.

The national insurance rise should be restricted to 50 years and above including pensioners and be charged on a sliding scale. The more you earn (or the bigger your pension) the more you should pay. I'm 60 and I'll work another 6 years and 9 months and happily pay it on my pension income too.
The younger generation have had a terrible deal on housing, unless they are subsidised by parents to get on the housing ladder. .

@ZombieEthel

Please keep in mind that half of social care budget is spent on working age disabled people. It's not just about care for the elderly. Any one of us could become disabled, physically or through developing dementia, before we reach retirement age. I agree that NI is not the way to go about it, but social care reform is more than just about preventing elderly people from having to sell their homes.

Thank you for posting ths. Also most people have to pay most of their ESA towards their care, think they are left with 24.50 a week to pay for everything they need.

@thecatsthecats

Possibly an unpopular opinion, but I think it bizarre that older people expect to hang onto their homes as well as take up a new home in a social care setting.

I will only need one home when I'm older, and care also. Having an asset I can sell to fund that is perfectly logical. Sad, but then so is lots of stuff associated with aging. You're entitled to be sad, but expecting to pass on thousands and have your care funded is taking the piss.

Bring on euthanasia. I want the freedom to die, and to live well before that.

(caveat, yes yes, lots of different circumstances etc)

Completely agree.

Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the NI rise, it should be illegal to break a manifesto pledge unless 90% of the entire commons vote for it.

Why? The Manifesto was only that of the winning party. No MP of another party is under any obligation to support them. Those Tory MPs who said that they wouldn't support NI or tax rises have a problem - but will they rebel?

What really irritates me is that people constantly (and rightly) complain about how the NHS is being run into the ground, how salaries are too low, how it desperately needs extra funding. Then as soon as the government increases taxes to raise some extra funding, they're fuming. Where do people think the extra money is going to come from?

They are raising NI, do you understand why that's different to raising income tax?

So those people with the salaries that are too low who work in care will now have less in their pocket.

[quote Realyorkshiretea]@lllllllllll why does it only flow one way? Why aren’t the elderly happy to pay more care fees to ease the burden on the skint working poor and disabled people?[/quote]
My mum pays care fees to a private company.
She would be happy to pay the same fees to the state which might subsidise others care but the state provides no care in her area. She can't access anything.

Please keep in mind that half of social care budget is spent on working age disabled people. It's not just about care for the elderly. Any one of us could become disabled, physically or through developing dementia, before we reach retirement age. I agree that NI is not the way to go about it, but social care reform is more than just about preventing elderly people from having to sell their homes.

It's worth repeating this again since many on this thread seem hellbent on ignoring it.

Beenasfar Nope, didn't notice the mortgage decreasing any until the rates dropped to current levels and we overpaid to clear it early. Still paid off what we borrowed and lots of interest, and our salaries didn't go up by 15 % either as we were both public sector.

Where do people think the extra money is going to come from?

I'd like it to come from:

• general income tax (happy for this to go up by a consistent % at all tax bands, and on all income types)
• IHT increases - it is utterly, utterly wrong that other taxes are kept low in order to fund the inheritances of the well-off.
• possibly some other wealth tax (doesn't exist at present, but various options have been suggested over the years.

I'm not happy for the funds to be raised through a tax which only affects the working population, and disproportionately impacts poorer people. I'm a higher rate taxpayer and the proportion of my salary which goes on NI is lower than it would be for a lower earner - that's just wrong.

[quote weresouth]@Slingsanderrors I don't understand your point. Do you think younger generations are paying less tax & NI then you did? Do you think young people aren't nurses who work hard? do you think young people don't volunteer? do you think NHS staff now aren't facing similar pension shortfalls? Mortgage rates at 15% ignores cheaper house prices & better savings interest. [/quote]
I don’t think any of those things, I have 3 thirty-something kids and know what life is like for them. They all work very hard and one of them volunteers too.
But I’m sick to death of young (and not so young) people saying that everything’s the fault of the “boomer” generation, we’ve caused climate change, we’ve caused the NHS/ social care problems, we’ve caused the financial crisis, we had it all - when all we’ve bloody done is not ask to be born and got on with what life’s thrown at us.

And when you’re paying over 15% mortgage payments, I can assure you there’s no chance of savings.

So where ate the savings we were promised would go to the nhs after Brexit?

@Realyorkshiretea

Meanwhile, hatred is gleefully piled on the heads of the old and the disabled.

Because it’s overwhelmingly the elderly that vote for the Tories. How many times?? They’re not blameless onlookers merely taking what they’re offered. They’re watching our quality of life go down the shitter while feathering their already healthy assets. Add in the fact we have stayed at home for over a year and crashed the economy and our mental health to protect them, and what do you expect? We should be jumping at the chance to stump up yet more money for them?

As someone rightly pointed out earlier, the main thrust of this policy is to protect the assets of the wealthy elderly in England (Scotland, Wales and NI are not changing the assets limits for social care at the moment)so that wealth can be passed to younger generations. The NI tax rise is more detrimental to the less well off across the UK, again the Tories protecting the wealthy.Your ire should be directed at all TORIES not the masses of older people who have the misfortune to become ill or disabled enough to need care and have never voted Tory. There are lots of them, you know.

I'm a higher rate taxpayer and the proportion of my salary which goes on NI is lower than it would be for a lower earner - that's just wrong.

Exactly