Means testing State Pension

[CuriousMariette]

Do you think the time has come for this to be introduced? I don’t think the current system is sustainable as many people are living too long. I know it’s not fair and would be political suicide but Pensioner’s didn’t even suffer a 80% furlough during lockdowns. I say this from a place of having “paid in” as people say for 30 years plus already and would likely not receive a State Pension in this scenario.

[quote 1dayatatime]@Blossomtoes

Only if you were one of the most academic 5%

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Actually in 1978/1979 , the proportion of 18 year olds going to university was 14%. That compares to 38% today and underlines the argument that so many people today are paying this graduate tax.

[/quote]
I left school in the 60s when 4% went to university.

@1dayatatime I think you're wasting your breath because you know free nursery hours.

I left school in the 60s when 4% went to university.

But you aware that these days a degree is a prerequisite to many jobs that in the past didn't require degrees?

I left school in the 60s when 4% went to university

I left in 1971 when I was told it was unlikely I’d be offered a place because entry standards were higher for girls. Fortunately things had improved by 1983 when I started my degree course.

@monfused

I left school in the 60s when 4% went to university.

But you aware that these days a degree is a prerequisite to many jobs that in the past didn't require degrees?

Because. More. People. Have. Degrees

Because. More. People. Have. Degrees

And.why.do.you.think.that.is?

[quote 1dayatatime]@ancientgran

"I'm saying it varies"

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Seriously look at this graph of average incomes vs average house prices and tell me it is not harder to buy a house today compared to the 1970s or that "it varies" from year to year when there is clearly a pretty identifiable trend.

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Have you got one showing mortgage payments v earnings as I think paying 2 or 3% on your mortgage v 15 or 16% will close that gap.

@monfused what you need to remember is interest rates were higher then so its more about disposable income also people then bought houses on a single wage as not many households had two full timers working
Now a couple both need to work to get a morgage and they are based often on 2 salaries
Its mot easy to compare like for like as there were things we get now they didn't then and vice versa
There was the3 day week and power cuts wtc but also many didn't own their own homes
You can't compare that easily as so many variations

[quote monfused]@1dayatatime I think you're wasting your breath because you know free nursery hours. [/quote]
- sadly I think you're right.

That and the argument that "we didn't have the latest iphone 13 in the 1970s" though that might had something to do with the fact that they were around..

@ancientgran yes thats what people don't get but it is still harder now than the 90's which is more comparable
Then i lived somewhere where you could get a 2 bed flat for £62000 i earnt around £18000 now that same job pays around £25000 and that 2 bed flat is £320000 its the last 20 odd years thats seen the huge huge rises rather than before , it crashes in the 80's as interest Rates were so high and many handed keys in

No to the original question.
I am 62 this coming April. I have several chronic illnesses and struggled to carry on working until last year. My most recent hospitalisation was a stroke in June 2020, two months after my 60th birthday. I managed to go back to work on slightly lighter duties (as a Support Worker). But I was struggling in my house as it was the large family house I bought with my DH and in which we lived with our two DC. My DH died in 2008 at the age of 56. So of course he never claimed his state pension. I did receive Widowed Parent's Allowance for a few years as my younger DC was 11 when his father died. Without that I would have been in dire straits.
The DC moved out in 2017 and 2019. I couldnt manage the house any more so I downsized to a one bedroom bungalow nearer to my DC last August. They had been worrying about me being alone after my stroke.
I had to leave work as my new house was too far from my job. However I had been struggling to keep working anyway due to my health and not being allowed to drive due to being partially sighted. I will (hopefully) get my state pension in April 2026 at the age of 66. I get less than £100 per month DLA and a small works pension of £215 per month. I manage by topping that up from the equity I achieved on my house sale. I will have to make it last until I get my state pension. So I am hoping the government don't put the pension age up again.

Because. More. People. Have. Degrees

Blair has a lot to answer for, especially his crazy plan for 50% of school leavers to go to Uni! He didn't give a moment's thought to the inevitable and obvious consequence that employers would start to insist on a degree as a blunt instrument measure to reduce the number of applicants they had to sort through, whether the job needed a degree or not.

Now we have lots of "over" educated people doing jobs that could be done by people with A levels (or even GCSEs), and at the same time a critical shortage of manual workers in the trades, etc.

what you need to remember is interest rates were higher then so its more about disposable income also people then bought houses on a single wage as not many households had two full timers working

I'm fully aware of that. The issue today is the size of deposit of required & the fact rents are so high & less social housing so it's far harder to save.

Its mot easy to compare like for like as there were things we get now they didn't then and vice versa

Again all data I've read said it's got harder to buy a house. But feel free to link to a source that says otherwise. And less people own today & a lot less younger people own.

@1dayatatime but people didn't have as much then ? Im only in my 40's but when we got a video recorder it was saved for months , credit cards were not so easy so people couldn't buy loads unless they saved or had on hp
My nan had her sofa 20 plus years I know people now who change them every 2/3 years
Many people never even had a house phone as couldn't afford the line rental and relied on a payphone
Life was different and that has to be taken into account , the biggest rises i have seen is 90's until now

@monfused do you have the data to prove a lot less own taken into account population size ? As i find that very hard to believe
In the 90's you could get mortgages with no deposit
I only have learned experience and what I have seen as I lived it
How old are you ?

@worriedatthemoment

"New figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that only half of people in their mid-30s to mid-40s had a mortgage in 2017, compared with more than two-thirds in the late 1990s."

"Among older people, nearly three-quarters of the over-65s who owned their homes in 2017 did so outright, the ONS said. These included those who benefited from being able to buy their council home under the right to buy scheme introduced in 1980 by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government.
Four decades ago a third of all UK residential accommodation was social housing. By 2017 that figure had fallen to just under 18%, the lowest figure on record."

@monfused like you said yourself more social housing so less of a need to own and your claiming to the 50's/60's/70's etc i think there would of been less homeowners
I was born in 70's hardly any family or people we knew owned , that changed in the 80's
I know how hard it is to save a deposit etc as we have never managed it with dc rent etc but i blame last 20 /30 years for it all going wrong , house and rent prices went up hugely in that time and it should of been nipped in the bud then ,don't know how we resolve it now

I’m sure I read somewhere that it would be cheaper to just give every adult in the country £1000 a month than to carry on with the huge administrative cost of the means tested benefits system.

I'm in my 30s & only bought because I had help with a deposit. All things being equal I wouldn't afford my home today if I was buying now.

@monfused so your comparing the 90's when it was easy to get a mortgage but the ones your saying had it easy would of bought 60/70:80's not 90's
Council house selling would be fine if we used the money to build new
I believe physically more ha houses but population has increased massively
The best thing they could do would be to build more ha houses and help prices go down , but that won't happen successive governments from various parties have underfunded this whilst the population grew and grew and private landlords increased

@BorgQueen isn't there a country thats trialling a universal payment ? Or one thinking of it

like you said yourself more social housing so less of a need to own and your claiming to the 50's/60's/70's etc i think there would of been less homeowners

Where did I say home ownership was higher in the 50s? I simply said home ownership has been declining particularly amongst the young because it has.

@monfused trouble is where i am
Houses are being snapped up still some don't even make it to the estate agent window or website
My brother has just bought in his 40's first property and they lost out on many that mostly went to buy to let landlords

@monfused

Because. More. People. Have. Degrees

And.why.do.you.think.that.is?

You tell me what you think.

This should be good.

We don't have any rent controls which doesn't help