Emergency Budget

[Wouldloveanother]

What are we all thinking?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62920969

A discussion thread…

But higher earners don’t tend to want health workers wages to be kept low; they want them to be well paid but expect the bill to be spread more fairly.

If they’re living on the basic pension then they have made no provision for their elderly care

I don’t know what posters like you want - every person to be looked after completely and totally
despite never contributing or saving or making sensible decisions? For work, and planning ultimately not to be worth it? For there to be unlimited money somewhere for every cause that needs it? Ain’t gonna happen

Actually Dh had a good amount in his pension. We had savings

All was good.

Then Dh started to have issues with his health. If only one GP he saw at his doctors surgery had actually not been so dismissive things would have turned out so much better.

6 months after first going to the GP and despite seeing the doctor every 3 days I ended up helping him into A&E where he was diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer
The NHS were no help and we ended up having to go private for his treatment.

His pension, our saving has to be cashed in so he could get the treatment he needed and would have got had we I think lived in the right postcode.
Then 20 months off work. 10 of those months he spent in hospital.

There are a lot of blanket statements about pensioners having enough money and if you haven’t got a pension you have obviously been feckless.
Don’t forget years ago just because your salary was deducted each month and you thought you were paying into a pension didn’t mean you actually got paid out at the end
Lots of things happen over the years.
As Dd is finding out. You can’t trust anyone

So your bloke would turn his working life upside down for the sake of 5p in the £? Bloody hell, I wouldn’t.

This is rubbish in all but a handful of cases.

Most people live where they live because of family ties and support, or because they love the area and culture, not for purely financial gain. Even wealthy people!

Not many people would rip their families world apart to emigrate to the other side of the world for money.

Yes some will, but good riddance to that tiny minority, our society will be a nicer place for it.

How would it be spread more fairly?

Their employer didn’t offer a pension scheme

l remember as a 24 year old graduate in 1987 plucking up the courage to join the company pension scheme.I was met with outrage. And wasn’t allowed to join it.

@Eastangular2000

Ok so that's what it is?.

Literally pay packet stuff.

You don’t think working people should pay for todays pensioners?? But that’s the social contract. That’s why we pay tax and NI because we know we will be looked after when it’s our turn

Will we? It doesn't appear so. What's your evidence for this assertion?

Wouldn’t that mean they’d have the benefit of their husband’s pension?

SAHM might not work in ways that make money, but they make a home life that enables the DH to work. Cooking, cleaning, washing etc. It is still their time that they’ve contributed.

Sweet Jesus. What has this country become?

Atheist?

Helping the poor, vulnerable and needy always sounded like a Christian principle. Jesus preached the gospel of kindness and charity, but it had to come with the bribe of being ‘saved’. Deep down people are selfish. But usually shit scared of death.

Liz Truss also couldn’t differentiate Greed from Profit. Profit isn’t ‘bad’, but Greed is a deadly sin. Sooner she learns the better for saving her own soul 😇 from eternal damnation.

I jest somewhat.

That’s because that particular increase was based on last September”s CPI. Pensioners are due to get 10.1% increase next April based on this September. Way beyond any wage settlement or increase of other benefits.

of course I am aware “rich people” don’t get pension credit (although you can own a pretty much expensive house and still be eligible). But the point (as I said) is state pensions go up at a higher rate than any other benefit and also are at a higher rate anyway than uc. Yet many state pensions go to very wealthy people.

of course it’s because pensioners vote in large numbers that they are so pandered to. Young people could actually do a lot just by being more engaged. But there is huge generational unfairness .

its unlikely that universal pensions will still be around for dds. Also the average person goes nowhere near paying for their own pension- NI is just a tax, there are no contributions.

The average NHS pension is £7k a year because the average worker hasn’t been there for many years so hasn’t got many years service to contribute. Even so a 7k index linked pension is equivalent to a 200k pot. Much larger than the average private sector pot.

As I said there is no one alive who was prevented from joining a pension because they were a woman for all of their working life. So your earlier post citing that as a reason for no pension is nonsense.

Of course no one disputes that there is a significant gap between men and womens pension savings. That remains so despite the fact that women have been encouraged to save into pensions for many decades.

Also it’s nonsense that rich pensioners pay “most of it back through taxation”. The very maximum level of taxation they’re paying is 45%. That’s not even half.

and means testing of benefits doesn’t cost more than it saves- don’t be ridiculous. State pensions are hugely expensive- about half of the total welfare bill because they are universal. It’s very likely to be means tested in future.

The OP's comments on this thread are absolutely sickening.

Totally agree.

Why?

The other benefits also went up at 3.1% so pensions and other benefits (including universal credit) went up at the same rate, NMW went up by more, lots of jobs have had big increases. During covid there was a £20 a week uplift to universal credit, not to pensions.

It isn't even 5p in the pound really. He will get his tax free £12570, he will get the next £37700 at 20%, followed by £99279 at 40%. Only after he hits £150,001 will he be paying that 5% so no one is actually paying 45% on all their earnings.

The average NHS pension is £7k a year because the average worker hasn’t been there for many years so hasn’t got many years service to contribute

No, it’s because the vast majority of people who work in the NHS are poorly paid.

As I said there is no one alive who was prevented from joining a pension because they were a woman for all of their working life

There’s a poster in her 50s upthread who was prevented from joining a pension scheme in the 1980s so it’s hardly unfeasible that many women in their 70s and 80s never had the chance. Or were so poorly paid they couldn’t afford it or if they could the pension would be negligible.

Also it’s nonsense that rich pensioners pay “most of it back through taxation”. The very maximum level of taxation they’re paying is 45%. That’s not even half.

Any pensioner who pays more than £9,300 in tax is paying all their pension back.

I think when pension funds failed it made a whole generation cynical about pensions, my experience running a payroll.

Have you ever worked and are you working? You might have more contributions than you think although the child benefit would help. Have you thought about checking your record, it might help you plan for the future.

This is the problem with it. It was always going to be a demographic time bomb. Theoney each cohort pay should be invested for their own retirement. As it stands, UK state pensions are a giant ponzi scheme.

But being the Tories main voting base, they’re not going to make pensioners pay for anything. The ills of society in years gone by will be remedied by squeezing working families even harder.

Theoney each cohort pay should be invested for their own retirement

So in order to make that happen one generation would have to volunteer not to have a pension. Which one do you think it should be?

The ones whose property value has doubled without them having to pay a penny tax on that?

I am extremely worried about the long term implications of this budget.

The open wallet energy subsidy is the most worrying imo. £60 billion in 6 months is just an estimate. This will go on for more than 6 months. I think it would have been more prudent to subsidise a certain amount of energy usage per household and therefore know exactly how much this is going to cost.

Don't get me wrong-I was extremely worried about energy prices and am somewhat relieved we won't be seeing those £6k per year forecasts in April, but equally when you have a budget massively cutting the tax the government collects and also commits to an uncapped spend, it makes me nervous.

It also makes me concerned at what cost this will come at-not monetarily but mainly NHS and social care. Its at breaking point now. They have committed to fix funding only-and given inflation rate, this is not good.