The Pensions Triple Lock has to go

[Flammkuchen]

When it was introduced, the aim of the Triple Lock was to increase pensions faster than earnings as the state pension was low. The TL has been very successful: pensioners now have a higher standard of living and more disposable income than working families. A pensioner couple each getting the full state pension receive £20k per year, with any private pension income on top.

This is great for them, but it comes with a trade-off. In order to increase pensions by over 10% a year, there is less money to pay nurses, teachers or doctors. Highly skilled public sector workers have low pay and there is a recruitment crisis.

AIBU to think that now that on average pensioners have higher disposable income than those in work, a policy that aims to increase pensioner income by MORE than average earnings - and so keep increasing the income of pensioner households faster than working households - needs to be rethought? Even just linking the state pension to average earnings would be better.

A nurse doesn't get (as a pensioner on 10k would), Council Tax Benefit, Housing Benefit, Winter Fuel Allowance £500), Warm Homes Discount (£150), free prescriptions, free tv licence (over 75), free bus/rail/tram/ferry travel (depending on area of residence).

To say a pensioner lives on £1OK is disingenuous. A pensioner in London could be getting hundreds of pounds a week in Housing Benefit alone.

a) The generation who keep banging on about how older people had it so good as if this is the one and only time people have ever struggled. And by struggle I don't mean because they have to choose between a new tattoo and a weekly meal out.

b) Oh so you want both lol? But pensioners now should go without? No surprise there.

I've never had a tattoo. I've worked since I was 16 for people my age our retirement age is already 68 what will it be when we retire? The NHS is falling apart , we pay higher taxes , private pension schemes are less generous. What are we paying for exactly?

Oh come on. Op starts off the thread going on about rich pensioners she knows and how it’s not fair blah blah, definitely an ageist thing. I will start a thread about single mums and how come some of them can have Botox and nails done etc - let’s see how that goes down.

Maybe we should just kill off pensioners, let them claim 1 year of their state pension , then kill them off. 🙄

Think of the extra money the Government will have to play with. (the money that working people had to pay in to their pension )

The thing is nobody resents your pension, nobody it’s what you signed up for, and it’s what you should have. If you need it.. where the resentment stems from is the ones that claim it and don’t need it and typically, they’re the ones drive in the 4x4 with a Costa in each hand. Trying to dress like 20-year-olds when they’re in the 60s, it’s hilarious. The government should probably release figures surrounding the data on who doesn’t doesn’t claim, how many that don’t and do the right.

How would you feel if you had built up a little savings pot. Spent years paying into it. Then one day the government said it was going to be means tested and you didn’t need it, so they were going to take your savings away.

It’s the same thing. A pension is a social contract. People have paid into it for years.

catandcoffee · Today 11:27

Maybe we should just kill off pensioners, let them claim 1 year of their state pension , then kill them off. 🙄

The implicit deal WAS that 'we pay you a pension at 65, you die before you are 70' (actually when pensions were introduced age 70, in 1908, life expectancy was 42 ). The implicit deal worked; it doesn't work if people retire, then claim a pension for 30 years.

You can protest all you like, but if the pension system its not sustainable (it isn't), its unsustainable.

I think it is the case now that we spend more on the state pension that we do on education for our children. With demographics indicating that we are an ageing population, unless we have large scale immigration, that is not something we can keep doing.

Or if we did, we would be prioritizing the elderly over the young.

I don't want that. Triple lock for education budgets.

In Japan, they are already facing the same issue. They call it the 100 year life. People are staying in the work place for longer.

That is us too, and the state pension age being pushed back to 70 in a few years. Single lock on pensions.

And this is the thing it isn’t a social contract, that’s where you’ve been conned if you like or you’ve misunderstood however, you want to look at it there, but it is a benefit like every other benefits you received what you paid for with your national insurance via the health service.

SP isn't £10k as I've pointed out before. £141 basic for older state pensioners, £185 for those eligible after 2016. I'd feel well off if DH and I got £10k a year.

My occupational pension from my lowish paid, public sector job just takes us over the PC limit. If we lived separately we'd cost the taxpayers a fair bit more! Here is the reality.

www.gov.uk/state-pension/what-youll-get

I agree with you completely. It is simply not sustainable to continue to treat age as a proxy for need. The irony here being lost is that those pensioners who are in dire need will receive less due to the transference of taxation across the ENTIRE pensioner population regardless of how wealthy they are. This conversation is long overdue and as you can see, tends to be rapidly shut down by those shouting pensioner bashing. Unless these discussions become more mainstream, the resentment of the young and disenfranchised is just going to get worse. Benefits should be distributed according to need and nothing else.

There's no deal. We aren't paying NI and taxation for ourselves that's the myth. We are currently paying for the pensioners and then so it goes on. The working age pay for the pensioners but we are running low on working age people. People are having 30 year retirements, that won't be a thing for the young. There will be no state pension , retirement age is rising , no NHS and the young will foot the bill for services they won't be able to use. It's a great deal! Not.

I think it would sting less if the current older generation admitted the young have been shafted.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56272829

Does this make it better? Nice chunk of 1.5billion saved from pensions by elderly people dying of Covid.

(Before anyone accuses me on insensitivity, we lost 3 out of 4 oldies due to Covid, so I don't post this lightly).

You've been well and truly sucked in there!

Soars? Outstrip? Read the bloody article

Outstrip by "almost £1,000 over the last decade" - that's a grand total of £19.23 a week

Soars? Keeps up with inflation. In a group that cannot/does not work or pays the usual taxes on earnings. Whose income has - again in that self same article - lagged considerably behind working-age adults but increasing generosity in pension payments has seen the gap halve over 20 years, analysis by The Telegraph has found.

20 years... that's what 'soaring' means in that headline! A 20 year process.

Could we all just apply some critical thinking here? When official data says that 200,000 more pensioners were pushed below the poverty line over the last year, that 1 on 5, more than 2 million pensioners live in relative poverty, posts like this and all the "My aunty has a million in pound notes under her bed" are ludicrous.

Fuck off idiot. It was a light hearted response. Honestly so sick of this site.

I think if that's in the Telegraph the triple lock is over. Either the Conservatives or Labour will change it after the election due to its growing cost.

If the retired get annual increases above those working, eventually we reach a point where the retired earn more than the working.

cptartapp · Yesterday 13:05
Agreed. All pensioner benefits should be means tested. Just like child benefit and others.

When will people get it , State Pension is NOT a benefit it is funded by working peoples NI insurance contributions all their working lives.

We will all be in the situation of needing to draw our pensions one day and will expect that the deal/promise will be kept - we pay in during our working lives and we get back when we retire.

The system has never really worked in that the payings in do not cover the payings out, and state pension reverts to being a benefit that is paid for by the current working population via taxes. But this is what will happen with all of us at some point.

Pensioners with good incomes do of course pay tax like everyone else, so are contributing to education and other services.

My mum and Dad were self employed and pretty much live off their state pensions. They can’t afford to put the heating on. They have a coal fire but the rest of the house is freezing. I have offered to help but they won’t have it. I am worried sick. I have bought them heated gilets for xmas. All they have done is work and pay tax and yet here we are. I know there are some incredibly wealthy pensioners but there also at least 2 million living like my mum and dad. I know single mums who go and have their nails done, I know people who claim sick who are just fat and lazy but I wouldn’t single out either of them groups for a ‘ discussion’ because it would make the many more genuine people in those groups feel like shit.

They should receive up to £600 in winter fuel payments hopefully soon and they should be being credited with £66 extra per month to their electricity bill cost of living payment. Hopefully the winter fuel payment will be paid soon.

No. It's funded by current working population. It's not a savings account.
The problem we've got now is that nobody has planned for the enormous demographic shift of the boomer generation retiring.

thats quite a way to go

average wage £25,000-£35,000
state pension under £10,000

It's just grim reading for the young. Schools are having to find money from reduced budgets and trying to fund teachers having pay rises from those budgets. The children are getting less and less. That is foolish. They need support, stability and money. But each year the opposite is occurring.