“We paid in all our lives”: AIBU to think, No you didn’t?

[Perlman]

My grandparents are traditional red wall labour voters. Born during WWII to poor families, they live where they grew up. My grandad worked in a factory and my nan worked as a secretary. Like many of their generation, they lived in and bought their council house. Very caring people until it comes to politics. They are hugely racist and advocate for sinking any refugee boats. This is despite the fact that some of their grandparents were refugees from Russia!

They want the triple lock, free bus passes, heating allowance, increased benefits for older people, et cetera. They think anyone who isn’t old who takes benefits is a scrounger and lazy. They say young people can’t afford to buy a house because they are lazy. They have inherited several, but put down their relatively comfortable position in retirement as to their ‘hard work’.

They justify their opinions and entitlement by saying “we paid in all ours lives, it’s our money”. AIBU to think that, well no, not really. You may have paid in money through taxation but clearly they are net beneficiaries of the state. They both had low paid jobs, bought and sold on their council house for a tidy profit, have thankfully lived a long life but with a myriad of expensive to treat health problems. So no, they haven’t paid for what they’re taking!

Given half the chance you’d take all of that too, wouldn’t you? You can’t blame them for taking advantage of things that have been offered to them.

She isn’t

Shes blaming them for saying it’s fair, right and deserved.

@Howmuchfurther

Shes blaming them for saying it’s fair, right and deserved

but in the context that they grew up in, it is fair, right and deserved. You can’t apply a different set of rules to them now - that was part of the reality of their working lives.

How many of them had the chance to go to university? Travel ?

We are comparing wealthy older people with younger, poorer people instead of looking at the relative wealth those older people had when they were younger. And forgetting the wealth todays young will have when they are older.

I remember paying income tax at that rate. I also remember the ‘brain drain’ when the top rate was around 90% in the 60s.

DH and I are state pensioners. I also have an occupational pension, not a big one. Having that extra income means we don’t qualify for pension credit. Our incomes are both below the personal tax allowance. Because we retired before 2016, our pensions are about £50 a week less than more recent retirees. Old basic is around £156, New pension is over £200.

Sharing wealth, sharing health is the approach of an evolved society. We seem to have had so much right wing Govt here now that many gave forgotten the huge advances made mid 20th century

It’s not the benefits and advantages they’ve received that I resent. I’m pleased for them. What I do resent is the “don’t know you’re born….youngsters are lazy….avocado and Netflix….we paid in” talk when they can’t/won’t understand the difficulties faced by todays hard working people.

Fair enough.

Can’t speak for that poster but I will not be inheriting my parents’ money. That ship sailed when I cut them off. If they do still have me in their wills - which I doubt - the money will be going to my siblings who still speak to them or to charity.

Some of us do put our money where our mouth is, is my point.

Good for you - genuinely. That poster was allowing the father she despises to pay her daughter’s school fees and I’d bet my house she won’t turn her inheritance down.

I think it is OK to expect a decent standard of living if you have worked all your life and paid in. Are you saying that due to having low paid jobs they don't deserve this? A low paid job can be hard work too.

They are incredibly fucking ignorant though. They are the turkeys that voted for Christmas that have fucked this country up and then have the gal to turn around and accuse young people of being entitled because they are complaining about eating cold beans in a damp flat they can't even afford to buy, or have kids either. I'm sure some of them experienced the same, but they also moaned, rioted and went on strike for better pay. I'm not sure what the difference is, because they certainly seemed very pissed off in the seventies when they were the same age as many of us are, but apparently we don't get the same privilege to moan about similar conditions.

Not all people of this generation are like this, but a fair number of them hold these views which demonstrates the real lack of critical thinking. My mum is like this. She was amazing bringing us up on her own, she did work incredibly hard, but she also can't see the struggles of people today when she lived on benefits when we were young initially (i chose to work FT instead of claiming benefits) and bought her cheap council house on a 100% mortgage. Yet she is the one who think people who claim benefits are scroungers too - apart from her obviously. 😂I do love her though, but there is a wall somewhere with a big crack in it.

Pension credit is available for those that have not “paid in”. In most cases this gives more money than those that have “paid in” - it opens a door to many more benefits.
The whole thing is a ruse to prevent low level revolution.

What benefits does it open the door to apart from housing benefit which is available to everyone? All pensioners get free prescriptions, bus passes, winter fuel allowance, etc, they’re not means tested.

Housing benefit
Cost of Living payments
Support for Mortgage Interest
Free TV license
Council tax discount
help with hospital transportation costs
Warm homes discount
royal mail redirection
…

As their contributions paid for the generations before them.
pretty sure the single mothers on benefits are contributing very little to any ‘pot’.

Housing benefit - universal based on income
Cost of Living payments - what are those?
Support for Mortgage Interest - pensioners are very unlikely to have a mortgage
Free TV license - no pensioners get those any more but they all used to
Council tax discount - everyone who lives alone gets it, students don’t pay it at all
help with hospital transportation costs - never heard of that
Warm homes discount - universal
royal mail redirection - you’re struggling now

You are wrong. Society needs highly paid, well qualified professionals. The pandemic situation showed that, surprise surprise, lower paid workers were needed to maintain the food chain. It did not show that they are more valuable to society than surgeons, dentists etc, who remember were not allowed to work, as the current health crisis clearly shows.

If you really think that there’s no point in engaging with you. Society would have collapsed without care workers, retail workers and drivers. Surgeons continued to work in other healthcare roles, while dentists are clearly not seen as essential because there are so few NHS dentists hardly anyone can get an appointment any more.

According to the financial times 1 in 5 baby boomers are millionaires. Or at least that's what a 2019 article shows. They were the only generation to see wealth grow in the 10 years before. Gen X saw a 5% drop, millennials saw a 2 % drop (from a smaller base obviously).

The thing people don't really appreciate is the funding of the NHS and state pensions mainly relies on the working generation paying for the one above (many people become a net cost to the NHS in the last years of their lives) the aforementioned social contract.

That made sense when the welfare state was created. Most people did not live to great old age and until the 2000s the retired/retiring generations were sigificanly reduced in number by two world wars.

Therefore the retired generations being supported by workig generations below were much smaller. The problem we have now is threefold - people are living longer but often in poorer health, the baby boom generation (those born 1946 - 1965) is huge and beginning to move in to retirement and ill heath, Gens X and Y (those born 1966 - 1990), the ones who will be supprtinv the retiring boomers, are litedally smaller as the birth rate fell a lot in the seventies and eighties.

What is known as the dependency ratio - the number of non working people being supported by working people is starting to look a bit shaky.

So whilst the boomers did their bit and paid it forward their burden it was tiny compared to the burden their children and grandchildren will have to shoulder.

TL:DR if you are retired and rely on your state pension and the NHS, opposing the immigration of young fit migrants and future tax payers is very dumb

TL:DR if you are retired and rely on your state pension and the NHS, opposing the immigration of young fit migrants and future tax payers is very dumb.

Also very selfish. As is opposing the building of new homes because you don't want your road to become "busy"

I’m not struggling for anything. Not sure what point you are trying to make.

You are misinformed - for example yes, you do get a free tv licence if you get pension credit. This is the point the previous poster was making - pension credit widens access to other benefits.

Given that that growth in wealth is predicated on the increase in house prices, I find it very difficult to believe that anyone who bought before 2009 saw a decrease in wealth. That includes most of Gen X. There’s a massive difference between being a millionaire with liquid wealth and one owning a £1 million house, those boomers fit into the latter category.

Boomers saw unprecedented wage increases and gains of upto 5000% on property values.
However this is hardly their fault.
They're comparatively wealthy.
They are also a sizable group, we've never had the cross generations mixing like this before. It does cause issues.

Boomers saw unprecedented wage increases and gains of upto 5000% on property values.

Blimey, where were those houses for a fiver in the 70s and 80s? Everyone who bought before 2009 has seen similar increases, not just boomers. Definitely not 5000% though, that’s absurd.

@Blossomtoes here's a link to the article. You can believe it or not, but I find it hard to imagine the FT is lying https://www.ft.com/content/c69b49de-1368-11e9-a581-4ff78404524e
@Harrypewter I don't think anyone is saying it's the "fault" of the baby boomers that they're so wealthy? Just that they can't suggest that it's right, fair and deserved.