“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!

Absolutely.

OP is talking about her grandparents, who she says were born during WW11.

Certainly the worst human rights abuse of my lifetime was the great tyranny of 2020-2021 under the Tories.

However Blair was the second worst prime minister.

He killed hundreds of thousands and destabilised a region.

He devalued degrees to the extent that a young person leaving university now has the employability of a young person leaving school with A-levels in the 1990s.

He dealt with unemployment by warehousing young people in universities and forcing them to pay for the three years they were excluded from the work place.

He created public sector jobs. Unlike unemployment, this is a permanent cost.

For the chosen few. I for many working class people, particularly women, higher education was not an option. They left school on Friday and we're expected to be working and contributing from the Monday

He devalued degrees to the extent that a young person leaving university now has the employability of a young person leaving school with A-levels in the 1990s.

He dealt with unemployment by warehousing young people in universities and forcing them to pay for the three years they were excluded from the work place.

Well, this is true. When I went to university in the 1970s, I was one of only 5% who did so. This is one reason why the country could fund me, through the Local Authority where I was resident with my parents.

Of course, in 1997 when Blair became Prime Minister, parents of the time still wanted their children to go to university. Blair found a way for nearly 50% to do so, which of course could not be afforded through the grant system. The terms on which loans were made were fair, and there were fair thresholds for income level at which interest was payable. A friend's daughter had 2 years' loan knocked off, because she used her degree to teach for 2 years (IUIC), This gradually changed over the years, but for some people, especially those with mental health issues, it has enable them to take a degree, usually in Art from looking at my friends) without worrying about paying it back, as they know they will never earn enough to do.

It also lead to the devaluing of degrees, the multiplication of soft degrees such as media studies, the overworking of academics, and the transition of the university model from one of providing rigorous academic research and teaching to one based on business and the bottom line.

So sorry about lack of formatting. First two paragraphs are a quote from @Howmuchfurther

Well done, @Blossomtoes ! The ageist shit on this thread is disgusting.

How would this help? Do you mean that net contributors should have higher state pensions and access to better treatments on the NHS than net beneficiaries?

I was at secondary school in the 1960s, when it was still the norm to draft girls into streams - professional (Latin and French), less professional(French) i.e. designed for girls going in to nursing, primary teaching, banks, Commercial (typing and shorthand, core maths) and Homecraft (human biology, cooking, sewing, typing, art). Your future career was set in stone at age 12.
By Year 13, there were 36 girls left at that level, out of a school of 1200. They were destined for secondary teaching, medicine, physiotherapy, library school, and a few pioneers in law.
Now aged 70+, most of these 36 girls, contrary to the norm to the time, worked professionally and raised children. They paid taxes...in many cases, large amounts of tax. Thing is, there are now only 24 of them alive. Isn't it generous of old people, having poured money into the pension coffers to then thoughtfully pass on without benefitting from their contributions?

I haven't read the full thread.
Your grandparents have some abhorrent views about refugees, OP. Sadly these views are not confined to one age group in our society and not all pensioners share them.
This is where posts become ageist. It isn't ageist to criticise your grandparents but it is ageist to stereotype all older people in a negative way.
After WW2 National Insurance was sold to the population as just that, a state insurance scheme which you paid into and drew upon in periods of sickness, unemployment and at retirement. Social security was separate, it was a cushion to provide a minimum income for those whose insurance wasn't adequate. That is why many older people say they have "paid in all their lives", because that's how they understand it.
The model was also based on a male breadwinner and housewife and women born in the 1940s and early 1950s have got caught up in the change to treating males and females as individuals.
The benefits system has changed a lot and some older people still see things as they used to be.
Some may be out of touch with the current housing crisis etc for younger people but surely most have children and grandchildren and can't really miss it.
Some older people help younger family members out a lot, some are self centered and don't chose to see what goes on . It's ageist to generalise.

A bit ZOMBIE ageist shit, though, no one will read if, why not start a new thread?

Well a according to MN, all OAPs vote Tory hmmm..

@FlemishHorse I think Mnet threw this up and I thought I was on the latest ageist shit thread about winter fuel payments