Pensions… again

[GoodnightAdeline]

https://amp.theguardian.com/money/2024/apr/08/uk-state-pensions-benefits-changes-april-triple-lock-rise

Another pension increase we can’t afford when working people are grappling with the cost of the country.

What will be the endgame in all this? Where will we be in 20 years?

Alternative to what? There wouldn’t be an alternative. The rise just wouldn’t happen. Things would stay as they are now. What do you not understand about that?

😂😂😂
So all pensioners would gradually see their already paltry pension dwindle to nothing.

Great idea!

@GoodnightAdeline you said that you 'feel the money could be better spent and pensioners as a group are least in need of yet another rise or concession'. Please can you tell the many posters on this thread who disagree with you which groups the government should be supporting instead with the money that is being used to increase the state pension to £11,500 per annum? Please could you also answer the question I asked you last night on whether you would be able to live on that much per year?

And we’re still waiting to hear how you’d means test.

Totally with you on this ,,,well said

OP, how much do you think it costs to accrue a private pension of £21k which would take pensioners to minimum wage? Do you think occupational pensions are free? Regardless of occupational pensions, people still pay NI. If they are not going to get a state pension are you suggesting they get their contributions back so they can add them to their private pensions? What would fund your childcare then, in your quaint ‘household budget’ analysis?

At what level of income would you withdraw the state pension? Are you saying that all pensioners should have to live on minimum wage levels, for instance? Or a mean average? Median? Mode? Whichever way you cut it, it would require a massive increase in the pension, as people who can’t afford to save enough to have even a minimal retirement income would withdraw from pension schemes and rely entirely on the state. So there goes your free childcare, as the mythical purse would be empty.

Pointless asking, I’m sure, but how do you justify keeping people who have paid tax all their lives on poverty levels of income with savings means tested out of existence?

Do you have savings? A mortgage? If so, do you plan to hand them over in 30 years or so, as you won’t ‘need’ the cushion they provide?

All that would cause is greater pension benefit claims.

In the next couple of years, the SP will attract tax, as thresholds are frozen until at least 2028, so rises will be clawed back.

Do you think the 30 billion handed back in NI cuts is affordable????

The thing is though by increasing the pension they are moving some pensioners into the "tax" bracket as the tax bands haven't increased, so some pensioners will now be paying tax on there pensions, which is appalling.

@VestibuleVirgin

"Oh do take a long walk off a very short cliff. How massively ignorant you are making yourself look.
You are ageist. Just admit it."

"Why ddon't you respond the specific points levelled at you"

Similarly why don't you also respond to the specific point raised by @GoodnightAdeline ?

for you x
This thread has left me in tears, when I was young we were proud to think our OAPs would be able to have a nice warm retirement. Meal out once a week, coach trip in the summer and pair of good winter boots.

Which ‘point’ hasn’t been addressed? She keeps saying that ‘we’ can’t afford pension increases. People keep telling her that we can - the economy is not run like a household budget - where does she think the money came from for furlough, or to hand billions to Tory cronies, for instance?

Also, pensions circulate in the economy, unlike savings. And the UK economic system and culture is largely underpinned by home ownership. Penalise that and the ramifications (for all age groups) will be huge. Cutting pensions won’t happen in a vacuum, or it would have happened. Boomer bashing is a convenient dead cat for the government, but the OP is too busy crying over the cat to think about the reality.

The question has been answered over and over, but it’s like talking to a wall. The OP has read or heard the mantra about intergenerational unfairness and is annoyed to think that someone has something she doesn’t. She is not factoring in the fact that every generation has different challenges, and seems to think that because she has lived through austerity (as if nobody else has) she has personally done something to make life easier for her children’s generation. It’s not a sophisticated understanding of how the system works, is it?

@Eventingmum

"The thing is though by increasing the pension they are moving some pensioners into the "tax" bracket as the tax bands haven't increased, so some pensioners will now be paying tax on there pensions, which is appalling."

Why is it appalling that a pensioner with a pension of say £15,000 per year pays tax on the proportion above £12,500 when it's presumably not appalling that a single mother with two young children with a salary of say £15,000 also has to pay income tax on the proportion above £12,500?

@ShyMaryEllen

Specifically this point:

GoodnightAdeline
Pensioners are the wealthiest demographic. Of course you get pensioners in poverty who should rightly be supported, but working age people are far more likely to live in poverty. Yet are paying for this rise. Can anyone justify that?

Oh do take a long walk off a very short cliff. How massively ignorant you are making yourself look.
You are ageist. Just admit it.

I know you say you don't have a problem with means tested benefits - but basically they all have to be considered together as they all come under the 'benefits' umbrella.

Many women pensioners will have been you thirty years ago - but without the necessary state support like nurseries to be able to work full time and receive a reasonable salary. Also the universal credit parameters are quite generous in my opinion.

You need to educate yourself and realise it shouldn't be a race to the bottom. The state pension is very low indeed, even with support of pension credit. I would say I was similar to you - without the childcare - very fortunate to have a five year break from a banking profession with a good pension. Then retraining into the public sector, so have also got a small public sector pension which supplements the state pension. You will be old one day, and trust me, very grateful for the small amount of support that this pension gives you. Also I take it you do realise many pensioners, like myself, are taxpayers, decent parents who have helped their children with house deposits and also saved them £££ by doing childcare for the early years before school.

Such bitterness isn't good for you, OP, focus on something else and let go of the anger!!!!!

@ShyMaryEllen

"She keeps saying that ‘we’ can’t afford pension increases. People keep telling her that we can - the economy is not run like a household budget - where does she think the money came from for furlough, or to hand billions to Tory cronies, for instance?"

The money for furlough or other Covid measures came from Govt borrowing which went up by £500 billion. The issue now is that the interest on this debt (which is very much non productive Govt spending) is about the same as the spending on education.

And? That stat about education is the absolute pinnacle of pointless comparisons.
Not increasing pensions wouldn't have a significant effect on national debt - as the poster you were responding to correctly says, national finances aren't like a household budget, however much it suits Thatcher apologists to pretend they are.

I don’t think they can, hence the vitriol. A lot of people are having problems confronting the fact our country is no longer very wealthy, because we have spent all the money on sticking plaster concessions for certain groups and not on projects to promote longer term growth.

I understand people feeling very defensive of their pension but aren’t we all defensive of our livelihood? I earn an average wage but would be happy to pay more tax if it was spent on infrastructure, new industries and ideas to get the machine going again. I’m not happy with it being spent simply handing more money over to the demographic who are struggling the least simply because they vote in higher numbers.

My greatest wish is a visionary new government who rejoin the EU, invest in the future and green initiatives and stop being held to ransom by voters who are not currently working people. It won’t happen sadly, even Labour have admitted we are so broke they’ve had to sack off their most expensive policies and their green pledge which is gutting.

Why is it appalling? We tax people whose earning exceed a set limit in this country. Their income exceeds the limit. It’s right that it is taxed. Occupational pension contributions are not subject to income tax when taken from an employee’s salary in the expectation that they will be subject to income tax when the employee retires.

I know it’s not like a household budget or 2+2=4. But equally nothing about giving more money to the wealthiest demographic makes any sense. How would it not be better spent on reopening early years centres, for example? The fact is children can’t vote so yet again it goes to the demographic that turn out in the greatest numbers to protect their own interests. I’m not wealthy, I earn an average wage but I’m not struggling and therefore I will vote in the interests of children and young people because their lives will be very grim if we don’t.

It is a straight economic fact that we cannot keep the triple lock in perpetuity. If we did so, at some point in the future it would consume the entire national budget. At some point the triple lock has to be withdrawn. No politician has the guts to address this.

Yet again, because you keep ignoring the question. How are you going to means test it and how are you going to stop younger generations from safeguarding their state pension by not paying into a private pension?Many, many pensioners struggle. Why wouldn’t they- our state pension is dire.

Agreed, alongside the NHS pensioners have become a sacred cow beyond reproach. It’s silly and benefits no one.

Right. Who benefited from furlough? Who currently benefits from education spending? Not pensioners.

That’s fine by me, as I take a far more holistic view of society than the OP, but if your world view is based on what is being spent and paid for now (as opposed to over a lifetime of contributions) then shouldn’t it be up to the young to pay for those things?

Yes, there are young people in poverty, and I would very much like to see that eradicated. Nobody in work earns £15k though, unless they are part-time and even then they will get benefits which were not available when pensioners had their children. There was no minimum wage and no childcare help.

I am not saying that that makes it ok though - but surely someone with the OP’s views about who pays for what should factor that in? My whole point is that each generation has different challenges and that only a tiny minority of people are in a position to change the society in which they live. Most people just get on with life as it is lived at the time - whether that is with austerity, unemployment, high inflation, fear of war, a pandemic or whatever. If things go wrong it is the fault of the government not the population. Blaming one another is what they want us to do, but we don’t have to do it.

It’s not a homogeneous group. Many , many pensioners struggle and many are not rich.

Enough is going on young children, not nearly enough is going on teens or young adults. The state pension however still needs to be protected.