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?

Sometimes you see a thread title, your heart sinks and you just KNOW before you even open it who the OP is going to be. OP you don’t seem to think the elderly or the sick and disabled should receive any support at all going by your comments on several recent threads. Why is that ? Or do you just enjoy the ensuing bunfight ?

Are you serious? Were you asleep during all the Covid scandals with PPE?

This poster has been on several of the threads that sprang up recently because of the announced changes to welfare. From the posts on those I came to the conclusion that they don’t want any form of welfare. They don’t believe in sickness or disability benefits, think too much is paid to UC claimants and now it would appear they don’t believe in pensions either. They’re also falling hook line and sinker for the ‘we can’t afford it’ line from the Tories without even a nod that these are ideological cuts which are not necessary.

You are not 'paying more' dear ... the OAPs have already paid it by working upto 51 years each (aged 16 to 67)

@JoyousPinkPeer thats the thing, no one has “paid in” as such. NI is not paid into a personal or collective pension pot where funds are paid out at retirement. NI is just a (unfair IMO) tax on employment where the proceeds are taken in by HM Treasury, pooled with other forms of taxation. Of course NI record is a determining factor of state pension entitlement. But that’s not the same thing as “paying in”.

The triple lock is not sustainable long term. The ‘best of three worlds’ increase will eventually raise the SP beyond affordability.

Do you not think that a better attitude might be to ask why the triple lock is not applied to other State benefits rather than try to take away the only decent State benefit in the UK.

Very few women I know in their 60s have a ‘full’ working history of tax paying. Most sacked off work when they had children, then went back very part time years later.

You clearly don’t know many single parents then. Or women with careers, not jobs. You’re talking about our mothers’ generation, not ours. I’m 71 next week and paid tax from the time I was 16 until now. Of those years 20 were as a higher rate taxpayer. All my friends had careers and a similar tax paying history. We’ll all be paying income tax until we’re fitted for our coffins.

How many people do you think have careers versus those with jobs in society?

How is that relevant? Most women work and have for the last 50 years.

Yes but I’m pointing out most women of the generation we refer to do not have a full record of unbroken income tax paying like they suggest. My mother in law says she ‘worked all her life’ when complaining about immigrants but when you add it up, she worked the equivalent of about 20 full time years, certainly no more.

I am not critising your mum, but that generation seem to always go on about the war as if it were them storming the beaches of Normandy, being a reason why they deserve a great deal now while young people struggle. The people in their late 60s and 70s, even 80s now didn't see the bloody war, let alone fight in it.

She is obsessed with the war. She thinks I’m a traitor and a ‘lefty loon’ because I didn’t want to sing God Save The Queen with her at the Platinum jubilee.

Most women of my generation do. Your mother in law is an exception. I personally don’t know any women who didn’t work and pay tax for the majority of their life. And I venture to suggest that, as a member of that generation, my sample is likely to be rather larger than yours.

Not saying all women/people of that generation think the same as my MIL, but just saying you got her spot on!

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/timeseries/lf25/lms

Around half of working age women in the 1970s had a job compared with three quarters now. I appreciate the reasons for not working back then were more complex (lack of childcare settings, etc) but I’m pointing out a woman born in 1948 will have worked, on average, far fewer years than a woman born in 1985.

That would be because in those days there was no maternity pay - something which boomers fought for and from which subsequent generations have benefited. There was no such thing as wrap around child care either. So ‘sacking off work’ as you so politely put it was pretty much the only option unless you had family who could do childcare.

But it’s ironic because people like my MIL blame society’s ills on people ‘having children they can’t afford’ OR ‘leaving them to be raised by nursery’

It WAS easier for a couple to manage on 1 salary hence why being a SAHM was more common

My mum (in her 80s) talks about having worked all her life too, but that's because she counts looking after her own house and children as work, which she believes it was. She doesn't see how annoying that is when she says it to her daughters who have all brought up children, run houses and worked full time throughout. She focuses on how much easier it was for us, as we had automatic washing machines.

I don't remember anyone in my mum's circle working when I was growing up. Maybe that's because if they'd been working I wouldn't have known them as they wouldn't have been at coffee mornings etc, but none of them worked. I only know one person of my generation who gave up work when she had children. Everyone else worked, even if some had a couple of years at home with babies.

To be fair though, in both cases people just did what was normal in their time and circumstances and it's probably not fair to blame them retrospectively for that. There were no nurseries or crèches for my mum's generation, so working mums would have had a much harder time if they didn't have family willing to do the childcare, and in any case they were paid less than men, had no maternity leave and so on, so it probably didn't seem worth it. Also, the system then was that women got their husband's pension if he predeceased them, and there were things like married man's tax allowance - things were different, and nobody can predict the direction things will take decades later. We all just make the best of life as we live it, really.

Thanks for proving my point so excellently. Most of those women of working age in the 1970s were my mother’s generation, not mine. You may also wish to acknowledge @Rosscameasdoody’s point that it was my generation that fought for the changes in employment legislation that make it possible for your generation to work - although, as you point out, 25% still don’t.

What’s happening here is the government are trying to iron out the massive discrepancy between people in their later years now, and younger people. To put it simply elderly people are far less likely to be in poverty than younger people and especially children, so it’s their turn to take the hit to distribute things a bit more equally. Nobody in a 800k house should receive fuel allowance when small children are living in mould infested hellholes because their parents are skint

I was talking about my mother in law, not you, I have no idea how old you are. I accept that but then every generation does something to improve the landscape, millennials are at the forefront of the climate movement.

What’s happening here is the government taking a relatively small amount from some pensioners to fill a corner of a huge budget deficit. The government has pledged (wrongly in my view) to retain the triple lock, this is an economic decision not an ideological one. There are people of all ages living in “mould infested hellholes” and £800k houses. Framing this as some kind of Robin Hood political gesture is just plain wrong, if the government’s intention was as you interpret it’s not doing very well.

I have no idea how old you are.

Maybe receive more and transmit less then. I told you my age several posts ago.

This - and you'll be a pensioner one day too OP.