This country as gone into terminal decline

[Carmes]

I have 2 young children in school.

I am becoming more and more anxious about what sort of jobs / careers they will have open to them.

I work for very large company with 10,000s of employees.

20 years ago whe I started work here there would be 100s of entry level jobs at any given time. These are jobs that don't require experience or a degree, ideal for a school leaver, and I know dozens of people who started their career this way.

Now there are maybe 10 jobs that would fit the same criteria.so. All the jobs have been offshored.
Now are the vacancies are for very specific technical skill set or experience.

This doesn't bode well for someone who has left school at 18'or even university.

Subsidised is the English spelling.
Explain what you mean by this phrase: Your contributions ran out 20 years ago
I have worked for 45 years, full tax and NI contributions, so I think you'll find I will be entitled to my pension when I get it in 3 years time as I have paid in more than enough.
How are you paying for your old age? A private pension that your employer has contributed a percentage to?

As I said @AsTheLightFades, go and look at the figures. Take your emotion out of it, stop swearing out of it and go and do the maths.

So, without taxation, how are we going to pay for the stuff everyone wants? Who is paying for the free nursery places, the pensions, the NHS, the endless list of wants from the generations least willing to pay for it, then chucking their toys out of the pram and moving when the government says 'if you want it, somebody has to pay for it'?

Carers deserve better pay. Much better pay. If pay was decent for carers, we’d have more people from the UK willing to train to become a carer. We wouldn’t have to rely on cheap labour from abroad. We’d also have better standards of care. Caring is a difficult job, my mother was a carer and what she had to do was beyond what most of us are capable of, certainly for people unrelated to us. What she was paid was frankly insulting. Immigration keeps wage levels low for jobs like this, increasing reliance on the welfare state and top-ups. Additionally the turn over of staff in professions like this is high.

Caring is a tough job but people don’t want to pay for it. Go onto another thread and you will see people saying they are giving everything to their dc now so the inheritance doesn’t go on care.

🎯🎯🎯

It can be true that both the things you have mentioned and uncontrolled immigration are all problems the UK is facing.

My DD is 24, left uni at 21, got a health now works in the NHS, helping people with strokes, on 37k per year as a band 6.

Its hard work with a lot of responsibility but she finds it incredibly rewarding and couldn't see herself doing anything else.

But if you do media studies or an english degree, then yes, getting a decent job is much harder.

On the Budget and Labour, the UK has had appalling growth over the last few years, we were in a technical recession one year ago, was that Reeves fault too?

Exactly.

Exactly. The narrative that all pensioners are saints who all worked 60 hour weeks for 50 years is absolute nonsense. Some did, some worked very hard, many did not. Many then expect to be supported by a current, smaller generation of workers who are, in aggregate, much less financially privileged than their own generation.

People blaming pensioners need a realty check. Let’s not forget that a lot of pensioners grew up during the war, didn’t get an education and had to rely on rations. How many of them were full of self pity and “woe is me - I can’t do this and I can’t do that because of mental health?” They just got on with it.
This country is too soft dishing out handouts and benefits to lazy working age folk who choose not to work. They are the ones draining the resources and it needs to change.

Well we have to accept that we don’t have enough people paying in and things like the welfare system are too generous. Our higher earners pay some of the highest taxes in the world yet our middle and lower earners, some of the lowest. We also have a majority of state dependents and one of the largest unproductive working age populations in the west.

All these awkward truths need to be addressed. There has long been an issue with over taxing reducing tax take at certain income levels, as raised by many economists. We are now taking that national and over taxing business so much - they are reducing employment.

You can’t keep taxing the same narrow base over and over again because they leave and tax take goes down. Everyone needs to start paying more.

God, no wonder this world is regressing - all those who know nothing asserting crap opinions

😆

Ok, I'll bite the bullet & say what no-one else has said, because yes, I AM pissed off with economic migrants coming here. All put up in expensive hotels ( a family member has just stayed in an expensive hotel in Edinburgh & it was a shocking experience..)
We cannot afford this! NHS declining, not enough homes (although personally I can't see why empty shops & offices can't be converted before we build on green belt.)
The answers seem easy to this simple little soul, I'm a Boomer too, so should be out of everyone's hair in the next 10-15 years..

Only in the very short term. The state pension was only introduced in 1950s, at that time life expectancy was 60 so relatively few people actually retired to get it. It the retirement age had moved with life expectancy when state pension was designed we would be retiring in our 80s. In the mid term life expectancy has massively increased ahead of the pension age.

Lots have already said immigration is to blame.
While also detailing the immigrants in their own family and their own plans to emigrate.🙄

I think these "nomads" must be self employed. Most companies won't allow people to work from another country unless they (the company) already has an office in that country.
There are too many problems with having to comply with local employment laws/tax/pensions/holidays/H&S etc to allow your employees to work from anywhere they fancy.

I have worked for 45 years, full tax and NI contributions, so I think you'll find I will be entitled to my pension when I get it in 3 years time as I have paid in more than enough

I don't know why this keeps having to be pointed out, @AsTheLightFades, but iit doesn't work like that and never did
Each generation's pensions are funded by the "next one down" who are still working, so your contributions fund those currently retired and in time the younger generation will pay for you

It's complicated of course because many pensioners still pay tax, to say nothing of the expectations around a "social contract", but that doesn't change the basis of how it works

No immigrants or emigraters in the family. Just weary Brits.

@onehundredandonepaws But yes, keep blaming the immigrants. Because that will solve your problems.

I'm an immigrant in the UK, I've always been employed since I arrived to this country years ago. I do a job that is frown upon by English people, I pay my taxes religiously, but clearly "we're the problem" of why this country has gone to sh-it. when in doubt Always blame the foreigner 🤣

People blaming pensioners need a realty check.. It’s not blaming pensioners to acknowledge we have an ageing population & that comes with financial, cultural & social implications. The governments have not planned for this despite it looming but they have got away with it because any discussion gets shouted down.

Oh, Lady Windermere's fan is out as an adjunct to the pearl-clutching

My older children all have stem degrees and thank God speak fluent mandarin and have dual citizenship because otherwise they would’ve been sold up the Swanee by Brexit.
I fully anticipate that they will all leave the UK
I just hope they take their sibling that doesn’t want to do a degree with them.

People don’t even understand how the state pension works though 🤷🏻‍♀️

You grew up in the 1960s for all I know ?

Its on the decline moving out in your 20s, therefore not the norm

just because you knew people that did this 50 or 40 years ago doesn't mean it happens now very much

People struggle to rent as proofing affordability isn't easy if you earn lower wages

Are they going to China or Taiwan? That's interesting.