To think we need to prioritise defence/Ukraine spending?

[Wildflowers99]

I’ll admit I had no idea how depleted our military has become until a few weeks ago. I was absolutely staggered to read we now spend more on PIP and DLA than our entire military.

I feel like slowly all of our public spending has been funnelled into health, benefits and social care, leaving everything else in a very poor state. Any time anyone has suggested spending money on anything apart from ‘freezing pensioners, the homeless or disabled’ they get shouted down (I am disabled btw, so I do understand the need).

AIBU to think we need to urgently address our spending priorities and as a nation wake up to the fact we’ve been overspending on the above for too long?

Also you don't see equivalently high paid business men working lower hours to get into a lower tax band.

I've never heard of anyone saying that they will do this.

Of course I’m not aware, doctors are only one small type of high earners 🤨

how can it not be worth it to work an extra day and earn more money? You still keep 55% of the pay.

Why would the NHS advise them not to? It’s none of their employers business.

that only makes sense to people who chose (themselves) that a day off is more valuable to them than a days pay.

literally today i decided to take a £900 a month pension supplement as cash that I’ll pay 45% on. I have enough pension; I’ll still get £500 a month extra cash, which I quite like 😀 to spend on some cash things. Totally normal behaviour

also by your argument there is no point working above the 20% tax bracket either- why do people bother with that stress eh?

True :-)

Your office full of workers is not going to employ a full time cleaner. The cleaner that empties your bins and hoovers is only going to be there for 2 hours max after you leave the office to go home.
Is is their fault for not working enough hours?

I think for some people having a bit of time, to enjoy life and recover from the stress of working, spend time with loved ones, indulge in hobbies maybe is more important than money

On the subject of cleaners, the one at my workplace refuses extra work when offered because it means he won't get his benefits and UC

Hate the game, not the player

This is a stupid argument. It's widely know that the marginal tax rate over 100k is 60%, plus loss of child care if that applies to you.

I have no more gripe with people minimising tax at that level than I do with people limiting their working hours re benefits (20 hours?). It's difficult when you are at a tipping point range. You really think about the time v money element

Maybe for some people. I think it’s rather standard and expected though that most people can handle working 5 days a week though, particularly the high paid ones.

I don’t personally find my job so stressful as a matter of course that I need an extra day off every week to recover

And also hate the people suggesting the game rules should change, by the look of it.

Don't worry Reeves will sort it at the spring statement 😉

What am unbelievably rude response.
Just why?

Entitled greedy people!

What’s entitled and greedy about people who are taking the pensions they paid for over decades? Perhaps the greedy and entitled are those who have only paid a fraction of those contributions.

Greedy for taking something they’ve paid into for many years?

There is a black hole Tax-wise for people earning £100-£120k ish (of which I am not one I hasten to add).

At £100k you lose tax-free childcare and the personal tax allowance starts to be removed, so someone who is paid, say, £115k on paper can actually be taking home less than someone on £99k, so people do things like drop a day at work or increase pension contributions to bring their taxable income down below £100k.

Not passing judgement either way on people that do/don’t don’t do this, but it is a fairly common situation for high earners.

A similar thing is the VAT threshold for businesses. By setting it at £90k it actually discourages small business growth. Businesses won’t take on an extra employee, open a new premises, etc to avoid paying the extra VAT. Better to follow the model of many European countries where the threshold is much lower which enables businesses more scope to grow and additional profit balances out the VAT they have to pay.

Pensions are supposed to be a lifelong benefit once claimed. Isn’t that the very definition of them?! Of course it isn’t greedy. The very elderly cannot work in the way younger people can (9 times out of 10), it should be obvious.

I've been paying into a small pension for about 20 years. Prior to that, I earned more and paid more; my pay reflected the fact that my employer made pension contributions too. Part of the rationale for this is to have an income and not be a financial drain on my DC in my old age, at a time when they may be juggling mortgages and the costs of rearing DC, and to have a buffer in case the state system can't keep up with the increasing proportion of elderly people.

But I'm greedy and entitled for making provision for my own future. Cool. Okay. 👍

True! However, for my age group I have sort of accepted that the age of retirement is going to be much higher than it was for boomers and even Gen X. I think most people my age have accepted this - people are living longer. Baby boomers did get a good deal in that they will (on average) live much longer than previous generations and have a much longer retirement (on average) than the original pension intended. That's fine. I don't think all boomers had easy lives in the past or now. It would be wrong (and not possible) to randomly order a load of pensioners back to work. However, because of the longer life expectancy V retirement age that life-long benefit will pay out far more than they put in for most boomers.

Younger generations who will be retiring later will include a proportion of people whose bodies give out before they hit retirement age just as some of todays 65 year olds are in fragile health. The irony is that those people will be "benefit recipients" and therefore "scroungers" whereas someone from a previous generation would be on their pension by then and therefore "virtuous" and completely deserving of support. Equally, while I am sure some people below the age of 40 on sickness benefits are scroungers many are ill through no fault of their own. And some are actually waiting for NHS treatment and unable to work for that reason. Some will be people who worked through Covid (as nurses, doctors, delivery drivers) while others were sheltering in place and contracted long Covid as a result.

You seem to want to put one group of people into a box that makes them completely safe from accusations of scrounging. While making quite negative generalisations about others. Or at least saying that "sacrifices must be made" but only by those you deem inherently sacrificial. The problem is, other people will be doing the same thing but the people they deem sacrificial might include your sacred cows. And then it will just be a tangle of different grievances competing.

Oh OK. So you won't want a pension when you retire then? What a ridiculous, ignorant comment.
You are embarrassing yourself.
I know it's hard to imagine but you do realise you will get older one day too?

I was answering the posters question of "Once again, if pensions weren’t intended for lifelong support, what were they intended for?"

I was answering the posters question of "Once again, if pensions weren’t intended for lifelong support, what were they intended for?" Please read properly before you lash out, i am on the side of the pensioner.

So will you want to claim your pension then? Or not?

What the hell!! I was replying to her question!!!

Yes of course i will?! I don't understand your beef?