To be angry with people who describe the old age pension as a "benefit"?

[FlubandSlub]

When I started my working life, aged 16, I entered into an agreement with the government for them to save my pension money for me. It was stated that it would be until I turned 60 which would be when I could starting drawing my old age pension. Even though I made my FULL pension payment contributions by the time I turned 51 the government has decided it will not abide by the original agreement and that it is going to keep MY money until I am 67. Probably hoping I will die before then.

Consider this, not only did I contribute to my pension, my employer did too. It totalled 15% of my income before taxes. If you averaged only £15 000 p a. over your working life, that's close to £220,500. Read that again. Did you see anywhere that the Government paid in one single penny?

We are talking about the money that I and my employer put in a Government bank to ensure that I would have a retirement pension. It was not money that the Government had any right to spend on other things! Upon reaching the age to take it back they've started to call the money we paid in a "benefit" !

If you calculate the future invested value of £2500 per year (yours & your employer's contribution) at a simple 5% interest (that's less than what the govtpays on the money that it borrows from overseas), after 49 years of working you'd have
£892,919.98.

This money was supposed to be in a securely locked box, not to be used as part of the Government's general funds.
Successive governments borrowed the money to spend on other things but that doesn't make my pension some kind of charity or handout!! If a private pension company did this we would sue them. Unfortunately the Government can legally rob us blind and get away with it

IT'S MY MONEY! IT IS NOT A BENEFIT!!

Exactly! ‘Equality’ and ‘equitability’ are not the same thing! The former allows me to try to enter a building that is only accessible via stairs, whilst in my wheelchair, because it’s the same for everyone. The later would put a damned ramp in place!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crkz1j18g0do

@SerendipityJane I was so shocked when I read that! Thank you for sharing.

Frankly I'm surprised it was news. It's a mere microcosm of what tens of thousands of people face every waking hour. They don't get a headline. They get told to stop whinging, get off their backsides and off benefits.

In Australia every employee is required to put money aside in a special pot that does have their name on it and is invested on their behalf to draw on when they retire. Much more sensible system. The UK one always felt too much like placing a huge amount of trust in the Government making good on their promises in the far distant future.

To be fair the UK was a global empire when it was 1948. The idea the money could run out wasn't really a thing

Also, you just have to accept that part of "being British" is doing things "The British Way".

For example when loads of free money was found in the North Sea, it would have been entirely possible to do what Norway did, and immediately invest it into a sovereign fund to underwrite state benefits.

However that was far to foreign for British tastes where the preference was just to suck it all in to the treasury and use it like regular money.

Same with the selling off of council housing stock. It would have been the work of an afternoon, to have required proceeds from the sales to be put towards building more council houses. However that was just unBritish donchaknow.

It's amusing how many people who are so fiercely proud of being British seem so unhappy with the results of being British.

I apologise to more discerning readers for a rather indiscriminate use of "British". I suspect had Scottish people been allowed a say, they would have preferred a sovereign fund. But as we know, they don't count.

Sorry - not aimed at you specifically. Just commenting in general because that seems to be the general opinion on benefit threads on MN.

I agree. the selling off of council housing stock was one of the most short sighted acts - dressed up as giving people autonomy. It was done under Thatcher’s rule - not surprising she sold off social housing stock because basically she didn’t believe in society.

As part of my job I accompanied PIP claimants to assessments and you would be surprised (or maybe not) at the amount of times the assessment couldn’t take place because the premises were inaccessible to the disabled person, or a toilet wasn’t available to those who had continence issues. There were some really spectacular fails where wheelchair users would find themselves faced with flights of stairs and no lift, after travelling for an hour or more to the nearest available assessment centre, or there would be no parking facilities for miles - none of which were communicated to the disabled person in advance.

There were a few occasions where the claimants benefits were stopped as a result because the circumstances weren’t recorded properly and they were deemed to have failed to attend. It usually took a formal complaint and weeks of waiting to have benefit reinstated and to organise another assessment.

It’s been a while since I retired and I sincerely hope that the situation has improved because in my experience the lack of respect with which claimants were treated was appalling. Most people have no conception that sick and vulnerable are treated with such lack of care unless/until they have experienced the system for themselves.

I expect she didn't believe in the concept of social housing in general but also wanted to buy votes from the boomer generation. She was incredibly successful there and managed to integrate her destructive ethic into many people's way of thinking. It is only now, a couple of generations later that we see the fruit of her mistakes becoming visible to nearly everyone. It's interesting that those who often seem to complain the very loudest belong to the generation that has clearly benefitted the most from her politics and those that have followed her.
I think what @SerendipityJane was saying is that British arrogance and a total lack of ability to adapt to changing circumstances has compounded the problems. I think that's fair. We can see it playing out currently in the political class in the UK and EU. It's depressing and embarrassing to watch.

You clearly don’t understand how your state pension works. Your pension is a state benefit which is being paid for by working people’s taxes - your taxes paid for previous generations pensions. You’re not going to get much sympathy here unless you educate yourself on the basics.

The employee's NI contribution isn't assigned to their own pension either, both theirs and the employer's NI contributions are swallowed up in one big giant pot.

The only thing that does count is the number of years you have paid NI contributions. That's what qualifies you for the state pension. So, unlike other benefits, you have to paid into to the system for years in order to become entitled to it. Which is why I'm saying it isn't a 'benefit' as such, because you are entitled to it irrespective of your other income after retirement.

Yes, we can see how well that has worked in the States, can't we.

^ is sarcasm in case you are one of those that doesn't 'get' sarcasm

I agree too, but you missed Marshall Aid. UK received more than twice as much as Germany. They built infrastructure and concentrated on productivity, we built...wait, it'll come eventually...I'm still thinking....NOTHING. We used it to subsidise the welfare state which we cannot now afford and cannot row back from.

Britain pissed away it's Marshall aid trying to keep the empire.

You can't get carer's allowance at all once you reach state pension age.

Eta: Apologies! I am wrong. I didn't realise that if SP is less than £83.30 CA is still payable to top SP up to CA rate.

How very generous, eh?

Where is the social contract written? Where is it something that people have signed up to? To say we cannot means test pensions because of some nebulous social contract is laughable. We have removed every other universal benefit but not pensions, why is changing that suddenly a problem? What a Government decides to do in terms of provision for its people changes whenever a different party comes in to power. The theoretical social contract is wildly different from what is was, another change makes no difference to that.

Why shouldn’t wealthy people who are earning and contributing be exempt from a state pension? They didn’t make all that money all by themselves. They have benefitted from the education system, the infrastructure, the Government subsidising their low wage employees with UC and sick pay, the economic success of a nation from government policy, not to mention tax breaks. The “I get nuffink from the government” high earning tax payers fail to see the broader picture of how they benefit off the backs of others.

I am a higher rate tax payer. If the government decided to make the state pension means tested by the time I get to retirement age so that those who haven’t been able to pay enough into a personal pension have enough to live on, I wouldn’t throw my toys out of the pram. What’s the alternative? At the moment it seems the alternative is to target vulnerable people and remove money they rely on to be able to live. If any wealthy person thinks that’s ok because of some bizarre principle, they need to have a word with themselves.

Where is the social contract written? Where is it something that people have signed up to?

It must be true, because it is so boring, but every election you get your chance to rewrite it - and indeed successive generations have.

This is what a lifetime of political ignorance, apathy and indifference gets you.

Errmm, raise taxes

Shouldn't that be NI contributions?

Im 63 so nearly same age as op, we were told that ni paid for current pensions but we needed to put away for our own pensions as well. Them they also moved the goal posts from 60 to 65 then 67. We also started work at 16 or in dh case he was 15 so will have paid NI and tax for 50 years by the time i retire,

Taxes are already at 50 year highs so they haven't got much ability to raise a lot more at this stage, although I'm sure they will try. I suspect they will attempt to tax wealth in some way but we will see. The other option, of course, is to reduce spending, and that includes reducing the state pension and scrapping the triple lock. That will nearly certainly come at some stage, although it will probably be forced by major gilt market dysfunction or similar.

Politicians lie. Surely everyone knows that by now! Younger people are unlikely to all get state pension and may well get nothing at all. Current pensioners and nearly pensioners are much more fortunate.

I'm pretty sure they will try, the gvnmt always go after the low hanging fruit instead of closing the many loopholes the "big boys" enjoy

Younger people are unlikely to all get state pension and may well get nothing at all.

I wouldn't like to be in the administration that catches that ball.