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!!

I don't think I have confused occupational pensions and state pensions. I agree that I didn't mention the employer's NIC (which was my mistake!) but the employer's NIC is a tax, isn't it? It's not a contribution to the employee's state pension and has no bearing on the occupational pension.

Employee NICs are taxes too. They aren't pension contributions. The state pension is not a pension scheme - it's a benefit.

Threads don't need the OPs permission to continue. Same way the OP can't demand people reply.

If everyone receiving a state pension twigged it was no different to ESA or PIP or any of the myriad benefits the state makes available then it's possible the political discourse in this country would be completely changed.

All NI is just a tax really - it just goes in to a big old treasury black hole of spending.

All the paper distinction is useful for is determining eligibility for contributions based benefits like contributions based JSA and the state pensions.

@SerendipityJane indeed - that is why it is always impossible to "cut the benefits bill" massively because no government likes to admit the lion's share of the benefits bill is old age benefits, primarily the state pension.

My opinion is that about 40 or 50 years ago some statisticians working for the government we're pointing out that the increase in life expectancy was going to cause a problem. Small changes should have been brought in gradually to contributions and retirement age over the last five decades. Governments of all political parties ignored this because they knew addressing it would be a vote loser.

And here we are today with a situation there is completely unsustainable.

It seems to me that one or two generations of people are going to have to take the hit in order to adjust things.

So what does everyone think is the solution?

I know. I have said in a previous post on this very thread that employee NIC is not a contribution to state pension and, in my second post, that state pension is a benefit. You are agreeing with what I have already said.

Don't you feel that you should be among those taking the hit? A joint effort?

The only group of people robbing anyone blind are current pensioners themselves who, by virtue of being far more likely to vote, have granted themselves an ever-increasing share of the benefits pie through the triple lock, which current taxpayers cannot afford.

Probably yes in all fairness!

But I do think now that my now National Insurance record is completely full, it would be a bit harsh to change the goalposts on me!

It is a benefit, though. Not other people's fault that you don't understand that.

So then we run headlong into Janes law of life (one of many).

Something isn't changing ? Cui bono ?
Something is changing ? Cui bono ?

So who gains from pushing the narrative that pensions aren't the same as (say) disability benefits ? Obviously an actor who wants pensioners to vote to slash benefits. Did I say slash benefits ? How careless of me. What I should have said is introduce byzantine mechanism to "assess" and "manage" claims overseen by megacorps that are paid more than the spending they save in contracts, bonuses and Wimbledon tickets.

It is harsh. But you should take it up with those who failed to plan for demographic changes. Not young people, whose pensions you did not fund. The goal posts have changed for us all sadly.

They could cut the benefits bill by more than £120 million a year by scrapping the £10 Christmas bonus (think how many nurses or teachers that could pay for!), but governments are too scared to even suggest that 🙄

That would be politicians in the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies.
They're all dead.

My apologies - wasn't tracking usernames within the thread and your comment on its own looked like you were distinguishing between e/er and e/ee NICs.

🤔

Objection !

"Robbing" is illegal. Voting is not (yet).

You can't blame pensioners for cottoning on PDQ which way the wind blows and realising the power of their vote.

I mean it's hardly as if they have been keeping the secret of voting for themselves is it ? Even before I first voted, it was a fact that the younger people tended not to vote. And frankly if that means they have been shafted since it's a little hard to sympathise. No one was stopping them voting.

Considering the absolute outrage over the means testing of WFA, I think the message has been sent loud and clear that pensioners are currently untouchable - there's a lot of them, who vote, with loud voices, who can make themselves heard through the media. Which leaves the younger generation to try to make up the shortfall.

This money was supposed to be in a securely locked box, not to be used as part of the Government's general funds.

It was never thus.

I'm 70 and started work at 15 - I worked for 51 years before I received my State Pension at 66 and that's just how it is.

Who wrote your carefully crafted screed?

Exactly 💯

Are you not aware of demographics? Pensioners outnumber the young. The proposal to reduce the voting age is an attempt to address this, but is being fought tooth and nail by those with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

Frankly £120 million a year is peanuts compared to getting companies like Vodafone to pay £1billion in tax that managed to get lost in the post.

But it is a Benefit. It's a contributory benefit.
Your contributions that you diligently made, paid for your parents and grandparents. The younger generation will pay for your pension. And the birth rate is falling which is why they talk of the pension being unsustainable. There will be more retirees taking benefits from the system than workers paying into it.

So much bollocks in your OP @FlubandSlub.

You can't complain when the asked for parity of treatment means you can't still retire at 60. You're likely to live into your 80s. NI has never been invested for anyone. The Pensions Act 1995 set out that women would no longer retire at 60.

Really every government since the 40s is complicit. And to some extent the electorate. It was hardly a secret that the boomers were a large generation- hence the nick name.