I’ve easily found £30bn of savings, so why can’t the government do this?

[OwnGravityField]

How about this state pension adjustment proposal?

Currently, the state pension system pays the same to everyone, even to households with very large private pensions and investment incomes. Much of this money ends up funding luxuries.

The proposal is simple:
*full SP for everyone who depends on it (60% of pensioners)
*households with more than £12,000 a year from private pensions, work, or investments have 50p of SP withdrawn for every £1 above that level, up to the value of the pension itself
*A quarter of pensioners would only have a modest reduction, and only the wealthiest 15% would no longer receive a publicly funded pension they do not need.

I used chatGPT to do the calculations.

Savings? THIRTY BILLION A YEAR

That’s 1% of GDP

List of things that could improve?

restored trust between generations so young taxpayers see their money spent on genuine need, not luxury.

national renewal: homes, NHS, lower childcare costs, investment in schools, training, the police force. It could be used to help families who are struggling with mortgage costs.

re-directing spending from low-value consumption (luxuries, imports) to investment (homes, healthcare, infrastructure) improves living standards

Positive effect on the bond markets, sterling value, credit-rating agencies, inflation trends, reduction in government debt - the UK really really needs this right now

I’d absolutely get up off my bum and vote for a party that proposed this. Would you?

I shall decline your kind offer, I don't think your advice is worth the money.

Another idea for those who work and save hard to support those who don’t.

Those with the broadest shoulders are fed up.

Excellent idea, I have enough in my private pensions to cover retirement. When can I stop paying NI? I also want a refund for all the NI contributions I have thus paid. While you’re at it, I want a refund on 20% VAT and whatever % my taxes pay for state education since my children don’t use state school.

I know I’m missing the point of this thread (and the terrible idea) but I’d love to know how much of this black hole could be filled with departmental savings in government - they waste billions every year.

The NHS included, my sister in law recently mentioned how her department ordered some chairs for a conference room, the chief exec didn’t like the colour - instead of sending them back the original ones where thrown onto a disused room whilst new ones in a nicer shade of the same colour were ordered. If ‘working people’ are expected to pay more, this sort of nonsense needs to stop too!

See the original calcs. Teachers and doctors minimally affected.

Retired doctor here. Under your proposal I would lose my state pension entirely. Someone with private pensions of £36K plus £12K state pension would see their income of £48K reduced to £36K which is a 25% income reduction. I don't regard a 25% reduction in income as being minimally affected by this crazy proposal.

Op you sound like the chatGPT search you wanted to run was "would it be a good economical strategy for the UK to shoot everyone who lives to 65"

Agree - wouldn't hugely surprise me if this made an appearance in the Autumn budget.

Sorry, married couples have not all received £150 each. We had £100 each.

I doubt you could afford me if you can’t see the value in Providing for yourself versus claiming £3600 per year in universal Credits

Were some pensioners not working class then?

I'm 65. I had my first baby in 1994. Mat leave was 26 weeks: 18 were paid; six at 90%, 12 at £50. I was back at work when my baby was 18 weeks. Only 7% of my generation went into HE, about 4% to university. MIL had DH in 1962. She was a teacher, she had to leave the Easter before he was born in August because it was considered undignified for dc to see a big bump. She had no right to return to her job. Her DH born in 1929 had little medical care prior to 1947 despite a serious accident when he was 10.

Many families in the 60s had outside toilets and no bathrooms. Few had central heating.

Thank goodness that in those days we knew the difference between their and there, even if we weren't university material. I dropped out of university. I have never been skint or struggled even without that privilege.

Sadly, you sound like an entitled moo with green eyes. I'm pleased my dc don't share your views.

OK, so I'll stop paying into my private pension, cash what I have in at 60 or earlier if I'm allowed, take my 25% tax free allowance (if that hasn't been thieved off me by then), cut my hours and stress at work to bring down my salary and tax liabilities, draw pension out at lowest possible tax liability but maximum to drain it over 8 years, draw it out as cash regularly and hoard it under the floorboards, buy precious metals and other things as small off grid investments, then claim full state pension at 68 because I'm now destitute on paper.

It's a no from me. If you want £30bn in savings let's start with cutting the benefits bill, the waste on DEI in the public sector and the money spent on housing asylum seekers

@Paetina totally agree

Just use ChatGPT 🙄

Therefore the problem is insoluble. The "I've paid my stamp" people who think NI contributions are their own personal savings plan

This is why NI should be abolished and income tax adjusted accordingly. And it's something that - before manifesto writing happens - there should be a cross party consensus on, so it can't be used as leverage.

Unless you think "tax the rich" will actually work. As if "the rich" will keep handing over ever increasing sums of money.

You do have to claim it. I know two people who have passed state retirement age and have not yet claimed it. Both are very wealthy.

I think welfare should be directly linked to how much tax you have paid.
If you have paid in very little then you are entitled to very little.

As usual net contributors get penalised, I find this sort of pseudo socialism being peddled as a solution is getting really tedious.

Thank you. Somebody has already pointed this out. I thought it just got sent to you.

I might be wrong but it surely only changes from a certain point onwards, not retrospectively. In the nhs it changed a few years ago but someone my age who is still some way off pension age could still have had 20 years built up in a final salary scheme rather than a career average. So they will have two pension schemes running if they’re still working.

Plus the mcloud remedy means they can choose for their pension between I think 2015 and 2020 whether it’s career average or final salary…..I’m very hazy on those details. But I do know for sure that I have 2 final salary schemes (one private sector and one nhs) and a career average scheme (nhs).

If you do this people will adjust their behaviour accordingly. They won’t save into private pensions.
In addition, you will be removing many people’s incentive to work at all.
I also think administering the scheme (eg means testing pensioners) would be extremely expensive and complicated.
People who have paid national insurance have been encouraged to consider the state pension theirs by right. This would be seen as theft. It would be a breach of trust between the government and the people.

Supposedly this is how benefits work in some European countries. I'm always puzzled by this though? I mean what do they do about people who haven't paid anything in? Are they just destitute?
We had a Ukrainian family living with us a while ago. They claimed UC when they arrived. It was a mum and primary school aged child. The mum fully expected benefit payments to stop after six months (as in Ukraine apparently) and had thought she'd go home if that happened. She was very pleasantly surprised to hear they have no end date.

Get rid of all quality improvements in the NHS, they don't improve anything, they slow clinical staff down and it's a jolly for the "officers" doing these roles.
I recently worked with a Band 7, QI officer who spent her days collating a file of local resources (took her 18 months). There are already fab national Apps (Hub of Hope!) that do this. It would have been a nice project for a sixth form health care student.
Absolute piss take.

Oh those greedy pensioners on £12k a year private pensions who have paid there full national insurance stamp, Christ I could maybe understand if you wanted to means test pensioners with 6 figure pensions but private pensions that would barely pay the rent on a bedsit, (because less and less people will be home owners in the future), WTAF....

But before even considering any mean testing pensions, how about collecting billionaire and corporate tax evasion, which completely dwarfs £30 billion a year!

If someone actually tackled THAT then I'd be voting for them and dragging every soul I knew to the ballet box, not for further putting the screws on the working and middle class whilst the richest in society absolutley fuck us over and have us at each others throats for the scraps.

Not true. My civil partner and I both got letters telling us we'd each get £100 (not the amounts you suggest). The letters state that if your gross income is above £35k (mine is), they will claw it back. We had planned to give it all to charity, so will now give £100 (plus an extra £100 because it's nearly Christmas).

I''ve no idea where these other amounts are coming from or going to!