Govt considering u-turn on WASPI compensation

[Ticklyoctopus]

https://news.sky.com/story/government-to-reconsider-whether-to-give-compensation-to-waspi-women-13468696

Oh God no 😖😖😖😖

I mean if we're going to talk about entitled whiners the waspi women win hands down. I don't see the current generation demanding compensation.

Just possibly because there is absolutely nothing that they should be compensated for? The Financial Ombudsman recommended that the Waspi women should be compensated. Labour in opposition were all for it. Now not so much.

I agree, they just will not accept they had the country’s best financial years and if they pissed them away it isn’t our problem. I suspect most are wealthy money grabbers however who lack self awareness on a stratospheric level.

Or just because no other demographic is so large with so much free time...

I think the point is, many of those who will effectively be paying for this compensation through their own contributions won't be 'getting there' in terms of collecting a state pension themselves at 65.

I doubt the average working 25 year old will see anything before they are 70, if at all. How many now are paying into a pension pot they may never benefit from at all.

Where will their compensation be, I wonder, for funding the WASPI women's injustice claim for a group of women all now in receipt of a pension today's under 30s probably won't get at all?

All this talk of 15% mortgages and pension discrimination is irrelevant. Go make a campaign to compensate everyone who had to pay 15% on their mortgages if that's so important to you (I would assume this affects a much wider set of people than only women born specifically from 1950 to 1953 or whatever).

The only relevant intergenerational comparison is the state of the public finances between then and now, and the total pension bill between then and now.

When young people say "we don't expect to get a pension" it's not because we think that people aren't "banding together in unity to fight for our rights together" or whatever. It's because we can see the writing on the wall re: the numbers no longer adding up.

This is pensioners though. You lot carry on not giving a shit about them until you get there. Then it will be, oops “I wasn’t careful what I wished for”!

I made this point up thread.
This pitting generation against generation is a sneaky way of getting younger people to vote against todays pensioners then it will be " but that's what you wanted" when it's their turn.
Once those rights are gone they are gone.

It's taken an immature turn now with people who should know better calling each other whiners so Im off .

There's loads that younger people have lost/missed out on, but the very nature of their young age naturally means that they can't be given much notice.

You can't warn people 30 years in advance that they're going to be whacked for debt for life for going to university - rather than getting it completely free (and maybe even being paid to do so - when it's something that most people commit to before they're 20 years old.

You can't give a baby 30 years notice that the child trust fund that children born before them were given has now been (quietly) taken away from them.

Essentially, it's only because people have been able to have such a long time to prepare and get used to changed circumstances that somebody else can be blamed for not holding their hands through it decades before.

👏👏

Because the current generation are the ones least likely to receive anything themselves. It is highly unlikely that anyone under 25 today will receive any sort of state pension before 70, if at all.

Those of us coming up to retirement now, or already in retirement paid our dues in good faith that we'd get our turn in receiving.

You already have, and I still will receive. In order to receive, you and I need enough people working to make that happen. If those young working parents have to lose an income, it affects what you and I will receive in terms of state pension. So it pays us to facilitate this. Paying you and I a pension doesn't benefit today's youth if they'll not be receiving anything back.

It's not a guaranteed reciprocal arrangement anymore. That's the difference.

I can see why that would cause prices to double. Except they haven't, they've trebled.

I've just looked at the WASPI website. They have a couple of really bizarre tickers right at the top.

The first of them counts the number of WASPI women who've died since 2015 - as though it's presumably the government's fault that people who could have lived for 65 or more years might now be coming/have come to the end of their lives.

The second is 'Money saved by the Treasury'. I don't know if this is referring to the (quite obvious, you'd have thought) fact that the government doesn't continue paying a pension to the WASPI women - or indeed to anybody - for you to live on after you've died?

Alternatively, assuming that nobody quibbles with the uncontroversial statement that no more people born nowadays can possibly be born before 1960 (i.e. they can't be born in a year that ended 65 years before they were born)... considering that, in their own words, they say "Compensation would be for the lack of notice women received, not the loss of State Pension", I don't see how the amount is continually increasing - bearing in mind that the time when they would presumably have been expecting notice has long since passed; and also that, as the number of surviving WASPI women is naturally declining, that would be fewer people still around who are lifelong traumatised by any lack of notice, wouldn't it?

Because when interest rates were low repayments were also low and banks began lending not only on two incomes but larger multiples of those two incomes.

Also the 'help' that the OP wants seems to be financial. The bank of mum and dad contributing house deposits has also added to house price inflation.

Not sure the OP was wanting help (unless I missed that?) Just doesnt want to end up paying for compensation for the 'waspi' women.

Quote from OP 'and finally our parents .........have fucked off ( Or they have in my case ) and are sunning themselves abroad whi!e we struggle. While I get they're not legally obliged to help us'......

I think she thinks they should help.

But it won't BE 'their turn', will it? State pensions will never be, for under 30s, what they are for over 65s today. IF they get anything it will likely not be until 70 at the earliest.

This it what young people are faced with. They know it. So surely you can understand why they might feel aggrieved that, on top of the fact that they are contributing towards a pension pot they will either not benefit as much from or not receive at all, their tax money is potentially now footing the bill for something they had no part in.

I'm old enough to be confident I'll get state pension, though it won't be until I am 68. 3 years later than the Waspis. If I wasn't, rest assured, if it's still an option, I'd be contracting out of SERPS.

It's not a reciprocal arrangement any more. People under 30 know if they want a pension worth anything, they've got to do it themselves. A chunk taken out of their salary for a WPP PLUS a chunk taken out to pay for other people's pensions. People who gave in the knowledge it would one day be 'their turn' even if later than expected.

Today's under 30s have no such expectations.

I'm nearly 50 and I reckon the state pension will be means tested by the time I get there.

Exactly. It's not going to be a triple-lock, guaranteed even if you have a nice private pension income, like it is today. It's not sustainable.

Hear hear. I’m mid 30s and always been fully aware that NI is paying for the benefits (including pensions) and NHS today. It’s not for ‘my’ pension pot. MY pension pot is a separate fund I pay into from my salary every month.

I doubt there will be a state pension when I get there , I have no illusions I will live my whole life again and not be receiving a state pension. Any state support in 30+ years will depend on the future government at the time, and will come from workers who are not even born yet. And there won’t be enough of them when we look at the current birth rates - we will need more and more immigration to plug the gap (and that will create even more future pensioners…)

Governments should have seen this all coming during the baby boom years, but it was always tomorrow’s problem.

🤣

Precisely. So why should your generation be footing the bill in addition to all that for a blanket compensation payment that won't even be means tested?

I suppose for the same reason that I pay tax and help to pay for subsidised childcare for two income families although we never benefited from that. And the same reason that our taxes helped to pay for schools although our children never went for even one day to state schools.

Everyone pays in, everyone to a greater or lesser degree takes out.

But the difference with that is that you benefit from more adults working. If you are a pensioner now, if those adults weren't working, where would your pension come from?

I don't even have children, yet I can see the wholesale benefit to the nation of every child receiving some level of education. You chose to send your children to private school. If you had found yourself unable to do that, the state safety net was there. Your children wouldn't have been without any sort of education. You paid for a safety net. Just like I pay for those on benefits in the knowledge that that safety net will be there for me if I am ever unfortunate enough to need it.

Pension payments are no longer that safety net. OK, it's never been an absolute guarantee, but now it's no guarantee at all.

The 30 something pp doesn't have a choice about whether to contribute to a private pension fund of some sort. She doesn't have the safety net of a state pension. She'll likely be solely reliant on what she has paid in to her own pension through work etc. Yet she, like you and me, will also have paid into it.

It won't be that she can say, 'well, luckily I have never needed it's, it may not be there even if she did. It's a safety net she doesn't have.

Yes. Older people are continually telling me "you just have to fight for it, don't let them erode it" but if the maths doesn't work out... it doesn't matter how much we clap for it. We are just acknowledging the reality of that.

And then the incentives switch, because if you are fairly sure it won't be there in 50 years, you might as well hope you only pay for other people for the shortest amount of time, rather than paying in your whole life and having it taken away just before it gets to you. A bit cold perhaps, but rational. We are not being "tricked into voting away our rights" or something. We would like to start sooner rather than later on acknowledging the new reality.

In a way this is something that WASPIs should agree with - if there is no money, surely better to admit it sooner rather than later so people have longer to plan?

For every clear-eyed 30yo in this thread I'm sure there are several more out there who are actively planning around a triple-locked non-means-tested state pension at age 68.

This is a brilliant post.

I’m tired of being told to ‘fight for things’ in a way that makes it sound like they’re being eroded due to flimsy transient politics, rather than because they’re a financial impossibility.

It’s such a glib, disingenuous way of trying to sidestep any kind of acknowledgement that we simply will not have massive benefits that previous generations had, and therefore rather than heaping all the ‘unfairs’ onto the under 50s, perhaps the things we can control should be distributed in a way that everyone takes a hit.

I honestly think the over 65s simply have no clue what it’s like to be a youngish working person now. My MIL is convinced young people should just stop spending money on ‘fancy mobiles and coffees’ to buy a house. She absolutely will not acknowledge that the exact same profession FIL had (he was military so we can pinpoint the rank etc) would NOT buy the same house next door to hers now, even with a 20% deposit they just would not be granted the loan. She just won’t accept it. She doesn’t want to.