This is about everyone contributing. It isn’t about being heartless or treating them differently. It’s about having an honest conversation.
Pensioners do not stop using the NHS when they retire. They live longer, cost more, and many will need social care. Look at your council see where they are spending their money. Those costs do not disappear simply because people dislike acknowledging who is actually paying for them. The NHS and state pensions are not free. They are funded by today’s workers. Pushing ever-increasing costs onto younger and middle-earning taxpayers is not compassion, it is robbing Peter to pay Paul. Calling it ‘fair’ does not make it sustainable.
The welfare state should protect people from need, not guarantee comfort. A safe home, food, heat and healthcare are essentials. Netflix subscriptions, the latest iPhone or a PS5 for your children are not. Want and need are not the same thing.
Saving, private pensions and deferred gratification should not be punished to cover government failure. Yet we increasingly encourage the opposite, while showing open contempt for anyone who earns more, lives in a larger home or has made provision for retirement, often despite growing up in poverty or spending a lifetime on modest wages. Only the ‘poor’ are treated as morally worthy. People are nudged to spend rather than save, on the assumption that the state will step in later because they ‘paid in’, even when many were never net contributors, excluding the disabled and their carers. That simply shifts risk onto future taxpayers. You do not need to be Einstein to see that this system is not fit for purpose.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. There are threads on here where people encourage parents who have already taken more out of the system than they put in to spend everything because the state will pick up the tab. There are others where people are complaining about parents spending ‘their’ inheritance. There is no such thing as free state money, and inheritance is not a right.
If people are angry, they should direct it at governments that have known about demographic ageing for decades yet refused to reform, grow the economy or plan honestly, not at other taxpayers who already do more than their share.
The safety net the welfare state was meant to provide has given way to entitlement. Entitlement to other people’s money for comfort or to support lifestyle choices, whether through the welfare system or through expectations of inheritance.
Entitlement is slowly killing this country. What is needed is wholesale reform, not punishment. If we want to preserve a welfare state at all, we must manage the risks of an ageing society and ensure the connection between responsibility, contribution and reward is upfront and center.