45% of working age people not saving toward a pension at all

[FernFaery]

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2026/may/19/britons-not-saving-enough-retire-pensions-commission

Another looming crisis!

As am I.

Good!

Sorry, I’ve read that three times and I can’t understand it.

This isn’t true. It’s now illegal for any government to adversely change the terms of state pensions with less than ten years notice.

You may not be aware of this but Governments make the law. That’s their entire purpose: they are the legislature. They can, therefore, change the law at any point. Courts simply apply the law that Governments have put in place.

Oh look, the sneering’s reappeared. You’re teaching your grandmother how to suck eggs here.

No, a serious economy can’t rely on redistribution of wealth, which is why it needs to stop. Hence the fact that we need to stop giving £80-90bn of welfare annually to pensioners who have no need of it, on top of paying £100bn per year in interest on the debt run up by the same cohort, funded from current taxes when the economy is in decline and investment in productive parts of the economy such as education and infrastructure is desperately required in order to raise productivity and living standards for the future. That’s the entire point that is being made.

Nothing to say then about the discussion about the economy, just more personal attacks. How very predictable.

I can assure you that my grandmother was not remotely sneering and didn’t need teaching how to be so by the likes of you. She was a nice woman and had no interest in such things.

It wasn't an attack. It was an observation. You seem to see fellow human beings as economic factors rather than people who have lived lives, raised families, worked for 40+ years etc. There's a reason people celebrate those that have lived before them. They love them. You think they are "things" rather than people.

Life isn't all about money.

Neither is it economically sound for taxpayers to subsidise private companies by topping up minimum wage with Universal Credit, but it happens. When the NHS was founded there was no ‘pot’ of money to pay pensions (and remember there were thousands of soldiers returning from war unable to work) but the system worked on the basis that before retirement working people’s taxes contributed to the education and services for young people and when they went to work their taxes in turn contributed to pensions - always remembering that those people had contributed to their own pensions throughout their working lives. Successive governments of whetever colour have misused National Insurance income which was originally meant to cover healthcare and pensions - it is now just an extra tax. That is not the fault of pensioners. Neither is it fair to blame pensioners for the fact that their houses have risen in value to the extent that it has. During the late 60’s early 70’s high earners paid £19s 6d in the pound (meaning they had only 6d left) Amoungst ordinary people it was usual for there only to be one wage upon which mortgages were calculated. People did go without a lot of the’luxuries’ people expect now. The reason house prices to rose exponentially was when women returned to work, and mortgages were calculated on two wages, and lower tax rates. Had that not been the case house prices could not have risen so steeply. It all comes down to not being able to eat your cake…

on top of paying £100bn per year in interest on the debt run up by the same cohort, funded from current taxes when the economy is in decline and investment in productive parts of the economy such as education and infrastructure is desperately required in order to raise productivity and living standards for the future.

There are a few issues with this. Firstly the national debt was “run up” by governments on behalf of every cohort in the country. Secondly, this is how an economy works; I spent the first 34 years of my working life helping repay WW2 debt - that war ended long before I was born. Finally, investment in public services can only be achieved now by raising taxes, I’m perfectly happy to pay more tax but I’m in a distinct minority.

Thats easy to say when you are living on somebody else’s money.

If you love your elderly, you pay for them if they couldn’t/ wouldn’t/ shouldn’t save for themselves

Whose money am I living on as a matter of interest?

And me - I thought it was mine.

Ditto. However, I actually don't have a problem with benefits. It's no skin off my nose. People getting benefits doesn't impact on me and I would rather they got them than they didn't. Are there people taking the piss? Yes. But they are a very small minority. Benefit fraud is miniscule. Whereas tax evasion is huge.

.

That is a really unfair accusation as well. I don’t view people as “things”: that would imply sociopathy or psychopathy.

Caring about economics and responding about economics to a thread about economics doesn’t imply not caring about people. In fact, wanting changes to be made to improve productivity and living standards for people so that there is a hope of rising prosperity (or at least no further decline) for future generations demonstrates the precise opposite.

You'll forgive me for not replying in any constructive way I hope. Considering my last one was deleted.

That’s incorrect. Taxes cannot be raised further without further damaging productivity and accelerating the economic decline, as has been demonstrated very clearly over the last year or so.

You can’t tax your way to productivity, it’s nonsense.

The tax revenue currently raised needs to be spent more efficiently and a large proportion of it redirected to the areas of public spending that will generate productivity and growth, with significant reforms to our tax, welfare, healthcare and administrative systems to make them fit for purpose so that they are supporting the aim of raising productivity and living standards rather than undermining it, as I set out in my detailed post earlier this afternoon.

Sorry. We're done as you reported me.

It’s not incorrect. There are three ways for governments to raise money: borrowing, which is out of the question in the UK currently; cutting some services to pay for others, which has already been attempted with zero success; and raising tax, which is all that’s left if the first two are discounted.

There’s a very interesting interview with a highly respected economist on the latest edition of The News Agents podcast with some credible suggestions for reforming taxation. I recommend it.

You don’t seem to grasp that each of these methods has consequences itself and, therefore, at a certain point some of them become self-defeating and create worse outcomes on precisely the things they were intended to address e.g. raising national insurance on employers reducing business investment, lowering pay rises for those still employed and resulting in large numbers of redundancies and a shrinking employment market.

Cutting education budgets reduces productivity and increases long-term costs in welfare, lost tax revenue, creates lower growth, higher justice costs, etc.

Not having universal childcare provision increases welfare costs, lowers tax revenue, increases the reliance of women on state welfare in old age, damages productivity.

Having cliff edges in the tax system like the withdrawal of child benefit and the withdrawal of the personal allowance again reduces productivity (amongst the more productive members of society so even more self-defeating) because people respond to economic incentives/ disincentives and therefore people reduce working hours/ retire early/ emigrate increasing skills shortages and lowering productivity and tax revenue and again increasing welfare costs and housing costs etc. to the state.

Poor healthcare provision and the lack of preventative healthcare and screening increases the costs of maintaining a comparable level of overall population health because issues are identified and treated later which is more expensive to do and also means there is lost tax revenue and higher welfare costs to the state, etc.

Lack of investment in infrastructure and deliberately erecting trade barriers decreases investment and increases our trade deficit and makes the UK less attractive to invest to create jobs and businesses. We import a large proportion of our essential goods therefore decreasing our export markets/ creating barriers and additional costs will of course supress economic activity and lower wages because more people will be chasing fewer jobs and we will be importing large amounts of inflation, which will also raise our borrowing costs as the UK economic outlook is less favourable. Inadequate investment in infrastructure and education discourages business investment because businesses cannot rely on the skills and infrastructure being available and we have an unstable political and tax regime so they are understandably reticent to invest because there are too many risks to the long-term outcome and return on investment.

There are endless examples. It is all interconnected. It is not a question of “tax people even more and that’ll fix it”. That would make it even worse.

Productive areas of the economy must receive the investment they require (education, industrial strategy in cooperation with private businesses, reform of the tax system, and infrastructure). Directing over 50% of public spending to over 65s will not raise productivity and is not necessary - as I set out this can be changed and free up £80-90bn per year while creating ZERO poverty for any pensioner - and this could transform the UK economy over time if invested instead in productive areas of the economy and then living standards would start to rise again and economic growth could be generated.

This needs to happen and if it doesn’t then living standards relative to other countries will continue to drop.