To think when the state pension is removed, the social contract is broken?

[JulyJulyNovember]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8e2yp1gg37o

It seems likely that in due course, the universal state pension will be withdrawn. At this point, I don’t see how there will be any incentive for young people to build wealth here.

I don’t think poor pensioners should be homeless, but I don’t think they should be provided for in large, unsuitable council houses or in nursing homes where places cost thousands a week. We are moving to a more individualistic world.

@6ate9 State pension isn’t the only benefit people get. It is however not means tested. Work pensions are mandatory so everyone has a separate pension if employed. The self employed need to save and many struggle to save enough. Young people are not well educated in money matters but those living at home can certainly save. Around me, dc have cars and quite a nice life. They don’t seem badly off at home.

There won’t be.

What happens to the money given to people who die before reaching retirement age?

Probably the same as what happens now. It goes back into the pot. Seems pointless it forming part of your estate as everyone else will have their own pot.

What would stop people making use of this money in their life?

The money is not for life, it's for retirement. Housing costs are a separate problem, unrelated to pensions.

Fact is, pensions cost £146 billion today. Under my plan, after 67 years, that cost would be zero forever. I think that is a decent long-term investment in our country.

Maybe not, but it’s going to be hard to sustain, due to an aging population and the rising financial burden placed on a proportionally smaller working age tax group.

Well then there will be a lot of elderly people dying in the streets. As well as entire families with small children and everyone with disabilities. Because it’s not just the elderly they’ll stop the money for right?

I said it earlier, we might end up going full circle and end up with workhouses again.

If there’s not enough people working, then there’s less money for pensions and benefits.

Only if people are stupid enough to vote for a government that would allow that to happen.

I can't imagine ever having had enough of living, unless I was very unwell indeed. Of course anyone can choose to end their life, but that poster didn't say that, they said they were going to refuse medications which could make their life better. If they refuse BP medication and have a stroke they aren't necessarily going to die, but could end up in a living hell for years. Great idea!

In my opinion that’s fine. As long as every non working person is treated the same. So no reasons or excuses why THEY should get some sort of “benefit” and be exempt from the workhouse. No “I’ve just had a baby and it’s not fair on the baby to grow up in a workhouse” or “I was born disabled so it’s not my fault I can’t work” or “I have autism and can’t live somewhere with lots of people as I’ll have constant meltdowns so I can’t live in a workhouse”. And so on. If you don’t work, you live in a workhouse. And that’s it. Quite honestly, I’d be up for trying that rule.

Quite, we shouldn't be shrugging our shoulders and saying "oh well" as if this isn't something that couldn't or wouldn't affect us. It has to be a combination and balance (not necessarily easy to achieve, I grant you) of individual responsibility and societal support and responsibility.

Same!!! But like you said, so many people are going to want to be exempt!!! The only way it would work is to have a dictatorship.

My Gran died last year aged 92. Living independently but with increasing difficulties till 6 months before she died when she fell and fractured her hip. Operation, several weeks in hospital before being moved to a care home. Absolutely hated it, hated the loss of independence and everything that came with being in a care home but could not be appropriately cared for at home.

For the last few weeks of her life she was mostly refusing food and water and medication. Telling everyone how she wanted to die and didn't understand why she'd lived this long.

She could have gone on for years if she'd wanted to. Her eldest sister died aged 99 4 months after surviving COVID in a care home in the first wave.

My Gran had had enough of living because it couldn't be on her terms anymore. That's fair enough.

The social contract was ripped up and spat on in 2020, in a multitude of ways, Partygate being one of the lesser ways.

I'm sure I know my own mother and her friends! I lived my whole childhood with her and in the company of my friends and their mothers etc. None of them worked when I was a child! I'm not saying that was the case for every single woman in the UK, but for my mother and her cohort it was the case. Of that I am sure.

I’m sorry about your Gran.. That’s what I want, to die on my own terms. I would rather have less years but good quality. I would refuse treatment .

I imagine it is the case, like now, it’s class and area dependent rather than age. My mum and all her friends were early boomers (born 46-52) and all worked most of their lives. My mum retired at 65 despite her official retirement age being 60. She worked freelance from home in the evenings doing medical typing stuff from when I was 1 and then went back to employed work when I was 6.

You do know anecdote isn’t reliable? I’m your mother’s generation and I don’t know a single woman who never worked after she had children. The only woman I know who didn’t work until retirement age or beyond was medically retired in her early 50s. The women you know are aptypical.

@blossomtoes my mother is 92!

Then she’s not a boomer.

1928 -1945 born, known as the Silent generation. Boomers came after WWII.

Exactly.

And mothers to gen Xers who became the forgotten generation or latch-key kids as mothers started to go back to work in the 80s.

There’s a massive misunderstanding of generations on MN! Most parents of Gen X are boomers. Women had babies much younger in those days.

Thank you all. I hadn't realised exactly when boomers started. I do now. My mother was nearly 40 when she had us. Her cohort of fellow mothers would include mothers who were much younger and were been born after 1945. Our next door neighbour was 24 when she had her first baby, who is my age, and she didn't work. I still know her now and she is 79 (born in 1947) and has never worked.

Maybe there are boomer differences and early women boomers were less likely to work, whereas those born in the late 1950s and early 1960s were more likely to? However, regardless of precisely when they were born, I do know plenty of my own mother's friends and my friends mums who worked for very short periods of time before they had children and now claim pensions they would not have ever made sufficient contributions for.

Umm, my parents are both war babies and my siblings and I are all gen X. Ok they were slightly older, but not complte outliers - late 20s ti mid 30s whwn they had us. OH is an old gen X (born in 65) and his parent were both from the silent generation.