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It seems likely that in due course, the universal state pension will be withdrawn.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.

My friends in their 60s and 70s all worked full time and had children. My mum, who would be 92 now, and most of her friends, didn’t.

I think the boomer period is quite different to other generations in that it came at a very unique period of history, after the second world war, and the experiences of those born in 1946 will be almost unrecognisably different from those born in 1964!

Most mums I knew, and my kids were born very early 70s, worked around their husband’s job so that one parent was usually around after school. My husband worked away at times, I did agency work when he was home. Friends worked in pubs, chippies etc until the children were old enough to be home alone after school. Most of our neighbours, like us, weren’t locals, so we didn’t have the luxury of grandparents and other extended family helping out.

I agree. Someone born in 1964 is far nearer my children’s age than mine, born 1946.

I agree too. My parents were old for the time - born 1916 and 1918. I was born in 1953 and my son in 1975, the youngest boomers are equidistant in age from both of us and probably have more in common with him.

Your mother may not have worked but most women did. They were sacked for being pregnancy or even getting married but working class women overwhelmingly worked in a patchwork of jobs, often out of hours. I remember my mother being so annoyed at being listed in the census as “housewife” or “domestic duties” when she was pulling nearly as many paid hours as DF (albeit for much lower pay). Cleaning, bar work, shift work, looking after the children of other women, piece work done from home etc. This was not “pin money” it was core to the family income.

I didn’t know any women who were the housewives of sitcoms. They were the posh families.

Its also worth remembering how much work was involved in running a home. I was a 60s baby - my DM had no washing machine and laundry was a full day's hard physical labour at least once a week. Even when a commercial launderette opened she would only use it in Winter to dry sheets due to the cost. Freezers were non existent (even our tiny fridge was a luxury - many friends only had “meat safe” type things. Shopping was a daily job involving multiple shops and the market - no convenience foods, no prepacked peeled veg. Oh and nappies were cloth. Vacuum cleaners were expensive - my DM like most used elbow grease.

And of course families were larger. Better contraception started to become available by the earlier 60s but our family GP didn’t believe in it (which nearly killed my DM and is the reason for my youngest sibling) and we didn’t have the option to go private. Most of the families I knew had at least four children to be washed, fed, clothed and housed.

Then of course there were the weekly trips for my mother and many of the others to the Brompton children’s chest clinic with me, along with half my class who also lived in the damp overcrowded housing. London - city of culture and parks or if you didn’t have money - city of overcrowded damp housing and 20 minutes walk to see a blade of grass.

And of course the deal then was that the married man’s tax/NI paid for his wife which is why men often got a pay rise on marriage. Plus women paid tax and NI on their casual work.

It always amazes me that on a supposedly women centred supportive site (hah!) people are so quick to denigrate the work and contributions made by women’s unpaid labour and dismissed it as “not working”. Then as now, the better off do nicely, the less well off struggle.

@C8H10N4O2 I was talking about work in the context of paying tax and national insurance. Nothing to do with a broader discussion about whether or not the contributions of mothers should be better recognised by society as a whole. Believe me as a single mother to two DC who has had to work full-time, I'd love to see motherhood properly valued by society!

So I’m in my mid 40’s and I am lucky in that I have a decent workplace (private sector) pension. However I it won’t be enough on its own to retire on (even after 40+ years paying in) because I work in a department where earnings are typically quite low, and because I have worked slightly under full time for years to keep childcare costs down a bit. I have always been told that my workplace pension would be in addition to a state pension, and that I should work out my predicted income in retirement as a total of the two combined.
i don’t know how i could possibly have saved into a private pension on top of my workplace pension deductions and NI contributions, because of the costs of living - childcare costs even with me working part time still over £1000 a month.

How many children did she raise?

Bloated?

I’ve thought this ever since starting work at 17, I’m 30 now. I think that when they started making companies have work pensions that’s when more suspicion crept in for me.

Luckily I work for NHS so my pension is not half bad as my husbands is for working in retail management, but it does at times become a worry, especially even more so for our children (1 on the way and the hopes of becoming a family of 4 in future).

Definitely scary stuff!

My grandmother on one side had one child and didn't work after getting married - unlike the grandmother on the other side who was very unusual for her generation in working after marriage (she had two children and died aged 68) my grandmother on the other side lived until she was 98. She worked for nine years and received a state pension for 38 years.

Fair it definitely isn't, and nobody honest pretends it is. It's meant to ensure dignity in old age. The problem is that people have been entitled to it from a decade or more before they're old, and having paid for that subsequent generations are not realistically able to be sure they'll get a state pension at all - and if they do they'll have to work many extra years first.

Yes. Bloated.

When it was set up, the state pension was about 2% of GDP, it’s now 8%.

The number of taxpayers to pensioners is decreasing due to demographics. There aren’t enough taxpayers to fund the current system unless you bump up retirement age to 71 in the next 25 years. This thread has already discussed why this isn’t realistic.

The triple lock has caused large increases in costs- it’s expected to cost £15.5 billion more than initially expected by 2030.

Spending on pensions already outstrips education spending, defence and public order.

It’s not sustainable.

I don’t know what the answer is. Current pensioners will argue they’re entitled to it because they ‘paid into their pot’, but it never was ‘their pot’- they were paying for retirees when they were working, and current workers are paying for today’s pensioners. If politicians try and set up some sort of cut off date (eg by 2040 the state pension will be vastly reduce etc) then there will understandably be backlash from current workers who will be expected to continue ‘paying in’ for pensions which the gov have explicitly stated won’t exist for them when they retire.

Look, I feel the same. My MIL worked for about a year when she was 16, and then got married and that was the last of it. She's 88.

But it was different times.

I don't know what she gets as an income as I would never be rude enough to ask, but she has a lovely home. Council. She does have her home lovely, through a number of ways. Nothing illegal! She's a wee catholic woman.

But sometimes, eg, when she got a new kitchen, new central heating, then new windows, it grates a bit, because I had to pay for all those things with her son and we have both worked since we left school! Plus she got her pension at 60. I won't get it until I'm 67. Plus her council tax is free and I need to pay mine - I could go on...

BUT, I gave my sons house deposits, they are both high earners who were supported by us for degrees, masters etc, they will get an inheritance,though none of them need it and tbh, as much as there were times I hated my work, I mainly loved it and I have a great circle of friends that I met at work and her friends = 0. Plus she has two sons on benefits.

It's swings and roundabouts and there is no point resenting the generation above you, because it gets you nowhere.

They are a product of their times.

The only people who think public sector pensions are not generous are people who have never worked in the private sector.

If she doesn’t pay council tax it’s possible she’s on pension credit rather than full state pension. Anyone is entitled to pension credit if they have low income.

You need to remember that back them most men Didnt want their wives to work, it reflected badly on their ability to provide. Let’s not be misogynistic to SAHM of the past.

I think she will be.

👏👏👏

What's the alternative though? We can't keep borrowing - we're already 3 TRILLION in debt and paying over £100 BILLION per year in interest on that debt - more than our education spending - so we're basically borrowing just to pay interest. It's not sustainable.

The alternative isn’t a return to workhouses.

So what is the alternative? Please don't respond with what it's not.

Not workhouses - but a return to cottage hospitals or similar. They would be NHS/council run and would be basic but decent. The council would cease to fund places in private care homes.

If you can pay, selling your house or whatever, then you (or rather your relatives) can choose somewhere with a private room etc, but there would be a basic offering for all.

Mil was actually for a while in one of the remaining cottage hospitals and it was fine! In fact it was better for advanced dementia patients imo with long wards rather than being shut away in rooms. But mil was ejected (“Can you self-fund?”) and it was a real struggle to find anywhere to take her. And when she was accepted into a care home she was the only person paying!

It so is not. DH is NHS and has a stonkingly brilliant pension, index-linked, for life. He’s currently on £180k pa and expects to retire on half that. Not just yet, unfortunately for me.

Public sector pensions are going to fuck the economy eventually, because we’ve kicked the can down the road for so long. I would agree that the SP needs reform, but the optics of leaving the insane £100k pa pensions of wealthy retired doctors well alone while pinching Doris’ £184 a week are career-ending for any PM.

Will he apply for the state pension?