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It seems likely that in due course, the universal state pension will be withdrawn.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

They may be equipped to work, but where do they think jobs come from? A magic job tree? Without a thriving economy, there won't be any jobs! Or at least any wealth creating jobs.

Easy words. Would you be OK with planning your entire working life around receiving a state pension then it was taken off you at the last minute? Of course you wouldn't.
Today's younger workers have a decent amount of time to make their own arrangements for their pension and that's the way it should be phased it - anyone starting work in 2028 onwards should be told they have to save into a pension on their own. They will say they can't afford to but we have been saying that for decades. Young workers/families have always beem short of cash.
Unfortunately it's the only sensible way to do it. Anyone in the workplace now cannot not have the rug pulled out from under them - that's just sheer spite.

This sounds a lot like a modern retirement community.

They exist already and are expensive. About £120-150 per week rent for a single bedroom and the same again for a service change.

https://www.sanctuary-supported-living.co.uk/retirement-communities

No, it isn't, but it is pragmatic.

I think the problem is that we have one of the lowest rates of taxation, and thus also have one of the lowest levels of public service. I count pension within that. Brexshit, war, and covid didn't help the economy, coupled with lower birth rates, so not only are fewer people able to contribute, there are fewer jobs for those lower numbers. And thos who are working contribute less, etc etc.

It is very easy to make sweeping statements like 'the whole system needs overhauling', but the reality is that the circumstances under which many of the components of the 'system' were created have changed, so the assumptions made at that time are no longer valid. At some point we really need to work out what the current needs are, and then go from there, but it is unlikely to happen as it would be a longer term project than any government is voted in for. Especially with the revolving door of Prime Ministers we have had over the last decade.

Well I disagree. I think a pension is pragmatic to have. Simply because there was a time when there wasn’t one. And it was terrible. So having one was invented.
We need to find ways to make it work.

The problem is an ageing population.

They can keep raising the state pension age all they like, it will not reduce the welfare burdon though. It will just push more people into sickness benefits until the pension kicks in.

Life expectancy may be increasing but people are not living longer in good health. There are a vast majority of people who will not be able to physically or cognitively do their jobs until 68+, think front line workers, trades men etc. Teachers at 68 managing young children in classes 30+ physically and mentally draining. Nurses/ HCA’s working 12 hour ward shifts making critical decisions that are life or death at 68. similar for police etc. It doesn’t seem sustainable, what will happen is they will be unable to work and will claim benefits for the interim.

ETA- most public sector pensions are now linked to state pension, certainly the NHS so theres no opportunity to retire at 55.

This. I’ve said this before on pension threads where everyone seems to say they’ll just keep raising the retirement age etc. In theory they could raise it to 90 but it doesn’t mean many people will be capable of working at that age. I use my PIL as examples.

My FIL is 74. Worked as an accountant until retirement at 66. He could easily have worked a few more years don’t get me wrong. But now at 74 he is pretty deaf, wears hearing aids but still misses things. He’s recently had a back operation and now walks with two sticks. Since the operation he definitely has slowed down a lot. He isn’t following conversations as easily as he used to. He struggles to use his phone these days. Forgets a lot of things people tell him.

My MIL is 73. She was a teacher until she retired at 63. Again she could have worked a few more years definitely. But now has had 2 knee replacements, has arthritis, is on daily pain killers for back pain and has a degenerative eye condition.

Who is employing these people at their age? What jobs can they do? They’ll be off sick more than they’d ever be at work. They’d make mistakes. They cannot do anything physical. They would seriously struggle doing anything with technology (especially MIL). So anyone who thinks people should not be able to retire until 75-80 please tell me what jobs older people like my PIL can do.

The problem with the numbers for retirement is they are based on a person's wishlist for a retirement life and not based on a person's retirement life.
My parents always find them amusing as they are told they will need over £20k a year for a comfortable retirement than they had when they were working and living a comfortable life. They are looking at a household retirement income of £50k a year with 2 state pension, a small NHS pension and the interest from my dad's private pension. This leaves the pension pot for if they need care in later life.
They are already living a comfortable life and haven't yet got the second state pension. They will have been on 2 cruises this year, have a top of a range caravan and car to pull out. Through June and July they will have used it for 6 out of 9 weeks.

We are currently a one wage household with 2 children. We have a household income of £65k but are able to save £15-20k a year living a comfortable life.

I don't disagree, which is what I was getting at in the rest of my post. I think finding a way to make it work is going to be difficult though, especially all the while the electorate want champagne service for lemonade money, and they want it delivered yesterday.

Okay, I should have said 'must be' instead of 'are'. But I stand by that, because the must be millions of women who never worked 30 years and who are claiming a state pension of some kind. My stepmother, for instance, has never worked a day in her life!

I realise with a bit more digging that anyone who didn't make at least 30 years of contributions will get a reduced amount, so my DM, for instance, will not be getting £184.90 per week, as she only has a few years worth of contributions. As per AI answer below, I suspect she is probably getting the Category B (Lower Rate) based on her DH's earnings.

Full Category A Rate: You receive the maximum £184.90 per week if you have at least 30 qualifying years of National Insurance (NI) contributions or credits.

Proportionate Rate: If you have fewer than 30 qualifying years, your weekly payout is reduced by 1/30th for every missing year. For example, 20 qualifying years yields £123.26 per week.

Category B (Lower Rate): If you claim a basic pension based purely on your spouse or civil partner’s NI record rather than your own, the standard rate is £110.75 per week.

I think we are going to end with a "medical retirement" situation whether it is a formal policy or an extension of the current disability benefits schemes where you are able to access a state pension like benefit before retirement if you are unable to work.

My mum was a nurse and retired at 55 as she could no longer physically do the job. She then took on family caring responsibilities for my niece and later my grandparents. At 64 she had a bad fall and fractured her back in 2 places and now has osteoporosis in her spine. Since then she has had reduced mobility and in a lot of pain. She went from the carer to needing care overnight. She was already retired but had she been in work I don't think there is a role she could do.

My dad did an outdoors manual job and got to 63 before he retired. He stopped work in the September as he realised through the spring and summer that he didn't have another winter out in the cold in him.

But it wasn't 60 until it overnight turned to 68, it crept, (and leapt) up over a few years.

Real life examples:

I was born in 1958, and got my pension at 66.
I was 33 in 1981, when they told us it would be more than 60.

My elder sister, born in 1954 got hers at (I think) 65, she was 37 in 1981.

No they won’t. It’s a benefit. There is no legal right to a UK state pension whatsoever.

The ones retiring and or close to retiring have had the best working/expenses ratio than anytime before or after in history.

If they haven’t managed to save additional pension and do nothing but complain about how little the state pension is, or how they had to wait longer, whinge whinge whinge, with the best economic conditions there was likely to ever be how can they expect to keep their state pension, and expect the younger workers to pay more for housing, education, everything, pay into pensions of their own and pay tax to fund the state pension and NHS for a population bigger than them?

Me me me generation.

No Government will remove the state pension. They can’t even reduce the triple lock!

Money put into pension pots - whether via tax or into a private pension - are tax free. When you withdraw that money you pay the tax, that's all. It's not unfair, in fact it allows you to build up a bigger pot than if you paid tax first.

We are in shared ownership, over 55, apartments. Two blocks are rented. Including service charges it's around £450 a month. All of the rented side qualify for some housing benefit, it's worked so it's all covered, in most cases. Tbh, I think schemes like the ours, is the way to go. We are connected to a extra care facility. A lot of people are resistant to go in, but once in, everyone loves it.
They will be hesitant to remove the OAP. They'll have to be a special scheme for asylum seekers and migrants and the backlash will be enormous.

I think the solution is complex and will never please everyone.

One big issue with the demographics is we measure number of children per woman and say the fertility rate is X, but women are having children later in life, on average, which means a fertility rate of 1.8 (or whatever) masks the true demographic change that has slowly taken place since the 1960s. We not only have fewer children per woman but the timing means we have fewer generations.

Take my family for example. Me and DH are both the oldest of two. My MIL born in 1946 had DH at 34. My DGM born in 1945 had DF at 16 who had me at 22. That’s a whole extra generation less on DH’s family tree than on mine since the mid-1940s. That was before the average age of FTM went up but illustrates the point. Without those extra generations we are losing working age people even faster than projected.

PILs have lived longer than my DPs as PILs are now approaching their 80s and my DPs died in their 50s and all but one DGP did. My family worked in factories. The factories and mines built this country and generations of workers were slowly worked to death to build national wealth and when the factories and mines were taken away, there was nothing for a huge cohort of working age people to do. We’re about 2 generations down from the closure of the mines and most factories and we still have nothing for people with this social conditioning and skillset (which is not every descendant of a miner/factory worker obviously, but there’s a significant number of them/us who are long term unemployed and we’re pretending this group of long term unemployed came from nowhere). Leading to MH problems as they are shoved into jobs they aren’t equipped for socially. Leading to more costs in NHS and benefits. And less contribution than if we’d just left income support alone.

People on this thread have said you need a pot of 3million to have a decent retirement but the vast majority of people will not earn that in their lifetimes let alone have it spare to throw into a pension. 😂🤦‍♀️

Everyone deserves a pension. We can’t leave people destitute. But what is the answer? How do we balance the books when everyone wants free money or for the government to subsidise everything (they don’t just want it, they believe they are entitled to it) and yet no one wants to pay for it or to do what needs to be done to improve the country’s economic output? Of course people vote for more free money, letting people stand for election on that platform has given away the keys to the banana plantation!

I'm 47. I've been saying for years that I won't get a state pension. Unfortunately I started paying into my pension on the basis that I would and right now I don't have any spare cash to top it up. So not sure what I'll do and I'm in a much better position than a lot of people.

I think state pensions should be means tested but it should be quite a high level.

But yet again, it's my generation being screwed because they don't have the ability to address it.

We live too long and can’t afford it!!!

Modern medicine has successfully increased the quantity of life, but it has not always matched this with a parallel increase in the quality of life. Consequently, many elderly individuals spend their later years managing multiple chronic illnesses, loss of independence, and prolonged suffering rather than experiencing a healthy, active old age.

Something has to be done though doesn’t it? When the state pension was originally introduced you had to be 70 and most people were dead by then. Now we have children who could realistically live to 90 and beyond on a regular basis. I don’t know the answer but some people have 20-30 year retirements; that just wasn’t a thing in the past.

£12k is a pot of gold?

I do think we need to slash public sector pensions to a similar deal as private sector workers get. That would save billions in the long run and level the playing field between public sector pensions and DC pensions.

Hasn’t it just been made legal to sleep in the streets? Used to be illegal.hey ho!

paving the way for extreme poverty to be normalised.