£610 a week pension demand is insane

[Thisismyfinesthour]

Just read that there is an online petition doing the rounds for a £610 a WEEK pension demand to the government.
WTAF? Is the heat melting some peoples brains? It seems over 5000 have signed it.
Where do they think the money is coming from?

@NotNowBernardNotEver I'll quote you "A tiny proportion struggle for money and they also usually have their rent paid on top of their state pension, pay no council tax and receive additional benefits and top ups.
Many of them paid nowhere near sufficient tax over their working lifetimes to cover the welfare and state services they are receiving (an average shortfall in real terms of £200k per person amongst current retirees)."

So you did use the £200k figure which the author of the book it comes from admitted was based on nothing much. You also claimed that the number of struggling pensioners was "tiny" when "According to the DWP figures for 2024/253 , the poverty rate amongst members of pensioner couples is 11%, compared with around 20% for single pensioners " and the rates are actually growing. Edited as I keep getting the quote marks wrong.

As you and your ilk say of all younger people, despite you being a welfare claimant and me supporting myself and retiring because I’ve decided that after having already worked more hours than most people do by their 60s and having paid several times more tax than they do over their lifetime, I would like to devote more time to being available for my disabled children now that I’ve ensured through hard work that they’ll be ok financially. Is that ok with you?

???

I've never claimed welfare. Plus I don't say it about all younger people. I wouldn't say you were young btw.

That's what you called it.

Again…. Yada yada yada….

So you are embittered about you lot.

Not a single person should feel anything other than empathy. Your life isn’t anyone else’s business.

Bloody hell, the actually lazy people really won’t stop, will they?

Off the top of my head, try having a look at:

https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/a-welfare-generation-lifetime-welfare-transfers-between-generations/

https://niesr.ac.uk/publications/generational-accounting-uk-2 with the full data and mathematical proofs of the study here: https://kotlikoff.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Generational-Accounting-in-the-UK-November-200.pdf

Or you could read some of John Hill’s work https://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/CASE/new/who-we-are/john-hills/publications.asp here, or his book “Good Times, Bad times”.

Or these studies: https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/press-releases/young-millennials-are-being-short-changed-by-the-state/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254438722GenerationalAccountsfortheUnitedKingdom

https://www.ageing.ox.ac.uk/download/11

https://obr.uk/box/intergenerational-fairness/

https://ifs.org.uk/articles/how-do-living-standards-compare-across-generations

https://if.org.uk/research/age-bias-government-spending-by-age/

Or Pinch’s book “The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Took Their Children's Future - and Why They Should Give It Back” as I believe another poster recommended earlier.

Or multiple articles in The Times, The Telegraph or The Guardian (to demonstrate it isn’t a left wing or right wing “view” but numerically evidenced fact from large data sets.

Or try looking at IFS reports or ONS data which evidence it very clearly without anyone else analysing it for you if you’re capable of doing so yourself (doubtful for many posters here).

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/articles/generationalincometheeffectsoftaxesandbenefits/2019-08-21

Or objective analyses from the international organisations I mentioned earlier, or from non-Governmental bodies, or the Government’s own figures published annually and compare them over time if you’re capable of analysing the data yourself without cherry picking and introducing your own biases, or….

But obviously the lazy people who have accused me of lying until I gave in to their demand to send them links (because apparently they can’t use google even if they don’t have access to specialist economic journals etc) will, I’m sure, still pretend all of this is somehow faked and some sort of “conspiracy” exists between all of these Government bodies, economists, academics etc, against the outraged elderly who lack numeracy and still believe they aren’t getting enough having impoverished the generations following them.

Lets look at the claim of "millionaire" pensioners. 90 per cent of UK personal wealth is held in pensions or housing.
The figures also refer to the number of people who live in households valued at £1m or more, rather than individual millionaires. This means two people aged 65+ living in a household worth £1m would both be included in the millionaire category, despite that wealth being split between them. So two people who have saved in the hope of a comfortable retirement and own a house.

@NotNowBernardNotEver If you are able to retire at 40 despite having apparently paid a lot of tax and provided for your disabled children - who presumably receive benefits - then you must be more than a millionaire, yet you begrudge helping people in poverty.

Accidental duplicate.

I don’t begrudge anything to those in need. I begrudge elderly people who are getting more than they paid in and claiming it even if they do not need it, and via their excessive and unrealistic and ever increasing (they’re never happy) demands on the state in excess of their contributions are impoverishing multiple generations of younger people and thereby making it impossible for the state to make the necessary investments in education, infrastructure and business to raise prosperity so that they have hope for rising living standards in the future. I find the refusal of a certain proportion of baby boomers to accept this economic reality shameful.

Nobody on the thread has suggested leaving the 13% of pensioners who have no independent income or assets without state pension: in fact it could be substantially increased and still tens of billions saved if it was means tested and welfare not paid to people with plenty of money to support themselves without state/ taxpayer help, much of which comes from people who are poorer than they are.

No, my children do not “receive benefits”. I left home at 16, 30 years ago, and have worked for everything we have, sometimes over 100 hours per week. I have raised my children alone and now wish to spend more time with them. As you said to another poster earlier, what I decide to do now with money I have earned is not your business and frankly this is yet another line of personal attack and nothing to do with the thread, is it?

I dont see elderly people demanding more from the state - I see younger people complaining about what has been standard practise for years. Meanwhile lots are getting considerable financial support https://www.savills.co.uk/insight-and-opinion/savills-news/391499/first-time-buyers-receive-%C2%A311.0-billion-in-financial-support-from-families

Several of your links dont work or are based on the 2019 Willets book where he admitted to a lack of data to support his conclusions. One of the individuals died in 2000, that's one of the links that does not work.

National debt was reducing until the bank crisis, the government selling the public shares in banks at a lost and the waste during covid. None of this is down to pensioners.

You have me confused with someone else - spend your money how you please but making false comments about how many pensioners live in poverty says a lot about you.

There were links to the IFS, ONS, studies from Oxford University, the work of Professor Sir John Hills and many of his data studies at the LSE, a stud published in The Economic Journal by multiple economists including Laurence Kotlicoff and others working via the NIESR, and I’ve also pointed you towards work of other economists working independently in the private sector, for government organisations (such as analyses performed by the Treasury and DWP), and by King’s College and Cambridge.

Do you have any credible data to refute them all?

It is laughable that you think some article by an estate agent is somehow equivalent to multiple macroeconomic analyses of the entire economy over time: longitudinal detailed studies of statistically validated and peer reviewed data on living standards by the government and the most reputable economic institutions and a academics.

The earlier poster who stated that it’s a waste of time to bother was correct.

I must remember this in future:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Wxk1cyYJe-o&pp=0gcJCWoCo7VqN5tD

There’s was a bloke on our local Next Door page who has been banging on about this for yonks. He’s finally been banned from the page (yay) as he was just so belligerent over it and was annoying so many people. He never had any answers as to where the money was going to come from.

👍

Why did you leave home at 16?

Where did I say I want pensioners to get less than me? Seeing as I don't get any benefits at all that would be a blt bloody difficult wouldn't it?

Neither do they.

And I won't be.

I'm taking it all with a very big pinch of salt.