£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?

So, those who defend the proposal in the OP, in all seriousness, you are PM/CoE, what figure would you have as the basic state pension, what measure would you increase it by, and how do we pay for it?

The biggest issue with state pensions is the moving goalposts so your financial planning goes out of the window. I started work, pension age for me was 60, it’s now 67, probably will be 68 so I have old pensions kicking in at a variety of ages but I have saved calculating getting my state pension at some point in my 60’s - remember we earned a lot less in the 90’s about 1/3 of a similar job now and some things eg my mobile phone contract are cheaper now than then!

im not demanding £600 a week but im asking for dates not to be moved for people retiring (state) after we turn 50 because we haven’t time to make changes and not everyone has the health to continue full time working so long.

@Everanewbie No-one, as far as I can see, has defended the petition. Several people have pointed out how few signatures it received and that it is never going to happen. Claiming things that havent happened makes you look silly. There are others ways to deal with the problems of poverty in old age without increasing state pensions. Allowing higher rate taxpayers to pay into a spouse's pension and the spouse gets the higher rate credit is one suggestion. It will gradually become less of a problem anyway as more women have employment pensions based on their own earnings.

@NotNowBernardNotEver Half your links dont work and the ones that do work are based on a book published in 2019 that the author admits was based on unreliable information. John Hills is dead - died years ago - which is why that link doesnt work but his work is also likely to have been based on the same unreliable study.

In the past 7 years we've had an increase in pension age and an increase of at least 2.5 million pensioners paying tax. If your unreliable study ever meant anything the world was already changing. The book was written to hide how the wealthy retain their wealth.

Once again - what went wrong was the bank crisis, selling off the bank shares at a massive loss and the waste during covid. All of these are about how the rich preserve and increase wealth at the expense of the poor. You just want to hide that by whining about pensioners.

I don't think it is unreasonable to expect commencement dates to stay the same after a certain point and I can appreciate the frustration this causes.

What I would say is that changes were made to make sure we can retain the state pension and it would remain affordable as a country given longer life expectancies and a top heavy population. But there comes a point where you plan for it and shifting goalposts puts the kybosh on everything.

I think a freeze so that goalposts aren't shifted for over 50s is entirely reasonable.

@anyolddinosaur one or two have actually, but I didn't ask that, I asked what would be reasonable? Clearly some think £12,547 is too low, but £610 pw is too much, so what figure between those two? Is triple lock retained?

@Everanewbie I added to my post to say there are other ways to deal with poverty in old age without increasing state pension. But you are using £12547 again - despite being told that most pensioners dont actually get the new state pension. Why are you so determined to quote a figure most people dont get - old state pension is near £10k, if you get the lot. Many women dont.

@Everanewbie I dont believe anyone has defended the original proposal - you'll have to quote them and the time of their post. There have been some comparisons with other countries better provision of pensions, that is not the same thing.

Nobody has defended it. It’s been universally denounced as ridiculous on this thread.

I am not going through the whole thread again, but I have been quite invested in this thread and I have read several comments suggesting that if that is the minimum full time wage, then it should be the minimum pension.

But whatever, if you don't want to answer the question, then don't.

No. Sir John Hills work preceded that of Willets. He did work with the IFS and LSE, as well as research for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. His prominent work in this area began in 1995 with his Inquiry Into Income and Wealth. He chaired the National Equality Panel which reported in 2010. Willet’s work built on what he had done previously.

This is exactly why I said earlier in the thread that I wouldn’t bother providing links and sources: people could easily find them themselves with a bit of effort even if they don’t know anything about economics and the same people who won’t accept facts and data quoted will always somehow claim that they can’t find/ access the information you provide anyway.

I provided you with the names of reputable organisations and institutions who have published data and research on their websites containing detailed information from which I have drawn every fact or statistic quoted. I also provided links to/ referred to various specific papers as well as those above including:

Data sets like the ONS’s Wealth and Assets Survey, the data from the National Institute for Social and Economic Research which consists of a longitudinal study of 40,000 families, the Family and Resources Survey produced by the Department for Work and Pensions, the Government’s own accounts for the figures I provided re. public spending or the IFS’s regular analyses of economic data and public spending and other research e.g. its research on intergenerational economic and social mobility.

Plus the research produced by:

The Resolution Foundation’s Intergeneration Commission

The Nuffield Foundation’s Intergenerational Audits

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s cohort analyses’ on wealth asset poverty

The National Institute of Economic and Social Research’s detailed macroeconomic modelling of the impacts of public spending, taxation and inflation etc on wealth distribution between generations.

The work published by the Centre for Economic Performance which has performed longitudinal studies looking at intergenerational income and also the persistence of this across generations.

The work of the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence at King’s on these topics, particularly asset accumulation over decades and wealth inequality between (and within) generational cohorts.

The Centre of Analysis for Social Exclusion at the LSE which has examined intergenerational transfer of famoly wealth.

The Centre for Longitudinal Studies at University College London which does incredibly detailed work tracking economic outcomes for tens of thousands of people across different generational cohorts.

The Institute for New Economic Thinking at the University of Oxford which looks at intergenerational transfers of wealth and wealth concentration.

Or you could just google the basic economic concepts involved e.g. intergenerational income elasticity, asset composition shifts, wealth-equalising or dis-equalising transfers etc.

Yet I’m sure you’ll still claim regardless that no such studies or data exist. 🤷🏼‍♀️

What has my family background got to do with the thread or you?

I am not young! I already told you I’m middle aged.

My concern isn’t personal, it’s about the future of those who are young adults now just starting out, and the children following them.

Most of that 27% will be asset rich and cash poor, they probably have a house that has increased in value a lot, particularly if they live in London or other expensive areas, yes they could sell but if they want to stay in the same area that may not release much cash either and the process of moving is difficult if you are elderly.

No: you are wrong. Scotland is NOT a net contributor. Only two regions of the UK are net contributors to tax revenue: London and SE England. I’ve told you this multiple times now.

Here is the latest detailed data from the ONS, and a graph to make it easy for you to interpret:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicsectorfinance/articles/countryandregionalpublicsectorfinances/financialyearending2023

You posted it therefore it's on the thread to comment on. You said you left home at 16 and brought your children - not child - up on your own.

That is true, but if they are sat on a large house and/pension/cash fund and don't want to use that asset for income, I don't think that is the taxpayers job to foot the bill. I get that it will be a shame to sell up, but I really don't see that it is right to ask for more from the taxpayer so you don't have to realise an asset.

Stop with the archaeology and argue the subject.

You’re giving a dyed in the wool Scottish nationalist basic economic facts. Good luck with that!

Sat?

It is my first language which means I can see how bad at it you are.

Btw it's "sitting".