£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?

I have a relative that lives in Lacock in Wiltshire. They get busloads of tourists. Incidentally, they also do litter picks. I”m curious as to where you live if Lacock is a dump by comparison. It’s almost painfully “naice” there. 😂😂

Oh so just chatting shit then lol

Same. We live in a beautiful AONB and get loads of weekend walkers from London, scout groups, DofE groups, etc. Helps keep our fantastic village gastropub, village shop and community cafe going, but it does mean that litter needs to be collected.

So they have never really worked, yet with pension credit still get a state pension almost at the same rate as a person who has worked on a low wage all their lives? What did they think would happen? My mother is nearly 80, was an immigrant who rocked up here at 20 and realised she needed to pay into a pension.

Lacock is 10 mins from my village, equally is Castle Combe. But beautiful villages. Id be interested to know the answer too

I think we need to have honest conversations about this and how it ties in with personal responsibility. Relying on one low wage to fund essentials and working PT for pin money was never going to be financially sustainable for anyone. We as a society tend to afford old people much more grace then a younger people but ultimately they often are at least partially architects of their own situation. They could have done more, as many of their generation did, but they chose not to. Now they Iive with the consequences of their decisions. In many ways they are lucky, they have effectively been subsidised by others their whole lives. What standard of living can one expect if they choose to live like this when they're going and don't even attempt to support themselves and pay into the system?

Before the bleeding hearts brigade chime in, we have to think what we are doing to younger generations by endlessly supporting the old. Our national debt is rising and the interest is crippling us but I don't think many have contemplated what paying this debt back actually means for the poor buggers picking up the bill. They will be paying in a huge amount of money and seeing nothing back for it as they are simply paying back the money that we are now spending on Glynis's increased pension now. They probably won't even be able to hope for a pension at the level we have today whilst having to pay vastly more into the system. How is this fair?

Shades of Calimero in this thread.

Difficult for some to understand under today’s freedoms, but some women in their 80s lived in the shadow of their husband.
By the way, you sound like @NotNowBernardNotEver , have you name changed?

Equally there were opportunities for social housing and low cost accommodation that don't exist today. Every generation has it's challenges. The fact that pensioners are now as a class the richest that pensioners have ever been proves that it was absolutely possible for most to build financial security in a way that wasn't possible in the past. Projections show that pensioners will be poorer in future generations.

Why in this context would you add more national debt paying pensioners more now when we know that future, likely poorer generations, will be stuck paying it off? There will never be a demographic where everyone is rich but pensioners are now less likely to live below the poverty line than working aged adults. They aren't the obvious candidate for help anymore and we need to be very cautious about burdening future generations to do this.

Do you mean unemployed working age adults?

Is that much different to people lie my mum who spent most of her working life paying taxes towards WW2 loans

She was born in 1946 so after the war and these loans were not paid off until 2006

Yes,because the debt accrued for WW2 wasn't used to fund living costs like it is now but to defend our country from an existential threat. To begin to repay the loans now we would need to cut spending just to standstill and then raise enormous amounts to start making a difference to the debt.

The WW2 loans were also largely tackled through substantial economic growth over the decades after the war. We didn't have huge budget surpluses and yet we're easily paying off the debt as our GDP increased so quickly. Do you really think we are going to get that level of growth in the next few decades? If not, then we will need massive budget surpluses which means spending cuts and tax rises.

How is this relevant? Lots of pensioners will have spent some or even most of their lives unemployed. They still as a group aren't as poor as working aged adults.

But it was to defend a country at war. So my mum wasn't even born during the war but the taxes ( and they were an awful lot higher % for most of her working life than it is now. think 38-41% tax rate in the 60s help pay off those debts

I’ll take that as a yes then.

I’m a working age adult as is my husband. If we were still working we’d both be getting 4 times the state pension - each.

The tax burden was lower in the 1960s and 1970s for the average worker than it is now despite the war debt repayments. The headline 38% tax rate wasn't paid by most people due to allowances and tax bands. You also have to factor in indirect taxation like VAT now which didn't exist in the 1960s so people were generally paying less to the taxman overall.

The wider context is important too. The war was an unavoidable event that led to a large amount of debt that we chipped away over decades with a growing economy. We are now accruing debt to fund people's living costs with a stagnant economy knowing that this is unsustainable and we won't be able to do this for future generations. When the war ended we didn't need to accrue further war debt. When does your current addiction to living beyond our means end?

I don't understand your point at all.

If poor pensioners had been paid more money into a pension or saved more money then they wouldn't be poor. Coulda, woulda, shoulda doesn't change facts.

I know you don't. Says a lot about your education. It's like trying to catch smoke.

You are very rude and unable to form a coherent argument. What relevance is it that working aged people living in poverty work or don't work if you are not asking the same question of pensioners?

Oh FFS. Because pensioners have worked all their lives! I take it your unemployed?

Many pensioners haven't worked all their lives, certainly not FT. This is especially true for women. Only half of women were in paid employment in the 1960s.

I am not unemployed and I'm a higher rate tax payer. My point is that why should a pensioner that's never be worked be treated differently than a working aged person that's never worked? Why do you assume all pensioners have worked all their lives when we know that isn't the case?

Some of them have, some of them haven’t. My grandmother has never worked. She gets state pension based on my grandfather’s contributions. She never had to make any of her own.

She has significant income from savings and investments. My grandfather left her several hundreds of thousands of pounds back in the mid-90s and a business that she sold for a few hundred thousand more. She has lived a very comfortable life. From her mid 40s onwards (when her youngest got to teenager age) her life was nice lunches, pottering in the garden, exotic holidays, clubs and unlimited leisure time.

I don’t begrudge her any of it, she raised 5 children and was widowed young (early 50s) and has buried two of her children before their time. She doesn’t need the state pension though. Her lifestyle would not suffer a single bit if she didn’t get it. She makes a big show of spending as little as possible, while accumulating tens of thousands in interest each year in bank accounts that she never touches.

This thread is like living through Groundhog Day.

Threads often are when they get this long. The same arguments naturally get rehashed. Its how they always go.