AIBU to think that pensioners are NOT victims?

[SugarMouse1]

Sorry, but they have had about 40 years where jobs were very easy to get

It was comparitively easy for them to buy a house

They could have easily got a council/HA house (where the rent is FA) if they couldn't afford to buy a house......

They should have saved up for their retirement themselves, the taxpayer should not be subsidising them- Young people now can't retire until well into their seventies!

YABU. 'Pensioners' are not one amorphous mass about whom you can make lazy generalisations. Most have worked hard, saved hard, contributed into pensions their whole lives (state and private) and are today not only self-sufficient but are also still contributing millions in tax into the economy. Houses may have been cheaper years ago but it has always required sacrifice to keep up with a mortgage - especially when interest rates were much higher than they are today and inflation went through the roof. Jobs stopped being easy to get by the late 1970s and someone retiring today has been through the recessions of the eighties, nineties and the most recent one. They will be lucky if they haven't been unemployed or made redundant at some stage in their life. Those that saved hard into private pensions find today that, due to stock market crashes, their money doesn't buy as big an annuity as was forecast. Those that contributed into the state pension thinking it would be enough to live on find it's a very small amount of money indeed.

Everyone in our society deserves help when they need it.

Yanbu for some pensioners... My aunt has state and occupational pension, winter fuel allowance, free travel, has constant minibreaks and does food shopping in waitrose.

YANBU - there is going to be increasing intergenerational conflict from now on.

Problem is pensioners vote a lot more than young people and politicians know it. Guess what pensioners vote for - more benefits/pensions. Its how New Labour won its 3 election victories. Rememeber how virtually the only pledge David Cameron made before the last election was to keep free bus passes.

Pensioners bought houses far cheaper as multiple of wages than young people can today. Average house prices were 3.25 x average male salary in the last 100 years. At the peak of the last boom house prices were 6 x average male salary. Old people had no student debt and of they under the age of 80 they are unlikley to have fought in a war (ubless regular soldiers) or suffered rationing. Many of them have very good index linked final salary pensions, especially in the public sector.

It will never be that good for young people.

YABU. My Dad doesn't have a final salary pension. He moved jobs a lot before you were allowed to keep the employers contribution to your pension, his fund has also been eroded by the stock market falls and annuity rates are terrible at the moment. My parents didn't buy a house until fairly recently for various reasons so didn't benefit from the property market. He was made redundant 3 or 4 times, the last 2 times when he was over 55 and had to take a big pay cut to get a job.

Consequently my Dad thinks he can't afford to retire.

"the taxpayer should not be subsidising them"

@stella1w... the only tax-funded subsidies your Waitrose-shopping aunt gets are a £200 fuel allowance and a few bus-fares. Many working families get far bigger subsidies on an ongoing basis

Yabu. Just because the world was different then doesn't mean the way things are wont hit some pensioners equally as much as it does others.

They are as entitled to help as anyone else

Yes, and mainly no.

The welfare state did create a "gilded generation" - not by intention, but there is a bulge generation going through and it has rather broken the system as it moves through it. They are now retiring.

But that generation is not a synonym for all pensioners. Nor is the existence of the advantages enjoyed such a generation inevitably true for everyone counted within it.

And in terms of what "pensioners" gave - there are more limbless and/o blind ex-Service personnel still living from WW2 and other 20thC conflicts than there are from Iraq and Afghnaistan combined.

Deprivation in the over 70s is terrifyingly worse than in other age groups, partly because there is less change of it being alleviated by change in circumstances.

Sirzy

not everyone is entitled to help

Polish immigrants can't get anything unless they've been here two years!

iF they didn't have such a good work ethic their kids would literally starve!

cogito

no its more- free prescriptions
free eye tests
oap discount in loads of places
free tv licence over a certain age
subsidised housing

trixy

how old is your dad?

so what?

young people now can't do it until into their seventies and most can't buy a house either

tough shit!

"free prescriptions, free eye tests, oap discount in loads of places, free tv licence over a certain age, subsidised housing"

Plenty of people get free prescriptions... those on low income, pregnant women, children, the unemployed etc. Eye tests come round every year or two and, when someone is elderly, eye-tests & prescriptions are arguably more important for their health and wellbeing than a younger person. Discount on goods is marginal. A TV licence is a few hundred a year.

Plenty of people live in subsidised housing and plenty of pensioners don't. You can't whine that "It was comparitively (sic) easy for them to buy a house" on the one hand and then complain that they have council houses on the other.

I think what you're expressing is as prejudiced & wrong as benefit-bashing.

Could I correct one error that is continually repeated.

Todays pensioners did not work for their pension. They never paid enough into pension schemes. That is why so many public and private sector pension schmes are in such deficit. That is the big lie that is constantly told. Pensioners of today did work - but they kept far more of their pay to take home than they should have.

Taxing the young of today or demanding higher pension contributions such as the recently introduced scheme that is going to hit everyones pay packets this month (unless they opted out) to pay the pensions of current pensioners is not on. Pensioners have taken out far more than they put in and will continue to do so unless their benefits get cut.

My parents spend their winter fuel allowance on a holiday in the sun. I think its a grossly unfair benefit.

Well I think this is rubbish. I just knew it would be a post saying, we want some of their money. And so it is.

Pensioners, by and large, are not on benefits. Most receive a state pension and some small payments such as the winter fuel allowance but then top it up with their own savings and a private or occupational pension. A minority are in receipt of support payments just the same as the rest of the population. Some receive disability payments the same as the rest of us.

If yesterday's employees didn't pay enough into the pension schemes wasn't that the fault of those who managed those schemes, not the employees? And, if schemes have been underfunded in the past, why should the mistake carry on be repeated for future generations by keeping contributions too low?

@reindeerjumper... £200 buys no-one a holiday in the sun.

It goes a long way towards it.

"Polish immigrants can't get anything unless they've been here two years!"

And rightly so, people shouldn't be able to just walk into a country and then be entitled to benefits in that country. The only exception I would make is genuine asylum seekers who's lives are at threat if they don't leave.

I can believe your argument to stop people who have lived in this country all their lives claiming benefits is the fact people who have only just arrived can't.

I also think you're forgetting, pensioners went without in a very big way. You probably can't even imagine it. Moan when you haven't got your laptop or your fancy phone and can only eat meat once a week, no cigarrettes, booze, a coal fire in one room, no clothes budget, no washing machine, no tumble drier, no dishwasher, clothes that lasted twenty years and just accepting that as life and doing everything you could for the family and the children.

"jobs were very easy to get" ?? you don't even know what you're talking about - three million unemployed when today's pensioners were under middle aged.

I have nothing for respect for the generation that lived through the War. It's the baby boomers that piss me off.

Exactly Brycie. They have also paid the pensions of the people older than themselves- it is what you do in a civilised country. Someone younger will be paying yours.

It is a lot more expensive to means test to see who actually needs it.

But it would create a lot more jobs!