60% drop in tax allowance for those set up as a limited company. Rise in NIC contributions for self employed even though we don't get holiday or sick pay and can't claim benefits.
Absolute joke, self employed and small business owners another couple of groups on the long list of people the tories screw over.
Look who's untouched again? Ah yes, pensioners, the ones who got us into this mess.
Quite a good rant until you got to that point.
Are pensioners to blame because they are not dying fast enough for your liking?
Nope, they're to blame, or rather successive governments that they voted for are to blame for esssentially mortgaging the future of younger people so they can have a cushty life relative to young people from the same background.
Which of the two is it - pensioners or successive governments?
I do believe (I am a pensioner and not planning to kick the proverbial bucket just yet) that my generation had it slightly easier that the current generation; that is not to say we had it easy. Being born just after the second World War was very difficult for many people like me; never had a holiday, largely wearing 2nd hand clothes, no family car etc etc. When I left school in 1962, I recall there being a whole range of unskilled jobs available for people (which is perhaps not the case today). Furthermore, buying a house in the 70s was easier than today (size of deposit needed) but at some point therafter I recall house interest rates rising to 15% or thereabouts. I had to move out of London to afford my first house. I also enjoyed an advantage that the current generation wont receive, which is that of a "Golden Handshake" pension.
So, on balance, given the factors above, I would judge that many of the current pensioners, NOW, and only NOW enjoy the fruits of their life. It remains to be seen how our lifestyle/quality of life will compare with that of the current generation when they reach pension life.
As for reaching pension life... to be honest I doubt we'd be able to get a pension at this rate, or at least reach pension age as it would have to be pushed up considerably at this rate.
You must be gutted with the expectation that you'll live longer than the baby boomers and thus your state pension age will be adjusted accordingly.
60% drop in tax allowance for those set up as a limited company. Rise in NIC contributions for self employed even though we don't get holiday or sick pay and can't claim benefits.
Absolute joke, self employed and small business owners another couple of groups on the long list of people the tories screw over.
Look who's untouched again? Ah yes, pensioners, the ones who got us into this mess.
Quite a good rant until you got to that point.
Are pensioners to blame because they are not dying fast enough for your liking?
Nope, they're to blame, or rather successive governments that they voted for are to blame for esssentially mortgaging the future of younger people so they can have a cushty life relative to young people from the same background.
Which of the two is it - pensioners or successive governments?
I do believe (I am a pensioner and not planning to kick the proverbial bucket just yet) that my generation had it slightly easier that the current generation; that is not to say we had it easy. Being born just after the second World War was very difficult for many people like me; never had a holiday, largely wearing 2nd hand clothes, no family car etc etc. When I left school in 1962, I recall there being a whole range of unskilled jobs available for people (which is perhaps not the case today). Furthermore, buying a house in the 70s was easier than today (size of deposit needed) but at some point therafter I recall house interest rates rising to 15% or thereabouts. I had to move out of London to afford my first house. I also enjoyed an advantage that the current generation wont receive, which is that of a "Golden Handshake" pension.
So, on balance, given the factors above, I would judge that many of the current pensioners, NOW, and only NOW enjoy the fruits of their life. It remains to be seen how our lifestyle/quality of life will compare with that of the current generation when they reach pension life.
As for reaching pension life... to be honest I doubt we'd be able to get a pension at this rate, or at least reach pension age as it would have to be pushed up considerably at this rate.
You must be gutted with the expectation that you'll live longer than the baby boomers and thus your state pension age will be adjusted accordingly.
Yes, I am gutted, because living longer =/= being physically able to work longer
I guess we should've told those people who are currently 100 that they should have worked to when they were in their late eighties. Those greedy bastards
according to the ONS as at 2015 the demographics of the country were
0 to 15 years 18.9%
16 to 64 years 60.9%
65 years and over 20.2%
There is a correlation between age and likelihood of voting. Only 50 per cent of men aged 18-to-24, and 39 per cent of women, voted in 2010’s general election. Among those aged 55 and over, 76 per cent of men and 73 per cent of women voted.
Only 16 per cent of 18-to-24-year-olds are certain to vote in an election, while 30 per cent in this age category told the Hansard Society that they are certain not to vote.
Voters aged over 75 are more than four times as likely to be “absolutely certain to vote” than voters aged 18-to-24
In a ComRes survey in February, only 60 per cent of 18-to-24-year-olds said they cared who won the coming general election.
Also it might be worth splitting up 16-64 years into smaller subsections to get an accurate vision of the voting population.
So pensioners have the life of Riley at the expense of the younger population. Although they are far fewer in numbers, more bother to vote than the younger population and thus are not ignored by successive governments.
If this is the argument, then the youngsters have it within their power to change things in their favour at the next and subsequent elections. Also, with social media youngsters will never have a better opportunity to spread the word and change matters, to get their contemporaries to vote.
according to the ONS as at 2015 the demographics of the country were
0 to 15 years 18.9%
16 to 64 years 60.9%
65 years and over 20.2%
There is a correlation between age and likelihood of voting. Only 50 per cent of men aged 18-to-24, and 39 per cent of women, voted in 2010’s general election. Among those aged 55 and over, 76 per cent of men and 73 per cent of women voted.
Only 16 per cent of 18-to-24-year-olds are certain to vote in an election, while 30 per cent in this age category told the Hansard Society that they are certain not to vote.
Voters aged over 75 are more than four times as likely to be “absolutely certain to vote” than voters aged 18-to-24
In a ComRes survey in February, only 60 per cent of 18-to-24-year-olds said they cared who won the coming general election.
Also it might be worth splitting up 16-64 years into smaller subsections to get an accurate vision of the voting population.
So pensioners have the life of Riley at the expense of the younger population. Although they are far fewer in numbers, more bother to vote than the younger population and thus are not ignored by successive governments.
If this is the argument, then the youngsters have it within their power to change things in their favour at the next and subsequent elections. Also, with social media youngsters will never have a better opportunity to spread the word and change matters, to get their contemporaries to vote.
Last time I checked a government was elected to represent everyone, not just the people who voted for them or those who voted.
Tbh your attitude stinks and is just typical of the baby boomer generation "not my problem you sort it", this goes back to the economy, the environment, housing...
The vast majority of people who are of pension age have never been near a firearm.
Many people who are of pension age did have the opportunity to go to university free of charge, a luxury no longer afforded to today's youngsters.
But Fiish, in those days you had to be quite clever to go to university.
Nowadays pretty much anyone can get themselves into university if they wish, and we have to fund these rubbish throwaway courses that they now have to provide to give these people something to study.
Pay 90% tax on our super inflated incomes so you can afford to go out twice a month and pay your inflated rent to live in London.
Or conversely you could do what we did. Stayed in, saved like mad, bought houses miles away from where we worked because it was all we could afford, stayed in and paid our maxed our mortgages off at 15% interest rates whilst 'doing up' the properties ourselves. Thought for ages to see if we could afford kids - no working tax credits, or child care credits in those days - ran our old 15 year old cars into the ground, worked all the overtime we could just to survive (and not seeing the kids) worked in pubs as a second income whenever the landlord needed some help.
It's called being young and the perfect opportunity to set yourself up for an easier life in your later years. Firm foundations. But without the luxury of the latest Apple product or anything else the easy credit you can get allows you to purchase because you want it NOW.
As an aside, I had just started work and wanted a small loan to buy myself a motorbike to get to and from work (as I couldn't afford a car). I had to make an appointment with my Bank Manager to get that loan - £300.
I can pick up the 'phone now and within 10 minutes I can have £15k dumped into my bank account. It's too easy and people just don't think about the consequences.
60% drop in tax allowance for those set up as a limited company. Rise in NIC contributions for self employed even though we don't get holiday or sick pay and can't claim benefits.
Absolute joke, self employed and small business owners another couple of groups on the long list of people the tories screw over.
Look who's untouched again? Ah yes, pensioners, the ones who got us into this mess.
Quite a good rant until you got to that point.
Are pensioners to blame because they are not dying fast enough for your liking?
Nope, they're to blame, or rather successive governments that they voted for are to blame for esssentially mortgaging the future of younger people so they can have a cushty life relative to young people from the same background.
Which of the two is it - pensioners or successive governments?
I do believe (I am a pensioner and not planning to kick the proverbial bucket just yet) that my generation had it slightly easier that the current generation; that is not to say we had it easy. Being born just after the second World War was very difficult for many people like me; never had a holiday, largely wearing 2nd hand clothes, no family car etc etc. When I left school in 1962, I recall there being a whole range of unskilled jobs available for people (which is perhaps not the case today). Furthermore, buying a house in the 70s was easier than today (size of deposit needed) but at some point therafter I recall house interest rates rising to 15% or thereabouts. I had to move out of London to afford my first house. I also enjoyed an advantage that the current generation wont receive, which is that of a "Golden Handshake" pension.
So, on balance, given the factors above, I would judge that many of the current pensioners, NOW, and only NOW enjoy the fruits of their life. It remains to be seen how our lifestyle/quality of life will compare with that of the current generation when they reach pension life.
From what I can tell (and don't quote me on this, I wasn't alive then) governments are made up of people, who are voted for by people. Baby boomers were and remain the largest block of voters, thus if the majority vote a specific way, the extreme likelihood is that party would form a government.
As for reaching pension life... to be honest I doubt we'd be able to get a pension at this rate, or at least reach pension age as it would have to be pushed up considerably at this rate.
Money has to be put away for pensions today, as much as they were in my day. Nothing changed there, except the potential size of the pot.
I find it difficult to compare quality of life between different generations. There are pros and cons on both sides. I mentioned in my previous post the advantage that current pensioners had when they were younger in terms of house buying opportunities and today with enhanced pensions. On the other side, disposable income available to today's generation is far far greater than in mine, which can be measured by the number of social activites on tap and peoples' use of them. Many of my generation, as young people, could not afford to eat out, run a car, go on holiday. I guess the quality of life "experience" is different for differing generations.
Where on earth are the young people with disposable income?!i can't afford to do any of the things you mention.
Going back many of the people that you refer to (pensioners) had to do 2 years of national service, and earlier than that they had to fight a bloody war to give some people your age the freedom to bitch and moan that life hasn't handed everything on a plate to you....oh yes and no one my age had a 'gap year' whereby they could ponce of their parents for a year or so, after partying at university for 2-3 years........in the world we live in now, everything is always someone else's fault, do me favour! Life is out there, go out and grab which ever part of it you want.......or sit and wallow in self pity......you choose.
The vast majority of people who are of pension age have never been near a firearm.
Many people who are of pension age did have the opportunity to go to university free of charge, a luxury no longer afforded to today's youngsters.
Absolute rubbish, where do you get this tosh. 79-80 year olds did national service, there are plenty around, there are still plenty of WW2 vets around as well. Also in the 1970's and 1980's and early 90's these people were still working and supposedly did all the damage, that the young are all bleating about.
Also re University, I went to Erith School, left in 1980 I dont know of anyone from my class who went to Uni. The options you were given were 1) go and work in the local factory or 2) Sign on, thats it, that was the reality.....! But hey you lot keep blaming the older retired people who gave you the chance to bleat on an on about how you deserve everything on a plate, its fucking pathetic.
I'm not blaming pensioners at all. And nothing I posted is untrue. I object to the fact that wealth continues to accumulate in a smaller and smaller number of people, who were mostly born between 1945 and 1975, whilst the Government cuts funding for under 25s as well as the poor and disabled in general. Especially since a lot of the wealth accumulated in pensions would have been thanks to Government spending, the debt for which has been passed onto this generation and the ladder well and truly pulled up. What's pathetic is writing off legitimate and truthful points as 'rubbish' and implying that any criticism of the current imbalance in wealth and equality of spending is disallowed because a tiny proportion of those of pension age have fought in a war.
according to the ONS as at 2015 the demographics of the country were
0 to 15 years 18.9%
16 to 64 years 60.9%
65 years and over 20.2%
There is a correlation between age and likelihood of voting. Only 50 per cent of men aged 18-to-24, and 39 per cent of women, voted in 2010’s general election. Among those aged 55 and over, 76 per cent of men and 73 per cent of women voted.
Only 16 per cent of 18-to-24-year-olds are certain to vote in an election, while 30 per cent in this age category told the Hansard Society that they are certain not to vote.
Voters aged over 75 are more than four times as likely to be “absolutely certain to vote” than voters aged 18-to-24
In a ComRes survey in February, only 60 per cent of 18-to-24-year-olds said they cared who won the coming general election.
Also it might be worth splitting up 16-64 years into smaller subsections to get an accurate vision of the voting population.
So pensioners have the life of Riley at the expense of the younger population. Although they are far fewer in numbers, more bother to vote than the younger population and thus are not ignored by successive governments.
If this is the argument, then the youngsters have it within their power to change things in their favour at the next and subsequent elections. Also, with social media youngsters will never have a better opportunity to spread the word and change matters, to get their contemporaries to vote.
Last time I checked a government was elected to represent everyone, not just the people who voted for them or those who voted.
Tbh your attitude stinks and is just typical of the baby boomer generation "not my problem you sort it", this goes back to the economy, the environment, housing...
I never said any such thing and you continue to just make things up. Read what I said.
If I'm a baby boomer then I qualify by about 2 years. Although I wouldn't have said I was tbh. I have no strong views, other than disagreeing when people spout nonsense.
A government is elected to represent everyone, but if you think The Labour Party would bring in laws to benefit the rich etc then you need to think again.
As Peter Gage said it's far from a black and white issue.
When I grew up we had no telephone until I was 19, no washing machine, no car until I was 14 and then it was so old it barely went anywhere without breaking down. We lived on a council estate. I wore second hand clothes. I had a second hand bike & as a kid remember either playing football or was on my bike.
Now my kids bedrooms have laptops, playstations, tv's, mobile phones etc etc.
They have numerous holidays abroad, whereas I never went abroad until I was 19. Our holidays were Ramsgate & Hastings.
I felt lucky if I had clothes on my back. I didn't have 30 pairs of trainers by the time I was 25.
Now property prices have rocketed which is a massive problem & although there are no fees to pay at university, you will have to repay loans if you earn above a certain salary level.
In some ways my kids are miles better off than I ever was and have lived a life of luxury compared to what I had.
3 tv channels, no football live apart from the cup final etc. I could literally list tens of things that my kids had that we never did.
Conversely, they will find it difficult to buy a property because the ever increasing demand from an ever increasing population.
I'm on no one side, but the oh woe is me it's all the pensioner's fault is silly. PS I'm not a pensioner either.
60% drop in tax allowance for those set up as a limited company. Rise in NIC contributions for self employed even though we don't get holiday or sick pay and can't claim benefits.
Absolute joke, self employed and small business owners another couple of groups on the long list of people the tories screw over.
Look who's untouched again? Ah yes, pensioners, the ones who got us into this mess.
Euthanasia is the only solution. Putting an age on it is tricky but I'd say most people are on the slide and a burden by the time they're 60.
60% drop in tax allowance for those set up as a limited company. Rise in NIC contributions for self employed even though we don't get holiday or sick pay and can't claim benefits.
Absolute joke, self employed and small business owners another couple of groups on the long list of people the tories screw over.
Look who's untouched again? Ah yes, pensioners, the ones who got us into this mess.
Quite a good rant until you got to that point.
Are pensioners to blame because they are not dying fast enough for your liking?
Nope, they're to blame, or rather successive governments that they voted for are to blame for esssentially mortgaging the future of younger people so they can have a cushty life relative to young people from the same background.
Which of the two is it - pensioners or successive governments?
I do believe (I am a pensioner and not planning to kick the proverbial bucket just yet) that my generation had it slightly easier that the current generation; that is not to say we had it easy. Being born just after the second World War was very difficult for many people like me; never had a holiday, largely wearing 2nd hand clothes, no family car etc etc. When I left school in 1962, I recall there being a whole range of unskilled jobs available for people (which is perhaps not the case today). Furthermore, buying a house in the 70s was easier than today (size of deposit needed) but at some point therafter I recall house interest rates rising to 15% or thereabouts. I had to move out of London to afford my first house. I also enjoyed an advantage that the current generation wont receive, which is that of a "Golden Handshake" pension.
So, on balance, given the factors above, I would judge that many of the current pensioners, NOW, and only NOW enjoy the fruits of their life. It remains to be seen how our lifestyle/quality of life will compare with that of the current generation when they reach pension life.
From what I can tell (and don't quote me on this, I wasn't alive then) governments are made up of people, who are voted for by people. Baby boomers were and remain the largest block of voters, thus if the majority vote a specific way, the extreme likelihood is that party would form a government.
As for reaching pension life... to be honest I doubt we'd be able to get a pension at this rate, or at least reach pension age as it would have to be pushed up considerably at this rate.
Money has to be put away for pensions today, as much as they were in my day. Nothing changed there, except the potential size of the pot.
I find it difficult to compare quality of life between different generations. There are pros and cons on both sides. I mentioned in my previous post the advantage that current pensioners had when they were younger in terms of house buying opportunities and today with enhanced pensions. On the other side, disposable income available to today's generation is far far greater than in mine, which can be measured by the number of social activites on tap and peoples' use of them. Many of my generation, as young people, could not afford to eat out, run a car, go on holiday. I guess the quality of life "experience" is different for differing generations.
Where on earth are the young people with disposable income?!i can't afford to do any of the things you mention.
Going back many of the people that you refer to (pensioners) had to do 2 years of national service, and earlier than that they had to fight a bloody war to give some people your age the freedom to bitch and moan that life hasn't handed everything on a plate to you....oh yes and no one my age had a 'gap year' whereby they could ponce of their parents for a year or so, after partying at university for 2-3 years........in the world we live in now, everything is always someone else's fault, do me favour! Life is out there, go out and grab which ever part of it you want.......or sit and wallow in self pity......you choose.
The vast majority of people who are of pension age have never been near a firearm.
Many people who are of pension age did have the opportunity to go to university free of charge, a luxury no longer afforded to today's youngsters.
The baby boomers like me are enjoying the fruits of the elected Labour governments who in 1978 and then Blair in 2002 introduced state pensions which instead of being paid for by those who would enjoy them, by vastly increasing their National Insurance contributions, would be paid for out of taxation on a Pay As You Go basis by the next generation.
The justification was the view that GDP will have grown enough to cover the cost. (they forgot to add - unless we spend it on something else.)
Same noises today about spending tomorrows money on todays wants.
On top of that, public sector pensioners enjoy the most pension wealth as a group, not because the pensions are over generous, but because they enjoyed the benefits of having only one employer over their career, so earning a good percentage of final pay, albeit modest final pay for many. Private sector employees tended to move around leaving a series of low value frozen pensions which amounted to a far lower proportion of final pay. So there are many comfortable pensioners who enjoyed the benefits of final salary pensions in both public and private sector, but only the public sector pensions are a drain on the current tax payer. Private sector pensions have to be paid for in advance from the company's profits ask Phillip Green.
Current private sector employees lose out not because of the State holding back, but because companies don't have enough money to put into their DC scheme. Large corporates are paying off the final salary scheme deficits for the once affordable pension obligations made unaffordable by improvements foisted on them by Labour governments obsessed with "fairness" and Tory governments obsessed with grabbing money from the "fat" pension funds.
Two thirds of your pension pot is built up from the first ten years of contributions - it's called compound interest! So youngsters leaving school now will not suffer the pension problems of the current working generation. That's because it is now compulsory to start saving for a pension from age 22 and for employers to contribute. The current pension black hole is down to many employees having been in either small businesses that never had a pension scheme until now, or a large employer who pays 99% of his pension budget filling the deficit in his closed final salary scheme. In both cases the same contribution is paid for a 20 year old and a 45 year old but the pension outcomes are vastly different. The pension gap would only be closed if companies were able to pay higher contributions with age, but that's against the law, it's unfair (not necessarily after Brexit though ).
Once the pension deficits have run their course and employees are building up a pension pot from day one, the next generation will have decent pensions, but be worrying about paying for their care when they are being kept alive in a box with replacement parts until they are 110.
As for housing, our generation enjoyed easier divorces, so unlike our parents who never parted and only needed one house, more divorces means one house for you and one for your divorced wife and another one for the divorced wife of the man now living with your ex who then moves out to live with another partner.... This hasn't helped the housing shortage and the pressure on prices, but eventually it trickles down to the next generation, even if the next generation has turned 80 by then!
The current generation were tricked into believing that a university degree was a ticket to prosperity. All it has done is to reduce the value of the degree as a currency and harmed the concept of working up the career ladder from the bottom using innate ability. Instead youngsters have been fed the false premise that employers reward the acquisition of academic candy floss by starting you at the top.
I think the current generation have indeed been hit by a perfect storm, caused by transitioning away from paternalistic corporate and State benefit systems to a more individualistic regime. They have been caught in between, not benefitting fully from the old regime and starting too late to benefit from the new regime. I think this is probably a one off event of a generation feeling it is worse off than its parent's generation.
I think people shouldn't take it too personally, the issue is a major accounting disaster based on pensions and other things and you can throw in things like globalisation for good measure. Who pays for a pension? It is basically those working now. There is a logic to this but a flaw. What if those being paid refuse to die at a reasonable age and start hoovering up all the money. Pensions were too generous and are now being paid for by workers not getting wage rises and getting inferior pensions themselves. Then when you throw in ridiculous house prices, a market my generation have had a hand in, and you have a depressing recipe for stitching up the young generation. Our children and grandchildren.
You only have to look at the R.I.P threads to see that quite a lot of people are departing relatively young, but medical breakthroughs can keep the very old and sick living for longer. One of the issues was that the disaster could be and was predicted but like I said in a previous post, nobody wants to pay for the solutions. But people have to pay - and those people are the young, paying with money and lifestyles they will never have.
I don't think anyone here is suggesting a pensions smash and grab to pay for youngsters to continue to have boozy nights out, iPhones and holidays. There are also some harmful stereotypes here. Not every young person can afford these things either, just like all pensioners are not incontinent geriatrics who are hiding millions of pounds under the mattress. I'm sure older people find such stereotypes offensive so the idea that all under-30s are high-spending yuppies is also offensive to those who are working and scraping away to pay the bills and put food on the table. At all the places I have worked, plenty of people who are meant to be full-time were also working part-time jobs at nights or the weekends. It adds up to 50, 60 hours a week.
There is simply not enough space to go into all the reasons why, but the events and decisions made following the Second World War meant that the country accumulated a lot of debt in order to rebuild and to modernise. This combined with several other phenomena (globalisation, free trade, ease on capital restrictions, the 'Big Bang' in global finance, electronics and technology, ease of access to credit instruments) meant that anyone born in the decades following 1945 had opportunities like no one before to accumulate capital and any risk was simply packaged and sold down the line to be paid off by the next generation. The financial crisis was the culmination of this balloon of risk and instead of those who had been feeding this crisis being made to pay for it, the Government bailed them all out and in order to pay for these bail-outs, Government spending cuts have disproportionately hit the poor, disabled and young the hardest. People who had absolutely no part in the events that led to the financial crisis, or had any stake. Certainly if the banks had been allowed to fail, I personally would not have lost any substantial amount of money. Of course I'm not saying the banks should have been allowed to fail, because of the chaos it would have caused, but those whose massive deposits were shored up should have been footing the bill, not disabled council tenants having to pay the bedroom tax.
It is a complicated issue. By all means those who saved and saved to have their retirement money and their hard earned assets did so fairly and in accordance with what the rules are at the time. So no, I am not suggesting that pensioners should be targeted. The problem is that Government knows that the young, poor and disabled are less politically active and so long as they continue to either vote for joke parties or not unite behind an obvious candidate, the main parties will continually to court the votes of those who do go and vote. Perhaps baby-boomers do deserve to remain immune from any impact of the financial crisis since they're the ones who bother to vote tactically, and also the most important politicians are also baby-boomers and so will continue to line their own pockets. The legacy that the governments of Thatcher onwards will claim is that this generation will be the first in history to be worse off than their parents.
Whether or not you think pensioners or baby-boomers or anyone else is to blame is not really important. The main question is, do those with the least money, the young, the poor, the disabled, deserve to face these cuts that are being caused by a financial crisis not of their making? Or can any other money be found? There seem to be plenty of older people moaning that they don't want to have to sell their homes worth the best part of a million pounds in order to fund their care, where do they think the money is going to come from? Plenty of pensioners have benefited from merely the circumstances of their upbringing, coming to adulthood in an era of unprecedented wealth accumulation, then they want someone else to fund 5-star retirement care. Maybe they should dig into their own pockets before taking the money from the disabled.
self employed to pay more in NI contributions as they are "better off" than those who are employed - someone had better tell the chancellor that they don't have access to a work place pension (which by law an employer HAS to pay into),sick pay, paid maternity/paternity leave.....Just wonder what these "benefits" are worth ???
Apart from that a very bland & non-descript budget. No usual changes in allowances (I know some were already announced previously & will take effect in April) or duties and nothing at all re pension contributions or allowances.
Lot of self employed don't take advantage of a personal pension, as you have to pay tax to get tax relief, an lots of them don't pay much, or any !
60% drop in tax allowance for those set up as a limited company. Rise in NIC contributions for self employed even though we don't get holiday or sick pay and can't claim benefits.
Absolute joke, self employed and small business owners another couple of groups on the long list of people the tories screw over.
Look who's untouched again? Ah yes, pensioners, the ones who got us into this mess.
Quite a good rant until you got to that point.
Are pensioners to blame because they are not dying fast enough for your liking?
Nope, they're to blame, or rather successive governments that they voted for are to blame for esssentially mortgaging the future of younger people so they can have a cushty life relative to young people from the same background.
Which of the two is it - pensioners or successive governments?
I do believe (I am a pensioner and not planning to kick the proverbial bucket just yet) that my generation had it slightly easier that the current generation; that is not to say we had it easy. Being born just after the second World War was very difficult for many people like me; never had a holiday, largely wearing 2nd hand clothes, no family car etc etc. When I left school in 1962, I recall there being a whole range of unskilled jobs available for people (which is perhaps not the case today). Furthermore, buying a house in the 70s was easier than today (size of deposit needed) but at some point therafter I recall house interest rates rising to 15% or thereabouts. I had to move out of London to afford my first house. I also enjoyed an advantage that the current generation wont receive, which is that of a "Golden Handshake" pension.
So, on balance, given the factors above, I would judge that many of the current pensioners, NOW, and only NOW enjoy the fruits of their life. It remains to be seen how our lifestyle/quality of life will compare with that of the current generation when they reach pension life.
From what I can tell (and don't quote me on this, I wasn't alive then) governments are made up of people, who are voted for by people. Baby boomers were and remain the largest block of voters, thus if the majority vote a specific way, the extreme likelihood is that party would form a government.
As for reaching pension life... to be honest I doubt we'd be able to get a pension at this rate, or at least reach pension age as it would have to be pushed up considerably at this rate.
Money has to be put away for pensions today, as much as they were in my day. Nothing changed there, except the potential size of the pot.
I find it difficult to compare quality of life between different generations. There are pros and cons on both sides. I mentioned in my previous post the advantage that current pensioners had when they were younger in terms of house buying opportunities and today with enhanced pensions. On the other side, disposable income available to today's generation is far far greater than in mine, which can be measured by the number of social activites on tap and peoples' use of them. Many of my generation, as young people, could not afford to eat out, run a car, go on holiday. I guess the quality of life "experience" is different for differing generations.
Where on earth are the young people with disposable income?!i can't afford to do any of the things you mention.
Going back many of the people that you refer to (pensioners) had to do 2 years of national service, and earlier than that they had to fight a bloody war to give some people your age the freedom to bitch and moan that life hasn't handed everything on a plate to you....oh yes and no one my age had a 'gap year' whereby they could ponce of their parents for a year or so, after partying at university for 2-3 years........in the world we live in now, everything is always someone else's fault, do me favour! Life is out there, go out and grab which ever part of it you want.......or sit and wallow in self pity......you choose.
The vast majority of people who are of pension age have never been near a firearm.
Many people who are of pension age did have the opportunity to go to university free of charge, a luxury no longer afforded to today's youngsters.
What utter garbage. I went to Dartford Technical high school for boys left in 1973 at 16, it was a Friday, started work on the Monday, an been lucky an healthy enough to have not had more than two weeks off in the 43 years since. As for Uni being free, no one but the elite went to Uni. I reckon 90% of us left at 16, and of the 10% that did A levels 3 % went to Uni. Now, you all bloody go for the 3 year fun fest !
I'm 59 an most 25 year olds have seen more of this world than I ever will. Because I went to work at 16, and was paying in to a pension at 20.
60% drop in tax allowance for those set up as a limited company. Rise in NIC contributions for self employed even though we don't get holiday or sick pay and can't claim benefits.
Absolute joke, self employed and small business owners another couple of groups on the long list of people the tories screw over.
Look who's untouched again? Ah yes, pensioners, the ones who got us into this mess.
Quite a good rant until you got to that point.
Are pensioners to blame because they are not dying fast enough for your liking?
Nope, they're to blame, or rather successive governments that they voted for are to blame for esssentially mortgaging the future of younger people so they can have a cushty life relative to young people from the same background.
Which of the two is it - pensioners or successive governments?
I do believe (I am a pensioner and not planning to kick the proverbial bucket just yet) that my generation had it slightly easier that the current generation; that is not to say we had it easy. Being born just after the second World War was very difficult for many people like me; never had a holiday, largely wearing 2nd hand clothes, no family car etc etc. When I left school in 1962, I recall there being a whole range of unskilled jobs available for people (which is perhaps not the case today). Furthermore, buying a house in the 70s was easier than today (size of deposit needed) but at some point therafter I recall house interest rates rising to 15% or thereabouts. I had to move out of London to afford my first house. I also enjoyed an advantage that the current generation wont receive, which is that of a "Golden Handshake" pension.
So, on balance, given the factors above, I would judge that many of the current pensioners, NOW, and only NOW enjoy the fruits of their life. It remains to be seen how our lifestyle/quality of life will compare with that of the current generation when they reach pension life.
From what I can tell (and don't quote me on this, I wasn't alive then) governments are made up of people, who are voted for by people. Baby boomers were and remain the largest block of voters, thus if the majority vote a specific way, the extreme likelihood is that party would form a government.
As for reaching pension life... to be honest I doubt we'd be able to get a pension at this rate, or at least reach pension age as it would have to be pushed up considerably at this rate.
Money has to be put away for pensions today, as much as they were in my day. Nothing changed there, except the potential size of the pot.
I find it difficult to compare quality of life between different generations. There are pros and cons on both sides. I mentioned in my previous post the advantage that current pensioners had when they were younger in terms of house buying opportunities and today with enhanced pensions. On the other side, disposable income available to today's generation is far far greater than in mine, which can be measured by the number of social activites on tap and peoples' use of them. Many of my generation, as young people, could not afford to eat out, run a car, go on holiday. I guess the quality of life "experience" is different for differing generations.
Where on earth are the young people with disposable income?!i can't afford to do any of the things you mention.
Going back many of the people that you refer to (pensioners) had to do 2 years of national service, and earlier than that they had to fight a bloody war to give some people your age the freedom to bitch and moan that life hasn't handed everything on a plate to you....oh yes and no one my age had a 'gap year' whereby they could ponce of their parents for a year or so, after partying at university for 2-3 years........in the world we live in now, everything is always someone else's fault, do me favour! Life is out there, go out and grab which ever part of it you want.......or sit and wallow in self pity......you choose.
The vast majority of people who are of pension age have never been near a firearm.
Many people who are of pension age did have the opportunity to go to university free of charge, a luxury no longer afforded to today's youngsters.
What utter garbage. I went to Dartford Technical high school for boys left in 1973 at 16, it was a Friday, started work on the Monday, an been lucky an healthy enough to have not had more than two weeks off in the 43 years since. As for Uni being free, no one but the elite went to Uni. I reckon 90% of us left at 16, and of the 10% that did A levels 3 % went to Uni. Now, you all bloody go for the 3 year fun fest !
I'm 59 an most 25 year olds have seen more of this world than I ever will. Because I went to work at 16, and was paying in to a pension at 20.
Sorry can you actually point to me which part of my post was inaccurate? I said many, not all. Just because you didn't go to uni doesn't mean no one else did. It's really not that hard to understand.
Maybe read posts properly before you write it off as utter garbage, you might save yourself the embarrasment.
I don't think anyone here is suggesting a pensions smash and grab to pay for youngsters to continue to have boozy nights out, iPhones and holidays. There are also some harmful stereotypes here. Not every young person can afford these things either, just like all pensioners are not incontinent geriatrics who are hiding millions of pounds under the mattress. I'm sure older people find such stereotypes offensive so the idea that all under-30s are high-spending yuppies is also offensive to those who are working and scraping away to pay the bills and put food on the table. At all the places I have worked, plenty of people who are meant to be full-time were also working part-time jobs at nights or the weekends. It adds up to 50, 60 hours a week.
There is simply not enough space to go into all the reasons why, but the events and decisions made following the Second World War meant that the country accumulated a lot of debt in order to rebuild and to modernise. This combined with several other phenomena (globalisation, free trade, ease on capital restrictions, the 'Big Bang' in global finance, electronics and technology, ease of access to credit instruments) meant that anyone born in the decades following 1945 had opportunities like no one before to accumulate capital and any risk was simply packaged and sold down the line to be paid off by the next generation. The financial crisis was the culmination of this balloon of risk and instead of those who had been feeding this crisis being made to pay for it, the Government bailed them all out and in order to pay for these bail-outs, Government spending cuts have disproportionately hit the poor, disabled and young the hardest. People who had absolutely no part in the events that led to the financial crisis, or had any stake. Certainly if the banks had been allowed to fail, I personally would not have lost any substantial amount of money. Of course I'm not saying the banks should have been allowed to fail, because of the chaos it would have caused, but those whose massive deposits were shored up should have been footing the bill, not disabled council tenants having to pay the bedroom tax.
It is a complicated issue. By all means those who saved and saved to have their retirement money and their hard earned assets did so fairly and in accordance with what the rules are at the time. So no, I am not suggesting that pensioners should be targeted. The problem is that Government knows that the young, poor and disabled are less politically active and so long as they continue to either vote for joke parties or not unite behind an obvious candidate, the main parties will continually to court the votes of those who do go and vote. Perhaps baby-boomers do deserve to remain immune from any impact of the financial crisis since they're the ones who bother to vote tactically, and also the most important politicians are also baby-boomers and so will continue to line their own pockets. The legacy that the governments of Thatcher onwards will claim is that this generation will be the first in history to be worse off than their parents.
Whether or not you think pensioners or baby-boomers or anyone else is to blame is not really important. The main question is, do those with the least money, the young, the poor, the disabled, deserve to face these cuts that are being caused by a financial crisis not of their making? Or can any other money be found? There seem to be plenty of older people moaning that they don't want to have to sell their homes worth the best part of a million pounds in order to fund their care, where do they think the money is going to come from? Plenty of pensioners have benefited from merely the circumstances of their upbringing, coming to adulthood in an era of unprecedented wealth accumulation, then they want someone else to fund 5-star retirement care. Maybe they should dig into their own pockets before taking the money from the disabled.
I think it is fair to say that during the election, I disagreed a lot with Fiish - but I think he is spot on here. My mortgage is paid off, I don't have a vested interest in things changing. But politicians voted down proposals to sort out this problem because the answer wasn't a magic bullet and people who have accumulated a lot of wealth through property values, rather than their hard work (that doesn't mean they haven't worked hard) don't want to lose any of it, even after they die.
I'll give one example of how rubbish and unfair social care is. Say somebody gets dementia and it is so bad they have to go into a home for their own security. If they have money - in savings or the value of their house, they have to pay for their care and it isn't cheap. A quite modest residential home can cost over 3.5k a week. Now lets imagine this home has a combination of people who have money and others who don't. The council will pay if you don't have any money but they pay a fair bit less than the residents who pay out of their own pockets. Basically, it is all councils can afford to pay! So the system, and the rest of us are more than happy that the person who is unfortunate enough to become ill with demetia, is effectively not only paying for themself but subsidising others too. And the reason they have to pay for others is that they have become old and ill and have no choice.
Governments of all colours know this is unfair. The conservatives actually brought in legislation to put a limit to how much of a person's savings is spent on social care. It was supposed to come in in 2015 I think but they deferred it because they didn't have the money! There was a solution as I explained in an earlier post and because politicians thought it would be unpopular, because it was a death tax, it was voted out. This isn't a critique of one party, in fact it is a critique of all of them, as they could get together and agreesocial care has to be sorted and all agree not to make political capital on an unpopular policy.
By the way - do you know that demetia isn't classed as an illness for the purposes of above. Not because it isn't, but because the country can't afford for it to be!
I don't think anyone here is suggesting a pensions smash and grab to pay for youngsters to continue to have boozy nights out, iPhones and holidays. There are also some harmful stereotypes here. Not every young person can afford these things either, just like all pensioners are not incontinent geriatrics who are hiding millions of pounds under the mattress. I'm sure older people find such stereotypes offensive so the idea that all under-30s are high-spending yuppies is also offensive to those who are working and scraping away to pay the bills and put food on the table. At all the places I have worked, plenty of people who are meant to be full-time were also working part-time jobs at nights or the weekends. It adds up to 50, 60 hours a week.
There is simply not enough space to go into all the reasons why, but the events and decisions made following the Second World War meant that the country accumulated a lot of debt in order to rebuild and to modernise. This combined with several other phenomena (globalisation, free trade, ease on capital restrictions, the 'Big Bang' in global finance, electronics and technology, ease of access to credit instruments) meant that anyone born in the decades following 1945 had opportunities like no one before to accumulate capital and any risk was simply packaged and sold down the line to be paid off by the next generation. The financial crisis was the culmination of this balloon of risk and instead of those who had been feeding this crisis being made to pay for it, the Government bailed them all out and in order to pay for these bail-outs, Government spending cuts have disproportionately hit the poor, disabled and young the hardest. People who had absolutely no part in the events that led to the financial crisis, or had any stake. Certainly if the banks had been allowed to fail, I personally would not have lost any substantial amount of money. Of course I'm not saying the banks should have been allowed to fail, because of the chaos it would have caused, but those whose massive deposits were shored up should have been footing the bill, not disabled council tenants having to pay the bedroom tax.
It is a complicated issue. By all means those who saved and saved to have their retirement money and their hard earned assets did so fairly and in accordance with what the rules are at the time. So no, I am not suggesting that pensioners should be targeted. The problem is that Government knows that the young, poor and disabled are less politically active and so long as they continue to either vote for joke parties or not unite behind an obvious candidate, the main parties will continually to court the votes of those who do go and vote. Perhaps baby-boomers do deserve to remain immune from any impact of the financial crisis since they're the ones who bother to vote tactically, and also the most important politicians are also baby-boomers and so will continue to line their own pockets. The legacy that the governments of Thatcher onwards will claim is that this generation will be the first in history to be worse off than their parents.
Whether or not you think pensioners or baby-boomers or anyone else is to blame is not really important. The main question is, do those with the least money, the young, the poor, the disabled, deserve to face these cuts that are being caused by a financial crisis not of their making? Or can any other money be found? There seem to be plenty of older people moaning that they don't want to have to sell their homes worth the best part of a million pounds in order to fund their care, where do they think the money is going to come from? Plenty of pensioners have benefited from merely the circumstances of their upbringing, coming to adulthood in an era of unprecedented wealth accumulation, then they want someone else to fund 5-star retirement care. Maybe they should dig into their own pockets before taking the money from the disabled.
You can't say all pensioners this or all young people that as it varies from person to person and family to family and geographical location to geographical location.
However I'm 31 and tend to be on the 'side' of the older generation on this one, in that my generation has, in a lot of ways, never had it so good if they are lucky enough to have been born into a stable, positive upbringing and work hard.
Housing is an issue but it can be achieved with hard work and going without.
Pensions will never be as good as the generation just before us could potentially achieve - I.e I work with people earning 30k or 60k who have retired early and will take home more or less the same (or more) in retirement!! But my parents of that same age have sod all pension.
On the other side I work with people in their mid 20's-30's who up until auto enrol had not joined the Company pension scheme. Madness! I joined mine when I started work at 17! People have to take responsibility for their future income.
I've been abroad 70 odd times at 31 where as my parents (who may be considered 'baby boomers' - late 50's?) didn't go abroad till their late 30's. My parents have never driven a new car, where now anyone can. My age group do and can eat out etc fairly regularly - my parents never did and still rarely do.
I've struggled for years to save a 20k deposit but have paid £10k plus for a wedding in that time and gone abroad a lot but have an old car and take packed lunches every day.
My parents paid pittance for a wedding 30 years ago but brought a 4 bed detached for £185k 18 years ago which is now probably worth over half a mil.
My parents have never got a penny in inheritance where others there age and my age even have received 100's of thousands.
I didn't go to uni and neither did they. We've both worked hard doing overtime and 2nd jobs when required. I still do. My Dads been made redundant 4 times - I luckily have not, yet.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's ups and downs through generations and depends on peoples priorities too, but if you're lucky to have grown up knowing that hard work and saving is important and that going without is essential at times then you will hopefully be okay and able to prosper.
Being a baby bloomer doesn't necessarily mean you'll be living the life of riley just cos of when you were born, likewise the opposite now - other things come into it.
It's those without that upbringing and support that I feel sorry for and who these times can be hard on.
When people talk about generation, it isn't individual people - it is a whole. So we can't say, that isn't me or my parents - it is a collective responsibility of a generation. It is like saying the British people voted for Brexit - Well technically 52% of those who voted did! But the British people voted for Brexit all the same. I won't make this political, if it proves to be a great move for the country the British people will be considered heroes. If it proves to be a disaster, they (including me) who voted remain, will be considered villains. We can't have the deabte saying - well that isn't me.
Digressing slightly but, in my view, relevantly 'social care' is a racket.
Two weasel words to justify making sick people pay for their own care despite working hard and paying taxes for 40 plus years in the majority of cases.
How is it that individual recipients of 'social care' are charged hundreds of pounds a week for a fleeting visit or two if they are lucky a day from a carer or carers paid the minimum wage? Where does the rest of the money go because there is sure as hell a massive dichotomy between what the vulnerable sick person who isn't sick so they can be legally mugged pays and what the carers get!
Solve that one and social care costs can come down which in turn might allow money to be diverted towards addressing some of the housing issues.
Digressing slightly but, in my view, relevantly 'social care' is a racket.
Two weasel words to justify making sick people pay for their own care despite working hard and paying taxes for 40 plus years in the majority of cases.
How is it that individual recipients of 'social care' are charged hundreds of pounds a week for a fleeting visit or two if they are lucky a day from a carer or carers paid the minimum wage? Where does the rest of the money go because there is sure as hell a massive dichotomy between what the vulnerable sick person who isn't sick so they can be legally mugged pays and what the carers get!
Solve that one and social care costs can come down which in turn might allow money to be diverted towards addressing some of the housing issues.
Digressing slightly but, in my view, relevantly 'social care' is a racket.
Two weasel words to justify making sick people pay for their own care despite working hard and paying taxes for 40 plus years in the majority of cases.
How is it that individual recipients of 'social care' are charged hundreds of pounds a week for a fleeting visit or two if they are lucky a day from a carer or carers paid the minimum wage? Where does the rest of the money go because there is sure as hell a massive dichotomy between what the vulnerable sick person who isn't sick so they can be legally mugged pays and what the carers get!
Solve that one and social care costs can come down which in turn might allow money to be diverted towards addressing some of the housing issues.
In short who is coining it in?
Have a wild guess.
You're going to say pensioners. I'm going to say private care providers and local authorities.
Digressing slightly but, in my view, relevantly 'social care' is a racket.
Two weasel words to justify making sick people pay for their own care despite working hard and paying taxes for 40 plus years in the majority of cases.
How is it that individual recipients of 'social care' are charged hundreds of pounds a week for a fleeting visit or two if they are lucky a day from a carer or carers paid the minimum wage? Where does the rest of the money go because there is sure as hell a massive dichotomy between what the vulnerable sick person who isn't sick so they can be legally mugged pays and what the carers get!
Solve that one and social care costs can come down which in turn might allow money to be diverted towards addressing some of the housing issues.
In short who is coining it in?
I must admit, it puzzles me a bit too. But that doesn't mean there isn't a good reason. The industry is highly regulated. A lot of homes are in financial trouble so they can't be raking it in! But like I said - local authorities tend to pay less - even though it is a massive percentage of their budget. We don't want our council tax to rise and somebody has to pay for it. Maybe we just have too many sick old people who can't fully pay for themselves?
Digressing slightly but, in my view, relevantly 'social care' is a racket.
Two weasel words to justify making sick people pay for their own care despite working hard and paying taxes for 40 plus years in the majority of cases.
How is it that individual recipients of 'social care' are charged hundreds of pounds a week for a fleeting visit or two if they are lucky a day from a carer or carers paid the minimum wage? Where does the rest of the money go because there is sure as hell a massive dichotomy between what the vulnerable sick person who isn't sick so they can be legally mugged pays and what the carers get!
Solve that one and social care costs can come down which in turn might allow money to be diverted towards addressing some of the housing issues.
In short who is coining it in?
Have a wild guess.
You're going to say pensioners. I'm going to say private care providers and local authorities.
I was going to say private care providers. And those who own shares in them. Guess who owns those?
Digressing slightly but, in my view, relevantly 'social care' is a racket.
Two weasel words to justify making sick people pay for their own care despite working hard and paying taxes for 40 plus years in the majority of cases.
How is it that individual recipients of 'social care' are charged hundreds of pounds a week for a fleeting visit or two if they are lucky a day from a carer or carers paid the minimum wage? Where does the rest of the money go because there is sure as hell a massive dichotomy between what the vulnerable sick person who isn't sick so they can be legally mugged pays and what the carers get!
Solve that one and social care costs can come down which in turn might allow money to be diverted towards addressing some of the housing issues.
In short who is coining it in?
I must admit, it puzzles me a bit too. But that doesn't mean there isn't a good reason. The industry is highly regulated. A lot of homes are in financial trouble so they can't be raking it in! But like I said - local authorities tend to pay less - even though it is a massive percentage of their budget. We don't want our council tax to rise and somebody has to pay for it. Maybe we just have too many sick old people who can't fully pay for themselves?
Apparently all the rail franchises have operating losses but still manage to pay their top brass hundreds of thousands of pounds, as well as the profits the shareholders seem to rake in.
Just because something is haemorrhaging money doesn't mean someone isn't making a quid on it.
Comments
I guess we should've told those people who are currently 100 that they should have worked to when they were in their late eighties. Those greedy bastards
If this is the argument, then the youngsters have it within their power to change things in their favour at the next and subsequent elections. Also, with social media youngsters will never have a better opportunity to spread the word and change matters, to get their contemporaries to vote.
No, seriously, eat me. Saves on my pension, saves a small cow.
Tbh your attitude stinks and is just typical of the baby boomer generation "not my problem you sort it", this goes back to the economy, the environment, housing...
The vast majority of people who are of pension age have never been near a firearm.
Many people who are of pension age did have the opportunity to go to university free of charge, a luxury no longer afforded to today's youngsters.
But Fiish, in those days you had to be quite clever to go to university.
Nowadays pretty much anyone can get themselves into university if they wish, and we have to fund these rubbish throwaway courses that they now have to provide to give these people something to study.
Pay 90% tax on our super inflated incomes so you can afford to go out twice a month and pay your inflated rent to live in London.
Or conversely you could do what we did. Stayed in, saved like mad, bought houses miles away from where we worked because it was all we could afford, stayed in and paid our maxed our mortgages off at 15% interest rates whilst 'doing up' the properties ourselves. Thought for ages to see if we could afford kids - no working tax credits, or child care credits in those days - ran our old 15 year old cars into the ground, worked all the overtime we could just to survive (and not seeing the kids) worked in pubs as a second income whenever the landlord needed some help.
It's called being young and the perfect opportunity to set yourself up for an easier life in your later years. Firm foundations. But without the luxury of the latest Apple product or anything else the easy credit you can get allows you to purchase because you want it NOW.
As an aside, I had just started work and wanted a small loan to buy myself a motorbike to get to and from work (as I couldn't afford a car). I had to make an appointment with my Bank Manager to get that loan - £300.
I can pick up the 'phone now and within 10 minutes I can have £15k dumped into my bank account. It's too easy and people just don't think about the consequences.
Everything is better when you save for it.
If I'm a baby boomer then I qualify by about 2 years. Although I wouldn't have said I was tbh. I have no strong views, other than disagreeing when people spout nonsense.
A government is elected to represent everyone, but if you think The Labour Party would bring in laws to benefit the rich etc then you need to think again.
As Peter Gage said it's far from a black and white issue.
When I grew up we had no telephone until I was 19, no washing machine, no car until I was 14 and then it was so old it barely went anywhere without breaking down. We lived on a council estate. I wore second hand clothes. I had a second hand bike & as a kid remember either playing football or was on my bike.
Now my kids bedrooms have laptops, playstations, tv's, mobile phones etc etc.
They have numerous holidays abroad, whereas I never went abroad until I was 19. Our holidays were Ramsgate & Hastings.
I felt lucky if I had clothes on my back. I didn't have 30 pairs of trainers by the time I was 25.
Now property prices have rocketed which is a massive problem & although there are no fees to pay at university, you will have to repay loans if you earn above a certain salary level.
In some ways my kids are miles better off than I ever was and have lived a life of luxury compared to what I had.
3 tv channels, no football live apart from the cup final etc. I could literally list tens of things that my kids had that we never did.
Conversely, they will find it difficult to buy a property because the ever increasing demand from an ever increasing population.
I'm on no one side, but the oh woe is me it's all the pensioner's fault is silly. PS I'm not a pensioner either.
Isn't that right Katrien?
Don't think any of my contemporaries did. Free or not.
The justification was the view that GDP will have grown enough to cover the cost. (they forgot to add - unless we spend it on something else.)
Same noises today about spending tomorrows money on todays wants.
On top of that, public sector pensioners enjoy the most pension wealth as a group, not because the pensions are over generous, but because they enjoyed the benefits of having only one employer over their career, so earning a good percentage of final pay, albeit modest final pay for many. Private sector employees tended to move around leaving a series of low value frozen pensions which amounted to a far lower proportion of final pay. So there are many comfortable pensioners who enjoyed the benefits of final salary pensions in both public and private sector, but only the public sector pensions are a drain on the current tax payer. Private sector pensions have to be paid for in advance from the company's profits ask Phillip Green.
Current private sector employees lose out not because of the State holding back, but because companies don't have enough money to put into their DC scheme. Large corporates are paying off the final salary scheme deficits for the once affordable pension obligations made unaffordable by improvements foisted on them by Labour governments obsessed with "fairness" and Tory governments obsessed with grabbing money from the "fat" pension funds.
Two thirds of your pension pot is built up from the first ten years of contributions - it's called compound interest! So youngsters leaving school now will not suffer the pension problems of the current working generation. That's because it is now compulsory to start saving for a pension from age 22 and for employers to contribute. The current pension black hole is down to many employees having been in either small businesses that never had a pension scheme until now, or a large employer who pays 99% of his pension budget filling the deficit in his closed final salary scheme. In both cases the same contribution is paid for a 20 year old and a 45 year old but the pension outcomes are vastly different. The pension gap would only be closed if companies were able to pay higher contributions with age, but that's against the law, it's unfair (not necessarily after Brexit though
Once the pension deficits have run their course and employees are building up a pension pot from day one, the next generation will have decent pensions, but be worrying about paying for their care when they are being kept alive in a box with replacement parts until they are 110.
As for housing, our generation enjoyed easier divorces, so unlike our parents who never parted and only needed one house, more divorces means one house for you and one for your divorced wife and another one for the divorced wife of the man now living with your ex who then moves out to live with another partner.... This hasn't helped the housing shortage and the pressure on prices, but eventually it trickles down to the next generation, even if the next generation has turned 80 by then!
The current generation were tricked into believing that a university degree was a ticket to prosperity. All it has done is to reduce the value of the degree as a currency and harmed the concept of working up the career ladder from the bottom using innate ability. Instead youngsters have been fed the false premise that employers reward the acquisition of academic candy floss by starting you at the top.
I think the current generation have indeed been hit by a perfect storm, caused by transitioning away from paternalistic corporate and State benefit systems to a more individualistic regime. They have been caught in between, not benefitting fully from the old regime and starting too late to benefit from the new regime. I think this is probably a one off event of a generation feeling it is worse off than its parent's generation.
You only have to look at the R.I.P threads to see that quite a lot of people are departing relatively young, but medical breakthroughs can keep the very old and sick living for longer. One of the issues was that the disaster could be and was predicted but like I said in a previous post, nobody wants to pay for the solutions. But people have to pay - and those people are the young, paying with money and lifestyles they will never have.
There is simply not enough space to go into all the reasons why, but the events and decisions made following the Second World War meant that the country accumulated a lot of debt in order to rebuild and to modernise. This combined with several other phenomena (globalisation, free trade, ease on capital restrictions, the 'Big Bang' in global finance, electronics and technology, ease of access to credit instruments) meant that anyone born in the decades following 1945 had opportunities like no one before to accumulate capital and any risk was simply packaged and sold down the line to be paid off by the next generation. The financial crisis was the culmination of this balloon of risk and instead of those who had been feeding this crisis being made to pay for it, the Government bailed them all out and in order to pay for these bail-outs, Government spending cuts have disproportionately hit the poor, disabled and young the hardest. People who had absolutely no part in the events that led to the financial crisis, or had any stake. Certainly if the banks had been allowed to fail, I personally would not have lost any substantial amount of money. Of course I'm not saying the banks should have been allowed to fail, because of the chaos it would have caused, but those whose massive deposits were shored up should have been footing the bill, not disabled council tenants having to pay the bedroom tax.
It is a complicated issue. By all means those who saved and saved to have their retirement money and their hard earned assets did so fairly and in accordance with what the rules are at the time. So no, I am not suggesting that pensioners should be targeted. The problem is that Government knows that the young, poor and disabled are less politically active and so long as they continue to either vote for joke parties or not unite behind an obvious candidate, the main parties will continually to court the votes of those who do go and vote. Perhaps baby-boomers do deserve to remain immune from any impact of the financial crisis since they're the ones who bother to vote tactically, and also the most important politicians are also baby-boomers and so will continue to line their own pockets. The legacy that the governments of Thatcher onwards will claim is that this generation will be the first in history to be worse off than their parents.
Whether or not you think pensioners or baby-boomers or anyone else is to blame is not really important. The main question is, do those with the least money, the young, the poor, the disabled, deserve to face these cuts that are being caused by a financial crisis not of their making? Or can any other money be found? There seem to be plenty of older people moaning that they don't want to have to sell their homes worth the best part of a million pounds in order to fund their care, where do they think the money is going to come from? Plenty of pensioners have benefited from merely the circumstances of their upbringing, coming to adulthood in an era of unprecedented wealth accumulation, then they want someone else to fund 5-star retirement care. Maybe they should dig into their own pockets before taking the money from the disabled.
I'm 59 an most 25 year olds have seen more of this world than I ever will. Because I went to work at 16, and was paying in to a pension at 20.
Maybe read posts properly before you write it off as utter garbage, you might save yourself the embarrasment.
I'll give one example of how rubbish and unfair social care is. Say somebody gets dementia and it is so bad they have to go into a home for their own security. If they have money - in savings or the value of their house, they have to pay for their care and it isn't cheap. A quite modest residential home can cost over 3.5k a week. Now lets imagine this home has a combination of people who have money and others who don't. The council will pay if you don't have any money but they pay a fair bit less than the residents who pay out of their own pockets. Basically, it is all councils can afford to pay! So the system, and the rest of us are more than happy that the person who is unfortunate enough to become ill with demetia, is effectively not only paying for themself but subsidising others too. And the reason they have to pay for others is that they have become old and ill and have no choice.
Governments of all colours know this is unfair. The conservatives actually brought in legislation to put a limit to how much of a person's savings is spent on social care. It was supposed to come in in 2015 I think but they deferred it because they didn't have the money! There was a solution as I explained in an earlier post and because politicians thought it would be unpopular, because it was a death tax, it was voted out. This isn't a critique of one party, in fact it is a critique of all of them, as they could get together and agreesocial care has to be sorted and all agree not to make political capital on an unpopular policy.
By the way - do you know that demetia isn't classed as an illness for the purposes of above. Not because it isn't, but because the country can't afford for it to be!
However I'm 31 and tend to be on the 'side' of the older generation on this one, in that my generation has, in a lot of ways, never had it so good if they are lucky enough to have been born into a stable, positive upbringing and work hard.
Housing is an issue but it can be achieved with hard work and going without.
Pensions will never be as good as the generation just before us could potentially achieve - I.e I work with people earning 30k or 60k who have retired early and will take home more or less the same (or more) in retirement!! But my parents of that same age have sod all pension.
On the other side I work with people in their mid 20's-30's who up until auto enrol had not joined the Company pension scheme. Madness! I joined mine when I started work at 17! People have to take responsibility for their future income.
I've been abroad 70 odd times at 31 where as my parents (who may be considered 'baby boomers' - late 50's?) didn't go abroad till their late 30's. My parents have never driven a new car, where now anyone can. My age group do and can eat out etc fairly regularly - my parents never did and still rarely do.
I've struggled for years to save a 20k deposit but have paid £10k plus for a wedding in that time and gone abroad a lot but have an old car and take packed lunches every day.
My parents paid pittance for a wedding 30 years ago but brought a 4 bed detached for £185k 18 years ago which is now probably worth over half a mil.
My parents have never got a penny in inheritance where others there age and my age even have received 100's of thousands.
I didn't go to uni and neither did they. We've both worked hard doing overtime and 2nd jobs when required. I still do. My Dads been made redundant 4 times - I luckily have not, yet.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's ups and downs through generations and depends on peoples priorities too, but if you're lucky to have grown up knowing that hard work and saving is important and that going without is essential at times then you will hopefully be okay and able to prosper.
Being a baby bloomer doesn't necessarily mean you'll be living the life of riley just cos of when you were born, likewise the opposite now - other things come into it.
It's those without that upbringing and support that I feel sorry for and who these times can be hard on.
Two weasel words to justify making sick people pay for their own care despite working hard and paying taxes for 40 plus years in the majority of cases.
How is it that individual recipients of 'social care' are charged hundreds of pounds a week for a fleeting visit or two if they are lucky a day from a carer or carers paid the minimum wage? Where does the rest of the money go because there is sure as hell a massive dichotomy between what the vulnerable sick person who isn't sick so they can be legally mugged pays and what the carers get!
Solve that one and social care costs can come down which in turn might allow money to be diverted towards addressing some of the housing issues.
In short who is coining it in?
Just because something is haemorrhaging money doesn't mean someone isn't making a quid on it.