State pension goalposts moved again
Discussion
kuro said:
Blaster72 said:
BoRED S2upid said:
Oh yes the robot revolution it will need an army of 70 year olds to pull them out of fountains when they all try and drown themselves.
I'd not laugh to hard .
anonymous said:
[redacted]
That doesn't address the fundamental problem (though has some merit IMO). A 16yr old starting work full time would be claiming by 61. A 24yr old by 69. Average life expectancy in this country is currently around the 80yr mark. So we're funding for at least 11yrs even with your revision. If we insist on continuing to "gold plate" pensions (allowing them to increase by more than the cost of living) that's unsustainable with a growing population.
We need to get systems in place that facilitate means testing (for all sorts of benefits) so that assistance can be focussed where it's really needed. Dismissing means testing with "it's too complicated/costly" doesn't seem to be thinking "out of the box" enough. Fundamental rethinks are needed to the way some/all services/benefits are handled IMO.
Moonhawk said:
Countdown said:
Devil's advocate....is it reasonable for others to have to fund somebody's retirement because they haven't made provision for themselves?
Whilst this is true - the government (in particular the last Labour government) have made it much more difficult to do so - particularly for those in the private sector.CoolHands said:
Life expectancy is not increasing at a linear rate
And that invalidates my point how exactly?In 1980 - the state pension age was 65 for men and average life expectancy was 73.7 years
In 2017 the state pension age is still 65 for men (i.e. a man born on 20th July 1952 would still get state pension at 65) - but life expectancy is up over 81.6 years.
So despite life expectancy rising by almost 8 years - pension age for men has not increased at all over the same period (and wont start to rise for men until the end of 2018).
The situation is a little more complicated for women as state pension equality legislation has already started to raise their state pension age - however the amount is still far below the increase in life expectancy.
Couple the increase in life expectancy with the fact that it's the baby boomers are now coming up to state pension age - and we have a big problem on our hands. We have a lot more people being paid state pension for a lot longer.
Interestingly - when the state pension was first introduced in 1908 - it was only paid to those over 70. This was at a time when average life expectancy was around 50 years of age.
anonymous said:
[redacted]
Wow, I'm sure your bitter prejudiced experience is incredibly representative of real life.Obviously older people will move into different roles - they won't be plasterers or brickies.
Older people have different softer skills that youngsters simple don't posses.
STURBO said:
There should be no fixed state pension age.
It should kick in when 50% of your age cohort have died. Simple, fair across generations and affordable.
Maybe 50% is a bit harsh but you get the idea.
I like it. Pretty morbid. Congratulations enough of you are dead now you can have a handout. Would there be a website to monitor how many are left that you can check each month? It should kick in when 50% of your age cohort have died. Simple, fair across generations and affordable.
Maybe 50% is a bit harsh but you get the idea.
fblm said:
Yipper said:
The harsh reality is -- Britain is one of the poorest countries in the Western world...
Not true. Your net national wealth is huge (more than everyone except USA, China and Japan and they have a slight population advantage!). Half the households in the UK don't even have a mortgage. Smile you're rich.For comparison -- if the UK joined the US today, it would immediately be the poorest state in the whole Union. Poorer, even, than sh*tholes like Alabama.
Britain is cash-poor and it just cannot afford big pensions.
BoRED S2upid said:
STURBO said:
There should be no fixed state pension age.
It should kick in when 50% of your age cohort have died. Simple, fair across generations and affordable.
Maybe 50% is a bit harsh but you get the idea.
I like it. Pretty morbid. Congratulations enough of you are dead now you can have a handout. Would there be a website to monitor how many are left that you can check each month? It should kick in when 50% of your age cohort have died. Simple, fair across generations and affordable.
Maybe 50% is a bit harsh but you get the idea.
anonymous said:
[redacted]
Pretty much any manual job is going to be harder for someone over 60. Builders, tradesmen, emergency services, armed forces, nursing, carework, etc. I'm just over 50 and I couldn't see myself doing those sorts of jobs over 60, and definitely not approaching 70! Its not limited to manual work either. I work in a technical role and i really don't like having to learn new stuff these days. I've done it time and time again and the capacity to keep doing it diminishes with age. Talking to an industry expert the other day its very likely that my skills will actually be completely redundant in 10 years anyway!
Unfortunately living longer does not give you extra young/middle age years. You're still ageing the same, but science if keeping you alive longer. That means your last active years will be spent working so that you can spend you final decade sat in a chair waiting for a care worker to give you your next pill.
anonymous said:
[redacted]
My (interior) landscaping firm has no employees other than me under 50. One is past 65 and still trundling along. The gardening side of the firm had a guy who worked into his early 80s, having been there since he was 14!
Company wide we have by far the lowest rate of sickness absence; oldies take far less 'odd days' than youngsters it would seem.
We got a woman aged 36 last year and were all excited by the diversity she brought to the place. After 6 months she got pregnant and went on maternity leave. So things have gone back to normal.
Yipper said:
...Britain barely scrapes into the upper-quartile of GDP per head PPP on a worldwide ranking. ....
Where are you looking?IMF we're half way up the upper quartile.
World Bank - same.
And that measure very much favours small nations. amongst those above us in the IMF one, for example, are
- Qatar
- Luxembourg
- Singapore
- Macau
- Brunei
- Kuwait
- San Marino
- Hong Kong
- Iceland
- Taiwan
- Oman
etc.
And that's if we accept the way that the different PPP methods try to normalise GDP figures.
The absolute wealth of a nation also has little/nothing to do with PPP figures.
That is not to say our finances are rosy. Productivity is poor (a malaise of many developed Western nations I think), our deficit is a nightmare, national debt is horrific and we seemingly have no desire to want to address any of these, especially the latter two.
But your doom laden sentences make ///ajd, jjlynn27 and MrrT sound like the most optimistic people on the forum
Murph7355 said:
.......Edit..........
But your doom laden sentences make ///ajd, jjlynn27 and MrrT sound like the most optimistic people on the forum
You mean to tell me that they're not all the same person ? - surely there can't be 3 people all with the same depressing view of.......[just about everything].But your doom laden sentences make ///ajd, jjlynn27 and MrrT sound like the most optimistic people on the forum
Blaster72 said:
dirty boy said:
Not really goalposts being moved is it? More along the lines of being increased in line with inflation...
What does inflation have to do with it?The state pension was originally intended to be just a safety net for those 'final bleak years' of your life.
Advances in medical treatments and huge cavernous gaps in lifestyle and living conditions means living over 80 is not unusual, so you've got millions of people living 10 years 'more than they should'.
If anything, the goalposts should have been moved more regularly!
FN2TypeR said:
Atomic12C said:
The other alternative of course is higher NI contributions and/or higher Income taxation?
I do think that the continual raising of retirement age is not a fair proposal for the wok force of the UK.
On the other hand though, if people plan better and save money they can retire at a much younger age than the state pension start age.
All it needs it restraint on those un-need purchases and living within your means, in order that one can save for the future.
This mind-set though is going to be hard to accept for the current generation of spend, spend, spend who live their lives on credit with total expectation that interest rates will always be low.
Consumer driven economy - save now and spend less = economic slow downI do think that the continual raising of retirement age is not a fair proposal for the wok force of the UK.
On the other hand though, if people plan better and save money they can retire at a much younger age than the state pension start age.
All it needs it restraint on those un-need purchases and living within your means, in order that one can save for the future.
This mind-set though is going to be hard to accept for the current generation of spend, spend, spend who live their lives on credit with total expectation that interest rates will always be low.
Lose lose
But yes, I agree that sensibility in our earlier days are the key to stability in our later ones
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