This exactly. 
I have said the same thing before. People are happy complaining about the amount spent on pensions and the Triple lock but I bet they donât complain when they receive their pension.
The main complainers will be private pensioned to the hilt
Yes, it was grim, but itâs also grim today - itâs just a different kind of grim.
Today young people have to deal with never being able to own a home, massive debt, the threat of fascism, AI decimating the job market, worsening relative poverty, energy bills out of control, cost of living off the scale, and the small matter of climate change being about to end Earthâs capacity to sustain life.
I grew up in the eighties, remember the miners strike doing incredible damage in my community and I would not swap with kids today. They have got a fucking awful deal.
1 Like
I donât expect to be able to retire before Iâm 70. And I wasnât calling for the removal of the triple lock. I was responding to @LondonRich point that the welfare bill is too high - the vast majority of which is Pensions.
This is all reductive anyway. Pitting young against old for the scraps from the table. This country should have enough money to look after its old people and provide opportunity to the young. We know where the money has gone.
4 Likes
@jaffod or anyone else doesnât have to agree with everything someone says or posts, they are allowed to read between the lines, and form an understanding sitting somewhere between black and white.
My view is not right or wrong, it is how I interpreted his post and I stand by it. You state there was a lot in there that deserved to be challenged, yet you have stated what you agree with or challenged me.
I have on numerous times been slandered by said poster, sometimes unfairly and without justification but on other times because our opinions are different. People call for me to get band, for what? an opinion based on my interpretation of a post and yet it is alright to chuck shit at me for the disagreeing with the most mundane of things.
I know you will disagree but my âRW viewsâ are generally more balanced and of perspective than the majority of posters whether I am right or wrong.
Just the other day I asked if you would vote for a Farage government if you had the insight of knowing his government would result in the UK becoming more prosperous than voting for another candidate and you could not commit or state you would vote Farage. You could have lied and said you would just to shut down my argument, yet you are so stubborn in your views and political allegiance you could not bring yourself to do it.
How selfish is that? That you canât even vote for him. Even in a hypothetical scenario, on the basis it goes against your LW views/rating, almost as if you would lose faith with the rest of the echo chamber, for questioning the âtrue Labour Valuesâ.
I have said it before, I would happily vote for Corbyn if the result lead to a better Britain in the long run. A Government which eliminates austerity and reduces poverty. Making life more rewarding for people who wanted to work and penalise, making it harder for people who try to avoi
2 Likes
give it a rest.
Whether you are right or wrong itâs becoming a boring rhetoric for anything that goes wrong in a LW Government. You canât just keep falling back onto the speculated and unproven theory that , billionaires run Print media and are the architects of our demise that Itâs all organised RW propaganda.
WaitâŠdo we have to subscribe to see the remainder of the post?
3 Likes
The recent Gov.uk (link attached) states that 55%of State Security goes to Pensioners - ÂŁ177bn, with ÂŁ145bn on state pension. This is as a total 55% of the expenditure.
The following link states that the Median pensioner contributes 56% to the total they receive back in pension. So if we are looking at it from a very basic perspective, just under half of it has come sourced from the Claimants pocket.
The first links states that in 2025-26 disability payments will total ÂŁ77bn and housing support ÂŁ30bn so thatâs ÂŁ107bn who are struggling and receiving state report often on little to no contribution to the âPotâ and yet we are concerned by Pensioners who actually add hidden value to the Government by being child minders to their Grandchildren and assist in local charities.
I completely agree with your last paragraph, I referred to that issue in my response to Kopstar. Basically the Government, irrespective of Party, have failed to invest the monies paid in through pension contributions to provide a positive balance. So that it is now a massive burden on the Countryâs finances.
It may well be pitting young against old for the scraps at the table but it is an increasingly accelerating downward spiral.
People living older, claiming for longer.
Young people not working, not contributing and therefore not creating a pension pot. No Income Tax, pension contribution to balance the books. Not paying NI, and yet who will be pressured/asked to support them in their old age?
Labours promise under the Starmerâs campaign was to reduce Social welfare and yet they have increased it disproportionately over their term in office so far. I am in no way placing all the blame on Labour, it is decades of bad decisions by the Government, with an ever increasing demand on finances.
Irrelevant of the Government in power they need to make some big and brave decisions on the back of good research. And on the back of that research stand strong to opposition. Maybe some out of the box ideas, see if we can control people who claiming providing a break down of their usage of the money. Enforce a limit on how much they can spend on alcohol, fags, scratch cards, energy drinks, transport. Stricter monitoring of claimants fraudulently claiming.
I hope Labour chose the right person and support them
1 Like
No it is part of a free to air series. It is my way of leaving you on a cliff hanger so that you will want to read my next instalment 
.
Aside from yourself, I am intrigued as to who will be the quickest to take the opportunity of my response, being that I have left myself open for (a hopefully funny) retort .
That is a fundamental mischaracterization of the problem, and skips right by the intergenerational unfairness. The amount contributed by the cohort with birth years 1945-1965 was never going to approach the amount the state would have to pay out with any reasonable rate of return assumption, and that problem was absolutely known as early as 1980. The UKâs pension system has never had an investable surplus in any case. The tacit assumption has always been economic and population growth, and the model faces collapse if either one is not true.
But increasing required contributions was anathema, right-wing governments did not want to increase the public take, left wing governments did not want to take funds from all tax brackets. At some point, people have to take responsibility for the governments they voted for.
7 Likes
Yeah but youâre obviously just a leftist sucked in by the LW propaganda.
1 Like
Crap, here I was thinking I was buying into a Thatcherite sales job.
4 Likes
Fuck me, are you always glass half empty
Tell me the percentage of people who owned their own homes in the 1920âs.
The fact society has changed to allow them the safety and opportunity of Credit Cards, Loans, including for education and being able to spend frivolously on goods that are luxuries rather than necessities and a lot of cheap shit. How did our parents pay for white goods, what was inflation like in the 80âs?
The problem of fascism, and yet there in no forced conscription and please tell me how many people died across the Two wars fighting Facism? I am sure the teenagers who lost their lives fighting are sympathetic to the todayâs youth.
Robotic machines were a threat.
Not being forced into slave Labour, with very little safety regulations or thought for mental well being.
Energy bills out of control, yet they have instant hot water, drinking water and better sanitation. No more taking a candle to the outhouse and shitting in a box, being able to wipe your arse with a triple sheeted Andrex extra soft.
Climate change, which whilst being a massive factor on our childrenâs future is not going to destroy their life tomorrow. I would imagine a nuclear bomb would be more likely.
I get and see that times are tough for the young, but again it is tough on almost everyone. We are all part of a repetitive cycle that has been happening for decades/centuries.
I must agree with you on your reflection towards child hood. Maybe my opinion is based on nostalgia. Life just seemed a lot more innocent/sheltered back then. I remember secretly playing Mortal Combat on the Mega Drive with my mates and my dad walked in on a finishing move. Game confiscated!
Rushing home to watch a tv programme or hoping I had set the Recorder correctly.
McDonaldâs being a treat instead of a demand/expectance.
Getting lost on family holidays, parents arguing and then realising the Map is upside down. Calling your friends on the house telephone and constantly worrying if your Mom or Dad was listening in on the other phone.
Society and technology has resulted in a more lazy and expectant attitude in society and I include myself in that assessment.
I think that despite our difference in opinions - what the problems are and how we got here - there needs to be some big calls from the Government and if it is Burnham or another i genuinely wish them all the best.
l
The term âParabolaâ comes to mind. Yeah, things were pretty grim in the 1920s, worse in the 30s. Then they got better. Much better. Then they got worse.
5 Likes
Thank you for your insight, I will read a bit more into this.
I accept that my points about the basics of the setting up of the Pension fund are based on a probably a more idealistic set up - with hindsight.
One of my points which you have acknowledged re: the UK pension scheme never having a positive surplus. Is there a simple reason for this Without associating it to RW/LW politics?
Wouldnât a growing non contributing population negate the reliance on population growth?
In your opinion, how as a Country do we go about changing the pension/welfare problem?
All questions are asked in good faith
Which 2 wars are these?
1 Like
Damn, foolishly, your radio silence lead me to a false sense of optimism, in that you had blocked me.
From our previous correspondence, I thought LW propaganda was just a myth, obviously my monthly RW party update has overlooked this and failed to notify me on this new revelationâŠ
On a serious note, why do you have to make it all about LW/RW politics, propaganda, voters being sucked in, etc, etc.
Why does every response have to be a dig, itâs fucking tiresome. Maybe if we removed the constant blaming of everything that doesnât align with your views as being wrong, we could actually discuss issues from both sides of the perspective.
Or you can continue to add no value.
The two where the UK ended up with a shit load of debt and you borrowed fuck all.
The history of it is not very hard to figure out. Britain had just come through a great national ordeal, and many citizens had seen enormous personal loss during the war - the desire was to at least address the financial element. The pre-war (1908!) pension scheme was fairly minimal though progressive in its time. So, in 1946(?) the pension was rolled out to cover those retiring into the wreckage of post-war Britain that would not benefit from the prosperity around the corner. Logically enough, it was in a deficit then, and the assumption of economic growth to make it work was entirely defensible. I find it hard to criticize the policy choice to provide a pension to someone who was 66 in 1946 and had seen the final years of their possible savings spent in a world with ration cards, and war bonds for any savings they might have had. In a year or two, post-war growth could make that work, easily.
Somehow, that became the operating model. As the baby boom entered the workforce, the ratio of entitled to contributors was quite favourable - and post-war immigration just made it all that much better. The contribution was repeatedly set at the level needed for a relatively large population to support a relatively small one. Critically, there was never a surplus to invest, it was always cash in, cash out.
Raising the obvious problem of the size of the entitlement implied was a very unpopular idea - you can go back to see multiple attempts to reduce the payout and/or increase the contribution necessary were political poison. I actually remember reading a paper as an economics undergrad in the early 80s looking at Western pension systems on an actuarial basis. The UK was so obviously unsustainable, it was headed for crisis circa 2010 even then. I actually wrote a paper with the basic thesis being âCanada is probably fucked, but not as badly asâŠâ
What is to be done? Fundamentally, a social choice - are the generation that did not contribute enough to sustain themselves entitled to draw the resources they want from subsequent generations? I donât see that they are. There isnât a fix that doesnât involve increased contributions and/or reduced benefits.
4 Likes
What the fuck are you on about?
2 Likes