State Pension

[TOPGUN749]

5 minutes ago, oowee said:

Triple lock is a joke. These benefits are out of hand and need to be capped and cut back to something more affordable. We cannot afford to pay these benefits without more tax. We already have the highest taxes ever something has to give. 

The choice is simple. Cut benefits or generate more tax. Every time we increase benefits for pensioners we take money out of the pocket of workers. 

 

 

Yet the workers still receive far more! There is not enough tax at the top end,those taking home £3,000 a month or more need to pay more,and at £5,000+ a great deal more.

51 minutes ago, bigroomboy said:

By saving and paying into a private pension during your working life, selling that 5 bedroom home or continuing to work if that's not enough. By definition the bare minimum is enough to live, just.

Many don’t earn enough to pay into private pensions if taking home under £10 an hour.Also most certainly don’t own 5 bedroom houses!

5 minutes ago, clangerman said:

like to know how we can’t afford pensions but we can waste money paying for someone else’s war migrants foreign aid etc 

Excellent point!

[oowee]

3 minutes ago, benbobailey said:

I receive state pension, which I contributed towards for 50 years. I feel no bitterness towards the people who benefited from my contributions.

  What a sad nation of sour, mean people  we have become.

     

The pension like all benefits should be based on levels of subsistence. Anything over that should be paid out of pension savings made during working life. Why should pensioners get paid more benefit than those on job seekers allowance? 

[TOPGUN749]

20 minutes ago, bigroomboy said:

Look I'm being a bit of a wind up, but you have to see the flaw in the logic. Why should somebody be working 60h a week to earn 40k to pay for their children's upbringing and a mortgage on a vastly over priced house in order to pay for you to live a life of Riley doing what you want all week?

 

I'm not saying the pension shouldn't exist, but it should be the bare minimum and I think it's gone way beyond that and people are claiming it for far too long.

If it’s gone way beyond the bare minimum try living on the £883 a month.It’s a pension- of course it’s meant to last until we die,whether 1 year or 35 years.

[bigroomboy]

7 minutes ago, TOPGUN749 said:

If it’s gone way beyond the bare minimum try living on the £883 a month.It’s a pension- of course it’s meant to last until we die,whether 1 year or 35 years.

It might just be me, but that seems like a lot of money, especially when supplemented by a lifetime of savings and a paid off property. I think pensioners need to have a reality check and have a look at how hard some people working have it currently. Sine people may be taking home a similar amount after deductions and supporting a family and having to pay for a roof over their heads.

[oowee]

6 minutes ago, TOPGUN749 said:

If it’s gone way beyond the bare minimum try living on the £883 a month.It’s a pension- of course it’s meant to last until we die,whether 1 year or 35 years.

What about job seekers allowance? Should we apply the triple lock to that? Should it be increased to match pensions? 

It is not sustainable to pay benefits at these levels. We need to better manage freeloading on our economy. 

In my view the pension should be scrapped (phased out) and replaced by a minimum benefit. Workers should be required to pay into a pension fund from day one and that fund should be invested in UK plc. Cut the government out of the equation and privatise the lot. The current pension system is unfunded. Its based upon a growing economy with more and more workers. We have neither. 

16 minutes ago, TOPGUN749 said:

If it’s gone way beyond the bare minimum try living on the £883 a month.It’s a pension- of course it’s meant to last until we die,whether 1 year or 35 years.

It's currently the private pension equivalent of having saved £225000 over a life time. 

[ph5172]

If your only income is a state pension then you would (should) be eligible for housing benefit almost in full. 
if your social housing rent is £400 a month then your combined ‘income’ is now nearly £1400. 

you would probably be getting your cold weather payment and social tariff broadband and such and as such probably not far off the ‘minimum wage’ 

 

 

 

[TOPGUN749]

2 minutes ago, oowee said:

What about job seekers allowance? Should we apply the triple lock to that? Should it be increased to match pensions? 

It is not sustainable to pay benefits at these levels. We need to better manage freeloading on our economy. 

In my view the pension should be scrapped (phased out) and replaced by a minimum benefit. Workers should be required to pay into a pension fund from day one and that fund should be invested in UK plc. Cut the government out of the equation and privatise the lot. The current pension system is unfunded. Its based upon a growing economy with more and more workers. We have neither. 

Yes unemployment benefits should also get the triple lock, always been far too low.I remember getting £130 a month 35 years ago,and it’s only about £350 a month now.Workers are already paying into a pension fund called National Insurance if they earn enough (over £242 a week)

2 minutes ago, ph5172 said:

If your only income is a state pension then you would (should) be eligible for housing benefit almost in full. 
if your social housing rent is £400 a month then your combined ‘income’ is now nearly £1400. 

you would probably be getting your cold weather payment and social tariff broadband and such and as such probably not far off the ‘minimum wage’ 

 

 

 

The new state pension is set at just above the level to receive housing benefit by £2 a week.That applies to council tax rebates too. 

[oowee]

8 minutes ago, TOPGUN749 said:

Yes unemployment benefits should also get the triple lock, always been far too low.I remember getting £130 a month 35 years ago,and it’s only about £350 a month now.Workers are already paying into a pension fund called National Insurance if they earn enough (over £242 a week)

The new state pension is set at just above the level to receive housing benefit by £2 a week.That applies to council tax rebates too. 

Who would you tax to raise the money? The thresholds have been frozen so a large proportion (11% ) are already paying 40% and this is set to increase to 14%. 

Rather than tax people more we could take house value to pay for social care. 

 

[bigroomboy]

Why don't we all just give up work then if there is so much free money floating around. I'd be much happier with 80% of my time back and clearly we don't have to worry about where this money tree grows?

[TOPGUN749]

1 minute ago, oowee said:

Who would you tax to raise the money? The thresholds have been frozen so a large proportion (11% ) are already paying 40% and this is set to increase to 14%. 

Rather than tax people more we could take house value to pay for social care. 

 

Thresholds need to rise especially the £12570, up to at least £15,000,and percentage tax needs to rise to compensate say 25% above £15,000 .National insurance should continue at 10% right up the income scale not reduce to 2% for the rich.

[bigroomboy]

3 minutes ago, TOPGUN749 said:

Thresholds need to rise especially the £12570, up to at least £15,000,and percentage tax needs to rise to compensate say 25% above £15,000 .National insurance should continue at 10% right up the income scale not reduce to 2% for the rich.

Or we could lower taxes and tell people to plan for the retirement they want. That way it's completely in the hands of the beneficiary. Hard work and planning and you get a pleasant retirement. Bad planning or low contribution and you keep working.

[rbrowning2]

1 hour ago, oowee said:

Triple lock is a joke. These benefits are out of hand and need to be capped and cut back to something more affordable. We cannot afford to pay these benefits without more tax. We already have the highest taxes ever something has to give. 

The choice is simple. Cut benefits or generate more tax. Every time we increase benefits for pensioners we take money out of the pocket of workers. 

 

 

I think you are forgetting that to get a state pension most will have worked for forty odd years paying towards their state pension whilst doing so. Yet you can arrive in a small rubber boat, get free housing, free NHS, free education for your children, free spending money and never paid a penny into this country.

[bigroomboy]

2 minutes ago, rbrowning2 said:

I think you are forgetting that to get a state pension most will have worked for forty odd years paying towards their state pension whilst doing so. Yet you can arrive in a small rubber boat, get free housing, free NHS, free education for your children, free spending money and never paid a penny into this country.

Sounds a lot like landing on a rubber pad in Great Ormond Street Hospital? I'm not saying it's right, but it's the very benefits system we are discussing here that incentives that activity. To be fair most of those people arriving on boat will be young and may well have 40 year of contribution ahead of them. I hear far too often people living day to day off our benefits system whilst blaming all our problems on a relatively small number of people taking huge risks to arrive by small boats.

[oowee]

6 minutes ago, rbrowning2 said:

I think you are forgetting that to get a state pension most will have worked for forty odd years paying towards their state pension whilst doing so. Yet you can arrive in a small rubber boat, get free housing, free NHS, free education for your children, free spending money and never paid a penny into this country.

The majority will not have paid enough in to justify the benefit. The govt does not invest any of the cash paid in. 

Some would say the more benefits we take out the higher levels of migration we will need to pay for it. It's perhaps easier to blame everyone and everything else for our own failings?

[TOPGUN749]

13 minutes ago, bigroomboy said:

Or we could lower taxes and tell people to plan for the retirement they want. That way it's completely in the hands of the beneficiary. Hard work and planning and you get a pleasant retirement. Bad planning or low contribution and you keep working.

Fine if you get a high income,not much good if taking home under £10 a hour! Or too sick to work.

[Yellow Bear]

20 minutes ago, bigroomboy said:

Hard work and planning and you get a pleasant retirement.  your pension fund robbed by the lieboor party who then wreck the economy so the fund becomes worth even less.

there put it right for you

Also  a large part of government pension pay out goes goes not to state pension but to state employed groups.  This will get Poo Pooed by some but check it out - some civil servant pensioner groups are getting a rise of 3x the average private sector pay increase.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/pensions/private-pensions/public-sector-pensioners-three-times-average-pay-rise/

Edited February 20 by Yellow Bear

[oowee]

2 minutes ago, Yellow Bear said:

there put it right for you

Also  a large part of government pension pay out goes goes not to state pension but to state employed groups.  This will get Poo Pooed by some but check it out - some civil servant pensioner groups are getting a rise of 3x the average private sector pay increase.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/pensions/private-pensions/public-sector-pensioners-three-times-average-pay-rise/

State pensions are rising at 3x the average private sector pay increase. 

[bigroomboy]

4 minutes ago, Yellow Bear said:

there put it right for you

Also  a large part of government pension pay out goes goes not to state pension but to state employed groups.  This will get Poo Pooed by some but check it out - some civil servant pensioner groups are getting a rise of 3x the average private sector pay increase.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/pensions/private-pensions/public-sector-pensioners-three-times-average-pay-rise/

That's the same increase that's being applied to the state pension. The difference being they have paid into a private scheme where the latter is part of a benefits package. As Oowee pointed out above, a private pension option could be completely separated from government. You may choose to stash the money under the mattress, buy property or invest in rare Star wars models. The choice is yours to plan for your future under that system.

[armsid]

OOWEE you keep digging at pensioners did Gordon Brown screw your pension no your on a public sector one All the hype about benifitts  The state pension is a contributery one payed every week as NI but you have people on £20k plus having free child care tax credits and once you are on TC.s a raft of other benifits kick in look at the free boiler scheme under £31k and one person on benifits not State Pension lots of people got these boilers so who paid for them?£31k is £600.00 wk so what is a basic income to live in UK these days

[TOPGUN749]

23 minutes ago, oowee said:

State pensions are rising at 3x the average private sector pay increase. 

By percentage only not in pounds! 

[Yellow Bear]

31 minutes ago, oowee said:

State pensions are rising at 3x the average private sector pay increase. 

Typical CS maths - Private sector pay increases are currently averaging circa 4.5% as are public sector  -  even 8.5% is only just under X2 but  even you should know that pensions run a 8 months behind and the average wage increase, which, in 2023 in September, when increase was calculated, was circa 9% and had been as high as 10%

Edited February 20 by Yellow Bear

[bigroomboy]

19 minutes ago, armsid said:

OOWEE you keep digging at pensioners did Gordon Brown screw your pension no your on a public sector one All the hype about benifitts  The state pension is a contributery one payed every week as NI but you have people on £20k plus having free child care tax credits and once you are on TC.s a raft of other benifits kick in look at the free boiler scheme under £31k and one person on benifits not State Pension lots of people got these boilers so who paid for them?£31k is £600.00 wk so what is a basic income to live in UK these days

£31k would be a take home of £2122 per month. Assume there were 2 earning that but with housing costs of £1500 per month then that would be £2744. Now assume that's likely to support a family if 4 that's now £841 per person for around 320 hours of work. On top of that they likely have 2 cars to run and other higher costs. You can start to see why £31k is not a huge amount of money to live off for your time and just how generous the state pension really is!

[oowee]

18 minutes ago, armsid said:

OOWEE you keep digging at pensioners did Gordon Brown screw your pension no your on a public sector one All the hype about benifitts  The state pension is a contributery one payed every week as NI but you have people on £20k plus having free child care tax credits and once you are on TC.s a raft of other benifits kick in look at the free boiler scheme under £31k and one person on benifits not State Pension lots of people got these boilers so who paid for them?£31k is £600.00 wk so what is a basic income to live in UK these days

Exactly. We cannot have it all ways. It does not add up. 

The more we pay in benefits the more we have to tax. The more we pay in benefits the less the incentive to work. The more we incentivise a lack of effort the less effort will be put in. 

It needs to be a balance that favours those that work harder, with a very minimum safety net for those that cannot contribute so much. 

[Yellow Bear]

2 minutes ago, oowee said:

It needs to be a balance that favours those that work harder,

This also needs to be beyond the reach of greedy, usually socialist, governments.  It is said that Broon took £100 billion from private pension funds and screwed the economy so badly that, although still not right, meant that what was left failed to grow as it should.

[oowee]

6 minutes ago, Yellow Bear said:

This also needs to be beyond the reach of greedy, usually socialist, governments.  It is said that Broon took £100 billion from private pension funds and screwed the economy so badly that, although still not right, meant that what was left failed to grow as it should.

It is the current Govt that is taxing at the highest rates ever. We currently have income tax rates of very nearly upto 100%. 

Edited February 20 by oowee