Triple lock pension.

[keith with the teef]

I’m beginning to begrudge the triple lock pension.

I fink its gotta stop. I have not had a pay rise since the crash and I cannot see one coming along any time soon.

Remember the old expression you never see a poor farmer, well its now pensioner.

I know they are not driving around in range rovers, but for those with no rent or mortgage there are quids in and laughing all the way to the bank.

My pension if I live to see and when and if I get it. Ouch.

[Ed P]

No arguments from me, and I’m a pensioner!

Young people have a much harder time with nearly all the facets of life than the pensioner generation:

a) Lower social mobility – the abolition of Grammar and Tech Schools made it much harder for the diligent and/or bright to get on.

b) The free University education enjoyed by TBLiar and his cronies has long gone.

c) It is MUCH harder to get and keep a job.

d) It is about twice as hard to afford a house

e) The ability to build asset equity is much harder.

f) You now live in a ‘1984 State’ where either the Government or Commerce tries to snoop on every aspect of your daily lives.

There are a few up-sides to compensate.  Health was much more of a lottery when we were growing up. Living in a house with ‘ice-fairies’ on the windows, no central heating and outside toilets is now pretty rare in the UK today.

[edit] The solution is a Dutch-style’ revolution. The young need to get out and vote, and vote for people of their generation. The reason Governments tremble with the thought of offending pensioners is that they out-vote twenty-year olds by a factor of at least three.

[Bob Williams]

Agree with every point except (a) Ed: –    ” the abolition of Grammar and Tech Schools ”    –

Here in Lincolnshire we still have many Grammar Schools. My youngest grandbrat attends King Edward GS in Louth and is doing very well, bright as a button and pushed to her limits by some very good teaching. The imagination she has always shown is being encouraged and developed: at the Parents Evening 2 weeks ago, she was forecasted to be in the top 5 percentile next year.

Her brother attended a local Technical Academy and received 1 to 1 tutelage that took him through Microsoft and CISCO qualifications, without having to go to Uni. He is now, as I have recorded here before, a network & security engineer. His 20 y.o. cousin attended the same Tech Academy and is a working chef with over 2 years’ experience. Her 18 y.o. brother is 2 days a week at an engineering establishment and 3 days at Grimsby Technical Institute (associated with Hull Uni) learning Electrical engineering. He went to a different local Technical Academy until the Institute.

The rest of your points are, sadly, accurate. However, the kids that make it will have learned to work hard in order to succeed. From what I learn from my grandbrats and their friends, they absolutely detest all politicians. A grandbrats’ friend was at a college where a local MP paid a visit. His opinion of the politico is not printable, but ended in “wazzak.”

 

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[D-Dan]

The big worry for the younger folk (and in fact, me, 52YO, T1 diabetic, and a retirement age of 67 – if I live that long) is a retirement age of 70, or higher. I’m lucky, as an ex civil servant, I can get a pension in 3 years if I take it (I won’t, wait longer, more per annum), but I really wouldn;t want to be a 20 YO now, faced with the prospect of dying before retiring. What annoys me most is that those making this choice for others are the same people with guaranteed lucrative pensions at 55.

Regardless of political allegiance, they fail to see their own “silver spoons”.

Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.

[The Duke]

Regards the pension age for young folk, i understand it sucks, but the pension was never designed to keep people in pay and or on benefits for 15 to 25 years.

When it come in I think the average male age was 67/8, so you’d be looked after for a hand full of years before you shuffled off.

Life span is lengthening as an ever increasing length in 50 years the average age may be 100,and the retirement may well be moved 90.

The issue is, the pension age should of been moved forward 20 years ago, and now should be on its second shift forward.

Now for all us normal folk individually  this isn’t a good thing, but a fair thing. Above, and in other forums, it’s been discussed, it’s harder than ever for kids to get and keep work, asset building is not wast it was 30 years ago and  private pensions are a joke. We now have about (or about to) have more pensions than workers.

At this moment in time many are private pensions that minutely take some burden off the system, but going forward, this isn’t going to be so, (things may change), so as we get older and older, and jobs get fewer and fewer, so things had to break.

Well the system was always broken, socialist capitalism mix has it limits, personally for the AI job filled future a stronger socialist approach is needed, I cant see it happening, because of shortsighted, politics, and business. But capitalism is not the answer to the jobless utopian future companies think we should be striving for. Mainly as they want the profit, and to be the rollers of the next cycle, where corps run the world not goes.

Non of this looks like it is going to help 1.the oap, 2 the working man, 1 kids. So we are all screwed.

We are going to be carved up into the have and have nots, in a worse way than we had it in medieval times eventually. Well become more like the USA and its current slave labour force of today. More slaves today than there ever was under slavery.

 

[JayCeeDee]

The biggest problem is you just never know who to believe.
The wife took out a private pension after seeing her Aunt – second mother in reality – dying of cancer and her family not being able to get her the things she needed, let alone wanted. She quietly helped out to get her those things. She vowed her kids wouldn’t be faced with those choices so she set about getting a private pension. This was in the late 80’s. In the mid 90’s when Maggie told the population at large not to expect the State to look after you in your old age, she thought she was ahead of the game and on the right path. The scenarios expressed by the bank she went through, proffered £350k minimum in 2014 ( age 60 ) or a more likely £500k. She thought she was well covered. They said for her pension to fail, money had to fail. Well yes, it did to a certain extent, but successive governments of the day did more damage, and in the case of Equitable Life, so did the industry.
While the business was doing well, she ploughed money into the pension, upping it by 10% each year to allow for inflation. She started off at £100pm and capped it at £300pm. 25 years later in 2014 , after several pension débacles by the industry and Gordon Brown, it was worth just over £100k. In hindsight, she would have done better putting that money into paying off our own mortgage earlier perhaps or into a second mortgage and buying and letting out a property. In retirement we have chosen the latter route, but even this has become more difficult with targeted increases in Stamp Duty and cuts in Tax Relief on income from rented properties.
You follow best advice and still you get screwed.

Then you go onto cars. The general advice in the late 90’s/early 00’s was go diesel. At that time diesel was about 5p/litre cheaper than petrol so to a lot of people it made a lot of sense. Now, when many people have bought diesel cars and vans, the tax is the same on both, but the cost of diesel now exceeds that of petrol and the cost difference has been reversed. How did it become more expensive to produce than petrol as opposed to 5 – 10 years previously, or did the industry just join the gravy train??!! Very soon now, diesel owners are going to get more and more penalised, either in cost or charge. The value of diesel cars will fall, the cost of using them will go up, be that directly in fuel surcharges, or disproportionate Congestion Charge inreases for diesels, or increased differing rates for diesel over petrol or electric. My next car will likely be petrol. I might have liked to go electric, but there’s still a premium to pay for the privelege.
With everybody going electric you wonder what the approach will be to get money from them??!! A charging levy?? ie you get charged to charge!!
You wonder why we are surprised. You follow best advice and you get screwed.
So you work all your life and manage to own your own house by the time you retire. You can’t sit back on your laurels, because, perish the thought, should you get ill and need to go into care, you end up having to sell your home to pay for your care. We both of us say, that if/when we can’t look after ourselves, can’t wipe our own a*ses or don’t know what’s going on, do for us what you’d do for a loved dog. Put us out of our miseries. Mind you the govenment will probably issue an assisted suicide levy, or just up the inheritance tax to cover any shortfall.
I sometimes think the ( deliberate ) Benefit Brigade have got it right. The system of benefits was designed to cope with the sort of poverty prevalent in the 50’s. Nowadays you see people on benefits with better cars/TV’s/holidays than most working people. There will always be people amongst us that rely on Benefits to survive, and who still struggle to manage. These are the folks that the system was designed for. These are the folks the system is letting down. They should be better resourced.
I’m not even going to go there about the economic migrants that are sitting in the wings. How will we justify the extended families that will come in on the backs of legitimate refugees and children when we can’t properly look after our indigenous poor and elderly, I’ll never be able to work out.

I don’t know what the solution is, but I surely recognise the problem!!

[The Duke]

That the million dollar question JC, we can see the issue, fixing it is another issue. One that isn’t going to get easier, as pop grows, jobs shrink, and lifespan lengthens.

The only real solution is a global communist type set up. It’s not a reality, but would work. A sort of Star Trek approach, where people work to fulfill rolls not for pay.

The capatalist nature means there has to be losers, wether on a micro level, have an underclass, or on a macro level having continues full of sweat shops. Also as no contry want to be “bottom forever” it creates tension and war.

I don’t agree on the globalist ‘capatalist’ agenda, but think that would of been a better stepping stone to a more socialist based set up eventually. By fragmenting nations, we are taking a step backwards.

Looking inwards could be beneficial short term, but ultimately the earths leading families (the 1% of the 1%) needs to come together , strike deals with each other, and stop the economic and military wars between nations.

And religion needs to F-off quick too, other wise no one is working together on anything.

[Ed P]

Duke, Singapore is pretty close to the sort of society you envisage. Capitalist, but very Socialist in their application of things. So far they have managed the difficult balancing act of simultaneously being the ‘good-guys’ to both the US and communist China. They also have a much lower corruption level than the UK and are amongst the top five in terms of low corruption. (the UK is relatively stinky in that respect). Unfortunately to achieve this, their society is both heavily controlled and paternalistic as hell.

One of the tenets of their society is that everyone works to the best of their abilities, and local companies are ‘forced’ to have a quota of make-work jobs e.g. lift attendant, hedge clipper etc. They appear to have an ambition to buy time for their society to adapt to a highly automated civilization by putting huge emphasis on both education and R&D. They also have a big emphasis on labour intensive service industries with Tourism being number one in this respect. (watch the Giles Coren episode on the Singapore Marina Bay Sands and look out for the mention of the Singapore Government’s role).

Unfortunately we would need a revolution before we could move towards such a meritocratic high-tech society as we have far too much bureaucratic  dead-wood in our Government and Civil Service.

[The Duke]

I can’t see it happening here anytime soon, there will be a right wing internal looking revolution long before any outwards looking coming together us even thought of.

Singerporians (if that’s their title) are some of the most racist, and bad manured  people I’ve come across. Also their car tax laws are crazy. In may cases are the value of the car.

I know they are very limited on space, but this to me smacks of keeping the poor off the roads and on public transport where they belong.

Also they can be a reset for being seen naked  though a window which I find bizarre

They have alot right, plus alot wrong. Just like the majority of us.

I quite the concept of communism setup, with me as Leader  :good:

[Dave Rice]

” bad manured people”

Does that mean they’re not as shitty as they could be? Boom tish.

[Ed P]

Most ethnic Chinese and Japanese are very racist, but generally not rude. Their sense of humour is very different, and many Western jests and off-hand remarks are thought extremely rude. East-West cultures ARE very different, and both provide potential minefields for misunderstanding.

I agree they have their faults but I would not put their $50000 fee to own a car for ten years as one of them. You don’t actually need a car in Singapore. Public transport is cheap and quickly gets you nearly anywhere on the Island in comfort. The few areas not covered are covered cheaply and efficiently by taxis (fares are less than here). It isn’t an us versus them on cars, just a way of heavily discouraging ownership on a 30×30 mile island Even the very rich think twice before getting a car.

[wasbit]

Going off at a slight tangent, I see that Bill Gates (amongst others) is arguing for robot workers to be taxed to make up for the loss caused by having less human workers.

– https://qz.com/911968/bill-gates-the-robot-that-takes-your-job-should-pay-taxes/

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[Ed P]

Bill Gates proposal was debated in the EU but was unfortunately thrown out. link

I’m not against automation having spent much of my life introducing it, but I do think that the current rate of change is much greater than society’s ability to absorb it. The one area that really worries me is the retail sector. This is already suffering from Internet shopping, and automated check-outs are rapidly eliminating many of the few retail jobs that are left. The rate at which jobs are disappearing is staggering.

I do not know how to phrase this without being intellectually condescending, but statistically there is a large percentage of the population (about 10% of working population) who are not really well suited to do anything else, and I have not read or heard of any Government plans to address the problems that will be caused by 3 million jobs going away.

[keith with the teef]

Taxing robots or what is defined as a robot. Is a clock not a robot?

Anyway taxing machines that do peoples jobs is a blindingly good idea how you measure it. well?

I never use automated check out in the supermarket. If I ve just spent an hour walking around a shop there is no way Im gonna tax my brain using an auto check out. No a person can do it for me. In fact I have stopped shopping in asda for that reason to many auto check outs.

[Drezha]

People that go to the self checkout machines and then complain they can’t use them and can the person overseeing them please do it for them?

NO – GO QUEUE UP LIKE EVERYONE ELSE AND LET THOSE OF US WHO CAN USE THEM DO SO!
Sorry, bugbear of mine  :whistle:

8 years of a weekend checkout boy means that I’m often as quick as going through a till, especially as I usually only have a basket and Morrisons have stopped the 10 items or less till.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[The Duke]

I always use self check outs as I hate small talk. I’d let a robot cut my hair if I could.

Though how you define a robot, and police such a tax penalty would be hard. I can’t see it ever happening. But it is a good dissuador if you tax automation highly.

However can you see the industry lobbiests letting it happen? I can’t.

[Ed P]

It would be fairly simple to implement this for existing businesses.

a) No capital allowances for certain devices. (I do not really like this approach as it is cumbersome and would give accountants a field day).

or

b) Apply a ‘lock’ to a company’s prior year’s proportion of the National Insurance contribution and instead make this an annual charge irrespective of changes in the numbers of people employed. I’m not sure how to handle start-ups – maybe they would get a free ride, but a mechanism would be required to eliminate evasion by shutting down and restarting a company, but maybe compulsory redundancy payments would be enough to dissuade evaders.

Government’s would not like this as they are wedded to the idea of ‘productivity’ without doing all the sums for the nation as a whole. A flexible labour force is a great concept, but only if there are enough jobs to go  around.

[Author]

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