Think Tanks and Economists eh?

[Workingman]

So these two boneheads on Sky were suggesting that the pension age should rise to 75 because we are living longer.

OK, that is very true, but have these people seen the fitness levels of the average 75 yr-old? What jobs are these people gong to be doing in order to give them a living wage, and wont those jobs be needed by younger workers? Then think about the retraining costs for all those who did physical jobs and who will need something more sedentary in order to cope. That's retraining for the types of jobs that will be the first to go as AI comes in.

All that will happen is that when a person gets to a certain age they will go sick, and it will not take much for a scaffolder, policeman, nurse, bus driver etc to prove that they are no longer safe to do their jobs.

The money paid out will still be the same just shuffled about and given a new title. However, at the same time it will raise the stress levels for those caught up in this load of garbage and end up costing the welfare services and NHS loads more.

The irony is that many of those caught up in this will be the immigrants brought in to solve(?) the demographic baby boomer problem because for economists that was the easiest solution. All of these 'saviours' will have become part of the problem... as many of us predicted.

[saundra]

After my husband worked nights for years in a bakery after leaving the raf he most certainly couldn't have survived till 75 and neither could I
Feel sorry for people who don't get there pensions at 65 tho

[Kaz]

It was bad enough that they put mine back from 60 to 66, but this is terrible! Imagine 70+ year old teachers, paramedics, nurses, builders, crane drivers, dustmen!? People will literally be dying "in harness" like in Victorian times. It beggars belief

Do you think they are kicking 75 about, so that 70 won't seem so bad, by comparison?

[cromwell]

My mate Ernie still works in the building trade at the age of 68, but he's very much the exception. He also works with his son, who is young enough to get to the awkward spots his dad can't get to any more.
The welfare state generally is struggling.
It promised "cradle to grave care" but these days when pensioners get their house practically taken off them to pay for their care home fees, it's easy to show that that promise is long gone.
The welfare state was set u in the 50's when men typically worked long hours for more than forty years in physical jobs, and typically died within a few years of retiring. This isn't the case any more and I don't know how we adapt it to today's demands.
Many people now pay for the dentist and pay prescription charges; the NHS isn't truly free at the point of delivery.
I don't know how the challenges of the future are going to be managed, but making people work until they drop dead is political suicide for any party, and they know it.

[Workingman]

Quite, Saundra and Kaz, agree with you both.

These people have no moral compass and would be happy to see others worked into their graves so long as they are OK. For them it is the money and nothing but the money.

Cue the rolling out of a handful of septuagenarians who 'absolutely adore' working in charity shops or on the tills... oh wait, they are not on living wages and some are doing it to top-up their OAPs, and as Cromwell says, they are the exceptions.

These twenty-somethings are going to have to come up with something a bit more workable because, as Cromwell also says, their current plans are political suicide - the Grey vote is massive.

[Kaz]

Crommers, my dad was a brickie and hod carrier, and his knees and legs were pretty much shot by his 50s. I've never seen worse varicose veins, and he was never a big man. No way could he have carried that on to 70 So as you say, your mate is very much the exception xx

[cruiser2]

I am over 80 and have been retired for more than 20 years. But I could not get up early and drive sometimes over 100 miles before staring work.
The only driving we do is to go dancing or shopping.
We pay to see the dentist. When the NHS changed the payment system our dentist siad he was not having any NHS patients. We get good service.
Have done some voluntary work.
Spent yesterday gardening including mowing the lawn. I can do as much as I want not what someone else says I must.
Have a happy retirement

[Kaz]

I'd love to, if I ever get to it, the way this shower keep putting it back!

[TheOstrich]

I have wondered about voluntary work, perhaps helping in the local food bank, but there's so many bureaucratic hoops to jump through these days, and in any event, it seems they've got all the support they need …….

[Suff]

Of all those thousands of hours I spent sitting in planes flying to work, there were some very interesting conversations.

Back in 2000, on a flight to Stockholm, I was sitting next to a guy who was inclined to talk. We exchanged jobs and it turned out he was a US Health Insurance executive. So, being interested, I asked a few questions.

His story was quite interesting and I'll relate it here. When I asked about the US investing in the pensions market (remember Maggie had massively reformed ours), he stated that the only place in the EU worth even looking at was the UK and only because of the reforms that Maggie had put in place to create a private market for pensions which supplemented and exceeded the UK government NI.

I asked the obvious questions about the systems and he told me the EU, in general, was 50 years behind the US in pension provisioning and that it would lead, in 30 years, to those states having to raise their pensionable age to 75 in order to be able to afford the payments, without punishing taxes that would force governments out of power.

What he told me was that if you encourage people to invest in their pensions privately, then allow those people to get a relatively low tax benefit from their investment, they are a boost to the economy with spending and living on the money they have invested in. However if you take that away and put it back into a government pot, it becomes just another fund to be spent in whichever way the current government of the day see's fit and becomes a political football as to how they fund it.

Not so long after that, Gordon Brown did a raid on personal pensions. I have a friend who lost a quarter of a million in pension funds because of the massive loss those funds took when he did that. People flooded back into NI and SERPS and the government took all that load on board but had not been saving for it for decades.

Every now and again I go back to that conversation, before Brown screwed it all up, thinking about how it could have been.

But, you see, this is how it is. Labour comes in and kicks down everything the Tories have built as being "elitist" and "capitalist". Now we are living with the cost of those decisions. Our so vaunted "socialist" government has trapped and entire generation into ever longer work before they get their state pension.

Enjoy.