There are a lot of comfortably off pensioners. And lots of poor ones. And there are a lot better ways of finding money for elderly care than Theresa May’s manifesto commitment to whipping the houses off people who need care at home.
True. Very true. They could stop pissing money up the wall on fake charities, foreign aid and useless government departments.
Oh, that’s not what you mean…
One of the oddities of the tax system is that we stop paying 12% national insurance on our earnings once we reach state pension age. The idea is that NI is basically a savings system that pays for our pensions, so once we’re in receipt of a pension we stop paying in.
Yes, that is precisely what it was supposed to be. It is, of course, a glorified Ponzi scheme, though.
But NI, when first set up, was a system of insurance against illness and unemployment. If NI is supposed to help fund the NHS and care services, there is no reason why pensioners – the better off at least – shouldn’t be paying it, albeit at a reduced rate.
Yes, it was supposed to cover those things too. Having spent a lifetime working and paying into the system, it is reasonable to expect a return on one’s investment. Except that it isn’t an investment because the government is terminally fiscally incompetent and wastes the money.
Still, at least the Guardianista are consistent in their hard of thinking. Not once does thrift occur to them. The solution is always moar tax!
The alternative is to substantially raise inheritance tax.
See?
Fuckwits.
I agree.
While the government has enough of our money to fund fake charities and lobbyists, send our money overseas to make rich people in poor countries even richer and spend our money on a vanity project to enable people to get to Birmingham (who wants to go to Birmingham FFS?) half an hour faster there is no justification for raising taxes.
Why are the powers that be so surprised at the state we find ourselves in?
More than 50 years ago, on the first year of an HND course at the Brixton School of Building (one of the many much lamented mono-technics of the day), our Economics lecturer gave us a talk on how the State Pension system was funded, i.e. today’s contributions fund today’s pensions for yesterday’s workers. He also told us that in 45 years time, when we came to retire, we would have a major problem because 1) people were living longer and 2) the birth rate was falling. The result would be that fewer and fewer were paying for more and more.
By the way, his solution was two-fold. Firstly, the pensionable age should be increased by one year every five years, by now it would be around 75. secondly, we should all invest in private pensions or sign up to the company scheme. I did the private pension, which was hammered by Gordon Brown’s abolition of tax relief on the fund’s income, and also a British Steel (now Tata)company pension – and look what has happened to that!