State Pension Affordability

[WTFH]

Yes, however we have leaders who don't have the ability or foresight to do this. Instead they're increasing the population and driving down productivity through misplaced and inappropriate policies.

Impoverishment is coming to the UK as with most Western societies and our response is to fight over the remaining scraps of wealth when we should be rebuilding our industrial capacity and expecting net contribution from people rather than net consumption.

How do you propose to generate enough tax to pay out to pensioners if we have a shrinking population and those that are of working age cannot afford to rent or buy property on their income?
You talk about "rebuilding our industrial capacity", but don't mention how this miracle can happen with the UK's current education system and costs.
Words are cheap, solutions tend to take time and cost money.
We know that trickle down economics has never worked, so what is your proposal?

[tazdevil]

so what is your proposal?

Make work pay by changing the benefits system from income for nothing to income for something, including pensions. There's plenty of work just a lack of willingness to organise for it and do it. Some sort of national service is required even if its education based and local government has to expand to use new capacity, people working for benefits including pensions, and do all the stuff we don't do because its too expensive to farm out. Caring, gardening, government, defence, civil call centres and so forth can all do with more input. So if you depend on benefits then some contribution should be mandated dependent on ability and everyone is capable of something! Yes, there will be those privileged by wealth to be independent of benefits and good for them but for the rest of us doing something is required.

Then drop this idea that we can buy everything we need as we'll soon not have the money to do it. So buy British or demand British content in goods. Promote British entrepreneurs and small business and drop the red tape that guarantees business for big co over small co. Go back to using our national resources and drilling oil and gas whilst at the same time investing in British manufactured green energy resources.

Lastly we're losing our homogeneity as British through dilution. We should stop pandering to ethnic interests and expect everyone whose here and benefiting from this nation to be British first and proud of it.

OK let the criticism begin...

[malvolio]

Make work pay by changing the benefits system from income for nothing to income for something, including pensions. There's plenty of work just a lack of willingness to organise for it and do it. Some sort of national service is required even if its education based and local government has to expand to use new capacity, people working for benefits including pensions, and do all the stuff we don't do because its too expensive to farm out. Caring, gardening, government, defence, civil call centres and so forth can all do with more input. So if you depend on benefits then some contribution should be mandated dependent on ability and everyone is capable of something! Yes, there will be those privileged by wealth to be independent of benefits and good for them but for the rest of us doing something is required.

Then drop this idea that we can buy everything we need as we'll soon not have the money to do it. So buy British or demand British content in goods. Promote British entrepreneurs and small business and drop the red tape that guarantees business for big co over small co. Go back to using our national resources and drilling oil and gas whilst at the same time investing in British manufactured green energy resources.

Lastly we're losing our homogeneity as British through dilution. We should stop pandering to ethnic interests and expect everyone whose here and benefiting from this nation to be British first and proud of it.

OK let the criticism begin...

Not going to happen as long as we are led by a party that has abandoned "Support the Workers" as its credo for "Support the Disadvantaged", sees our money as theirs to do with what they like and borrows when it isn't enough, are so in fear of ethnic minorities at the expense of ethnic majorities, and thinks we should impoverish ourselves to make a 0.8% (and reducing) drop in worldwide emissions. Not to mention slavish adherence to international law, as defined by pressure groups within the UN and who are
at best, an irrelevance and at worst supporter of our enemies..

This is of course a short term issue. Any likely future government will understand the nonsense that it is and do something (anything!) about it.

Oh look. A political post. Prove me wrong

[WTFH]

Lastly we're losing our homogeneity as British through dilution. We should stop pandering to ethnic interests and expect everyone whose here and benefiting from this nation to be British first and proud of it.

OK let the criticism begin...

I completely agree. We need to get rid of the Anglo-Saxons who came over here in small boats, bringing their language, their "values", who took our land, destroyed our country and now think they are the one true race.

[hobnob]

Make work pay by changing the benefits system from income for nothing to income for something, including pensions.

I heard something similar from Rupert Lowe (Restore party) recently:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DTnU31FDMOp/
"If a healthy individual on benefits has refused work over and over, make them work. Litter picking, five days a week. Don't like it? No benefits. Cut them off from their universal credit if they refuse."

For context, if you're over 25 and single, Universal Credit is £424.90/month.
Universal Credit: What you'll get - GOV.UK
That's equivalent to £98.05/week.

The full basic state pension is £184.90/week.
The basic State Pension: How much you get - GOV.UK

If you're 21 or over, the National Living Wage is £12.71/hour:
Minimum wage rates for 2026 - GOV.UK
So, if you did a minimum wage job full time (35 hours per week), your gross salary would be £444.85/week, significantly higher than either of the benefit schemes.

This plan sounds like a way to circumvent the minimum wage, i.e. make people work for peanuts under the threat of not getting anything at all. In this hypothetical scheme, would they still be allowed to take time off for job interviews, or are they trapped in this situation forever? For that matter, would they get annual leave (like a "normal" job) or would they have to work every weekday?

I'm not convinced that "there's plenty of work". But if there is, it should be paid a proper salary. Otherwise, you're incentivising organisations to get rid of paid jobs and switch over to slave labour. It's worth asking who would benefit from this hypothetical scheme: if it actually happened, would there be party donors who'd get put on the "approved employer" list with access to a cheap workforce?

In more general terms, this reminds me of the Brexit campaign, which was more about slogans than details.

[hobnob]

But if there is, it should be paid a proper salary. Otherwise, you're incentivising organisations to get rid of paid jobs and switch over to slave labour. It's worth asking who would benefit from this hypothetical scheme: if it actually happened, would there be party donors who'd get put on the "approved employer" list with access to a cheap workforce?

Just to expand on this point, suppose that I run a farm and I need fruit pickers. I then have 2 options:
a) Hire people myself, and pay them minimum wage.
b) Get the government to send me a workforce, and pay them nothing (because they're just doing this to qualify for state benefits).

As an employer, there's a clear financial incentive to go for option b!

Similarly, suppose that I ran a national chain of pubs, and I currently hire a lot of bar staff on minimum wage. Again, replacing all of them with people on benefits (where I pay nothing) would be an attractive proposition. It would then be in my interests to donate money to political parties who'd implement that, because the cost of my donation would be outweighed by all the money I'd save on wages. So, even if it's not a strict "quid pro quo" scenario (e.g. the PPE contracts that got handed out during COVID), donors could still justify supporting a party where they like the policies.

[sadkingbilly]

TLR

Lastly we're losing our homogeneity as British through dilution. We should stop pandering to ethnic interests and expect everyone whose here and benefiting from this nation to be British first and proud of it.

OK let the criticism begin...

feck off you fascist cant.
that do for starters??

[ladymuck]

Just to expand on this point, suppose that I run a farm and I need fruit pickers. I then have 2 options:
a) Hire people myself, and pay them minimum wage.
b) Get the government to send me a workforce, and pay them nothing (because they're just doing this to qualify for state benefits).

As an employer, there's a clear financial incentive to go for option b!

Similarly, suppose that I ran a national chain of pubs, and I currently hire a lot of bar staff on minimum wage. Again, replacing all of them with people on benefits (where I pay nothing) would be an attractive proposition. It would then be in my interests to donate money to political parties who'd implement that, because the cost of my donation would be outweighed by all the money I'd save on wages. So, even if it's not a strict "quid pro quo" scenario (e.g. the PPE contracts that got handed out during COVID), donors could still justify supporting a party where they like the policies.

I think... You get the benefits rate for a short period only. Six months, say.

If you don't get a job, you are given a job, but it is paid at minimum wage. You will be contracted to work for a specified number of hours per week, with time off factored in for job interviews. Excess time off results in the loss of your job and benefits.

Full of holes to be ironed out but that's roughly where I'd start.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Chain gang litterpicking. That's where I'd start.

Oh.

Sorry.

Thought I'd logged into the Reform thing.

My mistake. .

[edison]

The triple lock is unsustainable, but it seems even Reform have succumbed to the electoral logic of retaining it to have a chance of forming a government.

It was originally introduced to tackle pensioner poverty and has been pretty successful in ratcheting up pensions vs. average earnings.
There are clearly problems with it though - recently we had very high inflation and pensions went up by inflation. The following year, inflation dropped but wages increased to compensate for last year's inflation. Pensions went up by average income. Two bites of the same cherry.

If you're on an average wage with full working life in the UK, you can expect to pay maybe £170k in lifetime NI (inflation adjusted). You can expect to receive around £250k in lifetime state pension income.

There's already a safety net for low income pensioners with pension credit etc. so it's hard (impossible) to justify continuing this ratchet for everyone.

The state pension should be set as a percentage of average income - say 30-35% or whatever is affordable and maintained there, removing the triple lock entirely.

Our state pension system is predicated on it being supplemented by private pension provision. If we want the more generous European model we should have been paying a lot more tax over our working lives.
The Australian superannuation scheme is worth a look, though that relies on a significant (12%) mandatory contribution to worker pensions. It started at 3% however, so there's room for adjustment in the UK minimum contribution, though the effect on jobs might be problematic.

Overall, the problem like many political issues is the voters. Low tax for me, high tax for others, state pension for me, not for the kids, not in my back yard etc.
We get the politicians we deserve. If we accepted hard choices as a nation, politicians would find it a lot easier to do what's needed for the long term interests of the country.

You've summed it up perfectly - no UK government is going to tackle pensions whilst the over 50s are the biggest voting bloc. You only have to look at France and the terrible mess they've got in trying to increase the state pension age from 62 to 64. They've gone through three PMs in a couple of years and are struggling to pass a budget, all whilst running a large budget deficit.