Barry Carrington's World Of Procrastination

Why should young people have to pay for someone else’s retirement? If you live in a million pound house, and you can’t afford to retire, sell the house. Or don’t. I don’t care. You just can’t expect young people to pay for you!

The trillion pound question

And this is the change in the last 30 years. It's become significantly less fair over time.

The 1946 National Insurance Act was called 'the best insurance policy the British people ever had' by the Labour government at that time. It entitled pensioners to a contribution-based pension that would not be means-tested. To renege on that contract now would be one of the biggest betrayals of the British people ever.

My timeline is suddenly filled with posts along the lines of “We can easily give pensioners a better deal if we cut immigration/scrap DEI/end foreign aid/find some other footling saving.” Most of them look like bots, which raises the question: Who wants to push this narrative? Some unfriendly foreign power, presumably. For the avoidance of doubt, of course we should cut immigration, scrap DEI and end foreign aid. But that will barely make a dent in the budget. The biggest spending items are health and social security, and pensions are the biggest element of this latter. Politicians who don’t want to tackle these budgets a don’t want to cut spending. Every British party is currently failing this test.

I suspect people don't realise how extractive the triple lock is on pensions. The triple lock means the state pension goes up by whichever is highest of: 1. Average earnings growth 2. Inflation as measured by September CPI 3. 2.5% regardless of any other factors. Inflation is 3.8% and nominal earnings growth is 4.8%, but even if you were flatlining and your earnings didn't outpace inflation, the pensions would still rise.