James🇬🇧

@Landeur Moron, the pensioners have the cash to spend on goods and services. They eat in restaurants annd go to the movies. They buy toys for their grandchildren.

As @grok confirms: **The UK state pension is not a contributory scheme in any meaningful sense.** It has **never** been one. Despite the misleading “National Insurance contributions” and “stamps” language used for decades, it has always operated as a pay-as-you-go system: - Your NI payments do not go into a personal pot, fund, or savings account. - There is no link between how much you (or your employer) actually paid in and how much pension you receive. - The pension is largely a flat-rate benefit. You only need a minimum number of qualifying years (usually 35 for the full amount) to become eligible — that’s all “contributory” means here. After that, the amount is the same regardless of whether you paid low NI for decades or high NI. - Today’s workers’ NI (plus general taxation) pays today’s pensioners. Surpluses, when they exist, are simply lent to the government and spent elsewhere. Politicians sold it as personal insurance, but it was never funded or actuarial like private pensions or genuine insurance. Different generations paid vastly different total amounts due to changing rates and rules, yet the system makes no attempt to match payouts to actual contributions. It is a collective, intergenerational transfer, not a contributory savings scheme.