Dead (and senile) people don't vote

[Nearly Sane]

There are real issues about pensions but this may not have been the best way to express it.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34439965

[jeremyp]

Won't cutting pensioner benefits now on the grounds that quite a lot of the pensioners will be dead at the next election and some others will have forgotten who did the cutting make the government look even more like a bunch of bastards?

And isn't he forgetting that the dead pensioners are going to be more than replaced by new not so dead pensioners?

[Nearly Sane]

Yes, I think it misjudged and numerically illiterate and logically flawed. That said more and more of our welfare budget is going to pensioner benefits and unless something is done about it all the other welfare cuts will be negated. As Liam Fox has noted later in the article, we are effectively running a Ponzi scheme.

[jeremyp]

Yes, I think it both misjudged and numerically illiterate and logically flawed. That said more and more of our welfare budget is going to pensioner benefits

Unsurprisingly, because there are more pensioners.

and unless something is done about it all the other welfare cuts will be negated. As Liam Fox has noted later in the article, we are effectively running a Ponzi scheme.

I think there should be more means testing. Thinking about my parents as an example, they do not need the winter fuel allowance, in fact they don't really need the state pension.

[Nearly Sane]

I would agree that means testing is probably the only way to go currently. That the increasing numbers of pensioners are where the costs increase are driven seems to have completely been missed by Mr Wild

[Hope]

As Liam Fox has noted later in the article, we are effectively running a Ponzi scheme.

Hasn't that been what the national pension scheme has always been, though.

[Nearly Sane]

Yes, it has been a Ponzi scheme but one that worked on the basis of numbers dying, or increased production. Given the numbers of increased pensioners to working population, thus is a growing problem that is getting worse.

[Rhiannon]

Agree about means testing, my dad gives me his winter fuel allowance to treat his grandkids and my aunt and uncle use theirs to take a weekend break.

[Hope]

The last few years have seen a massive push to personal pension schemes suggesting that their owners may not need a state pension.  However, will we then meet a point - in say 30 years time - when the long-term impacts of the financial crisis of the noughties, the move to student loans, etc. actually start to destroy the value of personal pensions? I know of many young and not-so-young professional people who haven't taken out penion schemes purely because they can't afford to pay the premiums.

[Hope]

Agree about means testing, my dad gives me his winter fuel allowance to treat his grandkids and my aunt and uncle use theirs to take a weekend break.

My wife tends to give hers to a local charity.

[jeremyp]

I know of many young and not-so-young professional people who haven't taken out penion schemes purely because they can't afford to pay the premiums.

You do understand that pension schemes don't have a fixed "premium" don't you?