[Politics] Cost of Living Crisis

WATFORD zero said:

Without wanting to go off topic, I believe that these are exactly the type of issues that FPTP voting encourages party politics to ignore. All that matters is getting into 'power'.

With some sort of proportional representation or AV system, collaboration between parties is actively encouraged and when similar numbers of MPs from each party start getting returned regularly reflecting the small changes in actual voting patterns, it takes away the ability to constantly blame the 'other lot' and offers the opportunity for more mature, long term government to address the important, rather than populist issues.

I live in hope

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Gwylan said:

Well yes. I did say in my very first post that this would require a multi-party approach. The sort of hard choices that are being talked about are simply not possible in a FPTP system - particularly one where the elderly demographic have such influence.

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Machiavelli said:

To do that, we'd need an extremely brilliant rhetorician, a ruthless organiser, and a bottomless pit of money. Do indicate what you're going to bring to the party

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WATFORD zero said:

I agree completely that we need mature multi party politics for the oncoming economic storm (and would have helped for Brexit, Covid, Ukraine etc etc) but sadly, I can't see it changing as I think it would prove too complicated for a significant number of people if there are more than two rosettes

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Audax said:

Things like the threshold for Child Benefit being linked to the highest earner in the family. If family A has Earner 1 on £30k and Earner 2 on £60k, their child benefit is gone. If family B has both Earners on £45k, they still get full rate Child Benefit.

There has to be a way the system can be simplified and made fairer for all, removing the stupid quirks and all the sodding loopholes that people with the means to afford an accountant can jump through.

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usernamed said:

About £30?

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Pavilionaire said:

You are correct about the Child Benefit anomaly. It is unjust - pure and simple.

The ability to make your spouse a shareholder in a limited company means that £125K of Sales could result in take-home pay of c. £100K AND both spouses will be at / under the £50K threshold so pay no Higher Rate tax and lose not a penny of Child Benefit.

The government likes to tell us we have a record number of people in employment, yet we still hear we have a low productivity economy. It's no surprise when there are literally hundreds of thousands of spouses on the payroll or in partnerships who contribute little or nothing to the trading profits of the business.

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Gwylan said:

As you know, I was a long-standing advocate for a multi-party approach to Brexit, I'm still amazed that something like that was handled by one party.

What's interesting to me is that France is looking to tackle this by raising the pension age - it was a key part of Macron's election campaign. And EM got smashed in the elections as the electors weren't keen on losing pension benefits. It does indicate how tough this is going to be for any country (France BTW has got one of the highest birthrates in Europe, if not the highest, so it's less of a problem for them). The UK really isn't alone in facing this - it's a massive problem for all of Europe.

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Super Steve Earle said:

Since the first month I started work, my financial planning included my work pension and State Pension and developing savings. When I retired after 45 years, my lifestyle was/is based on that same premise. It's a shame some people think I should have died sooner rather than be able to enjoy a decent lifestyle in retirement for a while and support my family to have the same benefits I have/had. 'The elderly' seems very much a mean spirited, envious and derogatory term on this thread. I'm sure the millions who die before retirement age makes up for the burden of some older people. If I was means tested for my State Pension, I'd lose it and all my planning would be wasted. My savings would soon disappear and life would be shitty by comparison. No season ticket for me and Mrs Earle. Looks like a bit of politics of envy towards those who survive long enough to be denigrated as elderly, presumably pensioners. My three best mates died long before they could draw a pension. So did my boss. So did a friend of Mrs Earle. So did others I know. Shedloads of people don't make elderly. Those who do might be considered the lucky ones, not just parcelled up as boomers to be mocked. We don't all have big houses, gold plated pensions etc. But why shouldn't we have a vote? We have a damn sight more wisdom than plenty of 30 year olds because we have seen it all before. It's life experience. But again, not something truly valued these days. The elderly should be binned off, have no influence, no vote, lose their pensions and reasonable retirement, maybe their savings. Send them back to work - oh, wait a minute they are needed for grandparent duties. Ok, so that's a bit of a rant, but having only retired 4 years ago, therefore become 'elderly' at that point, I resent being blamed for all the ills of today and expected to sacrifice what I have achieved because there is a cost of living crisis. There's always a crisis of some sort and this is a bad one. I've made loads of sacrifices over the years to get what I have, but income pretty much stops dead in retirement compared to promotions and work bonuses. We have one of the poorest pensions in Europe. We should be looking at improving it, not means testing or deferring it till people are too old to draw it.
P.S. no wine was drunk during typing this slightly angry post.

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Audax said:

So ... My take on this (only quoting the start of the convo, but not ignoring the rest of it!):

1. Any economy that is built on the premise of continuous population growth to fuel economic growth is fundamentally broken. Because:

2. Our country, and indeed our planet, is a finite resource that contains finite resources. So:

3. Until and unless we can colonise other planets, continuous population growth eventually ends in collapse. Thus:

4. We must begin looking for sustainable solutions to generating economic growth that do not rely on population growth.

The above probably means making some really hard decisions in some areas of social support. In particular pensions for the retired. There needs to be a shift away from state-funded guaranteed pensions for all and towards responsible self-funded pensions with government funded pensions being a safety net only. (And yes, I practice what I preach here - I'm putting a voluntary 9% of my salary into pension currently. And will increase that if and when my budgets allow)

Also take a fresh new look at how taxation affects employment. If it's cheaper for businesses to employ one person working 37 hours per week than 2 people working 18.5 hours each, then we're in a bad place.

I'd also take a long look at how we tax employees. The current system of taxing individuals is unfair once you start looking at family units (although I suspect it works great for the government). I'd prefer to see tax calculated on a family unit basis. Scale it based on total family income such that it doesn't matter whether it's all earned by one parent or split between two. If Family A has the Mother earning £50k per year and the Father £10k, and Family B has both parents each earning £30k ... well, that's a £60k total and both families should be paying exactly the same tax (everything else being equal, of course).

I could go on ... but I'm supposed to be working.

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Super Steve Earle said:

Since the first month I started work, my financial planning included my work pension and State Pension and developing savings. When I retired after 45 years, my lifestyle was/is based on that same premise. It's a shame some people think I should have died sooner rather than be able to enjoy a decent lifestyle in retirement for a while and support my family to have the same benefits I have/had. 'The elderly' seems very much a mean spirited, envious and derogatory term on this thread. I'm sure the millions who die before retirement age makes up for the burden of some older people. If I was means tested for my State Pension, I'd lose it and all my planning would be wasted. My savings would soon disappear and life would be shitty by comparison. No season ticket for me and Mrs Earle. Looks like a bit of politics of envy towards those who survive long enough to be denigrated as elderly, presumably pensioners. My three best mates died long before they could draw a pension. So did my boss. So did a friend of Mrs Earle. So did others I know. Shedloads of people don't make elderly. Those who do might be considered the lucky ones, not just parcelled up as boomers to be mocked. We don't all have big houses, gold plated pensions etc. But why shouldn't we have a vote? We have a damn sight more wisdom than plenty of 30 year olds because we have seen it all before. It's life experience. But again, not something truly valued these days. The elderly should be binned off, have no influence, no vote, lose their pensions and reasonable retirement, maybe their savings. Send them back to work - oh, wait a minute they are needed for grandparent duties. Ok, so that's a bit of a rant, but having only retired 4 years ago, therefore become 'elderly' at that point, I resent being blamed for all the ills of today and expected to sacrifice what I have achieved because there is a cost of living crisis. There's always a crisis of some sort and this is a bad one. I've made loads of sacrifices over the years to get what I have, but income pretty much stops dead in retirement compared to promotions and work bonuses. We have one of the poorest pensions in Europe. We should be looking at improving it, not means testing or deferring it till people are too old to draw it.
P.S. no wine was drunk during typing this slightly angry post.

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Gwylan said:

That's quite a rant - not sure where to start.

Let's get one thing out of the way - this is not politics of envy, it's the exact opposite. As someone who's reaching retirement age in four months, I too have a lot of benefits to look forward to. My concern is whether those benefits are entirely sustainable.

Yes, you know a lot of people of a similar age who have died: so do I. Most people in their 60s and 70s will have a similar story but they're dying in lower numbers. The simple and uncontestable fact is that, for the first time ever in British history, we have more people over 65 than people under 18. And now that immigration is declining (they tend to have more kids) and people live longer and longer, that gap is going to widen - this is not sustainable. As I said, it's not an issue now but it will be in 30, 40 or 50 years time unless something radical is done.

No party is going to exclude 70+ from voting but the simple fact is that this is the age group that vote in big numbers and they get the benefits. This is also the group that benefited from free university education, cheap homes (my parents bought a 4-bed house in Brighton for £58,000 in current prices). NHS dentists and final salary pensions. You benefited from this - as did I. It seems unfair to lumber the younger generation with tuition fees, exorbitant rents and all the rest - and then tell them they have to pay more as there are more pensioners to support.

The Conservative politician, David Willetts, wrote an interesting book about 10 years ago. It was called The Pinch and it was basically about how young people get a raw deal as the baby boomers have reaped the benefits. Unfortunately, the book is a bit light on solutions but it's certainly not something that's gone away.

Finally,there's your bizarre claim that the elderly (or the aged, whatever you want to call them) are being pushed back into work. Again, it's the exact opposite: there are many stories of extremely experienced, capable and knowledgeable 50 and 60 somethings who are turned down for jobs. Ageism is rife in many industries: as someone who was made redundant at 59 and who has only managed to grab three job interviews in seven years, I know full well how hard it is to find work.

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beorhthelm said:

behind the headline inflation number toady, the core inflation (excluding fuel and food) is down for second month. silver linings and all that.

elsewhere might see the future by end of week, Nordstream gas pipeline has been offline for maintenance, rumours suggest the Russians decide not to turn it back on. that would be very damaging to european economies and oil/gas prices.

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WATFORD zero said:

But however it's wrapped up, Inflation has just increased to 9.4%.

Just as well we are concentrating on whether Rishi or Liz, two of the senior Government ministers will become PM to keep up the continuity that got us to this position

Can't say we weren't warned, again and again, over the last few years

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Harry Wilson's tackle said:

I'm somewhere between you and [MENTION=599]beorhthelm[/MENTION]. That said.....if the rate of increase in the decline of my health is slowing, it still means I'm getting sicker. The reason I am not in full team watford here is that until the triple whammy of brexit, covid and Johnson, we could not have anticipated the recent collapse. And whether it could have been mitigated against by having someone other than Johnson in charge, or not Brexitting, is untestable surmise.

That said, it seems only reasonable to get this shower out and have a genuine new broom in charge (Labour). We shall have to wait till a GE is called. Truss will go early I expect. With May-like misjudgement, perhaps.

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Harry Wilson's tackle said:

I'm somewhere between you and [MENTION=599]beorhthelm[/MENTION]. That said.....if the rate of increase in the decline of my health is slowing, it still means I'm getting sicker.

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Gwylan said:

That's quite a rant - not sure where to start.

Let's get one thing out of the way - this is not politics of envy, it's the exact opposite. As someone who's reaching retirement age in four months, I too have a lot of benefits to look forward to. My concern is whether those benefits are entirely sustainable.

Yes, you know a lot of people of a similar age who have died: so do I. Most people in their 60s and 70s will have a similar story but they're dying in lower numbers. The simple and uncontestable fact is that, for the first time ever in British history, we have more people over 65 than people under 18. And now that immigration is declining (they tend to have more kids) and people live longer and longer, that gap is going to widen - this is not sustainable. As I said, it's not an issue now but it will be in 30, 40 or 50 years time unless something radical is done.

No party is going to exclude 70+ from voting but the simple fact is that this is the age group that vote in big numbers and they get the benefits. This is also the group that benefited from free university education, cheap homes (my parents bought a 4-bed house in Brighton for £58,000 in current prices). NHS dentists and final salary pensions. You benefited from this - as did I. It seems unfair to lumber the younger generation with tuition fees, exorbitant rents and all the rest - and then tell them they have to pay more as there are more pensioners to support.

The Conservative politician, David Willetts, wrote an interesting book about 10 years ago. It was called The Pinch and it was basically about how young people get a raw deal as the baby boomers have reaped the benefits. Unfortunately, the book is a bit light on solutions but it's certainly not something that's gone away.

Finally,there's your bizarre claim that the elderly (or the aged, whatever you want to call them) are being pushed back into work. Again, it's the exact opposite: there are many stories of extremely experienced, capable and knowledgeable 50 and 60 somethings who are turned down for jobs. Ageism is rife in many industries: as someone who was made redundant at 59 and who has only managed to grab three job interviews in seven years, I know full well how hard it is to find work.

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wellquickwoody said:

This free university education that many speak of, let us clarify that a little.

In 1970, around 8% of the population went into higher education, by 1990 this had risen to 19%. Compare this to the 2020 intake of nearly 40% of all school leavers. So although the baby boomers had ‘free university’ according to many younger complainants, the reality is that it was actually open to comparatively few.

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