evilwebby
Player Valuation: £50m
war veterans? Heavens. Yes, I personally propose we kick them all in the nuts as a sign of gratitude. The fact is that people are living considerably longer than they were, and that demographically there are far more older people now than there were in the past. This has meant that the worker/retiree ratio has changed overwhelmingly since the state pension was introduced, and people are living longer in retirement. Older folk are also the biggest users of the NHS, and our lifestyles mean they are living longer with various chronic conditions that require frequent usage of the NHS.
Couple that with the shifting wealth of society that sees young people today the first generation in history less likely to be better off than the generation before them, it's perhaps not a big ask to request wealthy older people to contribute more to the burden their placing on the state. But that doesn't happen. Even under austerity for everyone else, the state pension was triple locked, and retirement age continues to grow at a slower pace than life expectancy, all while wealthy pensioners like Pete continue to get freebies like tv licenses and bus travel.
With regards to your question, I'm 40, and unless things change I don't expect there to be a state pension when I get to retirement age as it will be wholly unsustainable and the government won't be able to afford it. Also, just as a reminder, paying taxes all your life is irrelevant, as the pension isn't paid for out of your lifetime of taxes, but out of the taxes of those working in the current time. You don't pay into a pension pot as you would a private pension. It doesn't work like that. It's a ponzi scheme basically, that relies upon enough tax payers to foot the bill.
Not only is the state pension a ponzi scheme as you describe, but also all public pensions. teachers and policemen think their pension contributions are being invested on into a pot on their behalf are mistaken. Their current "pension contributions" are just a part of the overall tax intake that is used to fund current expenditures.
