Andy Burnham to scrap Pension Triple Lock

[gagzus 26,509]

1 hour ago, Economy said:

How is your benefit calculated there?

 

In Canada CPP (the main government pension) takes your 40 highest earning years which mean you had to deduct the maximum for at least 40 of your earning years to get the max pension which very few people do

 

Then there is Old Age security which is like a part 2 of pension, that is a flat benefit that is the same for everyone regardless of earnings but it is only about half what the full CPP benefit is (even stay at home moms who didnt work a day in their life get it) with the exeption being if you are a high income pensioner then there are clawbacks but the threshold is high enough thar it doesnt apply to mosy people

So in the UK for a state pension all you had to do to be eligible to get the pension is work a minimum of 10 years with contributions via National Insurance, that’s MINIMUM qualification but it doesn’t get you the full pension. To get the full pension of roughly £12.5k per year you have to have made 35 years worth of contributions. National Insurance pays for all our public services and benefits (including pensions) , in fact, the pension is the highest benefit in the country due to the aging population essentially outliving their original expectancy. Roughly £142b a year. Double that of Universal Credit (welfare for people either out of work or on low hours/income). There’s a misinformed notion of “I paid my whole life into a pension” amongst the retirees in the UK. But that’s not how it works, the current working class’ National Insurance pays for the then currently retired people‘s pensions. So pensioners now we’re paying for their grand parents generation’s pensions then, just like Millennials and Gen Z are for them now. That’s factual and you can search it on the government website in the UK. 

But sadly when you try to explain this to people they think you’re lying and try to play semantics that they “still paid” for it regardless. But in fact, they paid less in taxes for their grandparents pensions than we do for theirs now; because of the triple lock. Our taxes go up every year that pensions go up. And we’ve paid £16b more from the creation of the triple lock in 2011 to 2026. Because of the triple lock making pensions raise the same as inflation which hasn’t been less than 3% a year. But the triple lock means that the pensions will go up EVERY YEAR no matter what. It goes up by whatever is the highest metric; inflation, wages or a minimum floor of 2.5%. 
 

It’s estimated that by 2040, without getting rid of the triple lock pensions would exceed working wages entirely. Meaning someone who retires in the next 4-5 years would get paid more than a full time working person a month for doing nothing. And because our pensions don’t discriminate, that also includes people who claim their pension but still work (which you can do in the UK, you just pay 22.2% tax on your pension income), people who have savings, own their own houses, have family money, have inheritance etc are all still eligible for a state pension. Because our pensions aren't means tested, and every time politicians have brought up means testing pensions over the years, it has costed them their political seats in parliament.

Typically, Gen X and Boomers also had lower housing prices and a better market so that’s why that big percentage of them own their own houses outright, plus a lot of them were part of the industry wide unions from the 80s before mass privatisation in the late 80s/early 90s so they also have private pensions from that time like the Pit Pension—which is a pension for former Pit Miners when the UK had a massive coal mining industry, before Thatcher closer them all in the 80s. 

 

And if you have no other money beyond the state pension, as in no savings, no house to remortgage or any other income; you’re eligible for a benefit called Pension Credit to give you on top of your pension. So the majority of elderly people in the country in fact do not just get the baseline of £12.5k a year (despite the mass information and talking points currently politically and on debate shows) the average pensioner in the UK makes the most money out of everyone in society. 

1 in 4 households of pensioner age (68+) people have a collective income—whether they work still or have pensions, or have savings—are millionaires. Their household has a collective of MINIMUM £1m which is crazy. Pensioner poverty does exist, but it’s the lowest group for poverty in the whole country, whilst child poverty is the highest.