Pensions Outrage In UK

[Jimbuna]

It really annoys me that a political party (Lib Dems) with somewhere in the region of 55 seats (they're worst return in many a year) have so much influence on a subject that impacts on so many people that never voted for them)

Iain Duncan Smith has faced cries of protest from MPs on all sides in announcing the government will press ahead with controversial plans to raise the state pension age for women.
The coalition wants to raise this from 60 to 65 by 2018 before both female and male pension ages rise to 66 in 2020.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13834281

[AVGWarhawk]

The US fiddles with the age concerning retirement all the time. Let see, I will need to reach 105 before I can retire with full benefits.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

The US fiddles with the age concerning retirement all the time. Let see, I will need to reach 105 before I can retire with full benefits.

Is it really that bad....I'll soon have to reach 66 (up from 65) to receive a state pension and I thought that was bad

[Betonov]

They tried to raise the retirement age from 60 to 65 in our country this year. People went berserk, syndicates threatened with revolution, students threatened with another revolt (last year a student riot left our parliament building with broken windows and a burned ornamental bush) until a referendum was issued. The reform was rejected

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Betonov

They tried to raise the retirement age from 60 to 65 in our country this year. People went berserk, syndicates threatened with revolution, students threatened with another revolt (last year a student riot left our parliament building with broken windows and a burned ornamental bush) until a referendum was issued. The reform was rejected

I think we're a little more civilised than that in the UK

Or so the government tell us/hope

[Betonov]

Originally Posted by jimbuna

I think we're a little more civilised than that in the UK

I thought you are from UK

Edit: never mind, I read it wrong the first time

Syndicates are a bit too powerfull here, they're playing the nostalgia card of our prevoius system. Trying to revert back to socialism and people follow them like sheep and if they say there will be riots than I expect a call from the civil defence to be on call. The truth is, they're a money grubbing pseudo labor organisation and if they'd do their jobs, we wouldn't be in this mess where we are today.

Damn it, saturday we are celebrating our 20th independence aniversary and people are running around with Socialist Yugoslavian flags

[Penguin]

Originally Posted by Betonov

They tried to raise the retirement age from 60 to 65 in our country this year. People went berserk, syndicates threatened with revolution, students threatened with another revolt (last year a student riot left our parliament building with broken windows and a burned ornamental bush) until a referendum was issued. The reform was rejected

They raised the pension age from 65 to 67 here in 2007. What did the Germans do? They voted again for the Christian Demoncrats who initiated it ...
Those damned sheeps here don't deserve it better...
The brave heroes of the Social Demoncrats who also voted for the raise were suddenly against it when they went into opposition. Really the true voice of the small man....

[Skybird]

Somebody has to pay for all that people want to have in pensions and comfort. And the simple truth is demographics, debts, and the madness of the Euro trading away richer countries' future securities do not allow to pay for all that stuff anymore. There was party for half a century, and now the waiter has come to present the bill - and it is a nightmare number.

And what does that mean - "richer countries"? All Wetsern nations have lived for decades on tics, wastiong more money on tic than they could afford. Germany has black-on-white debts of almost 2 billion currently. If you calculate all future pesnions into it of people who at this very time earn or haver earned claims for fduture pensions, Germany's debts right now already are over 5 billion - one htird of that of the US, but with an economy and population not equalling one third of the US economy and population!

We have already consumed our children's and children's children's future. And in more than just finacial understandings of that phrase. Generation-wise, we have not been good parents over the past decades. We have been total azzes. And where the Argentinians have been ten years ago, and Greece is today, Germany will be in 10-15 years.

On the Greeks, it seems to me they do not search solutions and do not wish to understand how every single vote the private person made over the past 40 years has contributed to the mess they are in now. To me, there are no victims of the system, becasue the vast ,majority of Greek citizens particpated in the system as long as it held together and they did get their share. Instead of understanding this, they now instead look for foreign scapegoats. Today there was an article in the German press, describing the last reformer they had over 100 years ago who tried to reform the deeply corrupt political system Greece has traditionally. They lynched him.

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by jimbuna

Is it really that bad....I'll soon have to reach 66 (up from 65) to receive a state pension and I thought that was bad

One can retire at age 62 but benefits are less. Age 67 full benefits are offered.

Eehm, not to be a pain, but first of all, you have different pensions ages for women and men in the UK? I find that kind of weird in the first place.

It goes back a long time.
An equality case was bought which of course resulted in adding 5 years to the womens retirement age to make all things equal.
But that wouldn't be fair on a woman who was 59 and was about to retire so they stretched the timeframe for implementation, but 5 years is a lot of change so you have to stretch it down to be fair to 55 year olds which isn't fair on 54 year olds so you have to stretch it and they have been argueing for two decades on how long to keep stretching.

[BossMark]

As an ex coal miner I think I can claim my pit pension when I am 50, but not so sure now. I have never voted Lib Dem and have no intention of ever doing so(I am a member of the Labour party) what they are doing is an absolute outrage and come the next general election it will serve them right when hopefully they will get less than 10 seats.

[Bakkels]

Originally Posted by jimbuna

It really annoys me that a political party (Lib Dems) with somewhere in the region of 55 seats (they're worst return in many a year) have so much influence on a subject that impacts on so many people that never voted for them)



Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13834281

Eehm, not to be a pain, but first of all, you have different pensions ages for women and men in the UK? I find that kind of weird in the first place.
And it's 60 for women? Well I'm sorry but raising that age only seems a good thing to me.
Over here the pension age just got raised a year ago. Yes there were some protests, but the bill made it through parliament. And I got to say, it's only natural. In the 50's, a very famous social-democrat prime-minister here introduced pensions, a standard pension for elderly people and general health care. Socialist as he was, even he said (back in the fifties, that is) that the pension age should rise to compensate for the increased life-expectancy.

The only problem I see is that it's now going to be introduced in one large operation. And that it's going to affect the generation after the baby-boomers. Not the baby-boomers themselves.
They should have started slightly increasing it from the get-go. Still, it's now been raised from 65 to 67. I have no objection to that. I have some objections against other cut-backs, but the increase of pension age? It's only a logical consequence of increasing life-expectancy.

I can tell you this much though; it's going to be a way bigger problem in Southern Europe. The pension ages in Italy, Spain and Greece are much lower. And those countries are faced with an even larger ageing of the population.

[Penguin]

Originally Posted by Bakkels

Eehm, not to be a pain, but first of all, you have different pensions ages for women and men in the UK? I find that kind of weird in the first place.
And it's 60 for women? Well I'm sorry but raising that age only seems a good thing to me.

I agree with you regarding this point, as long as child education times are also considered towards your pension- which they are here, iirc 3 years per kid.

Originally Posted by Bakkels

Over here the pension age just got raised a year ago. Yes there were some protests, but the bill made it through parliament. And I got to say, it's only natural. In the 50's, a very famous social-democrat prime-minister here introduced pensions, a standard pension for elderly people and general health care. Socialist as he was, even he said (back in the fifties, that is) that the pension age should rise to compensate for the increased life-expectancy.

The guy said it in the 50s, where we had full-employment. These times will never come back. I live near the Ruhrgebiet, which used to be the industrial heartland of Germany. Only a fraction of the jobs were shifted from the industrial to the service sector. Most jobs just vanished.

I might be subjective, as most old people I know/knew come from a working-class/lower middle class background. You cannot do manual labour indefinitely - and certainly not everybody can switch to an administrational job at old age, not only because of the skills but also because of an limited amount of these positions.
This is something which is not considered in a static age limit: the different worn-out levels of the people. There are certainly many people who are eager and fit enough to work till they reach a high age, nobody should stop them doing so, but not everybody has the skills, health and possibility to do so.

Another problem I have with the argument of the increased lifespan of the people. It is certainly true that we live longer. But should the consequence be that we all work till near death? Maybe we just should say good-bye to this 19th/early 20th century model of labour and enjoy the fruits that an increased productivity can purvey to us. Or do we need to re-indroduce barren, repetitive manual labour at a conveyor belt, just for the sake of creating jobs?

[Bakkels]

Originally Posted by Penguin

I might be subjective, as most old people I know/knew come from a working-class/lower middle class background. You cannot do manual labour indefinitely - and certainly not everybody can switch to an administrational job at old age, not only because of the skills but also because of an limited amount of these positions.
This is something which is not considered in a static age limit: the different worn-out levels of the people. There are certainly many people who are eager and fit enough to work till they reach a high age, nobody should stop them doing so, but not everybody has the skills, health and possibility to do so.

You bring up some good points. Over here it will be taken into account if you're doing manual labour that takes a bigger toll on the body over the years. The problem is objectively establishing which jobs are heavier physically, and how much compared to others/eachother.

[Betonov]

A retiree tells her teenage grand-daughter: when I was your age I was allready working
Response: grandma, when I'll be your age I'll still be working