Roy, My Dads 67 and still has to work and will do for sometime to live after his pension became worthless but at the time was excellent.
It is interesting how different societies and cultures treat their "elders". I do not accept that someone who is retired is no longer productive, and many of them are certainly not "spongers". I'm happy to enter into a discussion on this, but on this occasion would like to respond as follows......... The food I eat now is produced by folks who work. The food I ate for the last 38 years whilst I was working was also produced by those who worked, but also consumed by those who did not work. Either we live for today and fuck the future, or recognise that there must be some provision for continuity.
Oh well. [sigh]. It looks as if I will have to spell out my point, though it seemed obvious enough to me to anyone who didn't want to immediately take offence without trying to understand what I was trying to say: Pensions (and you might say health care) work as a large Ponzi scheme. Those drawing out of the pot are being covered by those paying in. It is a fallacy to think (though a fallacy which is wilfully propagated) that you are drawing out against what you have paid in. This isn't the case. Those who went before you drew out what you paid in. The money is not set aside in a separate pot to cover your old age, earning interest to make sure that you are OK in your retirement. This is the problem with an inverted age pyramid. You end up with a small number of contributors and a large number of recipients. It's not a moral judgement on anyone. The only moral judgement to be made would be that those in power should be ring-fencing pensions, knowing (through simple demographics) the situation that will inevitably arise. In the situation of an inverted age-pyramid, you might even suggest that taxation would have to be ever increasing, to pay for all the costs attendant in an ageing population. It is a situation which is even more acute in societies like Japan, with an even more top-heavy age-pyramid and a massive reluctance to allow immigration to make up the shortfall of productive workers. Why do you think that immigration isn't just damned up in the UK? It's because the country needs new workers to pay for the old. It is understandable that the retired feel they have a right to pensions and healthcare for as long as they live. After all, their elders benefitted from their hard work. I wasn't trying to make any political, moral, or social point, just an economic one. It is a reality whether or not it offends you. As for the offence, I can no more get wound up about that than I would if someone in a pub said to me "Are you looking at my mate's pint?" in the hope of starting a fight. It's such a ridiculous premise that the only reaction can be one of bemused surprise rather than an instant rush of blood to the head. Still, it's a forum. If you want to be offended by my comments, I am powerless to stop you.
an interest free banking system CAN work and doesnt necessarily mean poverty..quite the opposite. watch this video: Muslim countries may well be comparitively poor for the average person. However, many of these countries have enormous oil wealth and other resources (saudi, UAE, Bahrain etc)..but, as ever, the huge wealth is held by a minute proportion of the country where the filthy rich drive gold plated bugatti veyrons down the corridors of their marble-clad palaces. The wealth held by these royal families and industrialists make the windors look like beggars. Apart from their incredible greed and obscene wealth, i would venture to suggest that the main reason these countries have a poor population (lower living standards) is because of their religious culture..they are poor in education, poor in morals, poor in literacy, poor in skills, poor in ideology...50% of the population are oppressed, they use slave-like immigrant labour to do the vast majority of the work..you dont see arabs cleaning rooms in hotels..you seen egyptians, indians, africans etc all on pathetic wages who send their money home. the arabs tend not to work, they OWN instead. A lebanese man may become a hotel manager, but an african will always be the gardener. ive witnessed this first hand when i worked in the UAE...a horrible, rascist country, but one which is considered moderate and liberal but where in many emerates they flog women who have been the victim of rape. A goat is of higher social value than an immigrant..this is also the case in law..the only imigrants that might be higher are the transitory white north european, candian and american skiled workers. Everyone in our country has a right to a decent standard of living..true their are some lazy bastards out there, but most are no more lazy and parasitic than many of the wealthy trustafarians who live from family wealth and contribute nothing, and evade tax expertly. the media makes a lot of spongers, but the biggest theft from the state are the by people in suits..one could also argue that the working class spongers have 'earned the right' because their families have historically contributed to the wealth of the nation, many of whom gave their lives in war(s)... What about a person who is physically or mentally disabled..are they a parasite? They cannot contribute, but isnt it up to a far, just, humanist society to care for the most vulnerable?? Should these people not be at the very top of the list in terms of social care? What about people who have become ill, or a child with a life long illness who may never be able to contribute? There are so many angles to this conundrum... I once heard an abhorrent statement made on one of these bullshit 'reality' shows, "real wives of wherever" where a 'mom' said that her kid had to get into some private school so that she was mixing with 'the best gene pool'..the inference of which i found to be particularly distasteful..this isnt nazi germany, and it certainly ISNT a meritocracy. Hard work is part of the equation, but the wealthy are no more talented or special than the poor..some are, most arent...some have been very lucky..most come from wealth (Trump) and have an utterly cold ruthless dispassionate attitude to everyone and everybody..they call this psychopathy...A rich man isnt better, he just has more money..the biggest freeloaders in our country are the royal family who have never done a days work in their lives, they have a tenuous claim on the crown at best..did anyone see the documentary presented by Tony Robinson where they traced the RIGHTFUL heir to throne and it turned out to be a random bloke whose family had emmigrated to Australia in the 60's...he had an unbroken, direct ancestry that went back about 800 years..but thats another story.. Idolness and avarice are almost as abhorrent as one another, but avarice is certainly the most damaging..laziness is simply annoying..vodafone avoiding £6bn in tax in ONE YEAR is a greater loss than a sponger ripping the dole off for £30k a year, or infact every single sponger added together. neither is right or fair, but one causes more damage than the other...the counter arguements are always bullshit like the value of shares, the bigger picture of the economy and so that have little real meaning... A recession to the truly wealthy is a time of opportunity and acquisition, and it has been shown many times that numerous recessions have been engineered.... I hate and despise the attitude that some people adopt about 'the lower orders'..they spout right wing shit and no nothing of poverty but seem to have this black and white attitude about everything..and will STILL whinge when johnny foreigner comes over here to work and then employ a polish builder on his kitchen extension...fkn snobbery. The arsehole in canary wharf is rewarded and thought of as a talent who must be retained for selling nuts and bolts on the stock market, but no one gives a monkeys about the skilled bloke who made the nut and bolt...the rewards are totally disproportionate, as are the penalties of recession. Anyway im bored now and havent even begun to start so i'm off. PS..fair play to both Royum and Glidd for expressing their strong contrary opinions without getting the arse...well...sort of. :wink:* (emoticon used for clarification, respect and love purposes)
Each successive generation has taken out more than they have put in, which creates an ever increasing burden on the next generation.
Thanks Glidd, as a former trustee on a rather large pension fund I'll bear your sage advice on how a fund works in mind. Just to be clear you wrote 'keep alive a load of old retired spongers' I'm not sure how that is not meant to be offensive. You presume that people don't understand a lot of things and either of your points? I re-read your comments more than a few times and then your attempt above to ridicule my stance in taking offense. That's usually the way someone who recognises they were wrong tries to justify the unjustifiable. There are without doubt spongers in the UK, their behaviour is not linked to age.
Interest rates should be viewed in association with inflation about which JM Keynes said By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.
As an ex-pension fund trustee it is all the more confusing that you should choose to misinterpret me. How you can imagine that any sane individual would actually consider all retired people to be shameless spongers, unless they were a fully paid-up member of the Nazi party beats me. And I can't imagine telling anyone I don't actually know to "fuck off" and to try to be deliberately offensive. Whatever. Have it your way. I have no intention of trying to propitiate someone who clings to their umbrage like a limpet to a rock.
true.. but then again each earlier generation was treated worse and worse and worse back over time....once upon a time we (your forebears and mine) were tied to the land and were owned as chattle by the landed gentry....in recent times our country used to have kids working down mines, people starving in the streets, families dying in work houses and young boys marching into machine guns and barbed wire....the rich industrialists still had their huge country mansions..(because it was important to show the world our industrial might...who for ive never quite sussed)... The man who owned the coal mine lived in a mansion, the workers who made him rich had to fight for the right to live in squalid slums with 50 people sharing a toilet..but that was better than the previous open sewers..go to any large industrial city..ANY and you will still back to back slum housing and dotted here and there the enormous country estates (some have now been over taken by suburban development)... im off to bed for a lie down.
Everything you say is perfectly correct, Glidd. Just one thing, re the last sentence in the quote above: even if somebody's contributions in their working life are "...set aside in a separate pot..." the position is still the same, and it is still Ponzi. The aged retired person still has to eat today food made by a working person today. Accumulated savings in a pot are no different economically from accumulated unfunded entitlements.
