Calvin Plummer
Vital Football Legend
Thats a decade of pension. Assume you've never used the NHS or any other service provided through taxation.
So assuming you haven't, if you'll kindly die at 75 then that's even.
Cool?
#COVID19
- Thread starter Woanz
- Start date
Thats a decade of pension. Assume you've never used the NHS or any other service provided through taxation.
So assuming you haven't, if you'll kindly die at 75 then that's even.
Cool?
mao tse tung
Vital Champions League
Do I remember correctly that you are a former Civil Servant?
If so, you should be thanking the tax payers for subsidising your wages over the years and for the inflated Pension you retired on.
And you will not have worked for anything like 60 Years; leaving school at 16 would equal a retirement age of 76 which is bollocks.
No doubt you left school at 9, worked down the pit, lived in a hole in the road and got up 3 hours before you went to bed; luxury!
Forest-England
Vital Squad Member
This is exactly what the Tories want. Divide and conquer!
Blame the blacks..
Blame the unemployed...
Blame the left...
Blame the disabled...
Blame the teachers & those working in the public sector...
Blame the pensioners...
Blame the young..
Blame the students...
Blame the immigrant...
Blame immigration...
And so on!
All while they carry on taking public money and handing it out to tory friends and donors. While quietly taking away our human rights.
Blame the blacks..
Blame the unemployed...
Blame the left...
Blame the disabled...
Blame the teachers & those working in the public sector...
Blame the pensioners...
Blame the young..
Blame the students...
Blame the immigrant...
Blame immigration...
And so on!
All while they carry on taking public money and handing it out to tory friends and donors. While quietly taking away our human rights.
Calvin Plummer
Vital Football Legend
So you constantly attacking Starmer and the BBC isn't what the Tories want?
Pope John XXIII
Vital Football Legend
You have done nothing remotely special or out of the ordinary. I don't know why you imagine you have. Even your 100k looks paltry now; I pay £12k+ a year in taxes; if I haven't beaten your lifetime sum already in raw numbers, I won't be far away.
Every penny you have spent in taxes bought you the services available to you at the time. In our society they also bought you the "entitlement" to still be looked after by the NHS and to still use those services even when you were not contributing
Those taxes did not entitle you to a triple lock on a state pension, nor to keep all your hoarded wealth while younger people are sacrificing their pay and their social lives to protect you.
Nor did your taxes go to contribute to paying for an historic and unprecedented future crisis. You did not contribute in advance to this crisis. You have contributed nothing to it, either in economic terms or, most likely, in labour. Nothing you have paid in taxes in the past anticipated nor contributed to the recovery from this. Your lifetime taxes are NOTHING like insurance at all
COVID is a new and unprecedented crisis; you must pay your share like the rest of us. Your parents and grandparents didn't shrug their shoulders in the war and say "enough, I've done my bit"; their generations bought war bonds and paid higher taxes later to pay for it. The minimum the elderly should pay is to sacrifice the already immoral triple lock, which the country already couldn't afford.
Do you really believe the triple lock (brought in by a party you then voted out of office) is an entitlement? Do you truly believe that your generation owes nothing in contribution to recovery?
Because it's that attitude that will eventually have the young part of the country refusing to comply and leaving your generation to fend for itself with no lockdown protection. If you believe you have the right to shirk your fair share you had better hope that vaccine (which my taxes are paying to put in your arm) works
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Forest-England
Vital Squad Member
It's looking very likely that Murdoch will give Starmer his blessing. Now there isn't much difference between both parties.
I hope I'm wrong and that I'm still able to vote for Labour. As I've voted for Labour all my life.
Calvin Plummer
Vital Football Legend
You didn't answer my question. Do the Tories want people to attack Starmer and the BBC?
Forest-England
Vital Squad Member
I really don't think they care. They've got away with so much. Without being held to account.
pebble
Vital 1st Team Regular
Seems an unwarranted attack on pensioners.
I feel lucky to have a pension and a garden, but my pension isn't enough for me to pay tax. I'm entitled to NHS treatment like everyone else. I've tried to obey all the rules and guidelines, to minimise my chances of making demands on the NHS during the pandemic.
If I get the vaccine before you do for being over 65, that's not my decision, like the triple lock you're so angry about. Do you want me to march on Westminster with a banner saying 'End triple lock now'?
It's not clear what you think older people should be doing which they're not doing now.
Pope John XXIII
Vital Football Legend
I think it is pretty clear.
The elderly are not going to pay their fair share of this mess through tax.
I'm not into raiding their wealth (although, by God, is a lot of it hoarded with your generation) either.
The triple lock was already immoral before the lockdown. A reasonable idea in the late 00's when state pensions had gotten very low. But 10 years later, throughout austerity? No.
I think it's quite shocking that every pensioner so far (as far as I can tell) has been outraged at this suggestion, called it an attack and basically stated that they are happy for me and my children to foot the bill for their protection for the rest of their lives, and that they don't feel they should have to make even that one sacrifice. What does that say about the mentality?
What do I want from you? "Fair enough" would be a start. An acknowledgement that the young are being royally screwed in an economic sense in this country and have been for more than a decade. I would be very interested in hearing any ideas you might have for how people of your age could contribute economically to paying the bills for this
pebble
Vital 1st Team Regular
This worries me from your previous post.
"Every penny you have spent in taxes bought you the services available to you at the time. In our society they also bought you the "entitlement" to still be looked after by the NHS and to still use those services even when you were not contributing."
Well, obviously once you start drawing your pension you stop contributing (unless your pension is income is high enough to be taxable, in which case you go on contributing).
But even a fascist wouldn't suggest that after paying National Insurance all your life you suddenly stop being eligible for NHS treatment when you retire!
Pope John XXIII
Vital Football Legend
Not at all.
Taxes are going to end up rising. I'll be paying them. So will you. Some of us will pay more than others.
Currently, those over 65, who most of the economic damage has been caused to protect, will pay virtually nothing if we are recovering via tax rises and they will see relatively few effects through cuts in services day to day.
Generational fairness has already been a big political topic for the last decade. The over 60s generation is the wealthiest in human history and are set to remain as such for at least the next 50 years; their children are generally not as wealthy and their grandchildren even less so.
That is going to get even worse if we as a nation have to cover the exorbitant costs of the COVID lockdowns. Around 2800 under 60s with pre-existing conditions have died of this. Only around 380 under 60s without pre existing conditions have died. This is overwhelmingly a threat to the over 60s but those under 60 have put their lives, their livelihoods and their relationships on hold to protected them. It feels callous in the extreme for the protected section of society to shrug their shoulders and tell the young that they need to pay all the costs as well.
This older generation rightly thanked their parents for saving their lives in the 1940's; I don't see why a modicum of respect for what the younger generations have done here, or at least an absence of utter dismissal of the sacrifices made, would be in order IMO.
In any case, the triple lock cannot survive. It was not designed to exist in the midst of any sudden economic recovery; it does not decrease when average earnings decrease, so if average earnings were simply to recover to some semblance of what they were before it would represent an absolute vast increase and potentially catastrophic additional national expense. So for that reason alone the TL will have to be dismantled
Pope John XXIII
Vital Football Legend
That is exactly what I said.
Your taxes over your lifetime have given you the "entitlement" to continue recieving all of those services long after you have ceased to pay for them. If you have been born after 1948 as well, your taxes also buy you up to 18 years of such freebies at the start of your life too. That is the settlement we have in this country. Am not questioning that. I merely say that this settlement does not entitle you to shrug your shoulders and assume the young have to foot your share of the recover bill for COVID.
I'm not sure why you are mentioning fascism. I'm not aware of any fascist or nationalist regime that persecuted the elderly. Germany certainly didn't, their pensions were pretty generous.
The reason I call it "entitlement" is because there is no guarantee that this will continue to be seen as an "entitlement" by the time I reach your age
JC21
Vital Football Hero
It ABSOLUTELY does
pebble
Vital 1st Team Regular
This is also disturbing:
"I'm not into raiding their wealth (although, by God, is a lot of it hoarded with your generation) either."
Well, I'm glad to hear you wouldn't go as far as stealing people's life savings. But what is it with this anti-boomer shit?
I don't know what age range you're accusing, but I doubt whether we're the worst hoarders of wealth in recent times.
If younger people are hard done to over the past ten years, it's because voters have elected rubbish governments. It's not because scheming 60-somethings have hoarded wealth. Nor have we cynically paid into the NHS in order to have it there for us in later life, in some kind of unfair way. That was the point of the NHS, for everyone.
I agree that post-pandemic we need to make radical changes to ensure that the young don't spend decades paying for the crisis. Writing off debts and moving to a universal wage would be a start. This isn't something that requires older people to parade through the streets whipping themselves - it requires governments and the super-rich to accept that their game won't survive without some rule changes.
"I'm not into raiding their wealth (although, by God, is a lot of it hoarded with your generation) either."
Well, I'm glad to hear you wouldn't go as far as stealing people's life savings. But what is it with this anti-boomer shit?
I don't know what age range you're accusing, but I doubt whether we're the worst hoarders of wealth in recent times.
If younger people are hard done to over the past ten years, it's because voters have elected rubbish governments. It's not because scheming 60-somethings have hoarded wealth. Nor have we cynically paid into the NHS in order to have it there for us in later life, in some kind of unfair way. That was the point of the NHS, for everyone.
I agree that post-pandemic we need to make radical changes to ensure that the young don't spend decades paying for the crisis. Writing off debts and moving to a universal wage would be a start. This isn't something that requires older people to parade through the streets whipping themselves - it requires governments and the super-rich to accept that their game won't survive without some rule changes.
Pope John XXIII
Vital Football Legend
JC21
Vital Football Hero
I agree it's not debating and I won't be debating tonight but I will happily tell you why I think it at some point
Apollyon
Vital Football Legend
pebble
Vital 1st Team Regular
Yes, that's what I said. '"even a fascist wouldn't suggest that after paying National Insurance all your life you suddenly stop being eligible for NHS treatment when you retire!"
But you said "In our society they also bought you the "entitlement" to still be looked after by the NHS and to still use those services even when you were not contributing" - as if there was something wrong with using NHS services after you retire.
Why even mention it? As this is the point of the NHS, it's perverse to suggest anyone should feel guilty for using NHS services later in life.
I'm not sure what you mean about this no longer being an entitlement for you when you get older. That could only happen if younger people, after I'm gone, voted in a government who tore up the established social contract. After I'm gone, I refuse to take the blame for any such change!
