Unmoderated

Yeah, read it yesterday. Intersting article but chimes with what I've been banging on about forever. Tax inheritances at people's marginal rates. There is growing inequality and this is built on housing inequaility of one's parents. The article essentially states (for those not subscribing) that the intergeneration inequality will manifest into an intragenerational one simply because of the huge value of housing wealth and how that is distributed and taxed. The comments section is especially enlightening. When the young cannot get on and improve their life because they're being ridden by the state and denied access to housing many leave or give up. Manny of my friends are amazed I'm even still bothering when I could clear the mortagage and have a far easier and simpler life..... I think I'm just hoping that things turn around. Walking away from a career and reputation is easy, getting back into it if they ever fix the busted housing and tax regimes is far harder.

Yeah, but despite a high income it's true. It is not contribution based. It's a fiction. A doozey. A fallacy. Those with the most pay the most and get FA in return? That's socialism? AND, apparently Insurance. But they're opposites in this context aren't they?

It's not a different scheme. It barely pretends to be to borderline people. It isn't. It's a tax. Do me another favour and explain how it isn't please. Nothing wrong with those with the most paying the most. Except you seem to think that once past the age of 67 this no longer applies. Those with the most pay the least? Millionaires paying less than those in debt. It's amazing how you're trying but failing to defend this. You didge the questions that make it obvious. You raise the core point around voting. The undead ever voting boomer leeches continue to vote themselves largesse from the public purse. Finally one realises what the former colonies on this good Earth were placed for. What do you expect the young to do? They'll either leave or they'll stop working. If you imagine otherwise you've an intellectual deficit. Most people think they deserve to pay zero taxes and get ALL the benefits. I cite Boomer in this group. Crack on. Make it £50K. Who do you think is gonna pay for your unfunded entitlements. Anyone voting Reform is simply inumerate. Show me how that stacks up. Tell me how hard it is for me to F'off to Panama or some other tropical paradise and pay zero tax until I can collect my private pension and pay min NI conts until BS retirement age of X when I return lol. Utter clown world. https://www.rsmuk.com/insights/employment-matters/payroll/new-national-insurance-rate#:~:text=In April 2022 the then,NIC rate back to 12%. September 2022. Not surprised you don't recall it. You seem capable of only recalling what suits. At this point I started maxing pensions so I'd never pay a penny more in tax. I have a blog explaining to other how to game the system. I literally want to collapse the tax base until those working and adding wealth are rewarded for all that they do. Why was it right to bin that proposal, in your humble opinion?

Hard to compare like for like. There are many other free items that pensioners get in UK. There's also very tax beneficial treatment of private pension contributions (a true contribution based system). https://fullfact.org/europe/pensioners-eu-uk/ I note that younger people in those countries are also not being screwed over with high housing, tuition fees and various other things. In any other EU country (well some at least) there is a real relationship between how much you pay in and how much you get. Not so in the UK. The state pension is funded out of general taxation. It seems bizarre that anyone cannot accept NI as a tax on earnings. It's not an insurance scheme, how much you pay in has no bearing on the pay-out. There is no link today between how much you pay in what you get out. Someone could pay £1m in NI over 9 years and get nothing back. Someone else pays £1000 over ten years and gets something back. The increase in taxation could be met through fiscal drag. Remove the PA for everyone and NI for everyone. Job done. Everyone pays something into the system and there's no exceptions between age groups. Would you do me a favour and point out where I requested a means tested state pension? That's something you've been talking about. I simply stated it's unfair to tax the ar5e out of a 25 year old with NI and a graduate tax when someone in their 70s has far less outgoings, is far wealthier and suffers a marginal tax rate of half their young counterpart. When everyone is paying into the system and people are not able to game it. When a 25 year old is no longer hampered by paying for people far wealthier than him to enjoy a quality of life he can't provide for himself I will have got what I wanted. I think NI going is an excellent thing. Simplify income tax, make everyone pay the same rates. If the state needs a little more then it can make EVERYONE pay a little more. You know what the tipping point for me was? When they increased NI to pay for the lockdown debts. This is something that harmed the young and benefitted the old. Guess who then is economically insulated from it? Guess who then has to pick up the bill? It's the single thing Liz Truss did that I agreed with.

I'm shooting for 50-ish. If I'm still enjoying work then I'll carry on but I think I'd sooner, finally, settle down on the coast and learn to paint. Kinda have a dream about making my own whisky. Put in the barrel aged 50 and finish in sherry casks. would be state retirement age for the first batch. Cheers boomers - after avoiding as much tax and retiring as early as poss! It could simply be that they don't push themselves so hard and/or sacrifice more of their gross income to pension.

Imagine offering on a place and then not staking out the location over the weeks and months it takes for the sale to go through.

Yup Yup Double yup.

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Sure, but if you're seriously ill a trip across the country and miles from family or friends is a fairly big deal.

Thanks. That wasn't clear to me in the original post.

They do. They are. He is 'living in interesting times'. True, not to mention school etc. But there's an elephant in the room here........ I agree with you. It's peanuts. There are people on 60K who get a triple locked universal basic income and none of that is clawed back. Utterly ridiculous state of affairs. Rob from the young who are rearing the next generation and give to the un-deads. Yup. The country should invest far more heavily in the next generation instead of chucking money at pensioners, the majority of whom are far wealthier than those being taxed to pay for it all. If you think that's ludicrous how do you feel about someone on a final salary pension getting a triple locked universal basic income, winter fuel allowance, cold snap payments, free X, Y and Z AND healthcare completely covered? Define middle class please. Would you agree a retired middle class doesn't require a state pension too? Would £60K annual income be enough to raise a child? Two children? Four? What if it's split between two earners so there's lower tax? What if they live in Blackpool, or London. Here's an idea. Just stop taking benefits away from people who work hard and make the wealthiest in society pay the same marginal tax rates (on a progressive scale) as the poorest.

I dislike them. Ugly things.

Nice rural home with oil and a few multi fuel stoves in the main rooms are a winning combo imho. Forage for free wood and in Forest of Dean coal seams are virtually at the surface level. Stack up bulk solid fuel and season logs. When oil prices spike up the use of the stoves. When prices fall get the tank filled. Or, for the price of a heat pump, have several tanks installed and then you can take advantage of dips in price. Also have heard stories of some diesel engines running of heating oil. Probably needs to be an old/simple engine though.

Not sure of your point? I think most young people viewed lockdowns as a joke only implemented to save the geriatric voters a few more months of the time they had remaining. The costs of that are enormous. IMHO far worse than any vaccine side effect. I also love how much has been made of the lack of efficacy of the vaccines and ow quickly it tapers. Somehow though, it's potent enough to alter DNA and instigate cancer in people. Especially young people who were less likely than older people to be vaccinated. Also no mention of any impact of Covid itself and what impact that might have on increasing the risks of certain diseases. Not worried at all. I'm more concerned (genuinely) about the impact my increased alcohol consumption during the BS lockdowns has had on my health - especially given I'd barely drank in seven months prior to lockdowns. Cancer isn't the new normal. Royalty have had cancer for centuries. You might not be aware of anything before you were born but QEII's father died of lung cancer. RNA vaccines for cancer have been theorised for a long time. There was some conspiracy theory that covid was the perfect opportunity to use a crisis as a testing bed to demonstrate how quick and effective it could be. Question for you - have the people who work on these vaccines been vaccinated with them?

I disagree old people moving out of London as any impact on life expectancy in London. In your rather simple analysis it would have the opposite impact. If everyone over 65 moves out then the average age of death in London would be lower than elsewhere. Life expectancy is measured as life expectancy at birth. Life expectancy in London is higher, I imagine, due to people being wealthier and having better access to healthcare (thanks to proximity to good university hospitals and a good supply of NHS workers - immigrant or domestic). There could be other reasons too. Someone living in London gets a long term illness and now their focus is on quality of life so they sell up, quit work and live their best life by the sea or the place they were born etc. That is not proper data analysis. Where is the data? I am enjoying the back and forth btw. You are making me think about things.

Lockdowns and resulted in much more sedentary lifestyles. Gyms closed, people housebound with little to do. Not hard to imagine that's a strong cause here? What's your rationale for referencing the Ukraine war and Brexit?

OK - what do you mean? That's not the social contract. Get on Google and you'll find multiple variants of it. It's a fictional fluffy 'policy' to get votes and justify tax rises. Even if this were once true, it's certainly not any more. Social contract for someone in their 20s - get into loads of debt to get a degree that's pretty much required to get onto any decent training scheme these days. Pay back that loan at higher rates of interest than a mortgage and all while trying to pay rent. So, not contribution based then. You can pay in £20 or £20K. In fact you could pay in £20K for 9 years and get nothing or pay in £20 a year for 35 years and get full state pension. It's qualifying years based. I am of course aware I don't exist in a vacuum. No man is an island and all that. I'm not talking about farmers and low paid people (either through ability or choice). Really it's more levied on the armies of people doing the square root of FA and paying nothing in (42% of adults do not pay income tax in the UK). It's also levied at the armies of people not paying NI despite being wealthier, on average, than others. I wont get into the dumb and frankly self harming tax kinks in the system again other than to say Tories missed a trick here when cutting taxes for the low paid they could have also fixed a tax system that screws higher earners but the massive reductions in NI would have provided more than adequate cover for any BS hypocrisy fired over from Labour on that. I think most countries only start off so high for a period of time and then it falls in steps down to an eventual floor? Could be wrong. But that is truly and insurance scheme. Someone earning £100K a year likely needs a higher income insurance than something earning £20K. JSA is a joke and that's why many have switched to being long term sick. No need to look for a job either. Could be funded by abolishing the triple lock perhaps? Or ensuring we all pay the same rates of tax?

Or it could be that people put on weight during Covid. Being overweight, and being obese are the biggest cancer risks after smoking. Some people ended up drinking a lot more alcohol than before hand too. Did this paper correct for those effects?

Then it doesn't make sense - pitching a demographic trend against a snap shot? Again, it's tangential - it was a point about conceptions which turned out to be wrong (thanks Dave). Though I wonder if he meant Bournemouth Town, not borough? There's a big uni there so perhaps that's something to do with it. Doesn't matter. It's entirely beside the point. Again, missing the point. You're focussed on London now. This isn't a London issue, it's a national issue. Life expectancy in London is higher because Boomers moved out? What? Life expectancy is determined by many factors. I'm not sure fewer old people makes sense? What's the life expectancy in the average nursing home? The assertion (not accusation) is that Boomers are holding on to the houses. Never said it was a London phenomenon (you're confusing a side point now with the core issue). Boomers are over housed. They hang on to larger houses than young people with young families can get access to. NATIONALLY! I am merely pointing out I think it unreasonable for those same young families to suffer high tax rates to keep Boomers, at the margin, living in houses they couldn't otherwise afford. If someone retired and can do this of independent means then fine - it's a free country. Transferring wealth from the poor to the rich to enable it is not fair. Boomers are not an ethnic group so there's no ethnic cleansing! Calm down lol. I've not advocated forcing them to move. I'm advocating a reduction in the freebies they get at the poorest in society's expense. Maybe you can't see how they do it but many do it. I'm happy to see data on this but they are not ALL on benefits. I had an Iraqi dentist who was here as a refugee. Good for him, and good for me and his many other patients. Of course, it's immigrants innit - not Boomers living in housing subsidised by the young and higher taxed (including said immigrants). So, if you get wealthier as you get older why then do you need tax breaks and a triple lock universal basic income plus a whole host of other handouts? Why do the wealthier and older members of society need a lower marginal tax rate than someone in work with little to no assets. You wonder why the birth rate has collapsed.... it's not hard to join those dots is it? There's no social contract. The working poor are paying in far less than they'll receive. The higher earners are paying in far more than they'll receive. It might have been partially contribution based before WW2 but it's not any longer and has not been for a long time. That's another issue. I'm fine to make it contribution based. I would like to see some relationship between what I pay and what I'd get back out if I'm unemployed or when I retire. I wont. You seem incapable of addressing the issue here and lurch to an extreme. Equalising tax rates across age groups IS NOT stopping the state pension is it? You try and make a strawman (badly) here. I'm arguing for, at the very least, the wealthiest to pay the same marginal tax rates as the poorest. That's progressive. Apparently not supporting it makes you very right wing (your words my friend). Just so you're clear - I want to keep the state pension. I would even advocate lowering the retirement age, or at least indexing it with life expectancy. I am not in favour of people paying less in tax simply because they're born a year earlier than someone else. Do you understand? One of the few things I can get on board with the Tories. NI needs to go and tax rates equalised. I will be old one day (hopefully, it's preferable to the alternative). I see zero benefit to me having a nice big tax cut when I've paid off the house, raised the kids and have a pension paid up (and in receipt of a triple locked state pension if I ever get there). I'm also pretty sure the welfare state is nothing to be proud of in it's current form. I'd give Labour the NHS and that's about it. State pensions were introduced in 1909. Retirement age 70 which was actually above the average life expectancy of the time. National Insurance was introduced in 1911. It was a tripartite funding between individuals, employers and the state. Labour merely expanded on what was already there. I think both were under liberal/conservative governments?

I think it's rather selective of them to decide what they think counts as communication. This was in the news for years IIRC? Check your maths there. Women outnumber men in the UK. Unless there are significantly more lesbian couples than gay couples I don't think that stacks up. Amen.

Actually it does matter for that particular point. You're suggesting the demographics ratio in London overtime has no relevance but immigrant population changing over time does? Another tangent but were you suggesting that all foreigners in London needed benefits to live there and they're paying those benefits to foreign landlords? Is this true? Most immigrants I know take nothing. Almost everyone in London over the age of 67 however.... But this is a tangent to the bigger picture. Boomers are, generally, over housed, wealthier and have that subsidised by the working poor suffering higher tax rates (see the point you made earlier about right wingers wanting regressive tax rates ). Even if all the Boomers did leave London they didn't just vanish did they? They bought other houses. That cycle has been running for decades. Move to London young, move out to start a family. It's that second step that's causing friction now. Family homes are not available (nor affordable to the majority) of people in the generations behind. My point is that, perhaps if the handouts to this cohort were a little less generous, more houses could be. The rebuttal from you seems to be 'foreigners'? Perhaps we're arguing about the same thing? Too many people getting too much out of a system with too few contributing. How might we change that?

Do the figures imply that? We'd have to see how those ratios have changed over time? If you've posted anything showing the boomer flight then I've missed it, but all I saw were ratios of over 65s to under 65s. From experience most people go to London young, get it out of their system and then move out having got trained up and made some good contacts. I didn't imagine they were all laughing at poor millennials lol. I can confirm though they are quite happy in their very large houses in my home town. Most aren't laughing at younger people. Many feel bad for them and sympathise. Obviously that doesn't extend quite as far as having their benefits reigned in or paying the same levels of tax but it's the thought that counts isn't it. You'd have to admit that you can surely see why there's a growing divide between the generations? Gen Z working, never being able to own and paying a higher marginal rate of tax than the wealthiest in society. Seems like a big exception. Data is data. Whatever is presented is only part of the picture. My current employer is a multinational data analytics company. Yeah, you see it with the alcohol consumption J curve, covid jabs, etc. Both sides insisting they're right because they're convinced they are. Some, though, tend to form an opinion and then run around finding data to collaborate it.

Not having kids (or at least the middle classes who used to produce doctors etc) because there's a huge cost to having them today. Two incomes needed to buy a family home and then one income either sacrificed to stay at home and raise them, or spent on childcare. NHS isn't set up correctly, it needs massive funding reform. It's a second rate (at best) health service. People can retire where they like. Immigrants coming here and retiring elsewhere is still better than someone born here, educated here, working here and then retiring overseas (we don't have to educate immigrants). Not sure we can say that about London properties. While you've clearly demonstrated a lower retiree population lives there than in Bournemouth hasn't that always been the case? London's a transient city. Many of my friends who moved there straight from uni have moved out to settle down and start families. I think that's a fairly broad statement about immigrants. Many can and do stand on their own two feet. I have many colleagues and friends who aren't born here, earn very good salaries and own their own homes. I don't blame Boomers is what I said? As a group they're the richest cohort and enjoy tax breaks that youngsters (poorer) do not. It doesn't matter who you vote for, as long as you vote. If you disagree do you think pensioners enjoy such generosity because it's the 'right' thing to do, or because they vote en masse? Who else in society gets anything like the benefits package afforded to retirees? Young don't vote in big enough numbers and so get screwed over (imho). Not talking about me here, I'm talking about people in there early 20s. I support progressive taxation. You're still not getting that a marginal rate of 62% from £100K to £125K which then FALLS to 47% isn't progressive. It's regressive! I don't complain about wealth redistribution when it's reducing wealth inequality. Tell me, how is taxing young people with less wealth at higher rates than old people with lots of wealth reducing wealth inequality? You're hopeless at trying to project me as right-wing. Would you consider the IFS a right wing institution? They're against stupid marginal rates too. I think, rather, you're guilty of supporting regressive taxation? You seem to be fine with lower tax rates for wealthier people and the highest tax rate for people who are not the highest earners? By your very own logic you're very right wing?

Love a tail wagging dog analysis. I would imagine the boomers have cashed in and downsized. It's what I'd do. Pretty annoyed with Dave Gorman now. The section of his show where he did this was really good. Seems it was nonsense now .

Without immigration the population woudl be aging for more rapidly and the unfunded entitlements wouldn't be paid for, the NHS would be even shorter staffed and the young and most able would probably up sticks and move to somewhere they're appreciated and given a better life. I don't complain about Boomers (as a group), I complain about young people not voting. Also note that it's higher rate tax payers funding the majority of the excess of the state here. Top 10% of income tax payers are paying 60% of all income tax. Without them you've got pretty much nothing. The way you frame it is that all immigrants are being subsidised by the state? The irony!