So Iain Duncan Smith would like better off pensioners to return their winter fuel allowances. I should declare an interest as a recipient of the fuel allowance. While, like many others, I have donated it to charity, the idea that I should repay it to the government is laughable – and it would seem that Duncan Smith’s colleagues agree. But I am also against the idea of means-testing this and other universal pensioner payments. Means-testing is divisive and inefficient. It would create an arbitrary line between those who qualify and those who don’t and would lead to take-up problems. If basic universal pensions were more generous, such payments wouldn’t be necessary; indeed, governments have favoured them as a cheaper option. One alternative to means-testing would be to raise the age threshold for fuel allowances and bus passes. When 60 is the new 50 and the retirement age is being raised progressively, does it make sense for it to be the gateway to such payments? Another alternative would be to treat all these universal payments as taxable income, in the same way that the retirement pension is. This would do more to address concerns about fairness than the kind of ad hoc, do-it-yourself means-testing proposed by Mr Duncan Smith.
If basic universal pensions were more generous, such payments wouldn’t be necessary
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How’s that going to happen when you’ve spent all the money?
Someone on median wage, 26K a year, would have had a fund of 604,000 pounds if their NI had been invested. That’s after charges of 0.75% a year.
Instead you give them a pension that the ONS states costs 152,000 pounds.
The 452,000 pounds that the 26K a year worker has lost has gone to pay for things like Peers at 2,700 a day.
My heating bill from October to March inclusive
was over £1000. I have got a pension of just under £10,000. More than 10% of all my income goes on electricity and heating oil. I am delighted to have the extra £200. Without a car, I do ok, but if I had to have one, I would be completely sunk.
This argumentation is very largely spurious:-
it omits crucial-needs, essential factors, and honest-reasoning principles;
such as
1. Earth-1 and Humankind longest-term affordability, sustainworthiness, and both personal and community efficiencies.
2. By bad-footprinting the three principles of good-communication and honest-argumentation:
(1) Clarity (there is no mention neither of “utility/essentiality”-testing i.e. how vital to Community, by size and sustainworthiness, is each fuel-burner’s consumption of sacred fossil-energy ;
nor of what vital lifesupportive process is served by “those of higher means” or by “better off pensioners”).
(2) Charity (e.g. that the rich should only be required to pay the same amount (NB NOT the same percentage; NOR “what they can afford”) has been opposed (the baroness says “I am also against the idea of means testing”). The baroness is against the real needs of the permanently low-incomed, and at the same timed imp-licitly against the need of the whole human race to be exemplarily-led, and governed, by people who can emulably live off just one human living each.
(3) Self-Corrigibility (by this time of life and public-service, surely the baroness should have publicly admitted that the remedy to the government re-distributing rich-pensioners’ surplus-moniues is to re-direct them to Charities whose pollution of the Air and bottom-line fuel-amounts one-way irresversibly burnt-up,
might itself be an un-sustainworthy alternative ?
B Lister, a suggestion: compel power companies to create a pensioner tariff. This is doable, targeted, and, I suspect, be popular with taxpayers of all ages who are fed up subsidising tax-avoiding energy providers.
Oh, and I’m not laughing at your choice of what to do with your unwanted/unnecessary allowance. The money came from my earnings and I would prefer it to be returned to sender.
I may say that if my home heating bill becomes too much I shall enter the House on the right, to keep warm; 600 people all in the chamber at the same time will surely warm me up?
This kind of suggestion from government is always, without fal a trick. It is floated to see how the public will respond, and it is always done with a divide the public tack.
Next they have you believe it will only be for those ‘rich’ pensioners. Never specific, the ones that have millions or many million. Then they get it passed. And low and behold your neighberour the old lady who has lived in her house for decades and becuase of government fueled inflation and robbery house prices, their three bedroom little semi is worth 1.5 mill. She has nothing but old 1950’s furniture and a meagre living but she is a millionaire and its her they grab the winter fuel payment from It will not affect those really rich and they kow it. Those really rich have their probate lweyers have already taken care of their money and it is placed long before it’s needed in the hands of their heirs. Death duties only fall on those who in life cannot afford financial advice. The ones who are money poor and asset rich. They are the ones who are robbed.
And as property prices and again being ficticiously inflated, the old ladies and men will find they owe the state everything they ever had and will not qualify for any kind of winter fuel, bus pass or anything else.
That way they can remove these payments from all, and that is the objective. No matter what they tell you or pretend.
You see they have to use this extra they can glean to pay for the drones they are harbouring in Lincolnshire. The American defence department does extremely well out of our tax payers and the kick backs to our government officials is very nice indeed thatnk you.All paid for by thoes who love their country and trust the spivs who work a number on us all.
The elderly are war people. understnad the meaning of sacrifice and giving to their government in times of trouble. And those in government know it. Which is why they will starve ourown, whilst they move heaven and high water to feed other nations on the grounds of charity and aid for all. Except those who starve here.
IDS and his jobs, we have a million people in work since we took over. Oh, yeah, work they conjured, akin to a white rabbit out of a back silk hat. These jobs are non existent in the real world. They are figures that have been massaged by omission and deceit. This about rich elderly is a farce and is another form of trickery.
Be careful what you vote for.
If I’m lucky enough to be a well-off pensioner, it will be because I’ve worked hard and contributed plenty of taxes to the system. As such, why should I give the government any more of my money than I have to once it becomes finite and possibly needed for my care as I get older?
I also wonder how many people IDS is aiming at, and the relative cost of a means-testing scheme compared to the amount saved by said scheme? Apart from the fact that once a threshold is in place, it’s all too easy to wind it down and down in successive budgets.
Do those who vote Tory or UKIP realise that this government and UKIP intend to make us all poorer. As poor as those in the USA. Now I suppose all those who love that little sanctuary of Capitalism will feel they all live like Hollywood. Think again people, even those who appear to be better off, are only one month from destitution in that land of the free.
Think again.
First Maude you need to list and quantify the state debts. That’s 7,000 bn.
Then the net wealth – everything from your bank account to property to paving slabs, is 7 trillion.
So how much can the state take to pay its debts, without screwing the economy?
We’ve had the experiment, its Cypus. There a small raid on a small part of the assets – bank accounts – screwed everything.
So your error is in thinking you are rich, that the UK is rich (its borrowed cash). You’re also wrong in thinking its capitalism, when there is no capitalism involved in the state run pension Ponzi.
@LB:
It’s simply no good telling me we are broke. We have been robbed and the robbers must repay their victim for the fraud they perpetrated.
When it comes to ridiculous pomp and circumstance they manage to find the money. Funerals for ex PM’s and opening of parliament. Also, when it comes to those in other countries, Aid, they find the cash. Oh, yes. And, when it comes to cutting taxes on the rich and to business, they find they can’t wait to offer up the pay off.The only money they can’t print is for the seriously poor in society. Those they despise, unless they are breaking their backs to do a good job of work in their back yards.
The Royal household had an unheard of increase.The bankers continue to get their mind staggering bonuses, and they were at the back of the fraud. The fraud was to remove from the poor to pad the rich even more than they already have. And that is that.
Horray, at last an admission the crime, and correctly identifying the criminals.
The problem is that the criminals by and large are MPs.
Bankers, perversely, are victims too. Some are, but you’re getting into the 1930’s Germany scenario when you blame all of them for the sins of a handful.
Bankers are paid large bonuses. 10% of profits, if they are lucky. Of the 90% that’s left, the state takes 30% Of the 10% they get, the state takes 55-60%. They are left with a pittance for generating vast wealth for the state.
So what’s mind blowing about a 4 million bonus, if you made 100 million in profits. The state has creamed off 34 million at least (without the extra tax a lot of people pay on top of dividends).
Strikes me the something for nothing society is the state.
So how about a 100% tax on Richard Branson’s wealth? It will plug the deficit for a week.
Whose next for you to plunder?