Burnham sagte, er solle über eine Bedürftigkeitsprüfung der staatlichen Rente nachdenken, um die Lücke in der Verteidigung zu füllen
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/andy-burnham-dan-neidle-state-pension-defence-blackhole-b3008914.html
Von Anony_mouse202
45 Kommentare
Money transfer for pensioners to rich weapons manufacturers, what a great idea…
So only those that don’t pay in get the pension? Brilliant sounds like a place I want to live
I hate what this teaches, don’t bother saving for a pension or be responsible, spend fecklessly, the state has your back.
I think pensions are one thing that shouldn’t be mean tested, most people expect something out if it after spending decades contributing via national insurance contributions.
Or you know, remove the triple lock.
Means testing it is the worst option
When im 67 I would have paid into the system 50 years to then be means tested, in comparison move to the UK, at 40, 27 years paying in.
And we are both means tested? That can’t be true.
Dan Neidle has the right ideas. We should be focused on income tax rather than pensions directly, because dealing with pensions directly becomes very emotionally charged and therefore unpopular.
The reality is that if we want to fund defence and have good public services and deal with the debt, it’s not just the richest who pay. In the Scandinavian countries, one of the main reasons they have good public services is because their taxes on the poorest and middle earners are much higher than ours. This will be hard to achieve here and will require a long-term persuasive argument toward the voters that it is the right thing to do. However, it is much easier to achieve than the pensions route.
Reddit pretends that just taxing the rich will solve all our problems on its own. What that is founded on, I am not sure. It certainly isn’t reality or evidence. The left wants all the nice things without having to do any of the hard work required to get there.
I saw a comment on BBC News where someone said they had paid £2000 NI for 40 years and deserved the pension. They couldn’t see the irony of having paid in nowhere near as much as they were taking out.
Any government, or party, who proposed this would make themselves unelectable for generations to come. Political suicide.
Not sure how I feel about this. The state pension is clearly unsustainable, but it hardly seems fair that yet again those that spend their whole lives paying into the system get nothing and those that don’t get everything.
I’ve already come to terms with the fact the state pension probably won’t exist when I retire, so I’m planning my retirement in other ways.
This would be beyond disgusting. The multi millionaires who propose it needs a wealth tax of the highest level. Theyve robbed it, about time they were forced to pay back
I’d say so it the opposite, set the pensions in direct relation with the amount you contributed via NI
Would fix the blackhole without being profoundly unfair to those who worked hardest
Keep the triple lock but means test the pension. Good job. What the fuck is 12% ni for if some people don’t even get a pension out of it
Great, take money away from something that everyone will use to go to make rich weapons manufacturers richer and have pointless military equipment sit gathering dust.
But ape mind feel good when beating chest.
…by one guy of zero influence. This is not newsworthy.
Surely this is a bigger vote loser than just scrapping triple lock
Careful about those incentives or you’ll end up raising much less money in tax when people don’t feel the need to contribute or save!
These headlines are made by Burnhams team to test the water.
Whilst state pensions are benefits (i have had many a social media argument on that). There is a social commitment that in contributing via NI you are paying for older peoples pension and rightfully expect the same.
Means testing would be extremely difficult. If i retire with a reasonable private pension but no savings or assets i dont receive a pension. Or as most pensioners have assets are we means testing on wealth?
Plus there is no mandate
Means testing is pretty much a full removal of the state pension as the people who receive pension credits and receive state pension would be very similar. Raises the bigger question especially around social contract, what’s the point in contributing if the everything goes to people that didn’t work for 50 years.
Aka taking away reasons for me to save for the future
It is taxable so it’s already means tested, increasing that deduction to the point where some people get little to nothing would be a massive break in the social contract.
It’s already causing damage that there is so much discussion about it, it is influencing people earlier in life thinking about pension contributions to think they may as well live for now as anything they do for later may well leave them worse off.
They would be better to say (for example) that they guarantee a state pension at a minimum level (still taxable) at 70 but that workplace and private pensions can be claimed without deduction from 65 and with deductions from 55. People would then at least see the value in putting current money in to allow them options earlier.
The state pension is your right and if you make enough contributions then you get it. Full stop.
Means testing benefits just makes the rich more invested in removing them. Just tax wealth rather than income.
They’re not going to touch that issue after what happened with winter fuel. While means testing it all the way to pension credit eligibility did actually leave some people in energy poverty, the backlash was that it felt like Tory austerity rather than Labour change. Financial holes will have to be filled either with new taxes, likely on wealth, or by changing the fiscal rules so they can borrow more to invest.
Sounds like army should have managed their budget better.
Man can they just not get this right. This is just going to benefit those who don’t bother. Just scrap the triple lock and use a sensible inflation scale. This is ridiculous. It’s so obvious what needs to happen.
Go without at times to pay into a pension for 50 years.
Government „you have a private pension, you cant have your state one“
Get to f**k.
If this was true i would like a rebate for the last 25 years of NI contributions and an immediate decrease in NI contributions. State pension is paid and earned not given away. To get the full state pension you need 35 years of contributions and it offers very poor value compared to a private pension scheme.
This will only benefit the lazy as they get free contributions while claiming benefits. The system is broken due to poor governance. This will be the straw that breaks the cammels back and I for one will be looking at moving abroad.
Many comments seem not to recognise that there are huge numbers of people between the rich and the working man with minimal pension arrangements apart from the old age pension. This middle group have factored in the old age pension into their retirement funding. Removing it would be unfair.
This is actually rage bait…
If you click to the article, and then click again to read the proposal, the policy author has listed all manner of potential changes to taxes that Burnham could choose in order to raise enough money to pay for defence.
Means-Testing State Pensions is just one of MANY options. It’s just the one that the author of the article has chosen to focus on to make the article click bait and then the OP has repeated to get people to respond with rage.
Other examples of raises extra money include:
Having people operating firms as a partnership actually pay employee NICs, they currently don’t, whereas everyone else under the state pension age does.
Increasing digital taxes.
Going after the small businesses that are not fully tax compliant – HMRC has already done really well going after larger firms that were involved in tax evasion.
Those above state pension age having to pay National Insurance Contributions – I think there is an argument that perhaps they should just combine income tax and National Insurance Contributions into one tax, although perhaps there is some scope to maintain some kind of system so that those who are temporarily out of work or overseas can still make some voluntary payments so as to maintain their pension provision.
There are many others that the policy author has explained in detail – so please, instead of just getting angry at the headline look at the policy suggestions in full and make up your own mind as to what they should do to raise the money required to pay for defence.
Not saying it’s not a good idea, but „told by“ an independent think-tank means absolutely fuck all, with regard to what Burnham actually does.
>The suggestion has come from tax expert Dan Neidle, a member of the Labour Party, in a list of 37 options he published on the tax policy website to find the money to pay for the unfunded part of Sir Keir’s Defence Improvement Plan.
>Listing means-testing the state pension as option 37, Mr Neidle noted: “The state pension pays out about £12,500 per year. It’s easy to think that’s an irrelevant amount to wealthy retirees, and we should means-test the pension to stop them benefiting.
Option 37 of 37.
>He claimed that barring the wealthiest from receiving the state pension could save £1bn a year. But it would break the link between the state pension being a universal benefit funded by National Insurance which was established when David Lloyd-George created it in 1908.
Or Burnham could, you know, tax the ultra wealthy on the value of their portfolios and close loopholes used by the wealthy and corporations that want to do business in the UK.
He has previously discussed changing business rates in a way which would target large online retailers like Amazon that rely on huge warehouses.
He has also recommitted to the triple lock on the state pension rising each year by 2.5 per cent or the highest rate of inflation and ruled out breaking Labour’s 2024 manifesto promise to not raise income tax, VAT or personal contributions to National Insurance, which in theory fund the state pension.
Labour already have an uphill struggle to get re-elected. This will damage them to the point of no return.
There are so many other ways to raise funds than to raid the pension funds. Start with closing the loopholes corporations and billionaires in the UK use to pay effectively zero tax
Wouldn’t it be more simple to stop giving tax payers money to immigrants
To achieve any actual substantial savings with such a policy, the threshold would have to be so low that they’ll affect the normal middle class pensioners, not the millionaires. It also means these people effectively pay a double tax: they pay tax on pension income and then also lose the state pension.
A state pension is 12,500 approximately. Equivalent to a 300k~ pension pot. Only a tiny single digit percentage of pension pots exceed that number.
The Conservatives had a plan to introduce a 50k income cliff edge where pension benefits were withdrawn. Even this would only affect 3-5% of pensioners (estimated).
It’s barely anything and won’t save anything, and if implemented you can be assured that it will be used as a way to eventually destroy the state pension for anyone with a private pension of any kind
its already ‘means tested’ it uses your entire personal allowance by default so any private pension you’ve saved is immediately taxed at 20%. Fiscal drag for the next few years will mean you’ll be taxed >20% as the state pension uses *more* than the personal allowance so they’ll have to claw it back more than 20% initially
as much as the triple lock is broken and needs reform, the state pension isn’t too big.
Slowly move it towards 70 (I assume the 68 will accelerate at this point) which saves a fortune. Remove the triple lock and peg it at 1/3 median wage or 1/2 minimum wage or similar.
turn it into a later life backup – much shorter period paid out, stop it ratcheting up.
Its way too early to do anything like means testing – you need a generation in auto enrolment and encouraging more people to not opt out, to start to increase the autoenrol amount. The *second* you means test state pension you’ll put people off saving for themselves and relying on benefits to help them out because why save if you’ll losing state pension?
How long befor your house you paid for 30 years is included in that means test forcing you to sell to the goverment to top up your state pension
They can start off by revoking all ex pms 100k pension
I am all for things being means tested, but leave the state pension alone. Maybe address the stupid things like 2 people in a household earning £99k being able to fully claim tax free childcare and free hours, but one person in a household earning £100k has it cut off, not even tapered. Or two people earning £60k claiming child benefit but one person earning £70k has to pay it all back at the end of each year.
You can guarantee that anyone with even a small private pension will lose out with this.
I’ll be emigrating then. Screw this. The amount of people I see who spend their entire adult lives lazing around, contributing nothing, while getting everything handed to them …
just scrap the fucking triple lock already fuck me, and also go after ppl committing benefit fraud etc
I wouldn’t mind if it was to those who genuinely needed it, but it seems this will punish those who worked their whole lives to pay for those who chose benefits as a lifestyle choice.
Sure, means test it. And allow me to opt out of NIC. Plus a refund of everything I’ve paid so far
If im paying ni i should get state pension regardless of what i have put into a private pension