The reality is that the fundamental pension contract, which is the collective acceptance of responsibility to provide for those in old age, is not reflected in the savings-based model of pension provision.
Petitio principii. He reaches his conclusion by the assumption he makes rather than proves.
If you assume that the base idea is the collective provision then anything which is not collective provision fails, doesn’t it?
Sigh.
Candidly, this line of argument is essentially his only one. Like his guff about the purpose of government. It always comes down to the same totalitarian bullshit.
Understand the quandary he is in. He has to rail, rightly I think, against the UK government’s failure to provide adequately for its own aged people, while others are given free housing, subsistence, healthcare and education on demand, without using the term “boat people.”
Why should the UK government provide for aged people? Why shouldn’t people themselves provide for themselves as aged people?
Why should the UK government provide for boat people? Why shouldn’t people themselves provide for themselves as boat people?
Because some of them do not have sufficient income to save after paying for necessities (as the then current populace define “necessities) or they are dispossessed of their savings by criminals, medical bills, divorce or inflation. For avoidance of doubt I am not one of the unlucky groups so I am not talking my own book when I say that Society (which effectively means you and and the guy/lady next door) have a moral duty to provide a minimum standard for those no longer able to work and impoverished *not through their own fault*; some of my taxes go towards the cost thereof. What we should provide for those who deserve little sympathy is another question (if you *insist* we can discuss it later).
As to your second question – yes we should insofaras we are able to do so (I started to do so as soon as I could foresee surviving to 40); some people cannot and some people do not. A lot of working class people regard their NI contributions as saving up for their old age – if you want to complain I recommend you to address the ghosts of Attlee and his cabinet.
In’t that what benefits are for? Such as Pension Credit.
Not Pension Credit – that is devised as a 100% tax on small occupational pensions to make working class retirees (but not the Polly Toynbees) wholly dependent on the state.
Why should the UK government steal money from working people, in return promising to provide health care when they need it and a pension at retirement age?
Second order effects.
If Spud had his way, the entire share market would collapse to zero & no one who’s been expecting a pension would get one.
What is the value of the stock market? The current undistributed dividends. That’s it. There’s no other value in it whatsoever. The money paid for the shares when issued went to the companies & no longer exists. A share price is solely an opinion of future company earnings. The market depends on savers investing in the market for shareholders to realise their investment. It’s a zero sum game. For money to come out money must be put in. So an investment you can’t cash in is worth zilch.
The future in Spudworld would be…interesting. Briefly.
That’s one way of looking at it. There are the high performers with extremely high P/E ratios, but listed shares must have a fundamental net worth. Those that do not are called “insolvent” and removed from the exchange.
Sorry. They have no fundamental net worth whatsoever apart from undistributed dividends. How can they have? The money that went to companies when the shares were issued is gone. The companies spent it.When people buy shares on the stock market the money goes to the seller. So there’s no actual value in a stock market. It’s pure opinion about a possible future.
Companies may have a value. But how do you extract the value from a company?
There will be some value in assets which can be sold off. Exactly how much depends on how the company has been run.
“Petitio principii”: also known as “begging the question”.
Thus speaks the wastrel who chose not to save up for his old age through a personal pension. He now wishes to impose a collective responsibility upon the rest of us to provide him with a pension (has he forfeited his entitlement to a state pension for some reason?)
Possibly the judgements against him have been applied to garnish his pensions and he’s feeling the pinch.
Or perhaps when he was fired he cashed out his contributions.
I thought pensions were inalienable to prevent tax avoidance
Well, there may be a reason he ‘chose’ not to save…
https://www.heraldscotland.com/default_content/12389812.lord-ashcroft-settles-libel-action/
Almost misread it as Potato Principle but we know the potato has no principles. Once again man with no savings yells at savings.
Give that man a Bell’s.
Argh! Spilled tea all doon my trousers!
The state pension was never a social contract. Isabel Paterson demolishes that fallacy here: https://isabelpaterson.substack.com/p/the-state-pension-was-never-a-social
What it may or may not be, and what the public are encouraged to believe, are two entirely different things.
See also: “National Insurance”.
I sussed that one at 15 doing the O-level economics course. Much to irritation of my teacher.
It was fairly obvious because where did the pension money my grandparents were receiving come from?
Well, yeah, but that’s because goods & services are delivered in real time. When you paid your NI as a youngster it was in the expectation of getting “pension” money late that you could spend on goods & services, which of course would be provided by those capable of doing it at the time: youngsters, not old tossers. This goes for all savings: they’re IOUs.
It doesn’t matter how big your pension pot: if there’s no one around to take your money for the goods & services (or, more likely now, no-one capable of actually delivering them) it’s useless. You can’t even piss in it.
When we paid NI it was in the knowledge that it was going to mostly the war generations and we did have an explicit debt of gratitude to them.
I’m not sure younger generations feel that same debt of gratitude towards us boomers, in fact going by some of my son’s comments they don’t and I don’t blame them.
Gratitude yes, but for what? What did the people of this country get out of fighting those two wars?
I think it’s worth reminding everyone that their savings, unless it’s in gold or stashed under the mattress, don’t exist. They’re merely book-keeping entries of future liabilities. The money they think they saved has been given to someone else as a loan.
The only actual, real money in any economy is that circulating in exchange for current goods & services. Tends to put the kybosh on fantasies like MMT doesn’t it?
A chunk of my savings is my personal pension (which is separate from the pension from my ex-employer) so could be defaulted upon but another chunk is my house and its contents and another chunk is part of my elder son’s house and part of my younger son’s flat – these have value (which is different from price and pretty constant while the price goes up and down).
What the economists call “narrow money” fits your description but savings and wealth is not just money and things that are easily and immediately convertible into cash.
Ditto. 90% of my assets are my house, and my shop&flat. In the next few years I’m having to work out how to do the second segment of “pensions”, gradually liquidate them to convert into income. But, unless some mad idiot or a socialist government – but I repeat myself – steals or destroys the physical bricks and mortar, they will continue as physical stub-your-toe assets.
Your stub your toe on assets only have value if someone’s willing to buy them.
It’s something I’m having to have severe doubts about. So many things are effectively zero sum games. The only way you can money out of property is if someone’s willing to put money in.
Back to commerce. All these things only work because surplus value has always been created in commerce. But now, instead of being fed back into the virtuous circle, the surplus is being captured by government. You can’t sell anything unless there’s someone willing to buy it has the money. Shares, assets whatever.
Very slippery term, value. Actual value is added & consumed in commerce. So what’s the value of a house? Building a house certainly consumes value in materials & services. But then you’re left with a house. You can’t directly exchange a house for for goods or services. So you’re back with commerce. To benefit from its value you need someone to buy it. Someone with money. A token of value used in commerce. The value of the house will be what the buyer is willing to pay you. If no one wants to buy the house it has no value, does it?
The convention is assets etc are valued in monetary terms. But that doesn’t mean the money actually exists.
It’s like when you talk about your savings. You can only withdraw your savings if other people don’t. If everyone tried to withdraw their savings they couldn’t. There isn’t any money actually there. You’re withdrawing what other people are depositing.
these have value (which is different from price and pretty constant while the price goes up and down).
Price is real if ephemeral. It’s the result of a transaction. Therefore value is indeterminate. You don’t know until you try to sell. All your “values” are just people’s opinions. You can’t eat opinions.
He has apparently been busy Tim:
‘I took time off over the weekend, whilst doing a lot of reading on money, seeking to find ways to reconcile chartalist (MMT) and Marxist positions on this issue via Foucault.’
Hasn’t he considered taking up knitting?
This reading is presumably the output of feeding a ton of delusion and misunderstandings into ChatGPT. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it will end up with MOAR TAX! and Spud being in charge of the world.
My aunt by marriage was an actuary for a milling company. She had to work out wheat futures etc. The doctor told her to reduce her stress levels by taking up knitting. You should have seen the jerseys she knitted. Her children cried when they had to wear them. We said that one day she would put two forbidden colors together and then goodbye cruel world. Imagine the disasters Richard would cause.
Via Foucault? He’ll burst a blood vessel, unless he’s researching how to bum Arab boys.
I accept all the arguments made here, but it is a fact, like it or not, that ever since the state pension was introduced and made available to all, something of the same was intended to continue into the future. When ‘National Insurance’ was introduced, the populace was led to believe that it covered pensions and the NHS.
I would favour NI being a hypothecated tax. Perhaps it’s worth telling state pensioners that they actually get more than they see paid, because NI has been deducted first !
As far as a pension from payments made into a scheme by an employer and employee, that’s definitely a contract.
The original intention was that it would be an insurance based system from the start but Labour backbenchers and the wider Labour moment demanded the government include everyone from the start, so it became pay as you go.
EM
But it can only hold with very limited immigration – everyone coming over on the boats needs to be turned round and sent back and certainly cannot receive anything in terms of housing and benefits – that’s the sole way the contract can hold.
How does it fail for someone appearing as an adult on a boat from abroad, while working if the same person had been born here?
This is all part of the evil socialist thinking all you stuff are belong to me cos reasons. I made my pension provisions when I had the chance(s) and never trusted the gov to not try and wriggle out of the deal.
Having paid enough ni & tax pretty galling to see people just rolling up (not all on boats) and getting it all while I have to wait an extra 2 years.
Could I survive without it sure. But there are many millions who relied on their state pension, have no property and are living in real poverty. They can’t get extra benefits because they have very small pensions and/or savings which push them just over the limits.
This intergenerational warfare thing smart move by the PTB get us fighting each other. “OK Boomer” the deluded generation warriors scream yeah “Alright Renter”.
If people are further deluded enough to believe that it is pensions that will kill the economy alone, then we are fucked. The welfare budget for the idle and the various newly-arrived can manage that all on its own.
Once they means test the pension, which will reduce it even further by means of civil service incompetence at doing such things, all those juicy pension pots are next on the list. Then your house which is too big for you so accept a state appartment and volunteer to be euthanised to remain on the right side of history. Thanks for all your estate comrade as it must be distributed fairly.
The “pension contract” is whatever contract you have with whatever pension provider you have. He’s mixing up “social security” with “pension”, tarred with a brush of “I MUST CONTROL YOU!”
@Pils
That’s pretty well it. From each according to their ability (how much they offend our collectivist hive mind) to each according to their needs (how useful they are in justifying our virtuous and divine right to rule).
Pointedly omitting our index linked and feather bedded pensions of course.
Everything is a “benefit”. Everything.
There are those, half my age, who have yet to do a days work who have already taken far more in handouts than I will if I live to be 122 (the oldest confirmed age I believe).
I am one of those who could get by without a state pension (which for me starts in September) but why should I?
Because it’s an unsustainable burden on an aging society and unfair on those younger who are currently paying taxes.
Fine, let’s have that debate but let us have it openly and honestly (yes, yes I know!) I’ll defend my really quite meagre state pension. Let feather bedded civil servants defend theirs.
In 45 years I have been made redundant twice and been fired once. Never took a single penny. So I’ll argue for the removal of all such safety nets – or at least restricting them (to those for whom they were intended when such safety nets were originally set up)
And then we can start on nut zero. Or should we do that first?
Pensions – sudsidies and yet to be disposal costs – for hundreds of thousands of tons of useless junk get priority over pensions for people.
If you want confirmation as to what these degenerate, anti-human, collectivist monsters really think of you!