They are stepping towards that with auto enrollment already.
I entirely expect the state pension to be means tested by the time I reach retirement age. Those with a full LTA will get zilch from the state.
Spring Budget 2023
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They are stepping towards that with auto enrollment already.
I entirely expect the state pension to be means tested by the time I reach retirement age. Those with a full LTA will get zilch from the state.
Both very good points.
So France offers an inferior service that is much cheaper to run but still requires state subsidy? sounds French lol
Governments change their mind what seems like every 5 minutes it feels like one could hold a lottery on what the reitrment age will be, the critieria to qualify etc.
All bets are off about how little you will have to be worth by what age to get anything. As others have said you cannot rely on the state.
Not for nhs, not for pensions.
Makes the triple lock even more unpalatable knowing many of us will get nothing
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The riots caused by a government taking away a state pension that someine has paid into for 30+years will make the miners strike and poll tax riots combined look like a Kumbaya festival....
Soldato
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So because it sounds like snobbery we can't have an open conversation about it as a society? Is it snobbish to expect more pay for being a professionally qualified person than as a labourer, or a bin man? What's happening to some extent is the gap between minimum wage jobs and qualified professional jobs is getting smaller. That might be a good thing if you're in a minimum wage job but if you're in a professional job it means you don't have same differential as you used to have.
So we have a shrinking differential for middle earners and the 1% getting ever richer with a growing wealth differential.
What's the point doing a job like the one I do, if I can earn a similar amount as a bus driver?
And I don't mean to disrespect other jobs but there are differentials in job 'levels' and always have been. In fact they are necessary otherwise what is the point doing certain jobs - i.e jobs in engineering continually reported as being difficult to recruit, yet they don't offer the salaries high enough to incentivise those choices.
Skilled work is often more mentally fulfilling and may well also be physically easier. How often do you hear kids say I want to be a factory labourer, or a shelf stacker, those are jobs you do to pay the bills and nothing else, whilst been a teacher, a doctor, a judge are things that people might aspire to be, so the motivation isnt necessarily because its better paid.
With that said there will always be a gap, and it also probably wont shrink for many jobs, jobs where the employee has the upper hand such as doctors, will probably maintain or grow the gap.
dlockers
D
dlockers
Probs be a bus driver. Just because you are a bit arrogant about being an 'engineer', whilst being a bus driver is infinitely more useful for civilisation. It's not like you're engineering anything that will significantly change the world now, is it?
Soldato
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Yes very high end jobs will maintain a gap. Doctors, pilots - jobs where it is extremely difficult to train for or a high cost of entry. But I think lots of previous 'middle earner' jobs are losing their relative position these days. The lower earner jobs are closing the gap, not least helped by minimum wage.
I don't know what the answer is, it's difficult to have conversations about low earners wages being suppressed when the cost of living is so high, but also qualified professional jobs should have a bigger gap to the lower earner jobs. I see your point that there are other benefits but money has at least an 80% weighting I think. If my teachers had told me I could earn the same as a train driver as a qualified engineer, what would be the point going to university and doing an engineering degree?
Soldato
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I'm trying not to be arogant because I'm fully aware how it's coming across. How can I make the point without it sounding arrogant? Do you think all jobs are equal?
You're right, perhaps engineering isn't what it used to be. So we should all just become bus and train drivers, or hgv drivers, and earn more money.
There shouldnt be a big gap just because you think ideologically there should be one, the gap is usually there because only a limited people are capable of doing those jobs and that they may have valuable experience or university qualifications relevant to the job that merit a higher salary.
I sometimes used to work for free, purely on the love of the job, I have also done lots of charity work for free.
Covid did show us who are the most valuable workers I think, the people who couldnt stay locked up in their homes, because if they did society would have stopped functioning.
Soldato
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I agree with you, they have huge societal value in that their job is essential, but nevertheless it is a low skill job that anyone physically able could do.
How do you square the circle there?
Doctors for example, very high pay only because the cost of entry is high regarding training. It's not a particularly difficult job to do (a gp for example, not a brain surgeon). The maths requirements of an engineering degree are harder than medical qualifications.
How do you know, as a youngster, what job to train for if you can't pinpoint a lifestyle expectation tier from that training outlay? You may as well take the easiest option.
Dont under estimate the difficulty of those jobs, a tolerance to do a repetitive action for several hours a day, and the physical endurance to sustain such types of work. There was a similar discussion about this a year or so ago, where I made the same point to someone else, in that post I gave an example of in my first job at a food factory, a manager made the engineers do manual work, and one of them practically collapsed within 15 minutes, never mind doing it for a 12 hour shift. They low paid due to the high amount of worker pool available, so yes there is more people capable of doing it, but not everyone could including people in much higher paid skill jobs.
Often a penalty for repititive physical labour is been crippled by the time you middle age.
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I was in a hospital recently and was thinking about the jobs of those I could see working around me. It was all very mundane, receptionist admin, phone calls, arranging things. Tricky, tiring work, dull environment - I don’t think I’d be good at it. I bet it pays pretty poorly too. Urgh.
Glad to do something else more stimulating that gets paid significantly more… but my job is worth diddly squat to society compared to theirs.
Glad to do something else more stimulating that gets paid significantly more… but my job is worth diddly squat to society compared to theirs.
People always seem to forget that without the likes of the bin men most of the "professional" jobs wouldn't be possible, society needs the people that are doing the "boring and unskilled" jobs as much as those doing the exciting and "highly skilled" ones.
I remember the fiascos that followed the decision to outsource hospital cleaning because how hard could it be, and why not do it and save a few percent. Followed by the outsourced companies getting rid of the marginally higher paid people who knew why it was important to clean everything and pay special attention to X or Y, and replaced them with people who didn't get any real training, didn't understand why it was so important to clean everything, and were under pressure to work at an impossible rate so did things like didn't clean around the toilets properly, or skipped cleaning some surfaces because they didn't have the time or materials.
I'm glad you said "a lot of" instead of "all" so-called professional people because then you'd be ignorantly unaware of how many "professionals" make your life easier and safer everyday.
This thread has taken and interesting turn and it reminded me of something somebody once told me - some people are paid for what they do and some people are paid for what they know.
Does society value brain over brawn?
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Caporegime
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When you look at it the Pension is 185 quid a week over 20 years (Which would be a good innings) which is 200k. Or 400k in 30 years time for me going by inflation over the past 30 years. Not including increases over that 20 years so more than likely closer to 500-600k for a state pension.
To save 600K for the vast majority will be very difficult and for those that do to get told you are not getting a state pension will end in anarchy.