This NI increase for Social/Health Care

Looks like the Government is going ahead with it. 1.25% NI rise.

[jfman]

Originally Posted by Hugh

Thing is, on average, most people don’t fully fund their state pension with their own NI Contributions…

I’ve had to use averages for these calculations, because that evens out those getting paid/paying less and those getting paid/paying more.

Average salary in U.K. is around £30k pa - the employee NI contributions on this are £2,460 pa; if you consider most people will work for 45 years, their lifetime NI payments will be just under £112k.

Current average time between getting the State Pension and popping one’s clogs is 15 years, and as the current State Pension is £180 per week (£9,360 pa), and over 15 years this is just over £140k.

If you add in the Employers NICs of around £2,700 pa for 45 years, you get another £122k, giving (hypothetically) a state pension fund of £234k per person.

Unfortunately, the NI Fund doesn’t just pay the state pension - it’s also supposed to fund the NHS, statutory sick pay, maternity leave, & entitlement to additional unemployment benefits.

One of the most frequent misconceptions out there - I paid in so I’m entitled to. At £2trn of debt the reality is, despite a massive sale of state owned assets, the books never have balanced and successive generations have simply kicked the can down the road to the next one.

I paid in for my mother and my other elderly relatives. It's called paying forwards and eventually your offspring will be paying forward if we don't go daft and return to the system that was available before the advent of the NHS ect.Not sure I care to return to the days of the poorhouse or people dying in pain because they had no money to pay for healthcare.

[nomadking]

Originally Posted by Maggy

I paid in for my mother and my other elderly relatives. It's called paying forwards and eventually your offspring will be paying forward if we don't go daft and return to the system that was available before the advent of the NHS ect.Not sure I care to return to the days of the poorhouse or people dying in pain because they had no money to pay for healthcare.

It's not about people who can't afford it, it's about those who have an asset worth a few £100,000. Why should they not pay? Nobody is living in the house(it's no longer their home), therefore it can be sold. No different to having money in the bank or a large amount in shares etc.

It's not as if we're talking about people who could spend the money on a world cruise or something. They are not meant to be physically capable of doing that, that is why they need the care.
In that sense the current situation, works and is fair and right. Those that can pay are required to do so, and those that can't, aren't required to do so.

[Carth]

Originally Posted by Maggy

I paid in for my mother and my other elderly relatives. It's called paying forwards and eventually your offspring will be paying forward if we don't go daft and return to the system that was available before the advent of the NHS ect.Not sure I care to return to the days of the poorhouse or people dying in pain because they had no money to pay for healthcare.

Pretty much as I've always understood it Maggy.
Basically, what we pay while of working age is used to fund those who are retired, when we then retire, our pension etc is funded by those who come after us.

One of the arguments going around is that people are living longer so more money is needed, however this *should* be offset by the amount of people working compared to, say, 1950 for example . . but the NHS was well run back then though

[jfman]

Originally Posted by Maggy

I paid in for my mother and my other elderly relatives. It's called paying forwards and eventually your offspring will be paying forward if we don't go daft and return to the system that was available before the advent of the NHS ect.Not sure I care to return to the days of the poorhouse or people dying in pain because they had no money to pay for healthcare.

So by any other measure it’s a pyramid scheme, with each generation hoping to squeeze the one after it by more than they paid out themselves.

[Carth]

Life is a pyramid scheme mate, the base is getting larger all the time but the foundations can't handle it.

Too many people looking for handouts instead of taking responsibility.

[Sephiroth]

It's a lot deeper than that - especially from the perspective of today's pensionable generation.

When they were of early working age, care homes were routinely run by local councils. Quite frankly, they wanted to shed themselves of the responsibility particularly as their poor performance won no votes. So the councils divested themselves of care home responsibility and put it into the profit making private sector. I don't recall a huge outcry when this started - possibly because it simply passed working people by.

If councils resumed responsibility, it would have to be paid for through the Council Tax or through government grants funded from wealth generated taxes.

My fear is that there'll be another show speech, lacking in proper content, as a sham disguising a rise that will only fund the NHS. I expect Boris to trumpet the headline figure without separating the regions; England will be no wiser as to what it means for them as there is no English Parliament (nor should there be). But honest politicians is what is really needed. Boris will say he's solving the problem when he obviously isn't, especially when you look at Hugh's fag packet calculation.

[jfman]

Originally Posted by Carth

Life is a pyramid scheme mate, the base is getting larger all the time but the foundations can't handle it.

Too many people looking for handouts instead of taking responsibility.

It’s a conscious choice to design it as a pyramid scheme - obviously by the generation that seen the greatest benefit.

The base isn’t getting larger - the population and number of net contributors isn’t rising in line with the number extracting money from the system as people live for longer and claim far more in pensions than they claim to have “paid in”.

Until they want to solve this structural problem we will continue to paper over the cracks.

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by jfman

It’s a conscious choice to design it as a pyramid scheme - obviously by the generation that seen the greatest benefit.

The base isn’t getting larger - the population and number of net contributors isn’t rising in line with the number extracting money from the system as people live for longer and claim far more in pensions than they claim to have “paid in”.

Until they want to solve this structural problem we will continue to paper over the cracks.

Exactamundo. I was looking for the word "Ponzi"!

[Carth]

Originally Posted by jfman

It’s a conscious choice to design it as a pyramid scheme - obviously by the generation that seen the greatest benefit.

The base isn’t getting larger - the population and number of net contributors isn’t rising in line with the number extracting money from the system as people live for longer and claim far more in pensions than they claim to have “paid in”.

Until they want to solve this structural problem we will continue to paper over the cracks.

It's not all about people claiming the state pension, and it's not all about people in care homes.

The 'structural problem' as to income isn't something that can be messed with much, however where the money goes to is a different matter. I could post a number of examples where money is 'thrown' at to appease the sensitive among us, but no doubt I'd be met by a wall of flame by those who want money for their cause at the expense of the public good

Originally Posted by jfman

So by any other measure it’s a pyramid scheme, with each generation hoping to squeeze the one after it by more than they paid out themselves.

So we go back to the old system where the poor had to hope that the wealthy would put their hands in their pocket voluntarily to support the workhouse from time to time?

My goodness how many Scrooges do we have on CF?

[Carth]

Originally Posted by Maggy

So we go back to the old system where the poor had to hope that the wealthy would put their hands in their pocket voluntarily to support the workhouse from time to time?

My goodness how many Scrooges do we have on CF?

Quite a few apparently, seems they begrudge paying an extra £5 a week . . . the price of a decent pint in some places, or a weeks worth of mobile data, or 5% of the price on a new tyre needed for the big expensive motor


ps . . don't mention roaming charges when they jet off abroad either

[TheDaddy]

Originally Posted by Maggy

So we go back to the old system where the poor had to hope that the wealthy would put their hands in their pocket voluntarily to support the workhouse from time to time?

My goodness how many Scrooges do we have on CF?

Thing is the rich did put their hands in the pockets back then, some of them saw it as their duty to, not so sure the same would happen today.

A couple of things jump out at me, why is care so expensive, why does the average residential home cost more per night than a decent hotel and why do people have to pay when large corporations don't, we know they've bought and paid for bozo and his chums but they can't expect a free ride because of that forever

[nomadking]

The private sector tripled capacity in the space of a decade. The demand must've been there. That freed up local authority places for those that really needed them.
The standards in private sector places must have been higher than council run places, as people were expected to pay for it. Taking over council run homes wouldn't have been a real option, they wouldn't have been good enough. So were council care homes sold off? Or is it a baseless rant? How many were simply moved out of hospitals? IIRC Where I once lived(late 1970s) there was a large geriatric hospital, it is now a more general type of hospital.
A big reason for the shift in council to private, wasn't selling off of council run homes, but shifting costs from councils to the benefit system which paid for the private care instead.

The predicted increase in demand(doubling?) in the next couple of decades is huge. Who is going to provide that?
if a person, in different circumstances, could be cared for at home by relatives, doesn't that mean they are not really an NHS matter and not necessarily provided for free. As in the 1980s where funding increasingly came from the benefits system, doesn't that also indicate it isn't an NHS matter.