John’s Blog 91 – Pensions – The Great State Pension Robbery

Criminals who rob trains; Businessmen who take and hide money from their Company; Solicitors who spend Client’s money are all prosecuted with long prison sentences for theft, fraud or embezzlement. Why can the State collect Pension contributions from worker’s pay packets as National Insurance and spend it without the same questions being asked? Of course there is the pretence of pension distribution but the poverty amounts are becoming the same whether you pay NI or not. The sums of money are huge, some £3,200bn of liability, equal to twice GDP and the final benefits are small and not related to the contributions made and the wealth redistribution is large. It is questionable whether this is a contributory pension scheme, it was certainly set up and run as one, with individual records and eligibility contribution years. There the similarity ends, the money is not put away as in any normal pension scheme in Funds which earn interest and grow, which should give a factor 3 to 5 enhancement of the annual contributions made. The money is lost in the bottomless Exchequer coffers and begrudgingly paid out as a benefit not a right. It does not stop there, the rules are changed without the consent of members, eligibility levels lowered, proposed abolition of the second pension and changes to the retirement age, which are completely unjustified. In a normal pension scheme, you can retire from age 55, providing you have built up an adequate fund and your final pension will relate to contributions made. In the State scheme it is a fixed poverty amount, unrelated to contributions from 65 but increasing up to 70, again the amounts lost are not trivial and represent theft from the individual. Every year that retirement is delayed, has the following consequences:- • Some 530,000 people lose a year’s pension equal to some £3.2bn • A year’s extra Tax and NI are paid, which at the average wage equals some £4bn • Some 6% die losing pension altogether, a potential saving of 4bn or more • A year of healthy retirement and enjoyment are lost; value immeasurable. These are not trivial or just petty theft, but loss of rights earned by hard work over a lifetime, which is made worse by the lack of historical evidence that we are living longer after 65 and estimates of only eight years of healthy living from 65, before old age sets in. It is not helped by the all grey liberal Society which does not recognise work or endeavour, taking no account of the contribution made and promoting envy of those that work, save and prudently look after their future. Tax the better off, who can afford it, but these are not the obscenely rich high earners but the middle society who make the effort to improve them-selves. The over 65 population is increasing rapidly and individuals need to save for their own retirement as the only way forward. National Insurance should return to just that; insurance for those who work and part should be put away for retirement in individual pension funds independent from the State for those who contribute, reflecting the amounts saved over their lifetime. It should not be squandered by the State in welfare, benefit and other payments which should be paid for by normal taxes.