'...the tony blair institute'. sorry, immediately switched off video.

Why is 7.8% of GDP not 'sustainable' when other Western European nations have for many years paid State Pensions equivalent to over 10% of their GDP?

The DC pension is a private saving/ investment account and should not be lumped in with the state pension.

So far 39 years paid into the system with NI contributions and add that to my employer contribution as well it’s a hell of a lot of money. By the time I finish working around 50 years of NI contributions and they call it a benefit and retirement age gone up from 65 to 66 and now 67. The government are kicking the can down the road big time and have done for decades !

Not a single mention of the effect the forever freeze on personal allowances is having...

You have to have an ego the size of Donald Trump to name an institute after yourself whilst still alive.

God this is so complicated and very unlikely to be implemented for that reason so a complete waste of time. Just get rid of the triple lock, raise pension in line with earnings since it's funded by current workers earnings.

Increase auto enrollment and find a way of making it compulsory for the self employed.

I liked this idea, and could put incentives in for any additional extras added to the pot.

Amazingly complex idea to solve a problem that does not really exist?  Governments just need to get a grip on spending and mismanagement of taxpayers money (look at HS2 for example....).  People who have worked hard and contributed to society all their lives through taxation need certainty when they get close to retirement not crazy ideas like this.

I just assume i'm not getting a state pension when i retire because governments are just mis-managing the whole thing. It should be based on what you put into it, not some ponzi scheme we have at the moment

Lost me at TBI. 👹

11:20 - The proposal the interviewee makes to link the pension to the level of wages is a terrible one if I understand it properly. I think his proposal is to link the value of the state pension is to link it to a proportion of average (not mean) wages. So what is the objection you might say?
OK, so if you have 10 workers for every pensioner, if the pensioner gets 30% of the average wage , then each worker has on average have to pay 3% of their wages to the pension pool.
But in the UK we are seeing a collapse of the dependency rate. If you go from 10 workers per pensioner to just 2, then each worker has to pay 15% of their salary on average to achieve the same result. Such a burden will collapse the tax base given all of the other things that need to be paid for. It will lead to the same disastrous outcome, though perhaps slightly more slowly than the fiscally crazy triple lock.

The clue is in the name: National Insurance, which was originally introduced as a fund to pay for pensions and other secuity benefits. However successive governments have treated these contributions as general cash and run the system as a Ponzi scheme where current contributions are used to pay anyone drawing the benefit. This was ‘fine’ during the 50s to 80s with a high working population contributing money but “No **it Sherlock” the demographics have changed so the Government has a problem and needs to look for ways to solve their mismanagement.
Had the money been built up in an investment fund for its intended purpose this problem would not exist, for example Norway set up such a fund and doesn’t have this problem. Anyone can do a simple calculation using their own working life NI contributions to see, even conservatively, what return this generates and it compares shockingly with the state pension.

Along with the triple lock they froze the tax threshold for all.
People’s small private pensions are now being eaten away by tax.

The problem is that, though there are certainly a large number of wealthy pensioners, there are still many poor ones.  If you ditch the triple lock you would need to replace it with something more than just CPI indexation, otherwise there would be a massive outcry.  As for building up 20 years of pension after 40 years of work, this is insanely harsh!  Many people in their lives simply cannot work, for various reasons.  I would reduce that to 30 years.  I don't agree with people taking the state pension very early, willy-nilly, because that would deprive people of their future pension; what would make a lot more sense is being able to take the state pension say, up to 5 years earlier, with an actuarial reduction.  Using individual life expectancy to calculate the state pension is complete madness, overcomplex and bureaucratic.  The state pension is not an annuity, it's not based on a calculation based on a lump sum, like a private pension annuity - there is no logic to this.

The nature of the triple lock is that it will increase the share of the nations output going to pensioners, and it will do so at an ever increasing rate. It is made worse by the terrible demographics and the worsening dependency ratio. Left to run long enough it will bankrupt the state. The sooner it is ended the less damage it will cause.
Ultimately we have to let the producers have the lions share of what they produce. That isnt good for pensioners but at least that way you have something for the older generation. If you put the cart before the horse and let the producers eat last, no one is going to get anything and we will get a complete collapse.

Joke most people are not working later in life because they want to. Its because they have to.

Health at older ages has actually worsened in the last reports

The state pension is not generous and has been dragged from the gutter it was in by the triple lock.

Fortunate to not have to rely on the SP. My financial planning hasn’t included it. Whatever I end up receiving in about 16 years will just be a bonus.