Inflation hits 2.9%

private rents up 1.6%

wages more likely to come down.

and will get higher with the idiotic climbdown regarding public sector pay cap.

Deficit running at £1BN a week. Public sector should be happy to still be in work.

2.9% is incredibly low. Anyone on tracker mortgages will have benefitted hugely since 2009. An effective pay rise of several % due to unbelievably low interest rates.


(Not reported, of course).

anybody requiring hospital, doctors, education social services will be pleased there
is still a skeleton service being run by this government

interest rates are less than 0.5 but banks manage to charge 10 times
that, having caused the crash in the first place, hey ho

pretty sure thats been reported

There is still a feeling among some that growth of GDP and real incomes is a given and that an interruption in the steady growth in prosperity with a few minor interruptions from 1950 until 2007 was the natural order. Why? It is equally possible that real incomes that have fallen gradually for the last 10 years will continue to fall for the next 50. The biggest losers have been pensioners if you look at their total income and not just at the state pension. My capital was earning me between 7 and 8% 15 years ago so my state pension was less than half of my income, now it is 1% for fixed interest and 3% for more risky stocks and shares so I rely much more on the state. Pensioners had £2000 extra personal allowance compared to working tax payers but now they are all the same which effectively means £400 less per year. The universal rise in the personal allowance from £6500 to £11500 (and now it is planned to go to £12000) is for me the main cause of the Government's financial problems. It would be affordable if inflation was 3% per annum but at an average of 1.5% it doesn't work. A rise of £5000 in the allowance means £1000 less income tax for every adult earning above £11500, or approx. £35 billion. Some of that extra income is spent on items bearing VAT or duty so some of it is clawed back but it is a massive difference in only 7 years.  That £1000 for an average earner of £20000 net of NI is a net income rise of 5%.

Yet public spending keeps ongoing up and up ? A brief look shows 2003 was £420bn, 2011 was £714bn, 2017 was estimated at £780bn and 2020 estimated at £842bn,obviously at varying rates of inflation. The rate of increase is slowing of course but it keeps on rising, NHS spend was £66bn (15.7% of spend), £120bn (16.7%) and £144bn (18.5% of spend) in years 2003,2011 and 2017.Will there ever be enough money spent to satisfy the NHS union voices ?

The poor pensioners - getting the same personal allowance as everybody else, but because it isn't more than everybody else, they're claiming it as a cut.
A bit like the WASPI women who were told in the early 1990s they'd be working beyond 60, being upset because they didn't expect to have their pension age equalised at the same pension age as men so soon.
You don't hear the pensioners moaning about triple locks, free bus travel, 5% VAT on energy ( the lowest in Europe, and below what a carbon tax suggests it should be ) and the NI exemption if still working.
I spoke to one old boy recently aged 80 about the WFA and we could divert some resources in the civil service if it was scrapped and replaced with £6/week on the state pension and the pension credit equivalent - he got hysterical that I wanted him to freeze in winter. Didn't think budgeting was his responsibility.

odd that you make mention of budgeting and mention the waspis who did not get the chance
to budget for their old age ,,,,,

I'm borrowing for my business at 4% donny. It's great! Never seen it this cheap. Helps me plan, budget and spend.

SMEs have benefitted hugely since the 'crash'.

Inflation at 2.9% is derisory. Interest payments on govt borrowing of £50BN (was 90 in 2012) are not.

if you were just about managing then 2.9 is not derisory, nor can they borrow
at that rate, its around 100-1000% when you have nowt

nice to see folk benefit from these times, but not nice to see folk struggle
because of them

http://www.johnmajor.co.uk/page4283.html

After careful consideration, the Government have decided that the state pension age should eventually be equalised at the age of 65. The change will be phased in over ten years, starting in the year 2010, so it will not affect anyone currently aged 44 or older.

That was in 1993 - if you can't budget 24 years in the future then even Jesus cannot help you. And these are women for crying out loud, hardly the sort with a reputation for blowing all their savings on coke, gambling and hookers.

the earlier you start with pensions the greater the effect of your budgeting

but you knew that ...

Where did I say "poor". Just stating facts. I could also mention the winter fuel payment that we don't really need but it has stayed at £100 since it was first introduced about 20 years ago. No indexation.

'biggest losers'
They haven't lost anything.

State pension age changes just another example of how things are becoming worse instead of better for British people.

bongo, you are right but everyone else who is worse off claim to be losing something so why not pensioners?

Mine and Study's posts deleted.

What a joke this place is.

lfc, increasing the pension age benefits everybody else other than pensioners. To keep it where it is would mean higher taxes or cuts in every other area of public expenditure and probably a big cut in the pension.

Its not necessarily worse for the countries economy if pensioners retire at 65 men, 60 women. or both at 63.
It frees up jobs for young people.
For example the retirement age in Japan is 60 for men and women (they live longer?)
retirement in China 60 for men, 50 for women.

Japan retirement age is increasing (much like Western world) - think will be 65 soon & maybe plans to increase further.


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/18/japan-doctors-propose-raising-retirement-age-to-75

The age to get state pension is only part of the equation. We should also consider how generous the pension benefits are. If UK pension was £5 k  rather than £8k then the state pension age could be lower & cost the same overall.

Once again it is the young in UK who are being f  ked over .

The worst thing to do for the economy
, and young people in particular, would be to raise the retirement age,
It should be lowered to 60 for both men and women  .
This is the most important thing for young people, and for the country.

LOL lfc

Yep - The "most important thing " for a 25 year old with £50k student debt , with high property prices & massive national debt is to pay more tax so that a 62 year old can get an extra £8k a year.
The young will be queuing up to pay more money to give to the old.
No down side for the young with that idea lfc.

young people don`t pay tax, and don`t have a mortgage, and don`t have student debt to pay.
the best thing for young people is that older people retire at a sensible age leaving jobs opportunities.
Its good for the companies themselves, its good for the workforce, and its good for young people trying to get a job.

Lfc

Please explain what you are on about regarding not paying tax.

How does a 25 year old with student load earning £25-30k a year not pay tax & don't have student debt to pay?


Paying a 60 year old an extra £8k a year from taxpayers money does not mean they will necessarily retire . Are you saying they should be forced to retire at 60 even if they don't want to?

young people without jobs do not pay tax.
students do not pay tax
young people in work do not pay tax
graduates do not pay tax on their loan.

people in work pay tax, if they are earning enough to pay tax. very good.

no one should be forced to retire at any age.
However if it is company policy that employees must retire at 60, or 65 that`s fine.
that`s up to the company.

you see having a state pension at 60 is not the same thing as forcing people to retire at 60.
It merely gives them that option.

There's an OECD paper in 2016 by Fournier and Johansson:
They found that every 1% of national income spent by government on pensions reduced national income by 2%. It was the 2nd worst thing they could find in government budgets.

But imagine if the corollary as proposed by lfc1971 was true, that it was effective to pay people to retire earlier and earlier compared to their expected age of death, using money taken from working-age taxpayers under threat of court.
Which countries would you now expect to see at the top of the league tables of prosperity?

Correction : give them the option to retire earlier.
Although funding it does rather reduce the options of everybody else.

Japan?

Lfc

Explain....


Young people in work do not pay tax



Ummmmmmmmmmmm

you have to understand what drives prosperity and wealth, it is not people working longer or harder.
It has very little to do with that.

Pensions are affordable, if we work for long enough. This means that young people have to be in well paid and secure jobs at a young age. They must be paying into their pension as soon as possible, preferably no later than 20.

Now this is where we are going wrong, they are not doing this, and no amount of raising the age at which they can retire will solve this problem

By making people work longer merely makes this problem more acute.

Lfc

Young people in work DO pay tax .


Of course the young should pay into their own pension pit early - they can't rely on people who have not been born yet to pay for their pensions. This is made difficult for the young as the UK government takes money off them to spend on the old.
The huge government debt is being dumped on the young to pay for.

The young will not be paying for anything if they cannot get into work.

The problem is this, people are not working throughout their adult life. Address this problem.
Until it is addressed then it is senseless to say that people must keep working until they are 70

Lfc

You post some total lies

You claimed...


Young people in work do not pay tAx.



Actually they DO .

There is no point working until you are 70 if you haven`t worked in the 50 years before that.

mexico I know young people do pay tax, some of them.

Latest figures from the ONS is that 10% of over 65s are still in work despite getting their pension while total unemployment is 4.3%. Not sure why you keep saying that young people will only get a job if the retirement age is lowered. We seem to be generating jobs for a million or more immigrants plus over a million over 65s as well as most of the younger members of the population. I know that stats can be misleading. I retired at 56 from my main employment but have had small amounts of self employed and fee income since then (now 73) but would probably not have been on the official list as working for those 17 years.

So at present 10% of over 65s are still in work. And if they raised the retirement age to 70 and 90% of over 65s were in employment, stopping people within companies moving onto the next pay grade, and not making room for young people to get started.
I don`t really see how that helps anyone.

Generating jobs for millions of migrants? well I really don`t see the point in generating millions more jobs if we are becoming poorer and having to work until we are 70 instead of 60 or 65.

Generating jobs for most of our young people? If they can afford to buy a house and start a family without the help of the state then we are generating jobs for young people.
If they cannot, then we are not.

lfc, You always seem to judge the economy on how badly the bottom 5% are doing. The average citizen is doing fine. Just look at the number of new retail outlets, catering outlets, accommodation providers, airline flights, train journeys. I could go on but the point is that spending and demand for all these things keep going up so if everyone is so poor, who is doing the spending? We run 2 holiday lets in Somerset and our occupancy has doubled since the Brexit vote, all British visitors. If you want a table at a local pub or restaurant on a Friday or Saturday you need to book. I am not unsympathetic to those who are finding things hard but they are a small minority.

LOL ,a small minority ,as compared to the miniscule amount of people booking tables on a fri sat night,you cant get a ticket at arsenal,city ,utd , Chelsea either,fook the other 70 million in the country,LOL

wonder how many restaraunts  would be full if credit cards wernt accepted

Miniscule numbers using restaurants, coffee bars, Mcdonalds, Motorway services (the most expensive catering outlets outside London). Don't be daft.

Most people see what they want to see, leftish supporters see austerity,doom and gloom, rightish supporters see low unemployment,increased public spending year on year, and more jobs than ever. The media prefer the doom and gloom because it catches attention and young people are too immature to understand that.

do the rightish people see personal debt at records high more than the 2008 crash when everyone was told to tighten their belts and pay their debts down.the rightish people are probably the ones not only mortgaged to the hilt but remortgaged to the hilt and will soon be getting hit with maybe upto 10 interest rate rises in the next 2 years plus the interest only mortgage time bomb starting to land,rightish people probably think government debt is horrific whilst personal debt is the norm,rightish people probably think getting 40 year mortgages and working till your 75 to pay it off is the sign of a flourishing country

On the contrary, rightish people are savers and lenders who are fed up with zero return on investment. I can't understand why if there is so much borrowing, bank rate is still 0.25%. I have always been brought up to pay off debt asap. My father bought our farm on overdraft and paid it off in 5 years and never borrowed a penny after that. I had a mortgage for 5 years after getting married and had it fully paid off by then. No borrowing since.

so much lending is happening at low rates as the banks were stuffed 10 years ago
and they need to build up reserves cheaply, let the poorest pay for the bankers
bonuses

If the national debt was to be addressed properly the howls of anguish and genuine austerity would be impossible to bear. My gut feeling is that another crash from God knows where,will force us to face up to it but I cannot foresee any politician who willingly wants to have that on their shoulders.My suspicion is that a clown like McDonnell would offer a pain free solution that voters might fall for but bring this reality upon us.