On 22/11/2017 01:28, JNugent wrote:
On 22/11/2017 00:18, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Â*Â*Â* JNugent wrote:

Pension is a lifelong thing.

Really? To most it's for the last part of their life.

That's right, the rest of their life, or are you now retreating into
pointless semantics as thogh you couldn't possibly work out the meaning?

You want me to work out what you should have said rather than did?

UB is a stop-gap until things get better by other means (a job).

Bit like saying when your insurance company pays for a repair to
your car
it is only a stop gap until you get a new one.

Not even a little bit like it. No-one wants ever to have to make a
car insurance claim. Everyone hopes
and expects to claim and receive Retirement Pension, preferable for a
very long time.
But car insurance claims may, I suppose, be slightly likened to
unemployment benefit. One hopes never to have to claim and with good
luck, never will.

The idea of national insurance is to provide for times when you are
unemployed or unable to work for other reasons. And to provide for old
age.

That certainly is often erroneously supposed to be the case. National
"Insurance" is not an insurance scheme - and you know it isn't. If it
were, it would cost more the greater the risk of unemployment or
sickness because that's the way that insurance works. But in the UK,
national insurance contributions are lowest (and can be zero) for those
who spend the longest periods on benefits and those who are least likely
to claim, are more likely to be paying 12% of their income for a
lifetime, in National "Insurance".

And neither is NI invested in a pension pot on behalf of the
contributor. You also know that but choose to ignore the fact.

National Insurance benefits have never been enough to replace earned
income. When the average male industrial earnings were about £18 a week
gross, UK was £3 a week (both figures approximate for 1969/1970, but
very close either way).

That's why there is a separate scheme of (higher) means-tested benefits
(and there isn't even the pretence of tyhat being predicated upon
insurance, even though many pundits frequently claim that people "pay
in" for their means-tested benefits (they don't - they get them even if
they've never contrinuted a bean).

The means testing is the issue. It encourages many not to work. Many say
they won't work for 50p per hour and I don't blame them.

But for some reason, it seems to be OK to become old. but not out of work
for any other reason.

You treat being retired and being unemployed as the same thing. There's
your error.

They seem very similar to me. One seems to get a lot of stick and the
other is pandered to. Everyone should get a wage and be damned, means
testing discourages meaningful work.

I guess you being 'retired' will say ageism rules.

Not many people think it morally wrong to claim for a dent on your car -
no matter how it was caused.

And?

I might have thought there were personal economic reasons, but hey!