So politicians are considering taxing pensioners more, because so many people over 50 have taken workplace pension retirement.
Only the wealthy can afford to take their private pensions from age 50, and early workplace pension age is 55 about to rise to 57.
The economy has just the same use for the wealthy in work as not. Key workers retiring from 55 will be burnt out.
Ian Stewart, Deloitte’s chief economist in UK, has made some idiotic comments [in FTAdviser's latest story 'Drop in older workers could lead to taxation on pensions'].
The actuaries can tell him that there has been a massive reduction in people alive, aged in their 50s and 60s, with the high increase of early death of women (half the population) in that age group.
Jeremy Hunt is a politician and so his focus on older, skilled workers is hogwash, as usual.Indeed, we are told that 1mn women are out of work from 50, suffering with severe menopause.
And where does he get the daft idea of the ‘high levels of personal wealth’ of people aged in their 50s, when supposedly he [like many others] means just the value of the house, now mortgage free? Bricks and mortar are not 'wealth’; they're just a home to live in til death.
Increases in age at which state pension becomes payable is merely the social murder, as defined by Engels, of the poor, near poor and just managing, and especially women, and has nothing to do with key workers staying in work.
We stayed in work from 50 to 55 (having lost early workplace pension age since 2010) and we stayed in work from 60 to 66 (2014 til now) and the economy was destroyed by other factors.
[We are told that there are] 575,000 people retiring from 50, a mere 2 per cent of the workforce.
I suspect this is is nowhere near the death rate of women aged in our 50s and 60s from women's pension age rise and the pandemic (not permitted to shield by age in our 60s by government policies, agreed by Labour).
Also, people are not retiring by choice in lower paid jobs, but being made redundant more after lockdown than other age groups. And age discrimination in new job recruitment, although illegal, persists and means they have not a hope in hell of getting a new job from age 50, never mind 60.
Jeremy Hunt is a politician and so his focus on older, skilled workers is hogwash, as usual.
Hunt is just after taxing pensioners more, and not forcing people back into work. This will fully destroy the Tories, who already are resigned to losing big in the next general election. Labour is an even greater enemy of pensioners, especially women.
Blair and Brown did this with the destruction of the final salary pension and all the attacks on the state pension in the last Labour government.
Christine Williams (1950s born lady), admin of the Grey Swans pension group
