Pensions

George Osborne has decided to increase the state pension age. Unfortunately he hasn’t increased it to infinity yet. Anyway, somebody I know on Facebook said this was bad. He stated that since old people wouldn’t retire there would be no jobs for young people. Also, he claimed we won’t be getting pensions until we’re dead. My reply to is below.

I think this is probably one of the more sensible things Osborne had done, although I am not a fan of the conservatives for various reasons. Your arguments against it don’t make sense.

First, it makes no sense to say that school leavers won’t be able to get jobs because there is not a fixed amount of stuff to do. We are never going to run out of problems that need solving, i.e. – ways in which our lives are less satisfactory than they could be. So to have work to do, what you have to do is pick one of those problems and pick a way to solve it that people will voluntarily support with their time, money and resources.

Second, the world does not owe you money. If you want to spend thirty odd years lounging about at the end of your life, then save for it. I can see no reason why future taxpayers should pay you to do nothing. Are they your slaves?

Third, I’m am a bit puzzled by why you would want your leisure time to be dependent on bureaucrats who have little or nothing to lose from shafting you.

Fourth, average lifespan has been increasing and unless the growth of medical knowledge stops, it will continue to increase, which means the proportion of the population over some fixed retirement age will increase. Even leaving aside the moral bankruptcy of expecting other people to pay for your leisure time, that will at some point lead to financial bankruptcy. Keeping the pension age fixed is a bad idea. It would be more sensible to try to change the world so that people can earn their keep by doing stuff they like doing, by changing the way jobs work or by changing attitudes people have to work or both.