I agree that given increasing life expectancy, some raise in the retirement age makes sense. But I wouldn't say it's vital; I could be persuaded that we should just all pay more tax while working to support the longer retirement period.
We possibly could do that - but it gets exponentially more expensive the more years you have to support. I'd be in favour of a citizen's allowance, to be honest, if we could get the political will behind it.
We possibly could do that - but it gets exponentially more expensive the more years you have to support.
Yes, but on the other hand it's not going to go up forever; we've got a demographic bulge to deal with, not an increasing elderly population for ever. (Unless medicine *really* comes on a way...)
Looks likely that 50% of kids born today will live to 100...
I should have said Citizen's Income - the most basic form of which is Basic IncomeBasically, everyone gets given the minimum necessary to survive on for free. You can then get rid of most tax complications above that (i.e. various sliding scales), don't have to worry about housing benefit, (most) disability living allowances, student loans/grants, etc. It's a vast simplification of the system. It also prevents poverty traps where losing the income from your benefits outweighs the income from part time jobs - all gross income increases your net income. It also means that employers can't treat staff in crap jobs quite so badly, as there's always the option of just stopping working, which gives more freedom to the worst paid/treated members of society
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Looks likely that 50% of kids born today will live to 100...
Yes, but there's fewer of them!
How on earth do you determine what the minimum necessary to survive on is? It seems like we'd need an awful lot more social housing than we currently have, for starters.
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Yes, but on the other hand it's not going to go up forever; we've got a demographic bulge to deal with, not an increasing elderly population for ever. (Unless medicine *really* comes on a way...)
citizen's allowance
?
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Looks likely that 50% of kids born today will live to 100...
I should have said Citizen's Income - the most basic form of which is Basic IncomeBasically, everyone gets given the minimum necessary to survive on for free. You can then get rid of most tax complications above that (i.e. various sliding scales), don't have to worry about housing benefit, (most) disability living allowances, student loans/grants, etc. It's a vast simplification of the system. It also prevents poverty traps where losing the income from your benefits outweighs the income from part time jobs - all gross income increases your net income. It also means that employers can't treat staff in crap jobs quite so badly, as there's always the option of just stopping working, which gives more freedom to the worst paid/treated members of society ( ... )
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Yes, but there's fewer of them!
How on earth do you determine what the minimum necessary to survive on is? It seems like we'd need an awful lot more social housing than we currently have, for starters.
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http://www.jrf.org.uk/work/workarea/minimum-income-standards
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I mean, _some_ - I can be enthusiastic intermittently, but a lot of people seem to be in jobs that veritably encourage cynicism and low morale.
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