According to the Telegraph, Europe faces an aging population nightmare, in 'absolute collapse'. An article by Tim Wallace.
Europe faces a demographic nightmare as the pandemic accelerates it's population crunch, leaving nations grappling with shrinking workforces and rising numbers of elderly to support.
New projections from the United Nations show a serious slowdown in population growth. Falling fertility and surge in deaths, has been worsened by covid. People are postponing having children, and there are disruptions in marriage patterns and family formations.
The world is struggling with supply shortages, a lack of workers, and financial challenges of paying for elderly residents. Fewer people mean a smaller economy, unless a larger share of the workforce can be persuaded into work. There are fears that the falling population could do real damage, particularly if it risks countries unable to pay for ageing populations' health and pensions expenses.
I am a little bit confused by all this. Are they saying we need more people, or less people? Or is it that they want to cherry pick those that they do need, and discard those who are no use to the economy whatsoever.
The latest label being bandied about is 'Useless Eaters'. I assume that refers to those who are not making a contribution towards getting us out of this hole.
Maybe the collapse of the economy is all my fault. I produced no offspring. I live in a house that could accommodate a family, and the Government pay me £200 a week. Maybe they would like to stop paying that, or perhaps I should get a job and give up my pension to help them balance their books.
As I see it the UK has a large pool of young male workers coming in almost daily. Could they not be given jobs to earn their keep.
Maybe another surge in the pandemic would take care of the Useless Eaters like myself. Another reduction in the number of pensioners would save a lot of money for the Government. It would also bring more lockdowns, more businesses closing, and more people being paid to stay at home. Which we all know from the first time around that that plan will decimate the economy even further.
The world finances are in a hell of a mess. Printing money has not addressed the problem and has made matters worse. The crux of the matter is they are trying to shore up decades of mismanagement. Putting a sticking plaster over the gaping hole that the worlds financiers have dug for themselves. They will not be the victims of their actions of course, the ordinary working class will be blamed for everything.
Hold onto your hat the ride is going to get tough.
Catch ya later. ilona
Well we did have plenty of young workers who were willing to do jobs in particular that Brits didn't seem keen to do, but a lot of them have now gone home due to the B word.
ReplyDeleteI'm confused, I presume you have an occupational pension, so why are the Government paying you £200 per week? I know you will have paid more years of contributions than necessary, and am not in any way suggesting that you should lose any of your pension rights, but still, £200 confuses me!
ReplyDeleteI paid into the system for 45 years. They came up with a figure I was entitled to. I paid into a private pension scheme for five years as well, now I get £20 a week from that.
DeleteOn the day it was reported the world population will shortly reach 8 billion, Dr Paul Morland, a demographer, appeared on the Jeremy Vine show suggesting childless people in the UK should be taxed for not providing the country with future workers as the population ages and is not replaced quickly enough. One of his suggestions was that women who produce a third child should get a celebratory telegram from the Queen! He didn't address the fact that childless people pay for schools, maternity services and children's services without receiving a direct benefit and didn't give any consideration to women who want children but can't conceive. I'm glad to say there was a backlash from listeners.
ReplyDeleteHatred of older people is being stoked by the government and the media. Covid didn't kill enough old people so a new way has to be found to eliminate them. The term "useless eaters" was coined by Henry Kissinger, I believe (now in his nineties, he must have stuffed away a fair amount of food since retirement age).
I was confused by Col's comment - is he saying private pension income should be deducted from the state pension entitlement?
Amanda, Sussex
I did not understand the point that Col was making. Don't know why he was confused.
DeleteI'm not in anyway suggesting that private pensions should be deducted from state pension. My private pension is a lot more per week than my state pension will be (15 months still to wait for that), so if it was deducted I'd end up giving the Government money!
ReplyDeleteWhat confuses me is how the figure of £200 per week was arrived at. My late father in law, who worked from 16 - 65 (49 years) had a state pension of £180 per week, and that was with all the age increases, as he was almost 92 when he died late last year.
I don't understand how your state pension is more than his was!
I can't answer that. I don't know.
DeleteCol maybe Illona is giving a calendar monthly figure and you are working on a 4 or 5 week figure. Just an idea I’m just depressed it’s only £180-£200 a week. I’m 60 so have a few years to go. Who am I kidding. By the time I retire we’ll probably all be working until we’re 80!!!
DeleteHi Deborah. The future is in the balance at the moment. I think we have to prepare for all eventualities. Sadly the world monetary system is heading for complete meltdown. The way it is going we don't even know if the money we own now will be worth anything. If they keep pushing towards a world wide digital currency, we become pawns in their master plan, to be manipulated as they see fit.
DeleteAll I can suggest, Deborah, is if you have to keep working make sure it is something you enjoy doing, a job of your choosing. When I stopped working I decided that time was worth more than money. I chose to manage on less because that was an exciting challenge to me.
If you still have a mortgage pay it off as soon as you can. That was a weight lifted from my shoulders and freed up my income for other things. Don't despair, all is not completely lost. There is a lot you can do from now on. Don't look at it with defeatist eyes, rise to the challenge, remember the song, 'I will survive'.
Just to add to Col's comments. I think it is a mistake to compare one persons pension entitlements to someone else's. I have friends who get a lot more pension than I do. That doesn't bother me. Everyone is different, everyone's work pattern is different. I am only interested in what comes into my bank account.
DeleteI think your late father in law had a pretty good deal. He had 26 years of Government pensions paid to him. If you want to compare, think of all those people who died a few short years into their retirement.
Oh, I don't need telling about people dying young and losing out on their pensions. My own father died at the age of sixty one, and never even got to draw a penny of his state pension.
DeletePersonally I think women who became entitled to their state pension at the age of sixty should consider themselves very lucky indeed, there are those of us who will be waiting seven years longer for our state pension.
Oh yes, people are assuming I'm a man because of my user name, I'm not male, never have been, and have no wish to be. I've been married for almost forty years, and am a mother and grandmother.
Thank you Col. I suppose your user name could be short for Coleen and not Colin. That shows how important it is to use a real name, or at least one that is close to it which indicates whether a person is male or female.
DeleteYes, I suppose I am lucky that my mother and father had sex at the right time in 1948. There is an element of luck in all aspects of life. Like my mother dying of a heart attack at 64, and my father also dying of a heart attack years before at the age of 46. Neither of them got to draw a pension, but I don't feel bitter about that. Just sad that they weren't able enjoy their retirement.
You will be alright, with a bungalow in Cheshire and a flat in Buxton. A nice little investment you have there.
That’s what we are doing Illona. I’ve been following your blog since the beginning. At least I think I have. I’ve picked up lots of tips from you but I also come from a thrifty family anyway. In fact my nickname at school was Thrifty. Back then I hated it. Now I realise I was probably a bit of a trend setter as it’s now, if not fashionable (for want of a better word), a definite necessity.
DeleteCol is a derivative of my name, I've been called Col since I was a baby, by family, friends, teachers, work colleagues, even our Dr knows me as Col (although I see them very, very rarely).
DeleteI'm well aware that we'll be alright in our retirement, but we worked damned hard for what we have, and the fact that the government are making me wait until I'm sixty six for my state pension grates terribly. I'm losing approximately £46,000 in pension payments, very annoying! I worked non stop, full time, five months off as maternity leave, arranged our shifts to cover childcare as much as we could, but still paid a fortune out to private nurseries and then childminders, and then get deprived of £46,000 by the government. It was a labour government which raised the pension age for women to 65, and the tories are adding extra years on all the time. Am I bitter? Damn right I am!
Back at the start of 2020, before CoVid was thing and there was just a nasty virus sweeping through certain countries, I joked that it was targeted at the elderly because it would cut back on the pensions being paid. Remember the massive number of deaths in the elderly in Italy, when the bodies were stored in football stadiums?
ReplyDeleteEuropean pensions are high and benefits are more generous than in North America. My government pension when I claim it in three years will be nowhere near 200 Sterling a week. I will only receive basic healthcare and will be required to pay for supplemental insurance if I want to have dental care and things like prescriptions and partial coverage on glasses.
There was a report on the 'net that quickly disappeared. Some boffin tracked the number of pensions paid to the over 80s in China in 2018, 2019, 2020. There were a huge number of people missing from the reports. Higher than would have been expected due to natural causes. But then remember, China only claimed to loose 3000 people that year.
I still believe it was a government plan, an experiment gone horribly wrong with farther reaching effects than the powers that be thought would happen.
Interesting comments you make. Thank you. I don't recall seeing any pictures of dead bodies stored in Italy. Perhaps there were and I missed them. The pictures of people falling down dead in China were exposed as fake.
DeleteThe way our National Health is going, we won't be looked after in old age, and will have to pay for some treatments just as you do.
My thoughts on your last sentence. There is a plan, but it's not the Governments who are pushing it forward. They are following the plan set out for them. They are following orders. The nasty virus gave them a window of opportunity to re shape the world monetary system. Not my words, their words. The experiment hasn't gone horribly wrong, it is going according to plan.
Watch what happens next. All countries in the Western World will be steered in the same direction. Mask wearing will come back, it's starting again in New Zealand. Restrictions on movement will be pushed, all in the name of climate change, and the green agenda. The experiment continues until 2030. It's all on the WEF web site.