Comments by "Clogs" (@clogs4956) on "Starmer Caused An Outrage‼️" video.

  1. Three years, two months and five days to official retirement age here (not that I’m counting…). God and genetics willing, I’ll be able to continue working this period. Labour government willing, I won’t have to keep working in order to pay for freeloaders, grifters and foreign nationals who have their hands held out for freebies.
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  2. Let me explain for those who don’t fully follow this conversation. There are Contributory Benefits and non-Contributory benefits. National Insurance is the key. It’s insurance against periods of ill health or longterm disability that reduce the ability to earn or stop someone working at all; it’s also an insurance against periods of unemployment; and a retirement pension insurance viz living long enough to no longer be required in the workforce. You pay into the scheme, you are insured, and your payments secure both current claims for Contributory Benefits and support Non-Contributory Benefit funds. Non-Contributory Benefits are paid to those who have not contributed to the insurance scheme, or haven’t contributed enough to secure a Contributory Benefit, and do not have sufficient funds to live on. Again, paid out to the sick, disabled, unemployed or aged. These Benefits are often supplemented by Council Tax reductions, free prescriptions (medical, dental, optic), and so forth. Ironically, Non-Contributory Benefits can be more lucrative than Contributory… It’s possible that making everything means-tested will result in those with assets being excluded from the pension they’ve paid into and, as a consequence, forced to sell anything they can in order to survive until such time as they fall below the savings threshold (currently £16k per individual or couple). Some people have to do this already, because the state pension isn’t brilliant and they have extra costs to cover e.g. care home fees. Making everything means-tested would most likely result in lots of houses being put on the market in steady supply, while the sellers downsize to rented flats, if there’s enough, although rent prices could then go sky high. Means-testing state pension is, therefore, potentially disastrous for the economy.
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