[Politics] Are baby boomers taxed enough?

[Weststander]

that aquired wealth is savings, pensions and property. you want to steal that? what gets me is the naive assumption they didn't go through any sort of hardships, as if there weren't high inflation, recessions, high salary multiple mortgages. many simply have some savings, or bought a good house because they didn't spend every penny earnt on fancy coffee and multiple weekend breaks a year. f***'em though eh, because you want that and the cheap house


of course they will, because they'll work, have savings, build pensions and have property. and they'll be inheriting all the boomer savings and property.

Do you remember credit controls? We waited for my Dad outside the Alliance BS in Duke Street Brighton in 1978, as the manager grilled him for hours before granting a remortgage.

Although in business, he didn’t take an overseas holiday until he was 40. Meals out were the archetypal Bernie Inns twice a year.

The multi overseas holidays per year and eating out several times a week phenomena, have been accelerating since the 80’s. Many young people now live this way, imho partly because buying a home seems too unobtainable, but there’s also I want everything right now mindset. Travelling numbers I think are now up to 2019 levels. In the 80’s and 90’s weekends away were to English cities, perhaps Bruges or Amsterdam, in cheap accomodation. Now anywhere in Europe.

My older brothers ran bangers bought from Shoreham Car Auctions for a £100 a piece, coat hangers the makeshift radio aerials. Then in 2000 I worked with a 19 year old girl who bought a new Micra, then a new VW Beetle.

Huge materialism changes over a few decades.

 

[DavidinSouthampton]

Those that work hard and drop the entitlement will.

there are some (quite a few) whose parents pay for them to go to very expensive schools, finance them through University and help them in their careers with contacts and so on. That doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t work hard, but some will sail through despite their own incompetence.
I was at Oxford in the 70s - a mere grammar school boy in the College with the 2nd highest public school intake in the University at 80%. And I am well aware that, although things have changed for the better, levelling up is a joke!

 

[Weststander]

It's not even a debate that the next generations are getting a worse deal. Tuition fees, grants, prescription fees, house prices, final salary pensions, NHS dentists. Poor sods will probably never retire. The population is ageing and its a massive problem.

I've no malice against anyone that was lucky enough to have those advantages I've listed above - I've had some and more myself - but the inability of some to even recognise that a typical Gen Z will never have the luxuries in old age is a bugbear of mine. Even on this thread people talk about "saving for a deposit" as if 30 grand and rent at the same time is a piece of piss if you cancel Netflix.

Final salary pensions - the public sector still have them and they’re fantastic. I’ve rarely met anyone in their 50’s upwards from the private sector who has a meaningful one. I do know loads age 66 upwards living on £11k a year.
Dentists - they all went private and are wealthy, a long time ago.
Uni maintenance grants weren’t available for me in 1984, they were means tested. The moment Major/Blair decided that my uni cohort of just 1/7th should become 55%, the whole thing needed some form of self funding.

Housing in southern England is THE bummer. We need millions more homes, yet every government and planning authority sides for votes with selfish nimbies who don’t give a xxxx about those needing homes. Supply and demand has given us house prices 7x higher than in 1995.

 

[Silverhatch]

Boomer here with two Gen Zs. Older parents who were war combatants shaped my formative years. University & Thatcher/Regan shaped my working years; especially the deregulation of financial markets and wholesale shift to service industries. Zs appear to think very differently on a vast range of Boomer-inspired cultural/societal norms. Hopefully they’ll do something about the hideous inequalities in this world and will finally f*** into the weeds the horrific public dinosaur boomer figures still stinking out the world’s political landscape.

 

[beorhthelm]

It's not even a debate that the next generations are getting a worse deal. Tuition fees, grants, prescription fees, house prices, final salary pensions, NHS dentists. Poor sods will probably never retire. The population is ageing and its a massive problem.

the we do something about the tuition fees, house prices etc. lets build the necessary half million homes a year, rather than objecting to every development. solve the problem rather than punish a group out of envy.

this whole idea of taking the wealth of boomers wouldn't address any problem faced by the younger generations, it would just be squandered and frittered away in social programmes. they wouldnt see a direct benefit.

 

[Iggle Piggle]

the we do something about the tuition fees, house prices etc. lets build the necessary half million homes a year, rather than objecting to every development. solve the problem rather than punish a group out of envy.

this whole idea of taking the wealth of boomers wouldn't address any problem faced by the younger generations, it would just be squandered and frittered away in social programmes. they wouldnt see a direct benefit.

Where I live, we are knocking down housing to build a 3rd train line to London that won't be used or the lads will no doubt be on strike again. Marvelous.

 

[dsr-burnley]

It's not even a debate that the next generations are getting a worse deal. Tuition fees, grants, prescription fees, house prices, final salary pensions, NHS dentists. Poor sods will probably never retire. The population is ageing and its a massive problem.

I've no malice against anyone that was lucky enough to have those advantages I've listed above - I've had some and more myself - but the inability of some to even recognise that a typical Gen Z will never have the luxuries in old age is a bugbear of mine. Even on this thread people talk about "saving for a deposit" as if 30 grand and rent at the same time is a piece of piss if you cancel Netflix.

When I see the student union bars closing down for lack of business, I'll believe that students are short of money.

Can havig the option of going to university but having to pay tuition fees, be considerably worse than not having the university option at all?

The idea that older people should be taxed at a different rate from younger people is clearly a non-starter. So if the idea is to tax people (all people) more in order to remove their wealth, then it's going to kick the ladder away from the younger people before they have even got on it!

(And the post-war generation didn't have to bother with saving for a house deposit while renting at the same time, because the post-war generation by and large lived with their parents until they had saved up. Sometimes even after marriage, they were living with their parents, because they hadn't saved.

But then, what this thread is about is not comparing the wealth of the young with the wealth of the old 40 years ago. It's about comparing the wealth of the young in 40 years time with what the old have now, and guessing what might happen.

 

[Jimmy Grimble]

Final salary pensions - the public sector still have them and they’re fantastic. I’ve rarely met anyone in their 50’s upwards from the private sector who has a meaningful one. I do know loads age 66 upwards living on £11k a year.
Dentists - they all went private and are wealthy, a long time ago.
Uni maintenance grants weren’t available for me in 1984, they were means tested. The moment Major/Blair decided that my uni cohort of just 1/7th should become 55%, the whole thing needed some form of self funding.

Housing in southern England is THE bummer. We need millions more homes, yet every government and planning authority sides for votes with selfish nimbies who don’t give a xxxx about those needing homes. Supply and demand has given us house prices 7x higher than in 1995.

Final salary pensions are gone for the current/next generation of workers in the public sector.

 

[Berty23]

Ffs. I just wrote a long explanation of why I think capital gains should be paid on property increases but it crashed.

In summary. My folks bought a place 2.5 times my dad’s income in 1980 for about 16k. It is now worth close to a million quid. So someone wanting to buy it would need 100k deposit and a wage of about 400k if borrowing 2.5 times. Clearly not happening in many cases. It is being clever and working hard earning all this free money is it. Ffs. It is just luck.

If not capital gains then it should be inheritance tax. Parents divorced and between them own three houses now worth a combined 1.2 million at a guess. My dad’s pension is more than my wage (which is over 50k). My brother and sister plus myself should get nailed for inheritance tax. Why should we get lots of benefit because my parents made so much cash just by living in a sodding house?

I would love to hear where final salary pensions exist In public sector. Linked to Average wage in civil service.

 

[Berty23]

there are some (quite a few) whose parents pay for them to go to very expensive schools, finance them through University and help them in their careers with contacts and so on. That doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t work hard, but some will sail through despite their own incompetence.
I was at Oxford in the 70s - a mere grammar school boy in the College with the 2nd highest public school intake in the University at 80%. And I am well aware that, although things have changed for the better, levelling up is a joke!

Independent schools are an excellent way for boomers to avoid tax. They are charities so by paying for their grandkids to go they can ensure that not only will they not have to pay as much inheritance tax but they can also ensure their grandkids get a leg up. All paid for by money gained by just owning a house. Well done them. That takes really hard work.

 

[Berty23]

Do you remember credit controls? We waited for my Dad outside the Alliance BS in Duke Street Brighton in 1978, as the manager grilled him for hours before granting a remortgage.

Although in business, he didn’t take an overseas holiday until he was 40. Meals out were the archetypal Bernie Inns twice a year.

The multi overseas holidays per year and eating out several times a week phenomena, have been accelerating since the 80’s. Many young people now live this way, imho partly because buying a home seems too unobtainable, but there’s also I want everything right now mindset. Travelling numbers I think are now up to 2019 levels. In the 80’s and 90’s weekends away were to English cities, perhaps Bruges or Amsterdam, in cheap accomodation. Now anywhere in Europe.

My older brothers ran bangers bought from Shoreham Car Auctions for a £100 a piece, coat hangers the makeshift radio aerials. Then in 2000 I worked with a 19 year old girl who bought a new Micra, then a new VW Beetle.

Huge materialism changes over a few decades.

When you say “seems to unobtainable” about owning a home. It implies you think it is simply a mindset.

Please explain how you think someone on 25k can save a 20k deposit when they are paying 1k a month in rent before any other living expenses. Bear in mind that if a graduate they pay something like 9% tax on earning over 25k on top of all other taxes.

I am very lucky. I was last free year of uni so didn’t have massive debts. I simply can’t see how any young person can save a deposit unless get lots of help from parents. And I don’t means a few months living rent free (which only works if they are close to work anyway).

I have no idea how people think they are supposed to afford to buy. Then when they save a deposit the house prices have gone up loads and they need bigger deposit to buy a crapper house. This is why young people are not having kids and we are facing a demographic time bomb.

 

[Jimmy Grimble]

Ffs. I just wrote a long explanation of why I think capital gains should be paid on property increases but it crashed.

In summary. My folks bought a place 2.5 times my dad’s income in 1980 for about 16k. It is now worth close to a million quid. So someone wanting to buy it would need 100k deposit and a wage of about 400k if borrowing 2.5 times. Clearly not happening in many cases. It is being clever and working hard earning all this free money is it. Ffs. It is just luck.

If not capital gains then it should be inheritance tax. Parents divorced and between them own three houses now worth a combined 1.2 million at a guess. My dad’s pension is more than my wage (which is over 50k). My brother and sister plus myself should get nailed for inheritance tax. Why should we get lots of benefit because my parents made so much cash just by living in a sodding house?

I would love to hear where final salary pensions exist In public sector. Linked to Average wage in civil service.

These two Twitter threads from excellent journalists linked to what you’re saying:

 

[Berty23]

More on the demographic time bomb.

I hear lots of boomers say “if you can’t afford kids then don’t have them” so now people are not. The data is genuinely scary. With those in 20s and 30s unable to afford a home and therefore start a family where are the workers coming from? So in 20 years when the remaining boomers are very old who will be the workers paying their pensions? Genuinely it is a huge issue that has such strong links to cost of housing it is a no brainer to make it more affordable.

If I get a chance tomorrow I will share data on this. We should be taxing the boomers sitting on massive pots of gold due to property prices and helping young families. And no this is not me. My kids are teenagers. I was lucky and got into property just in time and benefitted from low interest rates. This is for the current 20/30 year olds thinking of starting a family but decide they can’t afford it. The country needs them to have babies so offering free childcare for all would be a VERY worthwhile investment. Also increasing the child benefit thresholds that have sat at 50-60k for over a decade for massive drag on those.

It is genuinely nuts that this is not a bigger story. Without babies now the country is screwed in 30 years unless we get lots of immigration, which is ironically hated (relatively and obviously on average) by boomers.

 

[clapham_gull]

Housing in southern England is THE bummer. We need millions more homes, yet every government and planning authority sides for votes with selfish nimbies who don’t give a xxxx about those needing homes. Supply and demand has given us house prices 7x higher than in 1995.

Housing is the huge issue. I have been incredibly lucky because of age and I think about it all the time. It I was ten years younger it would have been a completely different scenario.

I scraped enough together to get a mortgage on a flat Clapham around 2000 for £132,000. Since the prices double up here in a few years, two properties later I'm embarrassed what my house is worth.

Was on the phone today trying to sort out an insurance policy my later mother had taken out and the bloke on the phone ten years younger than me was still renting.

Over ten years younger than him, I was quite easily on the property ladder in London.

The comment about taxing people on the value of their property won't work. What needs to happen is for the value of property to come down.

Sorry Nimbies, the only way that is going to happen is to build more houses and lots of them.

 

[Berty23]

My comment on taxing on property values was more about inheritance tax but also we need to close loopholes people have for avoiding capital gains and you could apply huge capital gains on second home owners. Make it pointless to make money out of property. State could run the rental market or have it heavily regulated so only certain level of profit/capital gains is possible.

I know lots of people at work who are trapped renting. Now rents going up because interest is. So they are having to fork out even more to pay off someone else’s debt. It is insane.

 

[GT49er]

Damn. I forgot the holidays abroad. I didn't catch my first plane till I was 35!

Haven't flown anywhere at all yet - let alone for a holiday!

 

[Berty23]

The funny thing about flights abroad and the boomer line of “I didn’t do it until I was x years old” yes but then that generation started the boom of package holidays and taking their kids abroad. Then throw it back at those kids.

I can’t believe anyone who celebrates things being worse in their day. Surely every generation wants the next generation to have it better don’t they? Otherwise it suggests they are jealous of their kids.

Given how bad things are for young people these days this could be the first generation worse off than their parents. Well played everyone.

We all know what the boomers have done to the long term prospects of the country too. But let’s not bring this back to the B word that boomers were, again on average, supporters of.

Not a generation that will be looked back on positively overall, I don’t think.

 

[clapham_gull]

My comment on taxing on property values was more about inheritance tax but also we need to close loopholes people have for avoiding capital gains and you could apply huge capital gains on second home owners. Make it pointless to make money out of property. State could run the rental market or have it heavily regulated so only certain level of profit/capital gains is possible.

I know lots of people at work who are trapped renting. Now rents going up because interest is. So they are having to fork out even more to pay off someone else’s debt. It is insane.

Inheritance tax wouldn't be an issue if property was affordable and personally I don't think you should "double tax" people on things they have bought or want to pass on.

Just need to build more houses.

It's the issue multiple governments have skirted round. The market will sort out rents if there is more competition.

You can put in rent controls, but it's somewhat meaningless if the houses aren't there.

 

[Berty23]

Inheritance tax wouldn't be an issue if property was affordable and personally I don't think you should "double tax" people on things they have bought or want to pass on.

Just need to build more houses.

It's the issue multiple governments have skirted round. The market will sort out rents if there is more competition.

You can put in rent controls, but it's somewhat meaningless if the houses aren't there.

It is not double tax though. My folks have made hundreds of thousands on property. It isn’t taxed until second home. So you could buy a house for 20k and leave a million. All just by complete luck. No inheritance tax if they stayed together is there? They have divorced so it is different but if parents make a million quid then me, my brother and sister could each get over 300k and they never paid any tax on it (council tax doesn’t count here). They are not geniuses, just lucky.

Many people working harder than people who get a leg onto housing market and build property portfolio and just sit there making profit by doing sod all. It is really bad.

 

[clapham_gull]

It is not double tax though. My folks have made hundreds of thousands on property. It isn’t taxed until second home. So you could buy a house for 20k and leave a million. All just by complete luck. No inheritance tax if they stayed together is there? They have divorced so it is different but if parents make a million quid then me, my brother and sister could each get over 300k and they never paid any tax on it (council tax doesn’t count here). They are not geniuses, just lucky.

Many people working harder than people who get a leg onto housing market and build property portfolio and just sit there making profit by doing sod all. It is really bad.

How does inheritance tax address the lack of housing ?

How does inheritance tax affect the value of a house ?

How does rent control address the lack of housing ?

How does stopping someone building up a property portfolio address the lack of housing ?

The only thing that is going to bring house and rent prices down is by increasing the supply. For a number of home owners this is unpopular, firstly it means their home won't double in price in ten years and secondly they might have to get used to having more neighbours. Successive governments have pandered to them.

The UKs population has risen by 8 million since 2000 alone. Meanwhile the supply of houses has decreased.

Planning law needs to be ripped up and started again and we are going to have to get used to it.