State pension: 65% below the poverty line

From time to time someone complains that the state pension, together with the means-tested part, is becoming less and less adequate to cover the most obvious, basic costs of keeping physically alive.

A pension of £10,000 a year will barely cover the basics such as food, fuel and utility bills. It is below the minimum income standard set by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which estimates somebody needs at least £14,400 a year to escape poverty....The full basic state pension is £97.65 a week [i.e. £5078 per annum]. (Daily Mail, 30 March 2011.)

The fact that a means-tested supplement to the pension is available will never be any good to me, or to anyone who is here now, because we would not apply for a means-tested benefit even if we became eligible for it. One simply would never have anything to do with what could only be got by exposing oneself to scrutiny and ‘assessment’.

Throughout the four decades when I paid in voluntary contributions for myself, and encouraged everyone here to do the same, I did so because the eventual pension would be ‘as of right’ and not to any extent means-tested, even if what was paid out ‘as of right’ was at the whim of the government.

I see also from today's Mail that pensioners with savings who go into ‘care homes’ will find themselves paying more, to subsidise those who do not have to pay fees because they do not have savings. That is better, at any rate, than making all pensioners, whether they are in ‘care homes’ or not, pay a tax to the government to subsidise those who go into these ‘homes’, as was at one time suggested.

Making people pay for living in these prison-homes is all right if that is really what they choose for themselves, i.e. provided they cannot be forced to go into a state (or private) death camp against their will, but can be left alone to starve to death at home if they prefer. Unfortunately, I believe this is not the case, and pensioners can easily be ‘sectioned’, or the current equivalent thereof, by a couple of authorised medical sadists (doctors). Even if not legally coerced in this way, I doubt whether many in ‘care homes’ could be said to have chosen what they are being forced to undergo.

Sharing the pain

Motorists hit by the soaring cost of petrol could be spared the 1p a litre rise in fuel duty due to come into force in April. Sharing the pain of rising oil prices between the Treasury and the motorist through the ‘fair fuel stabiliser’ is also still being considered, it was confirmed yesterday. Cancelling the 1p tax increase would cost the Treasury around £600million in the next financial year at a time of acute belt-tightening in the public finances. But Chancellor George Osborne is planning to help cash-strapped motorists either by scrapping the rise or by reforming the fuel tax system through the stabiliser. (Daily Mail, 28 January 2011.)

Sharing the pain between the Treasury and the motorist? What does that mean but sharing it between pensioners and younger people, whether taxpayers or on benefits? Or, actually, sparing those on benefits from any pain at all, and making sure that it is only pensioners, university graduates and the middle class (so-called) in general who are squeezed until the pips squeak. If the Treasury subsidises motorists at all, it will have to take the money to do so away from some other sector of the population. We know that pensioners are the preferred milch cows (from, among other things, David Willetts’s book The Pinch).

The state can alter the terms when it wishes

Of course all discussion about pensions these days is about who really ‘needs’ or ‘deserves’ anything. Of what relevance is it that some decades ago state pensions were supposed to be determined by contributions? Why should retrospective legislation matter anyway, nobody thinks it does now.

Such issues in themselves could easily take a book to deal with.

They like to increase state pensions, if at all, by reference to the CPI (Consumer Price Index) rather than the RPI (Retail Price Index). The RPI is more realistic than the CPI, but not much, because it leaves out much of what is really essential, such as servants, and going abroad to get things which in this country can only be got by exposing oneself to abuse by the medical ‘profession’. (A live-in housekeeper now costs £75K per annum.)

However, what makes the CPI even less realistic is that the cost of housing, renting or mortgage, is stripped out. Perhaps it is thought justifiable to use this index because ‘housing benefit’ is available to those who are prepared to expose themselves to the scrutiny of agents of the collective, and are able to prove to their satisfaction that they have no saved or inherited capital, etc.

Whenever a ‘benefit’ is provided by the state on abusive terms it can be ‘stripped out’ from the supposed ‘cost of living’ – meaning cost of keeping physically alive without being able to do anything.

So the cost of ‘medicine’ can be stripped out by those in charge of pension legislation, as well as ‘housing’, because you are supposed to find the NHS an acceptable substitute for what you might previously have been able to get by paying for it.

When the state pension became means-tested, the part you had of right, with no questions asked, started to fall in real terms, even more than it had been doing. In effect this meant that the ‘basic’ state pension itself became means-tested, since those pensioners who qualified for the new ‘benefit’ – pension credit etc. were also eligible for other ‘benefits’. So, in the eyes of those in charge of pension legislation, there was no need to consider, as part of the cost of living of un-means-tested pensioners, anything which they could get as a ‘benefit’ if they became ‘means-tested’ pensioners who qualified for other ‘benefits’.

The impact of increased fuel costs on pensioners is another cost which the pension legislators can disregard because those pensioners who qualify for the supplementary pension are able to go on the ‘social tariff’. (See earlier post.)

Another fuel-cost reducing ‘benefit’ for which those who qualify for certain other benefits are eligible, including those qualifying for the means-tested part of the pension, is a loft insulation allowance to cover the cost of insulating your house so that your energy consumption, and hence fuel bills, will be reduced. But those who only receive the ‘basic’ (non-means-tested) part of the state pension do not qualify for this.

The state pension was the only ‘benefit’ available ‘as of right’ once the qualifying contributions had been paid, and no doubt this fact was resented, and the intention was and is still to let it ‘wither on the vine’.

When the Crossman Scheme was introduced in 1970, the aim was supposed to be to provide a state pension of about half the average national wage. The average national wage is now about £25K, and if Charles McCreery and I were each receiving half of it, we would have £25K between us with which to continue working towards setting up our independent institution.

It would certainly grease the wheels better than the £10K we now receive between us, although it would not go far towards setting up and running an academic institution, in which to commence our proper forty-year academic careers.

When I was at the Society for Psychical Research in the early sixties, ‘graduated contributions’ were deducted from my tiny salary and I was sent pieces of paper telling me that I would receive so many pence a year extra (earnings-related) pension one day.

This certainly gave the impression that the eventual pension was supposed to be comparable with that provided by a commercial contributory scheme, as did the fact that businesses could only ‘contract out’ of the state pension system by setting up a really generous and well-run alternative.

What does it matter what impression was given, or even what statements were made? The idea lapsed long ago that an individual needed to know what was legal and what was not, so that he could plan his affairs in view of his own interests as he conceived them to be.

Arthur Seldon, discussing a 1957 report entitled ‘National Superannuation’, says:

The new graduated pension was not designed to have a financial fund, as those on which occupational schemes are based. Then what was to be the pensioner’s guarantee? ‘... confidence can be placed in the survival in perpetuity of a government in Britain.’ From a political scientist of Mr. Crossman’s stature, this is a claim that not everyone will accept ... ‘The State,’ said Aneurin Bevan in 1954, ‘is a sovereign body and can alter the terms of the contract when it wishes without asking anybody. It did in 1931, and it has done it over and over again.’ (Arthur Seldon, The Great Pensions ‘ Swindle’, 1970, pp. 67-68.)

The relevant departments of my unfunded independent university are effectively censored and suppressed. They have been prevented for decades from publishing analyses of the complex issues involved, while misleading and tendentious representations of them have continued to flood out from socially recognised sources. I hereby apply, for financial support on a scale at least adequate for one active and fully financed university research department, to all universities, and to corporations or individuals who consider themselves to be in a position to give support to socially recognised academic establishments.

A very poor deal

The Great Pensions ‘Swindle’ by Arthur Seldon (*) was published in 1970. I have never found this book at all easy to read, as Arthur Seldon was himself a politician and finds various arguments for and against different forms of taxation and redistribution far more meaningful than I do, as they depend on many unexamined assumptions.

However, in the course of discussing some past debates, he draws attention to two fundamental weaknesses in the state pensions system.

(1) That universal pensions could not be affordable at the proposed level if the annual out-payments had to be taken from taxation on a year-by-year basis, i.e. if no cumulative fund were built up to provide a capital basis, out of the income of which pension payments would be made.

Beveridge, in 1941, said at one point:

“It seemed to me right to make pensions as of right ... genuinely contributory; for pensions there must be a substantial period of contribution.”

The “substantial period” he recommended in the Report was 20 years. This advice [i.e. to build up a fund] was ignored. (p. 58)

People were misled, at least initially, into believing that they were paying into a contributory scheme, and that what they eventually received would reflect what they paid in.

However, Arthur Seldon’s book makes it clear that this was never in line with the ideas of many politicians. Should people be able to get better state pensions by contributing more? That was a controversial idea even then, and by now surely few would support it openly.

(2) The other way in which the state pension scheme was always a swindle (on the electorate by the government) was that the contributions paid in would have been enough to pay for much higher pensions. People are seldom aware of the potency of compounding interest, and if money is invested and the interest ploughed back as increments to the original capital, over a period of years the original capital is multiplied by a factor which is surprising to the unsophisticated.

I have done a rough calculation of this effect, and it comes out that if you save one tenth of your salary (assumed constant for simplicity) for 40 out of 45 years, compounded at 5%, then at the end you will have saved a capital sum capable of generating (at 5%) about 75% of your salary in perpetuity. By contrast, what the state currently takes in as National Insurance contributions is well in excess of 10% of people’s salaries, whereas the basic state pension it pays out is equal to only about 20% of the average national wage.

In 1970, Seldon’s comments on the Crossman scheme which was then proposed, included the following:

The only thing that is clear is that most people would be paying, as tax-payers and consumers, more than they think they would as employees. Young people especially will be paying in contributions for 30 or 40 years that could have brought them really high pensions if invested at high yields of interest. (p. 78)

The relevant departments of my unfunded independent university are effectively censored and suppressed. They have been prevented for decades from publishing analyses of the complex issues involved, while misleading and tendentious representations of them have continued to flood out from socially recognised sources. I hereby apply, for financial support on a scale at least adequate for one active and fully financed university research department, to all universities, and to corporations or individuals who consider themselves to be in a position to give support to socially recognised academic establishments.

*Arthur Seldon, The Great Pensions ‘Swindle’, Tom Stacey Books, 1970

The pensions swindle and euthanasia

The Daily Mail is working on the idea that we should not want to live beyond a certain age and should be pleased for the qualified sadists (medical doctors) to do us in when they think fit. Cilla Black does not want to live beyond the age of 75, it is said, and now Max Hastings comes out with ‘Thanks to medical science, most are in better shape than any previous generation of our age.’

The idea is, no doubt, that it is on account of ‘medical science’ that one in six will become a centenarian. If I get there it will certainly not be on account of 'medical science, as I have always shunned the medical ‘profession’, which has become ever more stupid, unprincipled and sadistic over my lifetime (as I gather from accounts of other people’s experiences).

When IQ was admitted to exist, it was also admitted that high IQ was correlated with longevity, whether as a result of genetic factors or because people with a realistic and forethoughtful approach to life were more likely to avoid the hazards that often led to death at earlier ages.

Most of us would say that we shall not want to continue if we lose our minds: it is tragic to see very old people who have lost contact with reality vegetating for years in the lounge of a care home, head drooping or staring blankly into space. The irony is that when we reach this state, we become incapable of making rational decisions about our own future or anything else.

Better by far (in my opinion) to have no ‘care homes’ at all, at least none financed by the state. What happened before the onset of the Welfare State was that if a person became too dysfunctional to support himself, and had not enough savings of his own or supportive relatives, then he succumbed to adverse conditions and was found dead at home or on the streets without having fallen into the clutches of the medical ‘profession’. Conscious or subconscious motivation of his own may have gone into his failure to provide for and protect himself, but he was not, on the whole, exposed to having decisions made for him by doctors concerning whether it was in his interests to go on living.

No doubt there is a hidden link to the pensions swindle here. Governments do not wish to go on paying the pensions that people were promised, so they need people to agree to euthanasia. Journalists such as Max Hastings, or entertainers such as Cilla Black, must therefore give a strong hint to the population that it would be sensible to let doctors pull the plug when deemed appropriate. They must provide a (notional) example to others by saying they might choose this option for themselves, though they need not necessarily stick to their suggestion when it actually comes to it. I believe it is what modern politicians and economists would call ‘a nudge’.

After two-thirds of a century of Welfare State ideology more people than ever before are reaching the age of 100. They live longer because, among other things, they are provided with money to buy food whether they could otherwise pay for it themselves or not, and medical treatment for all diseases, including obesity and alcoholism, whether or not they could or would pay for it themselves. Also they are prevented by legislation from exposing themselves to various risks which they might not themselves have avoided. And so they are at less of a disadvantage in comparison with the few who would live to a hundred anyway on account of high IQs and/or realism and forethought. Doesn’t that sound fair?

But then, having protected the dysfunctional from the consequences of their accident-prone ways of life, there is too large a population to be provided for out of taxation, so all must have their life-span curtailed, including those who are still functional and would have been so anyway. What could be fairer than that?

From cradle to grave – the social workers will be waiting to whip away your baby if they think there is a risk you will not look after it in the right way; the doctors will be waiting to put you down if they think you would prefer not to go on living, or would prefer not to if you had the right attitudes.

Socialism is incompatible with individual liberty. Capitalism alone protects it.

The absurdity of the ‘social tariff’

Recently there was a proposal that the winter fuel allowance, paid to those over 65, should be effectively means-tested by being paid only to those who already qualified for some other means-tested benefit. Those receiving the basic state pension, but not the supplementary income support, would stop receiving it, thus noticeably increasing the disadvantage of not qualifying for the supplement.

Probably this was considered too obvious a form of means-testing, so this benefit (winter fuel allowance) was continued as payable to all over a certain age, regardless of their assets. But what has now been surreptitiously introduced is another form of energy-related concession, which will (effectively) be means-tested: the so-called ‘social tariff’ of the energy companies.

One is now informed that if one is over 60 one ‘should be better off’ on the ‘social tariff’, though one can only find out if one is eligible by ringing up one of the energy companies. So now, presumably, there will be less need for pensions to be adequate, since all who cannot ‘afford’ energy will not have to pay for it. This will therefore probably drop out of the ‘cost of living’ used to assess pensioners’ needs, in the same way that the cost of healthcare has dropped out of it, since you are supposed to regard the ‘free’ NHS as an acceptable alternative to medication for which you might formerly have wished to pay.

No, the newspaper says, if you are on the ‘social tariff’ the supplier will not worry if you are late paying your bill but (although the newspaper does not say so) they may of course notify the social services to see if you would not be better off in a ‘care home’. As, of course, they might when you make your first telephone call to them to find out whether you are eligible for the ‘social tariff’ .

When the state pension started to be effectively ‘means-tested’, and to ‘wither on the vine’, I thought that however far it fell below one’s real needs it would at least have to preserve some relationship to the cost of the most basic physical needs. But no. Never underestimate the cunning of governments.

How about food and clothing suppliers being made to set up ‘social tariffs’ as well, so that the cost of food and clothing will vary according to the means of the purchaser?

Then it would not matter if the basic state pension is clearly inadequate to pay for the costs of living in food and clothing, as well as gas and electricity.

More on the state's infidelity

I wrote previously about what the government has now announced it will not pay to Christine and Fabian by delaying the age for receiving pensions, although they are both already fully paid up (or very nearly so) after decades of hard work in making qualifying contributions out of a low and often non-existent income without ever getting into debt. Only of very recent years has the threat arisen of changing the pensionable age from that which was known and expected throughout those decades.

Of course, old-fashioned private pension schemes could not get away with breaking their contracts in this way. Perhaps modern ones can if the government legislates that they must. The government itself, of course, can claim that it cannot afford not to without damaging its provisions to the real needs of foreign aid, the medical and educational oppressions, and social interference of every kind. It would not do at all if someone were rewarded for conscientiousness in making voluntary contributions by getting a pension of greater value than the benefits which could be claimed by the unforethoughtful. You might call that elitism.

Recently a new pension scheme was proposed which would not depend at all on contributions made, but only on some years of residence in the country. Those who had made contributions under the old scheme would receive their pensions under the old system, which would be less.

With a bit of delayed reaction time, it started to be suggested that it might not be fair for those who had paid contributions to get less than those who had not, and I think it has now been reluctantly agreed that those who had paid into the old system would get their pensions upgraded to the level of the new system.

The state’s infidelity

copy of a letter to an academic

Apart from means-testing the pensions, i.e. depriving Charles and me together of about £4,000 per annum, maybe more – which we would have been getting if the means-testing had not been introduced – the pensions due to Christine and Fabian have been delayed by a total of 9 years, thus depriving us of at least £50,000 (9 x present pension as reduced by means-testing) which the government should have paid to us if pension qualifying ages had not been retrospectively changed.

Thus the means-testing and change in qualifying ages together have deprived Fabian and Christine of at least £70,000 which they were due to be paid on reaching their former qualifying ages, both being fully paid up, or very nearly so, in terms of qualifying years (i.e. years in which requisite contributions have been made).

This income would not have been adequate to set up a satisfactory residential college with at least one research department, but the future loss of it is a serious drag on our continuing attempts to make progress towards the start of our 40-year adult academic careers.

Can retrospective legislation ever be ‘fair’?

Herewith some brief notes on some of the issues which arise in connection with recent terrible proposals concerning pensioners. I could and should be able to write much more about this and to get it published; only lack of financial support prevents me from doing this. People coming to work here on a voluntary basis would to some extent enable us to do more.

In the Daily Mail of 17 November there is an article about how governments etc. are letting down pensioners by providing them with no way of getting an income out of their savings.

The author of this article suggests that pensioners might be allowed to invest in special bonds paying a ‘decent’ rate of interest, but that the investment should be limited to a maximum of £20,000, so that ‘wealthy’ pensioners would not be able to benefit unfairly by getting an income which they did not really ‘need’. As usual, ‘need’ is defined in a way which implies that no one receiving more than about the level of income support can possibly be in ‘need’ of more.

Of course, most people with some capital must have suffered from the credit crunch, as the powers-that-be wanted them to do, since we know that the aim of modern society is to prevent those who have above average ability from acquiring any freedom of action to go with it.

In another article in the same issue of the Mail, about how pensioners can ‘sensibly’ get more income from their savings, investing in ordinary shares is described as ‘dangerous’. However, it is a lot less so if you have realistic information about what you are doing.

Over the years, we have invited many people to come and live near us so that they could do some work for us on a voluntary or paid basis, and also get the benefit of the information which we receive and discuss, which is relevant to investment and other financial matters.

* * *

The Pensions Minister Steve Webb, defending the raising of the age at which state pensions will be payable, especially for women, has argued that everyone was living longer, so it was ‘only fair’ that they should start to receive their pensions at a later age. This, however, presumes on the modern view of pensions as a ‘contract between the generations’. Originally people were supposed to be paying, with their contributions, for the income that they would eventually receive, which would be paid out of the income of a fund to which they had contributed. In such a situation, of course, the fund would go on being there even after any particular person had stopped drawing from it, for the benefit of future pensioners, and it would be constantly amplified by the contributions of those who did not live long enough to draw on it at all.

In fact, this fund never existed; see the book The Great Pensions Swindle previously referred to. Nevertheless, people were paying contributions into a supposed scheme which had undertaken to produce a pension bearing some relationship to the cost of living, or to the average wage, at a certain definite age, and this was something which people took into account in deciding whether to pay contributions into this scheme or not.

If it was wished to change the age at which pensions would be paid out, on old-fashioned principles it would be necessary to start a completely new scheme which only applied to people who started paying contributions after the new scheme had started. Retrospective legislation, or retrospective change in legislation, is unprincipled, but this is an idea that has been lost sight of.

Ros Altmann, the Director General of Saga, the association for over-50s, has criticised the postponement of the pension age, especially for women, not on the grounds that it is (in effect) retrospective legislation, but because the changes are too rapid and do not give those who are approaching retirement age ‘enough time’ to think about how they can arrange their affairs to compensate for the change.

One might think that an association of people over 50 would have old-fashioned enough ideas to stand up for principles, such as the principle against retrospective legislation. However, the majority of those who are over 50 now have spent most of their lives under the auspices of the modern ideology. In order to have been born before the onset of the Welfare State in 1945, a person would need to be over 65.

A strange remedy

In a recent Daily Mail editorial, under the title ‘The cheats who give welfare a bad name’, there is a reference to the case of an elderly couple, married for almost 50 years, who were found dead in their unheated home during the winter. Their death is ascribed to their having been ‘too proud and independent to accept offers of help from the social services.’

A fictitious pride and independence seems to be the only motivation that subscribers to the modern ideology can consider. It is at least as plausible to suppose that it was a thoroughly sensible sense of self-preservation. The couple could not accept offers of help without exposing themselves to the scrutiny of social workers, and at the age which they had reached they must have been aware of the possibility that they might be considered no longer fit to retain their independence, and might be incarcerated in ‘care’ homes. Very likely, if this had happened, they would have been separated. They may have quite deliberately decided that they would prefer to die together, and at liberty.

I do not mean to suggest that it is only the possibility of separation for married couples which makes the final loss of independence appear to some people as a fate worse than death.

The only realistic way to make situations of this kind significantly less likely is to return to an un-means-tested State pension, at a level that is likely to be adequate both for heating and for domestic help of a non-interfering kind. The cost of adequate pensions could surely be easily met by significantly reducing the army of social workers who now poke and pry into people’s lives, or even eliminating this army altogether.

The Daily Mail would like us to believe that the reluctance of old people to apply for help from the social services has been increased by the ‘rapidly growing army of benefit cheats’. So, the Daily Mail suggests, we must have ‘much tougher and more rigorous assessment of those who seek benefits’.

This will mean insisting on the same standards of efficiency from civil servants as those expected of employees in every well run private company.

It will mean far more rigorous checks on claims – handled with sensitivity so as not to deter those in genuine need.

The only real solution is to abolish the system of benefits completely. Such a system is sure to lead (as it has done) to an ever increasing population of dependents, and an increasing prevalence of dishonesty. (The dishonesty is inevitable, and not necessarily conscious.) Tougher rules are more likely to increase the level of dishonesty than to decrease the number of applicants. As it is, for example, many must apply for unemployment benefit who realise, at least subconsciously, that they have no intention of remaining in a job for more than a few days.

The retrospective pensions swindle

I have a book entitled The Great Pensions Swindle* which, 40 years ago, made some useful points about the likely unreliability of state pensions. The following, however, is unrealistic:

The breaking point is not postponable indefinitely. The resistance to periodic increases in ‘social insurance’ contributions will begin all the sooner when the ‘contributors’ realise they are paying not insurance contributions but an income tax. (p.128)

In fact, no significant realisation arose that “National Insurance” contributions were just a form of income tax, which increased the Government’s current spending money. Otherwise the book anticipates very much what has happened. What happens when a future generation decides it prefers to spend its money on what is fashionable at the time (overseas ‘aid’, social workers, ‘universities’, etc.) rather than providing a former generation with the pension it thought it was paying for? The pensions are 'too expensive'; they are suddenly means-tested, and paid at ever later ages.

Not least, let it be clearly understood that ‘right’ (to the pension) and ‘contract’ are two more good words that have been made misnomers. A ‘right’ to a pension that a man acquires by saving for it is unambiguous. The ‘right’ a man has to an income when he can no longer work is of a different kind. The word has been re-defined to mean a moral right or claim on society. But transfers of income from one age-group, or class, or generation, to another represent decisions by one group, or class, or generation, to help another in time of need. No group, or class, or generation has a ‘right’ in any absolute sense. ...

In civilised parlance ‘contract’ means a voluntary agreement between two parties each of whom thinks it will gain. There is no such voluntary agreement between the generations on pensions. Indeed, there can hardly be one since future generations cannot be consulted; and if they could they would hardly agree since the terms are loaded against them. (pp.129-130)

* * *

Retrospective legislation has become increasingly frequent, and by now no one seems to remember that there was ever anything against it. It used to be said that the individual had a right to know what was legally open to him (in taxation, etc.) so that he could plan his affairs to secure the best outcome in view of his own interests and priorities, as he conceived them to be.

The recent changes in the ages at which state pensions become payable is really an egregious example of retrospective legislation, and directly affects people in as bad a position as we are. If a company which offered pension schemes were suddenly to announce that all its pensions were to be paid two years later, those who had been paying into the schemes might well wish to sue it for breach of contract. When the government does the same thing, no legal redress is available. This has happened recently and seems likely to happen more, so that my junior colleagues’ pensions recede as one approaches them. The age at which one of them will start receiving her pension was first shifted from 60 to 62, and then again to 64. Another’s pension was shifted from 65 to 67, and seems likely to be further delayed to the age of 68.

Thus the state has already deprived us, who are trying to build up towards an adequate academic institutional environment, of seven years’ pension money, i.e. £35K at today’s pension rate.

I have previously pointed out how means-testing of pensions retrospectively reduces the benefit received in return for contributions paid. This means nearly two thousand pounds per person per year. The proposed tax of £20K towards the cost of state ‘nursing care’, whether such care is received or not, was first proposed as a tax on estates on death, but is now suggested as a capital levy to be paid by every pensioner on reaching retirement age. If that were made retrospective, so that it applied to myself as well as to my colleagues, that would represent an additional confiscation of £80K.

There are several other examples of abandonment of principles, and I should be able to write about them at length, because they are actually very serious, although no one else appears to recognise this. If Oxford Forum were provided with adequate funding, we could be writing and publishing analyses on this issue which are currently being ignored in favour of the usual pro-collectivist arguments.

‘We hereby apply for financial support on a scale at least adequate for one active and fully financed research department. We make this appeal to all universities, corporations and individuals who consider themselves to be in a position to give support to socially recognised academic establishments.’ Charles McCreery, DPhil

* Arthur Seldon, The Great Pensions Swindle, Tom Stacey Books, London, 1970.

Snatching winter fu-el

The age at which the elderly can claim winter fuel payments, worth £250 last year for the over-60s and an extra £150 for those over 80, is all but certain to be raised to cut some of the £2.7 billion annual costs. ... The handouts could also be restricted to less well-off pensioners who claim other benefits. (Daily Mail, 18 Aug 2010, from article ‘Bonfire of the middle class benefits’.)

After the state pension had ceased being independent of means-testing, additional payments for specific purposes were introduced from time to time, supposedly to reduce the hardship of those who now received significantly less than those with fewer savings.

But such specific items are vulnerable, and it is now proposed that the winter fuel allowance should be received at a later age than before, and also possibly be paid only to those in receipt of other benefits (i.e. with sufficiently small savings, and receipt of some other benefit to prove it).

Thus the proportion of the pension that is free from means-testing is to be decreased, and the extra percentage which I would receive if my savings were small enough will be increased. At present I would receive 36% more per annum if I were poor enough; if the fuel allowance were made dependent on means-testing, that would increase to about 40%.

As a matter of fact, even if I were eligible for the income supplement I would probably forgo it, and I think that pensioners as a whole should think very seriously before applying for it, since it can only be got by exposing yourself to scrutiny by those who may decide that you are no longer fit to live in independence, but should be incarcerated in a care home for your own good.

Since writing the above

Today, 19 August, I read that it is proposed that winter fuel payments to pensioners should be delayed to the age of 75, which means that those on reduced (means-tested) pensions will have their annual payment cut by about 5%.

There are criticisms that this will cost lives. For those of us who are still trying to get started on our adult careers by building up the capital necessary for an academic institution, it is simply an extra handicap, making an already grim situation just a bit worse.

More about means-testing of pensions

As I was deprived of a means of earning a living, I could not apply for income support (or 'social security'). So I was entirely dependent on building up capital and making gains on it (very hard work) to support myself, and work towards setting up an institutional environment for myself. So on reaching what they like to regard as retirement age, without having been able to start on my real adult career, I have savings built up which reduce my state pension to less than 75% of what it would be if I had sufficiently small savings outside of house ownership.

How could a person who had been deprived of an academic career have avoided this? Well, by accepting the social interpretation of one’s position and allowing them to medicate one into a zombie-like state, as did a certain Somerville graduate, by no means as exceptional as I was, but set on an academic career. (She was certainly no stupider than the average Oxford professor, and was clever enough to have learnt Polish on her own to a useful level.)

When thrown out of Somerville without a research scholarship (in history) she had about twenty jobs, each lasting no more than a fortnight (if I remember rightly). She then invoked the 'aid' of the social services, who diagnosed her, gave her a year’s resident psychiatric treatment, and released her to spend the rest of her life on the streets of Oxford, free from any need to support herself by 'earning a living', but also having surrendered the use of her own mind to the anaesthetising drugs provided by the NHS.

Her pension contributions were automatically paid for her. So she has presumably qualified for the full state pension, and it is unlikely that she had built up any capital, so she would not have lost over a quarter of it as I have done.

So you see one pays for one’s independence, and for even trying to increase it.

Care workers back death tax

Apparently, care workers support bringing in a death tax.

That is to say,

families with assets over a set amount would have to find the money to pay a death duty bill – possibly meaning they have to sell their homes – even if they do not draw on social services care for their ageing relatives ... Ministers released a document insisting that social care experts and charities agreed with their plans for a tax. *

Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they?

What is a ‘care worker’ anyway? People who are agents and beneficiaries of the oppressive society, being paid salaries out of confiscated (public) money to exercise power over people.

One might think, and I do think, that if you have state pensions at all they should not be means-tested and should be adequate to enable a retired person to employ whatever housekeeping and other help they need. But of course there should not be state pensions at all. Deterioration in the direction of total oppression was bound to take place once such a thing had been initiated, even if at the outset there was no suggestion of means-testing, and the possibility of being forced into subjection to ‘aid’ from the NHS did not arise, since there was no NHS.

But now, even if you manage to keep yourself at liberty and do not fall into the clutches of the NHS before you die, it is proposed that your estate should pay a levy on your death as a contribution to the bad and expensive ‘help’ which might have been meted out to you.

* Daily Mail, 20 February 2010 ‘Care workers back death tax, says Burnham'.

Two pensioners left to die

News item: two pensioners found dead.

Old, frail and struggling with the bitter weather, it was obvious that Jean and Derek Randall's lives were at risk. As Mr Randall's health failed and he accepted he could no longer look after his wheelchair-bound wife, a neighbour and the couple's MP contacted social services, the NHS and even Age Concern in the search for a care home place. But, despite weeks of phone calls, no help was provided. Last Thursday a concerned neighbour looked through the couple's letterbox and spotted 76-year-old Mr Randall lying dead in the hallway.

... Last night a neighbour declared: 'I believe they died because everyone who is supposed to care for the elderly in our society did not do it. Everyone passed the buck.' (Daily Mail)

Why were they not popped into a "care home", it is asked – in which they would not be paying guests who were free to leave, but incarcerated dependants of the state? Their lives would not necessarily have been prolonged, they might well have been shortened. And they would have been living at the mercy of other people, and in a decentralised state, possibly drugged out of their minds.

What pensioners need is not "care homes" into which they can be shovelled to end their lives in captivity, but pensions which are not means-tested and sufficient to enable them to employ housekeepers etc. so they can continue to live in freedom without invoking the "aid" of the oppressive society.

"Care homes" run by the state should be abolished, as should state-funded "education".

Tories: honouring a commitment is ‘far too expensive’

I have commented previously on the victimisation of pensioners. They are suitable objects for victimisation because they tend to be relatively middle class. The fact that middle class people are able to live longer, through a combination of forethought, intelligence and prior capital accumulation, is taken as a reason for penalising them. According to the prevailing ideology, it ought not to be possible for them to benefit from these factors compared to other people, because it is unfair.

One of the most appalling features of the anti-pensioner policy programme is means-testing, which I have discussed before. A prior contract between individuals and the state – that they were guaranteed to benefit from contributions they made towards the state retirement fund – has been cavalierly rescinded. Some people, like myself, even made voluntary contributions on this understanding, which is now revealed to have been entirely conditional. More and more of the state pension will be contingent on people having no savings, once again penalising those with forethought, intelligence, etc. The excuse for this is to target increasingly scarce resources at those ‘with the greatest need’.

This ‘need’ argument seems to be becoming the excuse for penalising the majority of potential recipients of state benefits and handouts, with only the alleged ‘underclass’ or ‘underprivileged’ being the approved targets for state spending – though whether even these people truly benefit from any of the ‘services’ designed with them in mind may be doubted.

The Conservative Party, which might have been expected to take a different line on all this, shows little sign of recognising the principle involved. Once upon a time the principle of not reneging on contracts would have formed a natural part of the ethos in this country, and various politicians and spokespersons, particularly from the conservative end of the political spectrum, could have been expected to make reference to it in defence of maintaining (e.g.) the originally planned system of state pensions. No longer, it seems.

David Cameron, the current Conservative Party leader, has some strange priorities. He has said that:

One of the greatest unfairnesses for the elderly [is] that those who [have] worked hard, saved up and done the right thing [have] to pay the full cost of their care home place.

Thus, so long as a pensioner is willing to surrender his independence completely by going into a home, he may be allowed to retain his savings. On the other hand, says Mr Cameron, the Conservatives ‘would not abolish means testing altogether because it would be far too expensive’.

It seems odd that reversing the reneging on a prior contract by the government should be regarded as ‘too expensive’, while all kinds of other schemes to (supposedly) increase ‘social welfare’ are not regarded as too expensive.

What is needed is a return to a situation in which people can, by forethought, avoid becoming dependent on the state, and where they are not penalised for this avoidance either at the time, or later in life. A Conservative government should make this its top priority.

‘The question of ethics with regard to pension policy is one of the issues on which Oxford Forum could be producing fundamental critical analyses if it were provided with adequate funding. We appeal for £2m as initial funding to enable us to write and publish on this and similar issues, which are currently only discussed in the context of pro-collectivist arguments.’ Charles McCreery, DPhil

Penalising foresight and determination

The state pension is to rise by the (unrealistically low) official rate of inflation. ‘Pension credit’ is also to increase, and the Chancellor said the increase in it was above inflation. However, not every pensioner is eligible for pension credit, which is means-tested.

So this year the percentage difference due to means-testing would appear to increase as between those judged to be poor enough and those who have built up some capital by saving to reduce their dependence on retirement.

In the Daily Mail of 25 November 2008, a retired car worker, Bill Jupp, is quoted as saying that pensioners had got ‘next to nothing’ in the Pre-Budget Report.

Bill Jupp added: ‘I’m also very suspicious of the £60 Christmas bonus. I’m sure they’ll be a cut in pensioner’s fuel allowance or something else to pay for it.

‘We are on fixed incomes but our council tax is going up, our food bills are going up and our energy bills are going up. It’s one long nightmare.’

Joe Harris, of lobby group National Pensioners’ Convention, says: ‘Pensioner inflation is double the official figures because older people spend a higher proportion of their income on those items with the fastest rising prices.’

We have heard suggestions that fuel allowances should be targeted towards ‘the poorest’ pensioners who are on ‘pension credit’, and this may well be another way of increasing the percentage difference due to means-testing.

‘The Premier [promised] to hit the middle classes and target the rich if he wins another term’ (Daily Mail 25 November 2008, front page)

When I was thrown out at the end of my ruined ‘education’ with no usable qualification, I was unable to draw income support, and realised that I always would be, unless and until I was able to get back into a proper university career. If I could be recognised as eligible for salaried appointments which it would be possible for me to take up, then I would have been able to draw income support during any hiatus in my career.

But the state pension was supposed to depend on making enough annual payments, even if you were unemployed, so I always paid the annual voluntary contributions for myself and anyone else associated with me, however little income we had.

This, I reckoned, would at least be reducing the disadvantage at which I should be on retirement relative to someone who had been having a proper career as a Professor in physics, philosophy or any other subject.

Soon after reaching normal retirement age I started to hear rumours of pensions ‘withering on the vine’ and a substantial proportion of the annual increases became means-tested, that is, it was allocated to the ‘poorest’ who had spent all their incomes throughout their working lives, which might well have included some who had lived as university professors with full salaries.

In an egalitarian society, it certainly would not do if a person who had shown exceptional foresight and determination in making annual payments, however poor they were, should be able to pat themselves on the back when they reached normal retirement age (although without actually having been able to get started on a salaried career) about an annual inflation-adjusted stipend, however inadequate, rolling in as a reward for all their effort and frugality.

State pensions and Trojan Horses

Hundreds of thousands of pensioners are living in poverty because they are not claiming the benefits due to them, official figures suggest. Ministers admitted that 700,000 pensioners would be lifted over the poverty line at a stroke if they simply got all the help to which they are entitled. Opposition MPs say many are put off claiming by the complexity of Gordon Brown’s benefit system, which involves complicated forms and lengthy telephone applications. (Daily Mail, 12 August 2008)

This is all the result of a means-tested pensions system, which should never have been introduced and which should be abolished. The real deterrent to applying for “benefits” is, or should be, not the complexity of the forms and procedures, but simply the fact that it cannot be done without drawing to oneself and one’s circumstances the attention of agents of the collective, who may easily attract the attention of other agents of the collective, who may decide that one should be deprived of one’s liberty. Those who complain of the present system naturally miss the point, because they are themselves in most cases agents of the collective who have nothing against people being deprived of their liberty.

For example, Liberal Democrat work and pensions spokesman Jenny Willott said: “The system must be simplified to ensure poor pensioners get the cash they so desperately need.”

The charity Age Concern also fails to address the real issue, instead taking seriously the rationalisations given for failing to apply. Research carried out by this charity shows that the reason given by almost 50% of respondents is that they find means-testing too intrusive, and by 40% that they are discouraged by complicated forms.

Opposition MPs do have some objection to means-testing, describing it as “demeaning”, and arguing that means-testing is

expensive to administer and acts as a disincentive to save. Officials trawl through details of people’s pensions, earnings, benefits and savings to work out whether they should receive top-ups. (ibid)

But no one mentions the real and absolute deterrent to applying, which is that in the course of “trawling”, officials may decide that it would be better for a person not to be allowed to go on living where they are living, or in the way they are living, at all.

It is very dangerous to draw the attention of the Oppressive State to your affairs, and probably many who fail to apply realise this, if only vaguely or subconsciously.

Until relatively recent years, pensions were the only “benefit” which was free from this danger. They were paid as a right to those who had made enough contributions, not to those whose “need” would be assessed as greatest by agents of the collective.

Means-testing of pensions should be abolished.

‘The question of ethics with regard to pension policy is one of the issues on which Oxford Forum could be producing fundamental critical analyses if it were provided with adequate funding. We appeal for £2m as initial funding to enable us to write and publish on this and similar issues, which are currently only discussed in the context of pro-collectivist arguments.’ Charles McCreery, DPhil

Means-testing pensioners

Pensioners, like the middle class in general, are victimised by modern legislation. The modern ideology does not accept innate differences but it does, in practice, discriminate against those with above-average IQs, and against personality characteristics associated with above-average IQs, such as conscientiousness and forethought.

The population of pensioners, whether or not classifiable as ‘middle class’, are likely to have above-average IQs, if only because they have managed to reach pensionable age. They fail to protest at the burdens imposed upon them, perhaps to some extent because, like my own parents, they are inclined to accept legal impositions without complaint.

People over 50 now constitute 43% of the voting population (this proportion is expected to rise to over 50% by 2031) and are in a position to exercise significant pressure on the political parties which wish for their electoral support.

Pensioners and prospective pensioners should never have accepted the means-testing of pensions. The effect of this policy is that those who have been so thrifty and frugal as to acquire savings, as well as making sure that they always paid the requisite annual contributions, whatever their circumstances, are being penalised so that more ‘support’ can be diverted to those who ‘need it most’, i.e. those who have made no attempt to build up independence of the state throughout their working lives.

Many of those who qualify for the supplementary ‘income support’, which would put their pension back up to the level it might be at if not means-tested, fail to claim it. They are exhorted to apply for what they are ‘entitled to’, the only reason usually suggested for their reluctance to do so being ‘pride’. But in fact they can only apply by submitting to ‘assessment’ of their circumstances by agents of the collective, who may quite well decide that it is not ‘in their interests’ to be allowed to live in their own home any longer, and they may be popped into the killing fields of the old people’s ‘homes’ whether they like it or not.

Ultimately, the state has the right to force an elderly person to live in a care home, or even to have them sectioned as a psychiatric patient. They will not be allowed the option of quietly starving or otherwise coming to grief in their own homes, which might very well be a less painful and distressing way of ending their lives than what awaits them in ‘care’.

Pensioners and their associations, such as Age Concern, Help the Aged and the National Pensioners Convention, should not tolerate means-testing. It was not regarded as acceptable in the original Pensions Act of 1911, which proposed that the pensions being set up should be paid for by contributions and would be payable to rich and poor alike.

Now Gordon Brown proposes an extra levy on salaries to ‘pay for care in old age’, in addition to compulsory pension contributions. Again, there is no way of opting out of this by saying that one will never be a drain on the state’s provision of ‘care facilities’ for the elderly, but would rather die in one’s own way in one’s own home.

‘The question of ethics with regard to pension policy is one of the issues on which Oxford Forum could be producing fundamental critical analyses if it were provided with adequate funding. We appeal for £2m as initial funding to enable us to write and publish on this and similar issues, which are currently only discussed in the context of pro-collectivist arguments.’ Charles McCreery, DPhil

Genocidal attitude towards baby boomers and pensioners

The ‘baby boom’ generation are being forced to use their wealth to subsidise both their children and their parents, a survey found yesterday. Instead of putting money away to fund their own future, many couples on the threshold of retirement are pouring cash into supplementing their offspring. At the same time they are under increasing pressure to help out pensioner parents facing bills for utilities, council tax, home help and care.

The two-way stretch on people in their late 50s and early 60s was highlighted by a poll carried out for insurer Engage Mutual. ... The survey found that parents close to retirement themselves are paying for their children to buy homes, pay off debts or for childcare for their grandchildren. It found that six out of ten people aged between 55 and 64 are still supporting their children. ... Four out of ten baby boomers are also supporting their own parents, the survey said. ... Engage Mutual spokesman Karl Elliott said: ‘Financial circumstances in Britain have changed considerably over the last fifty years ... with continued increases in costs of living, education and care, the wealth this generation have accumulated will be stretched far further than was the case for their parents.’

(From ‘The baby boomers left paying for their children and parents’ by Stephen Doughty, Daily Mail, 14 April 2007.)

Just a part of the concealed genocide of our time (genocide in the sense of reducing the proportion of the population with high IQs).

The baby boomers are being penalised by having to subsidise both their parents and their offspring. But you can bet that it is the baby boomers with above-average IQs who are being hit the hardest.

Pensioners are more likely than other sections of the population to have above-average IQs, which no doubt is why they are constantly penalised by legislators. Longevity correlates with IQ on account of both genetic factors and of a tendency to lead more functional and forethoughtful lives.

It is up to us to counteract natural selection, as Richard Dawkins would say. Nevertheless, all the attempts to penalise those with above-average IQs by taxing them to provide medical and educational oppression for all, which is particularly oppressive to those with above-average IQs when they are themselves exposed to it, have (I would surmise) still not succeeded in reducing the average IQ of the population of pensioners below the average for the population as a whole. If they have been too thrifty and have too much in the way of savings, their pensions are reduced and they do not qualify for means-tested supplements. ‘We must help those pensioners who are most in need; help must be given preferentially to the poorest’ said government officials when means-testing for pensions was introduced. And pensioners do not attempt to use their voting power to protest, partly because (I guess) the middle class has always been most ‘public-spirited’ and uncomplaining. So the thrifty, who have built up their savings, must reduce them by living off them or be subsidised by their offspring.

And it is the offspring with above-average IQs who are most likely to have delayed starting their adult lives and have debts to pay off, because they felt the need for a professional training, or just to become a graduate so as not to be at a disadvantage, now that degrees have become so common that they are actually meaningless as an indication of ability to do anything.

Gordon Brown has recently committed himself to the idea that ‘education’ should be provided for all the children of the globe, and presumably British taxpayers should be prepared to contribute to this enormous expense.

Could not a taxpayers’ association be set up with enough willingness to protect what remains of civilisation in this country to protest vehemently at overseas expenditure, when internal sources are clearly inadequate to provide for the needs of citizens of this country, and are going to be even more wildly inadequate in the foreseeable future?

In particular, taxpayers’ associations should insist on no further overseas aid being given until recent discrimination against those with above-average IQs are reversed.

It has only of fairly recent years become the case that those with above-average IQs have to pay more for further education than the ‘poorest’, and that pensions (for which pensioners at least nominally paid contributions throughout their working lives) should be means-tested, so that those with above-average IQs would, on average, receive less than the ‘poorest’ — with, on average, lower IQs.

At the least, education and pensions should revert to the former level of ‘fairness’, at which all undergraduates and pensioners received the same. Taxpayers’ associations, and/or high IQ associations, should insist on this happening before any more of taxpayers’ money is drained off overseas.

I appeal for financial and moral support in improving my position. I need people to provide moral support both for fundraising, and as temporary or possibly long-term workers. Those interested should read my post on interns.