Background
As I mentioned yesterday, I have written a column for the National on migration and the impending crisis that is going to envelop the UK, whether we like it or not.
The comments I made yesterday provoked a reaction here, with some people being quite angry with me for suggesting that inward migration was the only solution to the problems we face. In response, I have edited the article for use here.
But first, to highlight the issues I raised, this is a TLDR (too long, did not read) summary of what I had to say:
TLDR
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The UK's birth rate is low at fewer than 1.5 children per woman, compared to the 2.1 or more needed to sustain the population.
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Without migration, the working-age population will, inevitably, shrink, and it will not be possible for pensions to be funded.
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Pensions are not really about savings or financial engineering: they are about people at work supporting those in retirement. There will be too few such people to support those in old age on the basis of current projections, and AI is unlikely to have an economic impact altering this, in my opinion.
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In addition, there is a substantial risk that current private pension arrangements will fail because there won't be enough buyers for the accumulated assets of pensioners in the future to match the quantity that those in retirement will be seeking to sell.
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The baby boomer generation has passed on too few actual capital assets and too few children to sustain the fundamental pension contract with the generations following them.
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Migration is the only viable way to maintain that fundamental pension contract.
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The UK must not only accept migrants but actively welcome them if it is to avoid a pensions crisis.
The argument: without migration, the UK cannot pay its pensions
Without people, there is no economy. And without enough working people, there are no pensions. This is the reality of the crisis the UK faces: soon, it will not have enough working people to pay the pensions of those who will be in retirement unless some radical changes in the structure of society in the UK take place.
This, in my opinion, is a fast-looming problem, and few politicians want to discuss it. Most especially, that is because, in my opinion, there is no solution to this problem without increased migration into the UK. Quite simply, we now need migrants, including economic migrants, to come to the UK. Without them, we will not be able to pay the pensions to which we are already committed.
This is not, I think, a matter of opinion. I think it is a matter of simple arithmetic. Unless there is a significant boost to our population, the economics of retirement in this country will not add up.
Why migration matters
Migration is nothing new. I am in England because my family migrated to this country. Most of my extended family are of Irish origin. Earlier generations of their families left Ireland when work was scarce, and the welcome for Irish migrants in the UK was often hostile. They came anyway, because they had no choice. That is why I live where I do now.
But people do not just move for economic opportunity. Migration is increasingly driven by persecution, war, and political hostility. And, very soon, climate change will create massive new waves of people on the move, which is an issue that must be faced sometime soon, although it seems no politician is willing to mention the subject.
Whatever the reason, the outcome is usually the same: people arrive in a new country, settle there, integrate into their new home, contribute to its economy and culture, and almost invariably make it stronger. History shows that to be true. It would be futile to argue with that suggestion: this is how the UK came to be as it is.
The UK's demographic crisis
At present, the average number of children born to a woman in the UK is under 1.5, although figures are uncertain for last year. To maintain a stable population, that figure needs to be more than 2.
Like it or not, this means the UK's population will shrink unless something happens to replenish the numbers. And unless there is a radical and unlikely turnaround in the birth rate, which is something that will not happen while neoliberal policies keep wages down, housing unaffordable, and childcare inaccessible, the only realistic way to stabilise the population is through inward migration.
This is rarely acknowledged, but it is absolutely essential to our country's future. We need to embrace the reality of this. Doing anything else will make the current discussion on migration and its consequences very much harder to handle.
Pensions and the "fundamental pension contract"
Much debate on pensions focuses on pension funding mechanisms. The argument is about state versus private provision, implications for government debt, tax rates and tax allowances, and financial market returns. But all of this misses the key issue, which is that pensions are not really about money. They are about people.
As I have previously explained in blog posts on this site, there is, in effect, a fundamental pension contract which represents an implicit bargain between generations. This deal requires that the working generation give up some of its income to support a now-retired generation, which might include their parents, in the expectation that the next generation will do the same for them. What, however, is quite critical to this fundamental pension contract is the idea that the generation at work should accept its responsibility to create sufficient capital assets of worth to pass on to generations to come by the time that they reach their retirement age, so that the generations that follow them can as na consequence then afford to forego part of their income to support the previous generation who are now in retirement. This is the fundamental inter-generational transfer of wealth that has to underpin the actual pension contract within society.
You can dress this up in financial markets, savings schemes, or investment funds, but the reality never changes. Unless there are enough people of working age, no pension promises – public or private – can be met. Vitally, what we have to understand is that the pension crisis that we have has arisen in no small part precise because financial markets have sold us a vision of pension saving that utterly fails to reflect the fundamental pension contract to which I refer above, and which, as a consequence, could lead to a significant financial crisis unless we begin to address the problems it is creating now.
Why private pensions will fail
Despite the pension mythology peddled by the City of London, future pensioners will not be able to live in retirement simply by selling financial assets to future generations because there will not be enough people in those future generations to buy the assets that they have to sell. There is, as a consequence, a full-blown financial crisis in our current financial services-based pension provision. That is because creating supposed financial wealth by piling ever greater quantities of funds into financial markets is not the same as making the tangible capital assets, such as housing, infrastructure, productive business assets, and more, that underpin both real economic capacity and the fundamental pension contract to which I have referred above.
To reiterate the point, because it is so important, private pension systems rely on there being enough people in the future willing and able to buy the financial assets that the previous generation accumulated. But UK demographic data shows that will not be the case. As a result, private pension systems will fail at some point in the next 15 to 20 years. The market bubbles created by existing pension arrangements will burst, and financial engineering will not resolve the crisis.
The baby boomer generation has failed twice over in that case. Firstly, it has not created enough real capital assets to hand on, and secondly, it has not had enough children to sustain the system. Their children are now repeating this pattern of behaviour because the government is directing them to do so, which compounds the problem and makes the crisis we are facing even bigger.
Migration is the only way out
The UK's pension problem is not going to be solved by tweaking contribution rates, by raising the pension age, or by dreaming up new forms of financial trickery.
The only way forward is to welcome more migrants. We need people who are educated, motivated, and ready to work – people who want to build a new life here, integrate, and contribute to our communities.
This is not a burden. It is an opportunity. Migrants do not just fill jobs; they expand the economy, add to culture, and strengthen the very fabric of society. And crucially, they allow the pension contract between generations to survive.
Rolling out the red carpet
The UK does not just have a moral obligation to welcome migrants; it has an economic necessity to do so. Unless we take decisive action, our pension system will collapse.
Politicians who talk tough on migration while pretending to defend the "triple lock" are engaged in fantasy economics. One promise cannot be met without the other.
Without more working people, there will be no pensions. That is the unspoken truth.
And we have to tackle the hypocrisy inside the current migration system. Currently, individuals who are thought to add value to the UK economy by bringing in considerable funds are welcomed by our immigration system. In contrast, young professionals at the start of their careers, who have much to offer in terms of their economic potential that can add value to the UK, are denied access. If one type of economic migrant is welcome, it is straightforward hypocrisy to pretend that another type is unwelcome when, if anything, those young, ambitious and enterprising people who have taken the risk to up sticks and try to move to the UK have more to add to the well-being of this country.
Conclusion
There is no clever financial fix to this problem. There is no new pension scheme that can alter demographics. The numbers are clear. Without a significant inflow of migrants, the UK cannot sustain its population or pay its pensions. And let me be blunt: I see no alternative answer. Without welcoming a lot of migrants, we are heading for very deep trouble.
And finally, counterarguments and where this topic goes next
Despite the conclusion I have just offered, which reflects my original piece in the National newspaper, I am aware that some people have offered different opinions in comments posted to this blog. In particular, they suggested:
- As a matter of fact, we are facing a global food crisis, which means we have no choice but to reduce the planet's population, as we will soon be unable to feed everyone, leading to famine. I disagree, and will post evidence on this very soon.
- People are now living healthier lives and will therefore need less care in retirement, which is why I am wrong to presume otherwise. I completely disagree with this; I think that the real situation is quite the reverse. I believe that people are living increasingly unhealthy lives, meaning that they will live for less time, but will also live for much more extended periods in ill health before dying, meaning that the demand for care is going to increase, unless we make radical changes to lifestyles, the food we eat, and the way we understand the medical model, irrespective of the issue around migration. Again, I will write more about this soon.
- I am mistaken in thinking that people of retirement age do not provide constructive input to the economy, and that my assumption that they rely on working individuals to support their lifestyles is also incorrect. The argument is that those in retirement are undertaking unpaid work that enables those who are in paid work to function, for example, by providing childcare and volunteering elsewhere, which is essential. I do, of course, accept that such work goes on, but I would also suggest that it has always done so, meaning that nothing has changed, and therefore that the observations I have made remain relevant. However, I will try to tackle this in a future blog post.
Action points
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Acknowledge reality: Demand that politicians stop pretending pensions can be paid without an increase in the working-age population.
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Challenge the rhetoric: Call out political narratives that demonise migrants while promising to protect pensions – the two positions are incompatible.
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Write to your MP: Insist they address the link between demographics, pensions, and migration in honest, evidence-based terms.
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Support policies that make migration work: That means fair wages, decent housing, accessible healthcare, and integration policies that strengthen everyone in communities.
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Reject neoliberal distractions: Don't be fooled by promises of new savings schemes or financial fixes for this problem. Those fixes are one of the major reasons for the mess we now have to address.
Taking further action
If you want to write a letter to your MP on the issues raised in this blog post, there is a ChatGPT prompt to assist you in doing so, with full instructions, here.
One word of warning, though: please ensure you have the correct MP. ChatGPT can get it wrong.
Comments
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Isn’t this just a Ponzi-type solution? Working age migrants will retire, and yet more migrants will be needed to maintain the pensions contract in years to come.
More fundamentally, won’t maintaining an economy that depends on large-scale immigration divert attention from the degrowth that is needed to sustain the living planet?
See my other post this morning.
And you are ttoally ignoring that we might be one part of the world that could remian habitable as climate change develops. Why do you think we have the right to exclude others?
I certainly don’t think we will have the right to exclude the many climate refugees who will be the inevitable consequence of failure to address the climate emergency. But that’s not the same as encouraging large-scale immigration to solve a pensions problem, particularly when doing so will boost the growth that contributes to that emergency.
I am sure you can see logic in that: I can’t, since these events are happening simultaneously and not discretely as you imply.
Richard, thanks for highlighting this. The comprehensive nature of your analysis, when contrasted with the deafening silence from the political class on this and the related surrounding issues, demonstrates just how broken our politics is at the moment. Can you ever imagine any of the current crop of political journalists raise these issues with any of today’s media obsessed politicos? However, ignoring them will not make these issues go away. I fear there is a reckoning awaiting for the political class and the public backlash may be difficult to control. In the meantime we must all raise these issues wherever and whenever we can. We cannot rely on the political system to do anything meaningful until the problems become unavoidable.
You are right to stress that migration is essential to sustaining our economy and public services. We should also recognise another challenge: Britain’s falling birth rate. Unless this is addressed alongside migration, the long-term balance of our population will remain insecure.
The real issue is not that people don’t want children, but that the costs and pressures of modern life make it too difficult. Tackling this requires action in three key areas:
Childcare. UK childcare is among the most expensive in Europe. While free hours are expanding, provision is patchy and many areas remain “childcare deserts”. Affordable, universal childcare should be seen as infrastructure – an investment, not a cost.
Housing. Young families need security and space, yet housing is expensive and unstable. Other countries link family support with access to affordable homes. The UK must do the same, prioritising family-sized housing and long-term tenancies.
Healthcare. One in every classroom of children is now born via IVF, yet NHS access varies wildly across the country. Making fertility treatment fairly available nationwide would give many couples a chance currently denied to them.
Alongside this, workplaces must change. Flexible hours, genuine parental leave for both parents, and protection from career penalties are all essential. Countries that make it possible to combine work and family life – France being the obvious example – have sustained higher birth rates.
Migration is vital. But unless we also make it easier for people here to raise the families they want, society will continue to fray.
I agree with you.
I am a child of the 50’s. My experience of that time was that most of the families I knew had 3 children. My parents, born in the 20’s, came from families of 5 and 7 children. By the 70’s most of the families I knew had 2 children. I and my 2 brothers have 0 children between us. I realise that is not valid statistical evidence, however I strongly believe that the birth rate has been dropping for a long time when the economic pressures were not nearly as strong as they are now. Addressing the economic problems is vital, in itself, but I am not convinced it would have much effect on the birth rate.
The 1970 birth rate was around 2.4 to 2.5 per woman.
Now it is 1.5 per woman and declining.
Contraception and cultural change mean birth rates won’t return to post-war levels. But economic and workplace measures do make a real difference, and can be the difference between a fertility rate of 1.2 (if the current rapid decline continues) and 1.8 (more stable). Migration will also be needed.
There was a 90’s sitcom called ‘2point4 Children’. If they remade it today it would have to be retitled ‘1point5 Children’.
Richard,
I absolutely support your resistance to the demonisation and devaluation of migrants who have contributed massively to the economy and society of this country and now face abuse and worse from some sections of our population led by right wing politicians. However, I am not sure about your assumptions on the needs of future pensioners. It seems to me for instance that my daughters’ generation ( or some of them at least) expect less in retirement than the current generation of pensioners. One of them is a Buddhist and already tries to live a life which extracts fewer ressources from the planet. She hopes to be able to live in retirement on less because she is trying to build a life based around a sharing community. She is a vegetarian and has not been on a plane for the last twenty years and neither have her parents. In short we need more migrants to sustain our economy if we want to go on with an economy based on consumption, which I would say, the limits of the planet mean that we can’t. I accept that climate change is likely to mean pressure on migration and that politicians are not facing up to this, but I just do not see our current way of living being sustainable by any means and a better way is for people to adjust to “lower” or ” different” living standards. For instance does owning a car make you better or worse off, if you end up with heart disease from lack of excercise? In short the argument that we need more migration seems to be based on the belief that the economy has to continue growing. I’m not sure that is feasible anymore.
I am making no assumption of growth, at all.
I am hoping we might provide for essentials and care.
That’s it. You are, I am afraid, seriously over-optimistic, not least because there is no evidence whatsoever of most people being willing to to adopt lower or different living standrads – most especially when they are daily barraged with messages telling them not to do so.
Sorry, but we’ll have to disagree.
100% agreed.
Racism – talk about cutting your nose off to spite your face! Pathetic.
What about a population policy?
Presumably it would be possible to work out the numbers of migrants we are going to need and of course providing the services and housing they will need
We could also make sure that we make the best possible use of the people we have and that means making sure that our children are properly educated and don’t as far as we can prevent it they don’t go ‘off the rails’ something successive governments have done nothing about
That would require a government that believed in itself.
This is so true, Richard. I have been banging on about demographics to clients for years. As a small IFA in Somerset, I can say, too, that what might be called the “Great Decumulation” is well underway. Much of my work is in the pensions area and we have advised clients to remove >£50m from markets into annuities in the last three years. This process is accelerating and, magnified, will move markets over time. We have many clients aged 60+ with one or no grand children. We have many clients who rattle around in ‘too much house’.
We are an unhealthy nation, with millions living with long-term health conditions (me included, unfortunately). This does mean that as many as 60% (Source: Legal & General) of people buying annuities will get better underwritten terms – a higher lifetime income because it will be paid for less time, on average.
Anecdotally, I’m told that many IFAs “can’t be bothered” to complete a health/lifestyle form with clients – scandalous if true. Many IFAs want people to stay invested so they can continue to collect unjustifiable fees (once set up there are no explicit fees with annuities).
The financial house of cards is teetering as more and more baby boomers hit their sixties; it will not end well.
Thanks
And agreed
I agree that we need inward migration and I agree with the arguments you have made.
The fundamental problem you suggest is the low fertility rate, and I agree. A fertility rate of 1.5 leads inevitably to a rapidly ageing and declining population. No question.
However, with inward migration, the migrants tend towards the fertility rate of the pre-existing population. That’s not surprising because, in my view, fertility rate is governed by the way our society works and societal views. And we would hope that much of this was adopted by immigrants.
Unless we address the cause of the low fertility rate, as other countries have tried to do (mostly unsuccessfully) then we will continue to need inward migration indefinitely. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. But there is a debate to be had, whether we wish continued substantial immigration or whether we would prefer other policies to address the low fertility rate.
The other issue, which I mentioned previously, is whether we need, long term, an increasing population, a stable population, or a declining population. An ever increasing population is clearly not possible and, I suggest, many people would find this undesirable. On the other hand a rapidly decreasing population is not viable for the reasons you suggest.
Many of the environmental problems of the country, and the world more widely, are due to the large population. With a smaller population these problems would be less severe. So a slowly declining population is desirable and properly managed, taking into account advances in technology and medicine, seems possible.
Your assumptions are false, and I wish people would check their assumptions before they comment here. As a matter of fact, over 30% of all children born in the UK at present are born to parents who were not born in this country and in other words, there is no sign of a convergence in birth rates as yet. As a result, many of your arguments do not stack.
I do, of course, agree that we needed a debate about what size of population we want. I have no problem with a slight fall over time. Anything else however means that we will have a massive problem with managing people in old age. So, why are we debating a choice that will inevitably mean a cull of our elderly population, however we might dress that up?
The point in which we agree is that we do need to address the problem with having children in this country, and this has been raised appropriately by others as well. But I’ve been talking about how to address those topics for a very long time.
Thank you for your reply. 🙂
You are right, of course, that the fertility rate of immigrants is higher than the pre-existing population. But I think we have a misunderstanding, so I did a quick Google to check.
The convergence does not happen as soon as people immigrate. It happens in their children. A summary from Google says:
“Children of immigrants in the UK generally do not have higher fertility than the pre-existing population; instead, the fertility of immigrants themselves (the first generation) is often higher, but their British-born children and descendants tend to have fertility patterns that become increasingly similar to the native-born population over time and with subsequent generations.”
I think, therefore, that it is the case that, unless we work hard to increase UK fertility rate, on which we both agree, then sustained immigration will be necessary.
As I said sustained immigration is not necessarily bad. But, if there are young people in the country who would like more children but are currently constrained from having them, I would prefer that they have the opportunity to have children rather than relying on immigration.
Whilst I would prefer a carefully managed, gradual, population decline it would be monstrous to suggest a cull of the elderly and I have not done so.
So, without inward migration how are you going to manage an ever more elderly population?
Of course we need immigration to manage, amongst other things, the ageing population. We need it for other things to. This country has always had immigration and I expect it to continue to need immigration forever. I’m so sorry if I somehow gave a different impression.
It’s not whether we need immigration for the foreseeable future, we do, it’s a given. Its a question of how much immigration we need and want over the coming decades (not the next 5 to 10 years), what population we would like long term ( we can certainly have larger or, probably, a bit smaller), and what sort of policies we want over the long term to address our low fertility rate. 🙂
These are big questions that tie into a key theme of your blog – how to effectively manage the economy so that we do have choices.
The answer is right now that we are short of 270,000 or more birtyhs a year – so we need that net inward migration a year. That means gross migration of maybe 800,000 +
A question if I may please Richard.
Perhaps naively, I would have thought a shortfall in births of 270 thousand now would require immigration of 270 thousand in about 20 years time. I don’t understand, and would really like to understand, why it needs immigration of about 800+ thousand now. I would very much appreciate an explanation since I feel I’m missing a crucial point. Thank you.
This has been going on for decades. That’s why. We have fallen below reprodcution rate since the 1980s.
Thank you 🙂
Good article.
One caveat – discussion of immigration, colonisation, indigenous peoples, religion, demographics and birth rates can get VERY nasty indeed (Racism wants some people to breed but prefers to sterilise others, literally in some instances). Batten down the hatches and nail on the hurricane boards.
Because some really nasty racists will want to poison this discussion.
I know. They will be deleted here.
Yes – we should talk about it, but BBC , Labour , Tories and Reform have been talking about it every single day for weeks: ‘migrants’ ‘illegals’ ‘asylum seekers’ ‘hotels’ ‘small boats’ ‘being swamped’, 10,000, 25,000, 50,0000, 111,000.
They all want to talk about it because Reform have said that it is the sole cause of all our ills : NHS, housing, services, inflation – you name it, its all the migrants swamping us that is doing this.
BBC will do nothing to disabuse – and the more time gets filled with ‘discussion’ about migration the less time to understand what is really going on – whether its the genocide or our economically and socially dysfunctional system.
Yes Richard – everything you say is pertinent, but its getting to the point that we just cant have a sensible public discussion.
Agreed.
But that will not stop me trying to create one, even if the price might be considerable abuse at some time either now or in the future.
Demographics is interesting. Your point about pensions is graphically visible if you look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Kingdom#/media/File:UK_Population_Pyramid.svg which is the population pyramid of the UK in mid 2021. I’m in the 50-60 widest part, and so as time marches on, that widest part moves up the chart. Now look at the very bottom – it is so much narrower than my part. That by definition will never get wider unless we take in people in that age group, but it will get slightly narrower due to tragic early deaths. In 20-30 years time when they are in the middle of their working lives, they will be expected to cover the pensions of my large cohort – a significant challenge.
Without significant immigration or a sudden increase in UK birth rates, 10-20 years time when I could be retired and trying to take a pension, will be challenging for the country as a whole as you outline.
Agreed
Thank you
AI will presumably play a part in releasing more indigenous labour into the UK job market. Apologies if this issue was raised but I had to skim read this morning. Thanks.
AI changes work. Will it create more people, as you imply? And what will they do? Do we know. The internet is our recent precednt. It did not release labour.
Thank you
Why indigenous labour?
If migrants are made redundant because of AI, are they not allowed to get new jobs here?
This idea might upset lots of people in this country, but hopefully not here.
I saw yesterday that there is a new neonatal hospital set up in Gaza, because of the number of babies being born over there. I presume that’s because of the number of women who have been raped.
This country is partly to blame for this, by encouraging Netanyahu to do whatever he wants in Palestine.
Lots of these mothers and babies have no chance in Gaza.
Why not let them come here and be looked after?
Just a thought. We need more migrants here, and lots of people complain about them being young fit men who should be fighting in their own armies.
Surely a smaller working population could provide basic (and non-basic) needs for everyone if they no longer
engaged in activity that was unproductive from this perspective.
For example financial services, advertising, luxury yacht building, arms manufacturing, luxury cars, or cars in general if we improved
public transport, duplication of tasks (every privatised energy/phone company have the same departments doing the
same things) , Billionaire vanity projects, investing in disease prevention rather than treatment. etc.
I’m not against immigration at all and agree with most of what you said.
Maybe, one day.
But much as I would like to move in the direction you are suggesting, we have not so far.
And we might not unless we beat neoliberalism. We have not as yet.
So within the framework we live in we undoubtedly need more migrants.
And I always talk about the real world.
Richard,
I assume you’re right and a few “pension experts” have pointed this out in the past.
The UK “pay as you go” model for funding pensions out of general taxation adopted I think by Lloyd George in 1911 and not changed significantly by Labour after WW2 has the great advantage of a low cost start but as the population demographics change clearly challenges arise.
What to do now?
Options:
1. abandon the state pension funding model of pay as you go in favour of a funding model eg a state owned wealth fund focused on public infrastructure. Each individual would have fund and earn a return based on size of contributions, length of working life, etc. Clearly transition arrangements would be needed and some people would stay on the old current state pension while younger ones moved to the newly funded type.
2. Maybe do a private sector version of the above run by the city. Personally I think it would be bonkers but for some Im sure they would like the idea.
3. Stop providing state pension payments altogether. The poorest simply go to DWP straight away for means tested support the more affluent run down their pension pots faster and then go to the DWP. Modelling might show significant savings in the early years.
4. Provide a state pension in kind rather than a cash benefit & kept at a basic level eg council tax relief eg free public transport eg food ration cards eg free care.
5. Lastly govt could fiddle with tax immigration, value of the pension, contributions you make and the age you get them. Presumably to find not so much a sweet spot but simply a more tolerable one from a public finances perspective. Which clearly you are worried about.
I know you disliked Option 5 but this feels like the one we in effect have now.
I think I would look at the other options in some detail while sticking with option 5 for now.
However I am also sceptical about the affordability problem. Pensions go straight into the economy and contribute income for others. Not sure of the multiplier but I am sure it is significant.
I will be back with more on this…
Food ration cards for pensioners? Bloody hell! Why not just put us in the workhouse!!
Let us not forget that us boomers have less to pass on because successive governments have failed to find a way of funding social care. For example my mum and dad’s life savings and most of their propert equity had to be used to fund care costs. In the end what was left to pass on to the generation of my children, nephews and neices was pitifully small. I’m not saying that this is right or wrong, inter generationally though the assets that would have helped them have mostly gone.
A generation or two ago £50 would have been good
Inter generational wealth transfer makes me smile sometimes.
I know people who ended up finding the money to bury both parents. There was nothing left to transfer.
For some the Baby Boomers are the ones that have had it all. The selfish ones.
For others it is a very different story.
Thinking about it
I remember many years ago now talking to a French woman of Albanian heritage
Her family had been part of a large influxe of migrants to France in the inter war period partly encouraged to replace the losses of the First World War
President Sarkozys family were also part of this group
There is a precedent for this
At present, our system leans heavily on private pensions and investment funds. This creates two serious problems. First, private pensions are deeply unequal: the better-off benefit from generous tax reliefs and can accumulate large pots, while many workers have little or no private provision. Second, private pensions depend on returns from financial markets, often overseas. In effect, to some extent we are tying the retirement security of millions to global speculation rather than the strength of our domestic economy.
Is there another way? Could the state guarantee a more generous universal pension, funded directly by government spending? From an MMT perspective this is entirely affordable: as you’ve taught us, the government cannot run out of its own currency. The only real constraint is the capacity of the economy to provide goods and services for retirees without sparking inflation.
In practice, raising the state pension could have powerful benefits. Pensioners tend to spend most of their income locally, on essentials. That means the multiplier effect is high: money circulates in communities, sustaining jobs and businesses. Unlike private pension savings, which are often locked up in financial assets, public pensions flow straight back into the real economy.
Would this remove the need for migration? No: we still need a workforce to provide the services retirees consume, particularly in health and social care. But it would reduce the dependence of the pension system on volatile markets and on endless flows of new contributors. Security would rest instead on government’s commitment to meet its promises.
A more generous state pension would reduce inequality, save billions in costly tax reliefs, and provide a stable foundation for retirement that private funds cannot match. It would also act as an automatic stabiliser in the economy. The real question is not whether we can afford it – but whether we can ever have a government with the political will to make it happen.
https://northeastbylines.co.uk/news/politics/nothing-short-of-a-prison-system-protest-at-derwentside-irc/
Strange how this place seems to have been forgotten about.
The people who demonstrate outside it are wanting it closed because the women in there have been traumatised enough before they get there.
The they are left there until the government decides to send them back to where they came from, unless they can get legal assistance to help them to stay here and move into ordinary accommodation.
Unfortunately it’s one of the worst places in the country to get signals to and from, to contact family or legal help.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-63872228
This was 2022 and not much has improved.
Like I said earlier, all about men. Women don’t matter.
Whilst I agree with your analysis, I am concerned that by attracting the young, bright immigrants, we are robbing the poorer countries of their best and brightest leaving them less able to deal with their issues.
And it’s not just migration from developing countries to the West, as this documentary from the BBC shows on Kiwis heading across The Ditch to Oz indicates. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct80hg
Meanwhile NZ is robbing India, Phillipines etc of their nurses etc..
Indian is training nurses specifically for migration in the same way the Philippines does with merchant seamen
Sorry to be stuck in yesterday! I just want to add a couple of thoughts.
If a stronger state pension would give security to millions, why won’t the government do it? The reason is obvious: the pension industry makes vast profits from the trillions locked in private schemes. A bigger state pension would cut into those profits, so the City lobbies hard to keep things as they are.
We’re also told it’s “unaffordable”. But that’s a myth. As currency issuer, the government can always fund pensions if the economy has the real resources. In fact, shifting from private saving to a state pension could reduce the deficit: fewer costly tax reliefs, less money siphoned into financial markets, and more pension income spent locally, boosting tax receipts.
So the choice is political, not economic. Do we serve the financial industry – or guarantee dignity in retirement and strengthen the economy at the same time?
It’s been great reading through everyone’s thoughts here. What really stands out is how easily perceptions are shaped. From the myths about UC claimants and asylum seekers, to the way people swallow whatever comes through the media, new or old, it shows how manipulation works. The Overton window is constantly being shifted, and financed opinion polls churned out to reinforce a ready-made narrative, creating a toxic melee where genuine critical thinking is drowned out.
Even the language is part of the illusion. Calling failing, strictly controlled institutional accommodation “hotels” is a perfect example of how words are used to distort reality.
I do not deny that immigration can bring pressures on infrastructure, but the blame culture around it is built on distortion. The term “illegal immigrant” is itself a misnomer, created by tweaking laws so that asylum seekers have no legal route and are left branded as unapproved or unauthorised. We need to ask why the situation has been engineered this way, and remember that asylum seekers are only a tiny proportion of those who come to the UK. Without immigration more broadly, the country would grind to a halt.
What we need, more than ever, is education, context and the willingness to question what we are being told. Without that, falsehoods, greed and corruption creep in under the guise of public opinion.