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Comment by nbevans | Hacker News Reader

Pensions have not been going up. The triple lock was suspended. Inflation is wrecking the pensions of millions. The UK pension system is one of the worst in Europe. If it was ever to be substantially improved you will definitely hear about it.

All countries tend to have polarisation around the topic of "immigration". Statistically the UK is one of the most welcoming and least racially prejudicing countries in the world. There are numerous independent studies and reports that you can find to support this. You do need to pay though; the visas and healthcare surcharges ain't cheap. The same as any top tier country though.

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The triple lock itself was an incredibly favourable deal to pensioners - a guarantee that pensions will rise at at least inflation introduced by a government which was furiously cutting everything else. The government decided to remove it with inflation hitting 9%, and promptly reversed course with Sunak's "save the PM's job" budget to give pensions a 10% raise. The fact the UK's pension system has for a long time relied more on private pensions than many countries doesn't mean that the present government hasn't spent the last decade giving pensioners real term rises whilst other services and especially other state handouts and salaries got real term cuts.

There are indeed many indications of the UK being welcoming to foreigners relative to other countries For example, the UK government's recently announced plan to export refugees at great expense to Rwanda with seven days notice doesn't have majority support in any group except the pensioners the policy is designed to appeal to...

> "Pensions have not been going up. The triple lock was suspended. Inflation is wrecking the pensions of millions."

The triple lock has been temporarily suspended (with the wages element removed, so becoming a double lock) for 2022-23. The government has repeatedly said, and it was re-stated again by Sunak just the other day, that after this year the triple-lock will be reinstated for the rest of the parliamentary term.

Critically, the consumer price index part of the lock is still in place, so pensions will still rise in line with inflation (as measured by CPI) in 2022-23.

Pensions have increased substantially since 2010 due to the triple lock, which was momentarily suspended in 2022 because this year it would have been unsustainable: wages have increased significantly in 2021 due to temporary changes of the composition of the workforce caused by lockdowns. The current spike in inflation will be accounted for next year, like many worker’s salaries that have been adjusted using last year’s inflation (2-3%).

Besides, British pensions are lower because British pensioners paid much less pension contributions than other European pensioners.

It is a fact that the current government stance on Brexit is both exacerbating the labour shortage and damaging the country’s supply chains. And it would be totally disingenuous to claim that this doesn’t stem from an idiotic stance on migration from the EU, that has been part of the Conservative manifestos/programmes since at least 2008 and that lead to their last N electoral victories.

Their stance on immigration was always fairly reluctant. They took it because they were losing their base to UKIP. Ironically (given how horrible it was) it was one of the few things they actually did because of democratic pressure.

The British business oligarchy are now pretty keen to take Johnson down and replace him with starmer - the wages, inflation and supply chain damage has infuriated them. Hence the british medias obsession with boris's parties.

> The UK pension system is one of the worst in Europe. If it was ever to be substantially improved you will definitely hear about it.

I assume you just mean the state pension here. Occupational pensions have long been a significant part of our pension system that tends to get ignored. The auto-enroll workplace pension introduced in 2008 seems to have been very successful too.

Overall, if I remember correctly, the UK actually has the second total pension assets in the OECD, and one of the highest per capita.

It does not really matter what the assets or number representing the assets are. The problem that countries with decreasing proportions of young and working to old and non working populations are that automation is not close to changing bedpans yet, so there is decreasing supply of units of labor and increasing demand.

This was mitigated for a few decades with the import of foreign labor and automation, but presumably this is no longer happening at a sufficiently rapid rate to be able to prevent labor prices from rising. Also, who really wants to change bedpans?

So the political question is: Who in society is entitled to the decreasing amount of labor and how will it be divvied up?

> automation is not close to changing bedpans yet

I find it remarkable that this is the metaphor of choice, given that bedpans are merely the final remaining situation where chamber pots have not been replaced with mechanism-clearing flush toilets.

As mmarq was saying the government doesn’t represent the people, it is entirely possible for the British population at large to be welcoming and friendly to immigrants while at the same time the government is being as hostile as they can get away with.

Which countries do you count as “top tier”? I migrated to Germany, I pay the same healthcare costs as anyone else here. I can’t remember exactly what my combined ID card and work permit cost, but it was a 2-digit number. I think naturalisation here is about a tenth the cost of the U.K. also.

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