As you ask, I'll respond to some of your other points. Usually I try to only make what I think is the most important point, in a couple of lines, for brevity - it is a forum - but I'll expand.
That's fair enough. I just felt that highlighting a few words in quite a long comment and responding to just those words was disingenuous. Maybe it wasn't intentional, but it felt it.
The state pension policy which gives above inflation increases was introduced because it was widely considered at the time to be derisory. Personally, when I started work I foresaw it would be impossible to survive on it; working on BR gave me a much better pension for which I paid 7 1/2 % of my salary.
Well this raises another point - such pensions simply don't exist in that form any more. The current retired generation are littered with people who benefitted from final salary defined benefit pensions, which have mostly been scrapped since, rightly so because they're just not economical or sustainable. That is not the
fault of such pension recipients, but it is another factor which makes younger people feel hard done by. My old man has been a train driver for I think 48 years, and his pension is phenomenal. If I were to follow him into train driving today, my pension would be nowhere near the same. Nor would the staff travel benefits for that matter.
Personally, I planned my retirement on being able to live on my BR pension - retired before pensionable age - and, if you must know, I have been able to help pay off younger peoples' mortgages and, in another instance, pay off a considerable debt to avoid an imminent threat of bailiffs - all from my state pension. Other people I know have dome similarly - as far as mortgage settlement. As far as continuation of the triple lock - see above.
This comes back to what I've said about inherited wealth. You've clearly benefited from an incredibly generous pension scheme, retired early, and paid off the mortgages of some you know. While today, getting a mortgage is both more difficult and more expensive relative to income.
The comparison of house prices then and now is only of importance in the unlikely event of buying a house cash. For those of us who bought using a mortgage the interest rates we paid over time were never lower than 7 1/2 % and rose to 16 %. They're a lot lower now, A fairer comparison would be between the monthly mortgage payment payments then.
Well, as you wish - monthly mortgage premiums as a percentage of net household income have risen over 50% in the past 20 years.
If you couple this with the rise in rental payments relative to net income over the same period, you can see quite easily how home ownership has become so unaffordable.
Simplistically, house prices being 2 1/2 times higher now, and mortgage repayments 2 1/2 times higher then, might sort of balance out.
But they're not, so this is just a pipe dream.
It's also possible that lower interest rates themselves are a cause of higher house prices. Similarly, there was a limit on the ratio of earnings to mortgage 3 times then, plus 1/2 te salary of the spouse. These limits have been increased and this might also be a reason for house prices increasing - increase in money supply is, in simple terms, inflationary.
There is always an issue with unaffordable mortgages, but even with the more flexible approach we have now, many people are unable to afford a house because the prices are so high. It's all well and good accounting for an F1 doctor who a bank thinks will become a consultant in a decade or so but most people aren't in this situation and so while some 0-5% products are available, they're not offered to everybody. With current rent prices through the roof, saving for a deposit to buy a home is just out of reach for too many.
How are we old people 'holding people to ransom' by owning a house? What's the method?
Well, all of the above. It's not you
personally, which is how I feel you're taking this, but government policy is rewarding pensioners with above-inflation pension rises while imposing even greater student loans on young people. There is also the squeezed middle, because thanks to Starmer's promise to freeze income tax bands until 2031, most working people will be taking real terms pay cuts thanks to paying more income tax, wiping out the even average below-inflation cost of living increases made to wages. Meanwhile, when the government suggested maybe means-testing the £200-£300 winter fuel payment for those aged 66+, all hell broke loose. Meanwhile, university tuition fees next year will be £10,050. People will graduate with £97k of student debt if they take out the full maintenance loans and tuition fee loans. That's ridiculous, and the disparity between that and the state pension rise clearly demonstrates how the older generation are benefiting far far greater than the younger generation at the moment, and have been for a couple of decades at least. It's fine to tax young people another £300 but the idea that
means-testing older people for that same £300 results in revolt is what's wrong.
