The basic state pension is going up this week and the full rate will be just over £10,000 a year. This is the amount workers will be robbed of if the retirement age goes up a further year, as it will in three years’ time when it goes up from 66 to 67. There could then well be a Labour but you can safely bet they won’t do anything to stop it. Maybe they will be faced by French-style opposition with Starmer as the British Macron.
There’s talk of it going up to 68 before 2044 as currently scheduled. It’s a political hot potato which no government wants to be left holding as it won’t be popular. But there is another aspect to this. Professor Sir Michael Marmot, an expert on health inequality, points out:
“The most deprived two-thirds of the population do not have disability-free life expectancy as long as 68, so if you make the pension age older than that, you’re going to find a huge swath of the more deprived can’t work to 68 and will have less time time to enjoy this pension.” (Times, 31 January)
In other words, they will die before or soon after retiring. In fact this must be happening now to some extent with the retirement age at 66 and will to a greater extent when it goes up to 67. How convenient for the finances of the capitalist state.
If you can’t work you are no use to capitalism, just an expendable drag on profits.
1 comment:
They wouldn't have it any other way
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