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Agafaster wrote:
and heres me thinking the IT job situation in the W.Mids was bad !

No, *everything* in the West Midlands is bad! ;-)

[Wilse]

why should our federal deficit be sky high as we're handing out money we don't have?

Simple; no high-profile politician has the bollox to publicly point out what you just did.

[nadoom]

its funny, the same right wing politician wants to privatise social security and stop giving poor people hand outs loves to bits the idea of giving corporations and troublesome countries handouts.. weird...

[jkirk]

a picture of social security.

pol 1-hey let's create a fund that will help our people retire.
pol 2- sounds good we will call it social security

all is well for a few years then

pol 3-we are short on the budget this year
pol 4-well we do have a surplus in the social security thingie
pol 3- yes we can use that then replace it next fisical year

next fisical year

pol 3-dangit we are short again hmm how is that social security thing lookin
pol 4- oh we still have a surplus we can't spend it fast enough
pol 3-well let me have some more to even us out.

this continues until

pol 5- oh man we are getting negative numbers on social security.
pol 6- our budget is still in the hole so we can't help you
pol 5- we need to reform social security to reduce our spending & the benefits. oh well. :-(

[countzero]

jkirk wrote:
a picture of social security.

pol 1-hey let's create a fund that will help our people retire.
pol 2- sounds good we will call it social security

all is well for a few years then

pol 3-we are short on the budget this year
pol 4-well we do have a surplus in the social security thingie
pol 3- yes we can use that then replace it next fisical year

next fisical year

pol 3-dangit we are short again hmm how is that social security thing lookin
pol 4- oh we still have a surplus we can't spend it fast enough
pol 3-well let me have some more to even us out.

this continues until

pol 5- oh man we are getting negative numbers on social security.
pol 6- our budget is still in the hole so we can't help you
pol 5- we need to reform social security to reduce our spending & the benefits. oh well. :-(

Exactly what happenned in Japan. Retirement system in Japan is on the brink of collapse. The most important reason is the aging population (Japan is the oldest country in the world AFAIK), due to lack of children. I'm not sure that if the funds for the social security system has been spent for other purposes, but I guess we'll see that in a few years when the government has to push the social security reform. Another reason is that the young population does not want to work. Having a part time job is kind of enough to fill your stomach in japan, and you have all the rest of the time for your self. And the fate of the retirement system is so obvious that young people don't want to become a part of it. Most prefer to keep their payments to themselves (maybe sign for a private retirement program) so lack of fresh workers in the system makes it impossible for the system to continue as the bulk of the workforce will get retired in a few years, and they will not be able to get their retirement salaries from the system. I really wonder what the government will come up with.

[jkirk]

dang over here we are required to pay social security regardless of whether or not we want to participate.

[PMC]

Aye,

We have Social Security here. The idea is we contribute 11% of our lifetimes wages to it, but when we retire it's worth bugger all.

[Methuselas]

PMC wrote:
Aye,

We have Social Security here. The idea is we contribute 11% of our lifetimes wages to it, but when we retire it's worth bugger all.

It's nice to see that it's the same way everywhere. It's sad how pathetic everyone of our governments are.... :-(

[Cyberus]

I work with a demographer - and the projected demography for the UK in like 20 years time is that something like a third (I forget the exact amount) will be over 65 (the current UK retirement age for men).

So we are facing a pensions timebomb, not to mention the cost of the NHS/Social services in the future, as the elderly need a lot of healthcare or homecare or whatever - expensive. This is one of things the government tried to address in its recent white paper, "Our health, our care, our say". However the fact remains, that a smaller proportion of our population will be working age.

I think people often forget to look at economics when choosing their political stance.

For example, putting the moral side of their policies to one side, if the far-right parties in this country had their way, we'd be left with a massive elderly population in a few years time, and not enough taxpayers to support them.
People coming to this country to work are a huge economic benefit.

Without economic migrants helping our economy to flourish (as well as paying tax and NI), what else are the government going to do to solve this problem? Sure, they could continue to do things like cut down on benefit fraud, help more people back into work, rise the retirement age etc,etc, but you would need a miracle to prevent Britain suffering massively economically IMHO. And it will be the poor who will suffer the most - they can't afford to pay into big pensions. [Which is incidentally why I joined in a recent strike in protests by local government workers; I'll be okay financially I reckon, but there are thousands of people on much lower incomes who will suffer, hence I'm against anything that threatens anyone's pension - the thin end of the wedge for the poorer people in this nation IMO]