Just had to say.

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@Ming the Merciless It’s a multi employer scheme and as it’s been going for years the level of retirees outstrips those paying into it coupled with a risk adverse management approach, the returns have been poor massively increasing the deficit!

The way the attribution work is silly, it’s equal no matter if you have 1 person or 10,000 people in, so the smaller firms get penalised and if your last man standing you have to pay deficit debt that isn’t even from your company! There are reforms ongoing as my employer recognised it isn’t suitable anymore but there is an interim period where I’ll need to think carefully about what I do so as not to lose accrued benefits. It also not final salary but career average.
 

Cycleops

Legendary Member
Location
Accra, Ghana
You have some good points there and I think a lot of it is on credit: PCP for cars, credit cards for week end away and holidays and buy now pay later for many other things. All of it doesn't help of course but people see it as an easy escape, which it isn't of course as it will all have to be repaid eventually.
This is the way society has gone now and personally, I am not a fan of it. Many people have lost all sense of reality until reality hits back , as it is now and the storm is only beginning.
Very worrying times ahead indeed.
People living for today with no thought for tomorrow. It’s always been like that but none more so than now.
 

Moodyman

Legendary Member
We are wealthier (as a society) and more comfortable now than we've ever been.

Aside housing*, pretty much everything else is cheaper and better quality than decades before.

Thanks to improved efficiencies in production, offshoring and globalisation, the real cost of living has been driven downwards.

Yes, there are people on low incomes struggling to make ends meet, and others who live beyond their means, but on the whole, we're doing ok.**

It's been said that China lifted 800+ million of its people out of poverty. It's less well acknowledged that China improved the lives of many more around the world by being a manufacturing hub and trade.

So, yes the increased petrol prices will bite, and the energy prices will hurt, but these are short term.

* Housing is distorted by supply not keeping pace with demand. We've had several population surges - post 1945 and post 2004.

** In an earlier life I worked frontline for a large financial organisation. I saw many low earners with tens of thousands in savings and many six figure earners relying on their overdraft to see them to the next payday.
 
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