From the BBC:
"Outdated" age-specific benefits for older people should be replaced with support for the young to "deliver a fairer society", say peers...
The peers also propose changes to benefits for older people, including:
* Removing the triple lock for pensions, which raises the basic state pension by the rate of average earnings increases, inflation or 2.5% - whichever is higher
* Phasing out free TV licences based on age (currently free for over-75s) and ensuring the government decides on whether to give free licences based on household income
* Limiting free bus passes for the over-65s and winter fuel payments until five years after retirement age
As daft as the free TV licence, bus passes and winter fuel payment (fka "Christmas Bonus") are, the nominal cost of these things is minimal in national accounts terms and the real cost to those not receiving them is nigh on zero.
The triple lock is a gimmick, but it seems sensible to index the state pensions to wages, and I doubt that state pensions would be much lower had they just been indexed to wages without a "triple lock".
They have deliberately missed the point.
There's no particular conflict between 'young' and 'old' on the spending side, the real battle is between landowners (landlords or homeowners) and tax-payers (businesses, workers and consumers) on the taxation side.
And at present, the landowners are winning, as they have been doing since 1066. Funding public services - which create and sustain land values in the first place - with service charges on land (Land Value Tax) instead of with taxes on output and wages (VAT and NIC) will go a long way to sorting all this out, no need for sticking plasters on sticking plasters.
As long as ALL pensioners get the same goodies, regardless of how much land (by value) they own, there's not really a problem.
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