Old people and their costs

 Yesterday I spent some of my time in a group of people all over 70, that includes me.  As often in such a group  quite a lot of time is spent discussing ill-health it happens when you get old.

 Also people moan about the economy and the modern world,  some of them even read the Daily Mail so there views of the world are somewhat distorted.  If you try to point out that at least half of our welfare budget goes on payments to the elderly, the argument is that they have paid for them.  That is indeed true but all unhappily all governments just spend the income from National Insurance and so have to rely on current taxation to fund payments to the elderly. The obvious conclusion is that if we are not increasing our GDP and the number of people drawing pensions is increasing then we have a problem.

  The other big expenditure is health, 40% of all spending on the NHS is on people over 65. So when we discuss the state of the economy and public expenditure it is the elderly who eat up most of it, over a quarter of public expenditure goes directly on the elderly So it is the responsibility of the elderly to make sure that taxes are fair and collected, that people have decent jobs so that they can contribute to the economy and stop blaming other people for the ills of modern society. we were the ones who laid the foundations in the 80's and 90's for the current problems that society is now facing.

  We need some clarity of thought in what we want to happen. To claim we want less regulation but to blame Gordon Brown for the banking disaster because there was not enough regulation is inconsistent, especially when its roots were in New York!