From Unity, 27 March 2010

Editorial

According to figures obtained from the European Union, one in three pensioners in Northern Ireland is now living in poverty because of having to live on the basic state pension of £95.25 per week.
     These findings put Northern Ireland on a par with Latvia and Lithuania and far behind most other Continental countries when it comes to pensioner poverty.
     It is estimated that six out of ten people here do not pay into any pension fund, and so reliance on what is a pathetic low state pension means that what is already a bleak situation may get even worse for future generations, according to one commentator.
     The EU defines poverty as having an income less than 60 per cent of the national average; you do not have to be a mathematician to calculate where the state pension at present puts you, even if you manage to get the means-tested pension credit top-up to £130.
     According to one financial adviser, people here appear to be relying on state pension as their core retirement income but get a shock when they realise how little that is.
     Of course, the drive over the years was to undermine state pensions, the earnings-related link being an example, and to force people into various forms of private schemes, many of which have suffered damage inflicted by the present crisis. Others have been affected by unscrupulous employers, as the Visteon example shows.
     People of course are living longer. The average life expectancy here is 82 for men and 85 for women, and so any savings have to sustain people for about twenty years after retirement. A poor state pension will quickly erode such savings.
     No such problems for the parasitic rich, who have no need to concern themselves with the level of the state pension, just as they have no concern over the NHS. Both these are irrelevant to their lives.
     Workers on low wages are expected to finance their own pensions in this constant drive to the privatisation of everything that moves.
     State pensions are a socialist idea but are undermined by governments wasting billions on imperialist adventures and allowing the rich to avoid and dodge paying proper taxes.
     Pensioner poverty is immoral; but so is the capitalist system.

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