While the French are protesting so vehemently against a raise in their pension age that some of them are getting badly injured by police, on this side of the Channel things are rather different. Our Government is reportedly considering bringing forward a planned rise in the state pension to 68 from 2046 to the 2030s — and our protests aren’t quite so vociferous. Compare that to the French, who are fuming about a rise from 62 to 64 years old.
Of course, everyone understands why the state pension age is going up. As my colleague Melanie McDonagh noted in this column on Tuesday, we’re living far longer than we were back in the 1940s when the state pension age for men was set at 65. So if we want the same standard of public services, don’t we have to work longer?
Sure, in theory. But as a 23-year-old, I can’t help but feel jaded by the news of the rapidly accelerated rise, the latest nail in the coffin that is the general economic malaise which has descended upon my generation.
What age will we be, I wonder, when the class of 2020 are finally allowed to leave the rat race? Perhaps by then they’ll have done away with retirement altogether, and resorted to cryo-freezing and unfreezing our decrepit bodies to keep us all as perpetual economic agents in service to the state. Millennials and Gen Z are the most educated generations yet, but they are living through what the TUC has called “the longest and harshest pay squeeze in modern history”. To put that into context, in 1989, half of 25 to 34-year-olds owned their own home. Today, the figure is 28 per cent. Not that renting is working well either — last year I had to move back in with my parents because I couldn’t afford my rent.
It’s hard to communicate to older generations just how difficult it is to feel motivated when, save for the very wealthiest, your future looks bleak. We can’t forget, either, that nearly 10 million working-age Brits don’t have jobs. Some of these are students, but it’s little wonder people appear to feel less motivated to work when the rewards for doing so seem worse than ever.
So no, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to feel a bit miffed about all of this. And to my comrades across the Channel: santé, I’ll be raising an £8 pint to you this weekend.
