It shouldn’t be pensioners who have to pay for this crisis | Letters
Jeremy Cushing, Dr Michael Griffiths and Ian Watson sound warnings over a thinktank's call to ditch the triple lock on pensions, but Mike Pender is in favour of it. Meanwhile, Malcolm Pugh says raising tax on unearned income makes more sense
The cost of bailing out the financial system after the 2008 crash was eventually borne overwhelmingly by those least responsible for it and least able to pay. It's normal to wonder how the (probably even more vast) cost of the pandemic response will be paid for in future years. The proposal by the Social Market Foundation (Coronavirus UK: Call to scrap 'triple lock' on pensions after crisis, 14 April) is a foretaste of policies to come. To ask the older generation to face cuts in their income, before making proposals to limit higher pay or imposing taxes on extreme wealth, is almost unbelievable. But so was George Osborne's decision to derive 80% of the cost of his programme from cuts and only 20% from increased taxes. Thousands of elderly people have died as a result of that decision. We have been warned. The claim by the thinktank that society is "making sacrifices to protect its elderly" sounds tin-eared considering what is happening in care homes.
Jeremy Cushing
Exeter
" The Social Market Foundation's proposal that "the economic cost of the emergency measures deployed to manage the pandemic should be shared fairly between old and young" takes no account of the fact that the old are already paying disproportionately with their lives, as the mortality is significantly higher in the over-70s. The government can expect to make significant savings on the pensions of those who die of coronavirus before considering scrapping the triple lock on state pensions. This proposal is a thinly disguised attempt to force those who have already contributed throughout their younger lives to pay twice.
Dr Michael Griffiths
Caerphilly