Your contributors (Letters, 16 February) are mostly in profound disagreement with Phillip Inman’s article (Baby boomers, pay your dues, 14 February). Here is the contrary view of a pre-baby-boomer. Over a long period of time, we better-off pensioners have been gifted three substantial unearned financial windfalls. First, many of us in our 70s and 80s have long exhausted what we paid into the system, so the younger working population pick up the bill for our pension and health costs. Second, we received unearned capital gains from home ownership. Third, persistent inflation eroded the real burden of our mortgage repayments.
Let’s not praise or blame anyone for this; it’s the way the cards have fallen. But on top of these windfalls, we receive free prescriptions, bus passes, TV licences, heating allowances, and the triple lock. Pensioners on low incomes need and deserve these benefits, but the rest of us with relatively generous occupational pensions can afford to contribute more, especially since we are overwhelmingly the main beneficiaries of the welfare state.
Lawrence Lockhart
Bath
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