In a development that has caused every Conservative MP over the age of 60 to simultaneously clutch their pearls and their pacemakers, it has emerged that Generation Z are planning their financial futures with the assumption that the state pension will be nothing more than a quaint historical anecdote, like the Corn Laws or the concept of a affordable seaside holiday.
Yes, dear reader. The youth of today, those bedevilled creatures whose very existence is a affront to the settled order of property prices and warm beer, have looked into the abyss of Britain's pension sovereignty debate and concluded: we'd be better off investing in a one-way ticket to Mars than waiting for a monthly handout from a government that can't even decide on a consistent policy for wheelie bins.
This is not, as the Daily Mail would have you believe, a sign of moral decay or a conspiracy to force the elderly into lives of quiet desperation on a diet of cat food and regret. Rather, it is the cold, hard actuarial logic of a generation that has watched their parents be sold a dream of final salary pensions that vanished faster than a Tory MP’s principles upon receiving a knighthood.
Let us, for a moment, examine the facts with the forensic precision of a man who has consumed three double gins before breakfast. The state pension, currently around £9,000 a year (or, in London, enough to buy a small parking space for a bicycle), is widely expected to become means-tested, delayed, or simply abolished by the time today's twenty-somethings hit retirement age. This is not paranoia; it is simple mathematics, a discipline for which the Treasury has a legendary allergy.
The pension sovereignty debate, if we may dignify it with such a grand term, boils down to a simple question: can Britain continue to fund a decent state pension for all when the ratio of workers to pensioners is sliding faster than a greased eel down a waterfall? The answer, which every politician will obfuscate with the skill of a master illusionist, is a resounding no. And so Gen Z, those canny creatures who were raised on the internet and a diet of ironic detachment, have made their decision. They will not rely on the state. They will rely on themselves, their side hustles, and the universal solvent of a booming cryptocurrency market.
The government, predictably, is apoplectic. Ministers have rushed to microphones to denounce this as a ‘dangerous and irresponsible attitude.’ But let us be clear: what is truly irresponsible is a system that sells people a dream of a comfortable retirement based on the assumption that property prices will always go up and the working age population will never shrink. That is not a plan; it is a pyramid scheme with a royal warrant.
So what is to be done? We could, as a society, have a grown-up conversation about pension reform, perhaps raising the retirement age to 95 and making everyone work in a call centre until they expire. Or we could acknowledge that the current system is broken and start planning for a future where the state pension is a safety net, not a expectation. But that would require political courage, something in even shorter supply than affordable housing in the Home Counties.
In the meantime, I shall toast the pragmatism of Generation Z with a gin and tonic. They have looked into the abyss and seen not a pension, but a void. And they have chosen to fill that void with cryptocurrency, avocado toast, and the quiet satisfaction of knowing they were never fooled in the first place. Long may they reign. Or at least, long may they contribute to my National Insurance pot before the whole thing collapses.
