Polly Toynbee says that to pay for pensions and care, “the money is right there for the taking, in wealthy pensioners’ assets” and that “one in five over-65s live in households with assets worth more than £1m” (During Covid, callous Tories knew this about old people: they’re very expensive, 3 November).
But most of those “assets” are their houses, not things they can trade. A home is not an asset. You can’t survive without one, so you can only sell if you move to a cheaper area, and damage your health with the stress of moving away from the place and the people you know.
So if most older people are relatively “wealthy” homeowners, and most young people relatively poor tenants, it’s not because of a conspiracy by old people. It’s “Tory policy driving a wedge between generations”, deliberate theft by multimillionaires getting rid of council houses, pushing up house prices, and increasing profits for private landlords.
So the answer to the problem is not to take people’s homes away from them, but to massively increase the tax on the people who really do have millions of pounds of wealth.
Rowan Adams
Dilwyn, Herefordshire