Letters: It's in every worker's interest that the triple lock is watered down quickly

OBVIOUSLY the pensions triple lock is only “intergenerationally unfair” when it is halted or watered down. But it should be equally obvious to Tom Bryson (Letters, August 10) that the triple lock is unsustainable and will come to an end. Pensions that grow as fast as earnings in good years, and faster than earnings in bad years, will inevitably require a larger and larger share of the economy .

Normally the economy would react to such a mismatch by increasing prices, but state pensions are locked against inflation, as are the pensions of public sector workers, so high inflation makes the problem worse. Then there is the additional problem of the number of pensioners increasing faster than the number of workers, which also requires that a larger share of economic output goes to pensioners. So the solution is that the number of pensioners must fall, not just to keep the ratio of pensioners to workers roughly constant, but to ensure that the number of workers increases relative to the number of pensioners so that we can afford the higher pension.

The longer the triple lock persists, the faster the pension age must increase relative to life expectancy, so that the ever-higher pension is claimed for an ever-shorter average length of time. As watering down the triple lock is a mathematical certainty, the question is when it inevitably must happen. It is in the interest of every worker who expects it to happen in their working lifetime, or even early in their pensionable lifetim.