Posts by BenWilson
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OnPoint: Easy as 1, 2, 22.8 billion, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
They’ve got large pension funds amassed overseas.
Aha. Now, lets say they've also got large funds located here, something that could easily be legislated for - say no more than a fixed percentage can be overseas.
Note that Australia has over 1.28 trillion Australian dollars in such funds. If we managed to get near that proportionally, that would be around 250 billion dollars invested into retirements, powering the stockmarket, and other investments. Is it any surprise they laughed off the GFC?
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Up Front: How About Now?, in reply to Russell Brown,
An incremental handshake? Starts really weak, then gets stronger?
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Up Front: How About Now?, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
Have them live on different islands. It's a good start. I imagine different countries would work even better.
It's been my solution for years. It's not as good as it seems - you end up forking out big time for airfares, and going nowhere else for holidays.
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OnPoint: Easy as 1, 2, 22.8 billion, in reply to Gareth Ward,
Has to come with means-testing as well of course...
I'm thinking that it's simply a percentage of income, how it's done in Oz. We can start off low, like they did, and then within ten years everyone will be clamoring to raise it. The money is taken from pre-tax income so it's tax-free. Unless you want to draw it early, in which case you have to back-pay the tax - one of the main reasons I still have my fund in Oz.
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OnPoint: Easy as 1, 2, 22.8 billion, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I strongly suspect that any nation that does try to live a rentier existence off its accumulated pension funds will find that inflation and currency changes erode the value of those funds.
It was fairly clear that extended economic stagnation in Japan and Germany came about from high levels of savings. But they are also very wealthy nations - would it be so bad to stagnate at a position of massive wealth?
I don't think that inflation has too much effect on funds - at the very worst, a fund is likely to be in T-Bills which are pretty much tracking inflation, that is their main purpose. But they can be in anything the retirees want, once they get their hands on them, and there is room to have more or less risk profile even before retirement. My own Australian super fund has steadily grown since I left there 11 years ago, beating inflation quite handily even with the GFC.
Currency changes? I can't see any reason for a correlation. Can you elaborate on this fear?
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OnPoint: Easy as 1, 2, 22.8 billion, in reply to Bart Janssen,
no, a thousand times no.
Actually, yes. They supported me when I was young, I support them when they are old. To say that they're supporting themselves by having supported me and that I'm supporting myself by supporting them is circuitous and quite pointless, requiring buy in to a contract that I didn't agree to because I was too young, and which they can't enforce. Every generation does actually have to make its choices afresh. The contract idea does my head in. What is actually wrong with saying that we support the elderly because we have social compassion? Why bring in "because we OWE them"? That just gives wiggle room to adding up just how much we do actually owe them, and perhaps calling the debt settled.
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OnPoint: Easy as 1, 2, 22.8 billion, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Superannuation was a very simple contract between the voters and the government ... voters paid taxes that the govt would set aside and invest and then pay back to those lucky enough to live past 65 years.
It's a contract I never signed. I will pay for the oldies, but not because of any contract. It was an improvement on no pension of any kind, but the way that money is put aside for old people can, and should, be drastically improved.
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Compulsory super contributions is the solution to our super problem. It won't harm anyone on super, but it can reign in the cost of national super really, really fast.
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Cracker: Another Capital Idea..., in reply to Hilary Stace,
People trusted Muldoon then just as people trust that nice Mr Key now. Logic doesn't really come into it (except on this forum).
36 years later, though, we get to see the outcome of Muldoon's path - the colossal pension bill, on which elderly people still subsist. We also get to see how it fared for Australia over the last 20 years: From wiki:
After more than a decade of compulsory contributions, Australian workers have over $1.28 trillion[3] in superannuation assets. Australians now have more money invested in managed funds per capita than any other economy.[4]
That is one fuck of a lot of money funding retirement in Australia, and it didn't cost the government anything, other than the political will to push it through.
Perhaps Labour should be asking Keating for some tips about how he sold the idea.
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Cracker: Another Capital Idea..., in reply to giovanni tiso,
It's just about the only worthwhile thing there is.
When one is writing, definitely so. Polls bounce around for all sorts of reasons. But the steady pressure of a good idea building support is lasting. No one is going to remember the ins and outs of how the information about the CGT came out in September - they will be far more likely to be simply considering it on its merits, which are many. One of the biggest merits is that it is a decisive change, a clear alternative to the National line of selling off assets. I think NZers have been wanting this from Labour since Clark resigned. To be even discussing the merits of CGT is a big shift away from discussing the benefits of selling assets. Labour has seized control of the debate.
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