Paul Routledge: OH, FOR GOD’S SAKE PAUL!
“Will you be working until you are 67, Prime Minister?” He is backing a Pensions Commission recommendation that other work people should slog on an extra two years after the current retirement age. “Oh, for God’s sake Paul,” he snapped.
Posted on November 21st, 2005 at 12:35 pm
| See also • Christmas comes early • L.a.R.R.B. Latest: The fat lady warms up • Downing Street does auto-fellatio |
Permalink • Trackback • Subscribe By Email • Print This Post • • • |
|
Filed under Blair, Chicken Nuggets, UK politics |
Mandatory retirement is nothing but an effort to open up jobs for younger workers. It’s social engineering in the worst sense, and should be outlawed as government-subsidized age discrimination. Too bad socialists have managed to make it sound appetizing by pulling private pension programs into the mix and forcing corporations to transfer the costs of retirment from the retirees to the backs of productive workers. We’ll soon see the fruit of this (we already have in bankrupt airlines) when General Motors goes belly up thanks to a $1200.00 per vehicle retirement surcharge.
that’s a nugget alright.
Of course I now know that the reason I want to retire and enjoy a few years without the endless mind-numbing slog of work before i fall down dead is because “socialists have managed to make it sound appetizing”. Those tricksy lefties!
red
Kevin, I’m not sure what the situation is in the US but in the UK poor pension provision means that there is no such thing as mandatory retirement hence the proliferation of pensioners serving drinks on trains, greeting customers at superstores and other such dignified occupations conferred on those who have already provided a lifetime of coal for the engines of capitalism.
The vast majority of the UK’s workers do not have private pensions and almost as many have no inkling of what one is or does. Many of our “corporations” have also done their damnest to cheat their employees out of their rightful pensions that they have stored up over years of working for the Man. Couple that with Gordon Brown’s skimming of pension funds and you find that many of those with non-state pensions (leaving aside those dependent on meagre state pensions after a working life of paying their taxes) aren’t going to be living in the socialist nightmare you foretell.
I think Kevin is right - we shouldn’t be confusing a mandatory retirement age with pension funding.
With an ageing population, the only options I can see are:
a) Increase burden on working population.
b) Allow pensioner living standards to fall.
c) Persuade/compel current working population to lend money to other countries so they can call it in later.
d) Reduce current consumption and invest it to increase future productivity.
e) People work longer, helping to maintain working/non-working ratio.
We’re almost certain to see some combination of a) and b). c) is sensible but almost impossible in practice. One of the best ways to acheive c) would be to cut government spending and thereby improve trade deficit (I’m guessing you wouldn’t fancy that). d) is great if you can work out how to do it, but is almost certainly impossible to engineer through direct government intervention. Given this, some element of e) looks like a necessity.
The biggest problem with pension funding is that most people (myself included) have very little idea of what they are currently likely to receive. However, given that we don’t know what inflation and interest rates are going to do, projections can be pretty meaningless until a few years away, at which point it’s too late to do anything. I tried to work out whether I should be in or out of SERPS, but because it’s impossible to take much of a guess at real investment returns for the next thirty years, the calculation had a big fat question mark in it that rendered it meaningless.
But as I said, the term “mandatory retirement” is a meaningless term when it doesn’t apply to so many of the British public.
Yes, the firm you work for may give you the bullet at 65 (or 67) but if you’ve still got a mortgage you don’t get to retire.
Talking about pensions from a macro perspective is all very interesting and a useful debate to have but I suspect it doesn’t help those in society for who the “mandatory retirement age” might as well be 110. Which is the end of the argument I’m coming from.