From: BillK (bill@wkidston.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: Thu Aug 14 2003 - 09:12:15 MDT
On Wed Aug 13, 2003 10:18 am Randy wrote:
>
> Excellent post! Right in line with my recent thoughts. This really
> belies the growing neoconservative "arbeit mach frei" propaganda that
> has helped lead to the increasing age at which one may draw SS
> benefits (was 62, now 65, soon to be 67). We need to take a look at
> what we are doing, and decrease the SS eligible age even if we have
> greatly reduce benefits.
>
Sorry, but governments are not trying to increase the official
retirement age because of neoconservative propaganda.
The problem is that the money is running out.
The western European countries have a huge pensions problem looming over
them. It is so bad that even politicians who will do anything to remain
in power, are taking hugely unpopular measures like reducing pensions
and benefits and increasing the retirement age.
The aging population problem (people living longer and having fewer
children) means that fewer and fewer working people are paying taxes to
support more and more 'retired' people. And it will reach crunch point
in just a few years.
Many people are depending on company pensions for their retirement. But
since the stock market collapse and many companies going bust making
their shares worthless, company pension schemes are in big trouble. In
some cases the 'black hole' in their pension scheme fund is greater than
the worth of the company. They are stopping new members to their old
scheme and providing a much lower benefit scheme for new employees. And
hoping that the stock market will recover enough before they have to
meet all their pension scheme commitments.
Some people call this 'whistling in the wind'.
I entirely agree that early retirement is a good thing and will mean a
longer life, as the statistics from David A. Kekich show.
But, How to fund it?, is a non-trivial problem while we are still in a
resource scarce environment.
BillK
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