ivannomonet
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It's a pity that it will be delayed so long, but the policy of doing it in small bites makes a lot more sense than in big chunks. Much less likely to encounter resistance from people feeling hard done by due to their birthday falling a few days the wrong side of the new year.The Pensions Commission report, which was submitted to Social Protection Minister Heather Humphreys in recent days, is understood to recommend that the State pension age begin to rise in quarterly increments to 67 between 2028 and 2031, before gradually increasing to 68 by 2039.
Raising the pension age is just another money grab from working people. Covid showed us that 70 years of age is considered vulnerable and liable to severe health problems.
Raising the pension age is just another money grab from working people. Covid showed us that 70 years of age is considered vulnerable and liable to severe health problems.
Many people in low wage groups will have even lower mortality rates and won't even reach 70 years of age. The state pension is subsistence level anyway, but should be available to people at 65, or even earlier. We should be able to fund a modest retirement for our citizens at an age when they can have some level of active retirement.
We are in the midst of a pandemic which may well see a reduction in life expectancy and add another chronic illness to the spectrum. Another policy mandated by right wing freakonomics. Getting so boring.
30% of Irish people die before they reach the age of 69, so you could add their contributions to your imaginary purse. They get nothing back.You could claim with equal validity that lowering the pension age is just another moneygrab from working people, given that the Social Insurance Fund would go bust almost as soon as the pension age was lowered - meaning that working people would have to fund those pensions!
30% of Irish people die before they reach the age of 69, so you could add their contributions to your imaginary purse. They get nothing back.
The social insurance fund (SIF) is just an accounting concept. There is no investment strategy, there are no benefits that won't get paid if it runs out of money. The SIF has been in deficit for most of its existence with the Exchequer acting as residual financer.in the Social Insurance Fund that will go bust
When today’s retirees started the working lives, the average life expectancy for a 65 year old then was about 13 years. Today, the average life expectancy for a 65 year old retiree is c20 years (a 50%+ increase). So whilst some would like the retirement age to continue to be 65 (or earlier according to Allpartied), the same people also want lower taxes and are unwilling to fund even longer State Pensions. Only in the SF world of Narnia economics can these contradictions be squared.
Irish GDP has increased by over 500% in the last 20 years. There is a lot of wealth being created in this economy. More than enough to cover a pittance for people in retirement and to deal with the ageing crisis.
GDP nets out the costs too!I'm not an economist but I tend to view GDP a bit like turnover of a business. A nice headline figure, but I'm more interested in the bottom line, after all the costs.
This is an interesting debate. Following on from Conan's point, here's a handy table of average longevity in Ireland since 1950. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IRL/ireland/life-expectancy
Even in the short space of time since I started working full-time (late 1980s) it's gone up by 8 years. Those additional 8 years of a full State pension - roughly €13,000 per year - is the equivalent of an additional cost of around €100,000 per person to the State.
So where's all that extra money to come from?
Allpartied believes that it's not an issue...
I'm not an economist but I tend to view GDP a bit like turnover of a business. A nice headline figure, but I'm more interested in the bottom line, after all the costs.
So on one side of the debate, it's a verifiable fact that our increasing longevity, while welcome in many ways, is going to cost the State a huge amount of money per year. Think €13,000 x every retired person x 8 years or whatever time period you're looking at.
Does anyone have figures to show that our increased GDP, net of all the expenditure is sufficient to pay the huge additional cost of the State pension? This is not a rhetorical question - I'd be genuinely interested to see. I work on the pensions side of the debate so I'm far more familiar with the cost of the State Pension. I'm less familiar with the income side - where the money is coming from and how much extra we have to go around, compared with a few decades ago.
GDP nets out the costs too!
To simplify greatly it's profits of businesses plus wages of households.