Work up to 75!

amacca

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121390008#Comment_121390008

I'm not disagreeing with you!

Just a statement of fact. Some people dont take or at least don't sppear to take considerations like that into account.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121389461#Comment_121389461

Another baseless generalisation. Pass.

Geuze

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121381917#Comment_121381917

The population of Ireland is not "naturally falling".

Births have exceeded deaths every year for many years.

Plus there has been net inward migration, especially since 2004.

Add the two together, and the population has risen strongly.

Sand

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121390008#Comment_121390008

I got a plot twist for you and your planning ahead - if you don't own a house now, you're never going to own a house. Your child is never going to own a house either. They will own the debt for your end of life care

Not to mention the debt for your own luxury beliefs. That is what you are planning ahead for.

m2_browning

Wow the doom mongers out in force today

Wait until you hear about youth unemployment rate and house ownership rate in the authoritarian utopia of China that above poster usually gushes about

El_Duderino 09

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121390034#Comment_121390034

Yeah you can feel assured I've considered having a rake of chaps and working hard while living in poverty, without ever buying a house. Considered it and decided its not for me.

m2_browning

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121390371#Comment_121390371

Have you tried the dole, I hear it’s great and you get free housing and healthcare and paid generously to post regularly on boards.ie

El_Duderino 09

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121390171#Comment_121390171

Yeah that's possible, likely even. We're saving and planning to buy ahouse as soon as we can afford it so hopefully we'll have the house to sell to pay for end of life care.

I've decided to be an entitled millenial and keep my boujee habits like eating food every day and paying my household rent and utility bills and aspire to own a house. It's the kind thing my generation do probably because we're just so entitled.

El_Duderino 09

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121390360#Comment_121390360

Who gushes about china's housing situation? They're in a worse state than us.

Given the demographic pyramid projections, what do you think will happen?

The govt have mapped out the PRSI increases for the next few years. They are woefully inadequate and still leave a gapping hole in the pension pot. The wealth fund will not cover the current hole as it stands

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/politics/arid-41274412.html

Including the recent increase in the last budget, here's how it will look for the next few years

The longer they leave this to take serious action on it, the more painful that action is going to have to be. Its going to result in horrific cuts in 10-15 years if they don't get serious about this asap

Note, the 3.50% is my estimate and I'm being very generous as its likely closer to 4.5% needed to make up the shortfall

amacca

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121397697#Comment_121397697

I know it's crystal ball gazing but what kind of horrific cuts would you envisage out of curiosity

Cuts to social welfare, cuts to health, cuts to education, cuts to policing, cuts to quangos...cuts to TD renumeration etc

What areas do you think would bear the brunt?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121397968#Comment_121397968

Everything would be fair game to be honest and there's few things that would be off-limits. Literally death by a thousand cuts as the impact would effect everything and the impact would just keep increasing.

The worst option would be reducing the pension itself or not increasing it inline with inflation, but no govt will do that. They are all terrified of energizing the grey vote as these are people with nothing but free time on their hands to campaign against them.

The route the govt have chosen to go is for a smaller pool of workers to pay for a larger pool of pensioners. That is not a sustainable way to run the finances which is why they were looking to increase the pension age to 67. That collapsed, so the sovereign wealth fund was next up. Problem is, it will be too small and won't generate enough, fast enough.

That leaves nothing but PRSI. However it needs to be increased a LOT more, a LOT faster, which they also won't do.

Its like watching a car crash where the moment just before and moment of, impact, goes on for decades.

Its what the word clusterfuck was invented for

Peregrinus

I don't think it's correct to say that "the route the govt have chosen to go is for a smaller pool of workers to pay for a larger pool of pensioners". There's going to be a smaller pool of workers; there's going to be a larger pool of pensioners. There's a limit to what any government can do to influence either of these things. You can encourage people to have more children, but obviously people's childbearing choices are influenced by more than just government encouragement. You can encourage more immigration, but that gives rise to its own challenges/may encounter political opposition. You can raise the retirement age, but that's not popular. While these things may have some influence on demography, it's probably not a huge influence.

So, in the future, the ratio of retired people to workers will grow.

And here's the thing; retired people are always supported by active workers. You can make choices about different mechanisms for transferring wealth from workers to retirees, and you can make choices about how much wealth to transfer from workers to retirees (and note that these are two different and independent sets of choices) but the fundamentals of what is happening — the transfer of wealth from the workers who generate it to the retirees who consume it — does not change. All we are really looking for is the fairest and most efficient way to do this.

Beta Ray Bill

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121398112#Comment_121398112

The problem is absolutely massive, I don't see how to fix it at all. (Get wimminz to have more kids in their 20's maybe?)

Now there is one caveat in that a lot of the people who migrated here to work may return to their country of origin once they reach retirement age.

I wouldn't be holding out to much hope for that though... but that's just the cynic in me.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121399993#Comment_121399993

Yeah its going to take a few different prongs of action to address, none are palatable but all will be necessary

Or we could do what SF want, reduce the pension age to 65 and not increase PRSI and don't set up a wealth fund 🙄

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/sinn-fein-attack-government-plans-to-steadily-increase-prsi-contributions-for-all-workers/a61348790.html

m2_browning

So 65 remains the retirement age for state pension, instead we get more taxes

El_Duderino 09

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121401694#Comment_121401694

Is that what you think will happen? What happens to the range and quality of services for old people? Apart from state pensions (which are presumably the least expensive aspect) what happens to all the other services like health care, and then home care residential care palliative care, housing grants and schemes and the smaller stuff like fuel payments and travel passes?

m2_browning

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121401897#Comment_121401897

That’s what was reported on RTE anything else is speculation sprinkled with rants against “boomers”

El_Duderino 09

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121401997#Comment_121401997

OK. I was asking you what you think will actually happen. Just asking for you opinion.

You don't have to mention boomers. In fact, I was thinking long term so post-boomers. I wasn't really asking about boomers at all.

m2_browning

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121402059#Comment_121402059

I doubt the age be raised because we have one of the highest if not the highest growing population

and Sinn Fein will import hundreds of thousands of Gazans out of “solidarity” with fellow terrorists who will turn into millions paying for your retirement and voting Sinn Fein back in

El_Duderino 09

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121402142#Comment_121402142

Fair enough. No point continuing to ask questions when you're not equipped to answer. Blood from a stone.

Mrs OBumble

Free travel will go. Replace it with health-travel vouchers, issued by health care provider for use getting to health-care.

Social housing will be reformed. Lifetime tenancies will be replaced with a right to adequate housing: once you don't need a 3 bed any more, you move to a 1 or maybe 2. (Actually if it's a 2, you will likely have a housemate.)

Most important, though, euthanasia will be marketed as acceptable and reduce the length of the expensive end-of-life months on average.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121402340#Comment_121402340

Solyent green will be the new super food

BlueSkyDreams

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121402340#Comment_121402340

We should already have house sharing for social tenants, just as we do in the private sector. Until such time as we have a surplus of housing.

The most likley plan to deal with the deficit is that anyone with a private pension over a certain value wont get the state pension.

Not fair, but I can see it coming.

El_Duderino 09

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121402909#Comment_121402909

Yeah I don't have a huge problem with means testing benefits for older people. We means test benefits for working age people.

People of working age can't get out of work benefits with an income or if they have large savings or wealth. But a pensioner with a private pension or with an investment portfolio still gets old age benefits.

I'm sure old age benefits will get squeezed from all directions. It seems unfair that my generation will pay for those benefits for old people, and when we get old, we won't get those benefits AND we'reconsidered entitled. But, that's just how it is. Unless we make it easier for young people to have more children without living in poverty, then there's not much that we can do about it.

Peregrinus

You're overlooking the distinction between means-tested and insured payments.

If you're unemployed, to qualify for Jobseeker's Allowance you have to satisfy a set of conditions, one of which is a fairly stringent means test that considers both your assets and your income.

But to get Jobseeker's Benefit you don't have to satisfy a means test. Instead, you have to satisfy a contributions test — you have to have paid the appropriate number of contributions over the appropriate period and, if you have, you satisfy the test and you get the payment.

That's why it's called social insurance — you pay the insurance premiums (contributions) and, if the risk (unemployment) eventuates, you get the payment.

It's the same for the retirement pension. You qualify for the non-contributory pension on the basis of a means test, but you qualify for the contributory pension on the basis of having paid the contributions.

This creates a problem when it comes to changing the system. Someone approaching retirement now has already paid all the contributions needed to qualify for the contributory pension, so you pretty much have to pay it to them — there are huge legal and political consequences if you try to welch on the deal after they have paid all they are supposed to but before you have paid anything. But in order to actually pay the pension to them you have to keep collecting contributions, because that's what you are using to fund benefit payments. So the next generation of workers continue to pay contributions and that buys them, in return, the right to a retirement pension when they reach the appropriate age.

Really, the only way to break this cycle is (a) reduce social insurance contributions for current workers so that they do not acquire an entitlement to a retirement pension, but (b) increase some other tax on current workers so that you can afford to pay retirement pensions to current pensioners. And the current generation of workers would have to be pretty stupid to fall for that. Basically, they're still paying as much as they ever were, but they are now told that it won't qualify them for a pension. That's not a good deal.

As I've already said, all retirement pension arrangements — public, private, funded, unfunded — are just alternative mechanisms for transferring wealth from the workers who produce it to the retirees who consume it. It follows that the benefit/burden of the system is always shifting - more retirees means more wealth must be transferred, fewer retirees means less; more workers means the burden of this transfer is shared among more people; fewer workers means it is shared among fewer people. There are lots of things you can do to try and manage those demographic shifts — encourage more workers to enter the workforce by e.g. improving the participation of women; promote immigration; raise the retirement age or encourage people to defer retirement. And you can limit the cost of the benefits by reducing pensions or, more realistically, by not increasing them as much as pensioners would like. But some of these measures are more effective than others, and all of them have political and/or economic costs.

A lot of discussion about this proceeds with an assumption that higher social insurance contributions is a non-starter. But I'm not so sure about that. In the first place, social insurance contributions in many countries are considerably higher than they are in Ireland; if it can be done in other countries its not impossible here. In the second place, would you rather pay an extra 2% in social insurance contributions or have Great-Auntie May come and live with you?

m2_browning

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121403459#Comment_121403459

Your whole entitled moaning rant is based on an unproven belief that state pension age will rise (it can quite easily fall too if that’s what people vote for) sometime between now and your retirement presumably decades away

I recommend you concentrate on actually living to 65 and remaining in good health, that in itself is an achievement especially the good health part

Patrick2010

pension age is 66