Pensions - grow old at your own expense

m5ex9oqjawdg2i · 03-03-2010 10:44PM

Douglas CoolS Troll wrote: »

I'm no FF'er but compulsory pensions are a good thing, it's just that they seem abhorrent because we dont have them.

In Australia your employer must pay your wages, and must pay a sum of 9% minimum into your pension fund. I was there for a year, doing sh1tty backpacker jobs making crap money and I had €2000 in my fund at the end of it.
If we all had the same we would retire pretty comfortably.

Fact is we wont be able to pay the pensions that we're paying now in the future, we have a young population now, gonna have a very old one in the future. This has been on the cards for a long time, I remember a teacher telling me this 10 years ago.

Probably should have been introduced when we all had jobs and were flush, but that would have lost votes...

It's all well and good, but when people struggled to pay the 1% income levy, how are they going to pay a further 5% into a pension fund that they may never see?

I agree that if you opt out of this, which is exactly what I will do, that you do not get a state pension. This, I am perfectly happy with. Some of us actually have the ability to save and put aside a nest egg for the future. It's the greedy fools that cause these problems for the rest of us.

03-03-2010 11:00PM

Sofa King Great wrote: »

1. People are stupid. It cannot be left up to people to look after their own pension so the government are making sure these people arent flat broke when they get old

2. The country is broke. They need money to pay out the old age pension, where do you think this money will come from?

jaysus your lookin at it the wrong way the goddamn pension reserve fund is being raided every few weeks to put billions into the banks........

1)The banks are stupid
2)The banks are broke
3)The Govt and people are stupid for using their own money to bail the banks

PDD · 03-03-2010 11:15PM

Pensions are on of the oldest scams on the planet. You pay in a shed load of money over your working lifetime so you can get a miserly ammount paid out when you retire buts its ok coz when you die all that money you earned and put away (not to mention the renturn on investment using that capital) goes to............. someone else and not to your estate. Its morally repugnant.

To a certain extent yes its required because the vast majority of people are useless with finance and could not be left to their own devices to create a financial nest egg for retirement plus we live in a social welfare state. The question you have to ask yourself is wether you trust the judgement of those holding the keys, a good place to look is past performance.

Can ye blame a banker for being so risky when at the end of the day after he's lost millions or billions he gets a golden parachute or at worst a slap on the wrists, not much of a deterent is it? Anyone else in any other instance would be strung up for embezzlement.

Thoie · 03-03-2010 11:29PM

Douglas CoolS Troll wrote: »

I'm no FF'er but compulsory pensions are a good thing, it's just that they seem abhorrent because we dont have them.

Some of us already pay into a compulsory pension/social insurance fund - it's called PRSI.

epgc3fyqirnbsx · 03-03-2010 11:35PM

Thoie wrote: »

Some of us already pay into a compulsory pension/social insurance fund - it's called PRSI.

Yes thats a very good point, but PRSI goes to so many other things that it would be messy

I was actually going to post that perhaps they should lower prsi to compensate for a separate pension fund, but hadn't given it enough thought, this being AH surely I'd be pulled on a point, and thought that i'd think it through later (I'm enduring the Notebook at the moment hence break time postings)

But yeah, lower PRSI say 2-3% for a 5-6% individual pension sounds good to me

arybvtcw0eolkf · 03-03-2010 11:44PM

I'm reminded of the old;

When they came for the gypsies no one spoke,
When they came for the gays & trades unionists, no one spoke.
When they came for the handicapped, no one spoke.
When they came for the Jew's, no one spoke.
When they came for me, there was no one left to speak..

Well I posted here last year that this would happen and was laughed out of the place!.

When they came for the public servants, no one spoke.
Now they've come for the private sector worker....

To be continued.

randylonghorn · 04-03-2010 12:02AM

Sofa King Great wrote: »

1. People are stupid. It cannot be left up to people to look after their own pension so the government are making sure these people arent flat broke when they get old

Might make sense if there was even a shred of evidence that the government are any less stupid ...

Thoie · 04-03-2010 12:08AM

Douglas CoolS Troll wrote: »

this being AH surely I'd be pulled on a point, and thought that i'd think it through later

It's late - let's sleep on it

Xluna · 04-03-2010 12:21AM

genericguy wrote: »

So we now can add this to the litany of offences against the state that this government has committed.

the priests raped you and your childrens' arseholes, and the government doesn't want them punished.

the bank played monopoly with all your money, costing you a fortune on our house. the government takes another fortune from you to help the bank out.

the minister for defence commits perjury, for which a normal citizen would be jailed. they send him to sit on the back bench, collecting a huge salary, and give him a ministerial pay-off to soften the blow to him.

they are actively seeking to force people out of employment via the headshop legislation, which will also have the extra added bonus of giving money to the gangland thugs who are shooting each other and innocent people for the laugh. on top of this they aren't recruiting any more police despite the huge increases in serious crime.

they've removed care assistants from special needs schools, leaving our most vulnerable members of society without essential education services.

the hospitals are fcuked.
the schools are fcuked.
there's no funding for academic research.

but fcuk it, they dropped the price of a pint, so fianna failure still retain enough support to stay where they are. if this was any other country i'm positive the bodies of all the FF and Greens would be lining the streets.

I nominate this for post of the season.

Doc · 04-03-2010 12:32AM

So do I get the tax back that I have already paid into the state pension fund if I am no longer going to be getting one?

ejmaztec · 04-03-2010 12:34AM

Doc wrote: »

So do I get the tax back that I have already paid into the state pension fund if I am no longer going to be getting one?

Nope.:(

Grimreaper666 · 04-03-2010 12:40AM

Bernie Madoff would be proud of this scam, i'm suprised Fianna Fail haven't hired him as an advisor.

Amhran Nua · 04-03-2010 01:50AM

Sofa King Great wrote: »

2. The country is broke. They need money to pay out the old age pension, where do you think this money will come from?

We had the money, sadly it was all handed to the banks in the form of the pension reserve fund.

Douglas CoolS Troll wrote: »

In Australia your employer must pay your wages, and must pay a sum of 9% minimum into your pension fund. I was there for a year, doing sh1tty backpacker jobs making crap money and I had €2000 in my fund at the end of it.
If we all had the same we would retire pretty comfortably.

We do have the same, its the employer's contribution and its more like 10%.

We have a similar policy in AN, but the trick is to remove public sector pension entitlements and standardise across the board at the same time, so things balance out nicely. Naturally FF missed the point on that as well.

xoxyx · 04-03-2010 08:55PM

DublinWriter wrote: »

Grow old at my own expense? Damn, and there was I hoping that someone else would pay for it.

Well yes, I was hoping somebody else would fund at least part of my elderly lifestyle in the form of the state pension I was expecting to get. If people aren't working because of illness or because they can't get a job, they get the dole. If a person isn't working because they are past the retirement age, they should get the pension equivalent of the dole IMHO.

Accordingly to Article 45.4 of the Irish Constitution:

1. The State pledges itself to safeguard with especial care the economic interests of the weaker sections of the community, and, where necessary, to contribute to the support of the infirm, the widow, the orphan, and the aged.

2. The State shall endeavour to ensure that the strength and health of workers, men and women, and the tender age of children shall not be abused and that citizens shall not be forced by economic necessity to enter vocations unsuited to their sex, age or strength.

Of course this is completely completely open to interpretation, but obviously the drafters of the Constitution thought it important to include the elderly as a sector of society which may need protection. However, this pension requirement and the raising of the retirement age seems to be being forced upon us due to economic necessity without so much as a "by your leave".

As far as I'm concerned, a certain percentage of the taxes we pay throughout our working lives should be allocated into providing us a basic pension once we retire. If we want to supplement that with a private pension then that's our choice.

Sofa King Great · 04-03-2010 09:53PM

z_topaz wrote: »

Well yes, I was hoping somebody else would fund at least part of my elderly lifestyle in the form of the state pension I was expecting to get. If people aren't working because of illness or because they can't get a job, they get the dole. If a person isn't working because they are past the retirement age, they should get the pension equivalent of the dole IMHO.

Accordingly to Article 45.4 of the Irish Constitution:

1. The State pledges itself to safeguard with especial care the economic interests of the weaker sections of the community, and, where necessary, to contribute to the support of the infirm, the widow, the orphan, and the aged.

2. The State shall endeavour to ensure that the strength and health of workers, men and women, and the tender age of children shall not be abused and that citizens shall not be forced by economic necessity to enter vocations unsuited to their sex, age or strength.

Of course this is completely completely open to interpretation, but obviously the drafters of the Constitution thought it important to include the elderly as a sector of society which may need protection. However, this pension requirement and the raising of the retirement age seems to be being forced upon us due to economic necessity without so much as a "by your leave".

As far as I'm concerned, a certain percentage of the taxes we pay throughout our working lives should be allocated into providing us a basic pension once we retire. If we want to supplement that with a private pension then that's our choice.

SO would you prefer they raised income tax by 5/6%?? You are saying it is our constitutional right to get a pension from the state. How do you propose we pay for that? Before pepole start giving out about the current taxes they should really look at the income tax levels paid in this country in the 80s when iincome tax was as high as 60%

stovelid · 04-03-2010 10:04PM

Cloud skin: saving me from black text since 2000 and something.

xoxyx · 04-03-2010 10:07PM

Sofa King Great wrote: »

SO would you prefer they raised income tax by 5/6%?? You are saying it is our constitutional right to get a pension from the state. How do you propose we pay for that? Before pepole start giving out about the current taxes they should really look at the income tax levels paid in this country in the 80s when iincome tax was as high as 60%

I'm saying that the Constitution took care to include the elderly in its provisions, and we all know that it doesn't do such a thing lightly.

And, seeing as how pensions have been provided to the retired thus far, obviously our taxes are already taking pensions into consideration.

Don't get the relevance of the end of your post btw.

xoxyx · 04-03-2010 10:23PM

Sofa King Great wrote: »

6/7 = 86% per cent of population below 65
1/7 = 14% per cent of population above 65

in 40 Years
2/3 = 66% per cent of population below 65
1/3 = 33% per cent of populaiton above 65

I think that is possible

I thought you were showing stats initially when I saw your post, but you're actually just converting percentages to fractions.

Why do you think that is possible? I still think it's a completely fabricated, pull-a-figure-out-of-the-air, exaggeration.

Pensions - grow old at your own expense

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