🚀 go-pugleaf

Ben Singer (singer@julian.uwo.ca) writes:
> Given that a number of younger people resent the rather small CPP 
> payments to retirees (compare with most Western countries) and wish to 

They are not that "small", PLUS the government has squandered the fund as
low-interest loans to the provinces.

> withdraw them, thus reneging on a committment many depended upon--ok, 
> fair enough (or, perhaps, unfair enough). But let's be consistent: let's 
> establish an "entitlements account" for each individual and, first of 
> all, tally the amount put into the retirees account from the beginning 
> and pay him that back with compounded interest. Then, let's tally up the 
> child support payments made to the mothers of the present generation, 
> along with the overly generous unemployment benefits (in many cases 
> leisure benefits) and compound the interest on these over the years and 
> bill the recipients for this cost (I suspect that the CPP recipients in a 
> high proportion of the cases paid high taxes to support such persons 
> while themselves not gaining any, or very few, benefits of this nature). 

No one has paid higher taxes in Canada than the people working today and
the taxes they are paying are not coming back to them now or in the future.

> That's the point: those who are complaining the most include many who 
> were fully supported by older individuals who could have put those funds 
> into future retirement annuities. Let's have a little social symmetry

Let's have some SUSTAINABILITY.  Each generation should pay for
themselves.  Any other strategy falls apart when demographics change.  I
don't think individual accounts would ever work though.  For one thing,
everyone would have to try and save enough to live on to a very old age
(e.g. 85), whereas the intent of the program is to ensure that people have
some type of pension income while they are alive.  Since the average life
expectancy is much less than what each person would try to save enough
for, a pooled approach like CPP is better.  Howver, those funds should be
kept out of government hands and managed professionally.

--

-Pat  

bn207@freenet.carleton.ca