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To: Wharf Rat who wrote (40832)	2/3/2005 1:17:28 PM
From: altair19	Respond to of 104197

Wharfy - Excellent article - thanks. I think my plan will work better<g><ng>. The fact that AARP launched a $3 million advertising campaign against "personal retirment accounts" may tell you that this dog's not gonna hunt. They first came out against it formally last November. They have 35 million members. Let's hope those old fogies kick the living shit of the idea - hey, wait a minute - I resemble that!! Altair19

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (40832)	2/3/2005 5:29:44 PM
From: abuelita	Respond to of 104197

Canadians spared pension debate under way in U.S. By JOHN IBBITSON UPDATED AT 5:24 PM EST Thursday, Feb 3, 2005 In last night's State of the Union address, President George W. Bush proposed major reforms of America's troubled Social Security system. This would be a good time for Canadians to congratulate themselves. Mr. Bush is pushing a plan that would permit younger workers to divert a portion of their Social Security payroll taxes to personal accounts. He sees it as the best response to the looming shortfall in Social Security that threatens to deprive pensioners of their government benefits in coming decades. Fortunately, far-sighted actions by Canada's finance ministers in 1998 corrected a similar imbalance threatening the Canada Pension Plan. As a result, Canada is one of only three countries (the others are Britain and Australia) whose citizens can have full confidence that their pensions will be available for them, no matter how young they are or when they plan to retire. Government pension plans are influenced by two factors: the average age of a population (which itself is influenced by birth rate and immigration policies) and the contributions of workers and businesses. Japan, because of its low birth rate and restrictive immigration policies, is the country with the most heavily aging population. The nations of Europe come next, followed by Canada, which has the most aggressive immigration policy, and trailed by the United States, which has the highest birth rate in the developed world. In the 1980s and '90s, it became increasingly clear that the contributions of workers in developed countries would not be sufficient to finance their pension plans well into the 21st century. Since the solution was either to raise payroll taxes or cut back benefits, most politicians ignored the problem. But in Canada, then-finance-minister Paul Martin and his English-Canadian provincial counterparts agreed to steeply increase premiums paid by workers and companies. (Quebec operates its own pension plan, which is in equally good shape.) Our contributions rose by 70 per cent, but, as a result, the CPP is taking in more than it is paying out, and will continue to do so for years to come, leaving it with a solid surplus for those years when the size of the work force is insufficient to sustain the needs of retirees. The Americans have largely ignored their looming Social Security deficit. So serious is the problem that analysts such as conservative British historian Niall Ferguson believe that America is set to implode from the weight of its fiscal, health-care and pension deficits. Because Republicans have taken up this cause, arguing that partial privatization of Social Security is the solution, Democrats now maintain that there is no real crisis in Social Security, that the fund won't run out of money until 2040, and that the solution is to increase payroll taxes on upper incomes. And so a vital component of public policy becomes a partisan political football. This, at least, is one debate we are spared. Canadian business and Canadian workers accepted that their payroll taxes were going to have to go up if the CPP was to be saved, and now we enjoy both the security and the competitive advantage of a fully funded pension scheme. "This is one of the success stories for Canada," says Jean-Claude Ménard, the chief actuary at the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions. Mind you, we shouldn't be too complacent. Supplemental programs, including Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement, are funded from general revenues, and therefore vulnerable. Company pension plans are in many cases less solvent than their government counterpart. And few of us are doing all we can to save for our retirement. Mr. Ménard also suggests that the time may have come for governments to look at making the CPP more flexible, allowing people who keep working after 65 to receive partial benefits. But at least Canadians won't have to spend the rest of this decade wrangling over whether and how to save the government pension plan from bankruptcy. Good on us. jibbitson@globeandmail.ca