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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GraceZ who wrote (30508)	5/1/2005 10:48:15 PM
From: Moominoid	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

Socialism properly defined is the idea that the government should own the means of production. Like the US Post Office, Amtrak etc :) The Australian Superannuation guarantee tells people they need to save for retirement, instead of the US system of taxing them through the social security tax to pay for other people's retirements. The Aussie age pension is means tested and very low (it assumes that one owns a house to live in). That seems less socialist by your definition. There was some debate about the superannuation guarantee that it does tend to funnel money towards the stock market as that is easier than the alternatives. People were doing things like using super money to buy property which was used in their business. That seemed pretty reasonable to me... but there was some upset about these things because of the tax advantage I guess. I moved here just under three years ago, so am not sure of any details since then. Except that "superannuation choice" is finally coming in. Well it certainly could be improved on. The rationale for forced saving is that people are irrational... Personally I would prefer to have more access to the money before I am 60... But I can invest it anywhere I like (as long as it stays inside the Aussie super system). If I went down the "self-managed" route (lot of bureaucracy I think involved in that) I guess I could invest in Google or whatever if I felt like it :) At the moment it is in a leveraged investment into Australian shares in a managed super fund. I think Australia has set itself up for the future aging of the population better than any industrialized country. I think Chile has a similar system (maybe Singapore too?). When I say "free" I mean that the price charged to users is zero. Not that it is cost-free of course! David