{"id":1346,"date":"2009-06-28T10:40:32","date_gmt":"2009-06-28T10:40:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.widmann.org.uk\/2009\/06\/28\/1346\/"},"modified":"2009-06-28T10:40:32","modified_gmt":"2009-06-28T10:40:32","slug":"how-to-fix-the-pensions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/how-to-fix-the-pensions\/","title":{"rendered":"How to fix the pensions"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/rileyroxx\/151985627\/\" title=\"photo sharing\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm1.static.flickr.com\/48\/151985627_f76043167b_m.jpg\" alt=\"\" style=\"border: solid 2px #000000;\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px;\"><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/rileyroxx\/151985627\/\">Old People Sign<\/a><br \/>\nOriginally uploaded by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/people\/rileyroxx\/\">rileyroxx<\/a><br \/>\n<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<p>More and more people are complaining about the fact that the public sector are still <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/debate\/article-1195993\/VINCE-CABLE-Our-test-courage-cut-public-sector-pensions.html\">enjoying generous final-salary pensions<\/a> while the private sector has mostly moved to much more modest defined-contribution schemes.<\/p>\n<p>The solution recommended by most commentators is to reduce public-sector pensions.<\/p>\n<p>This, however, is not likely to be enough for a comfortable retirement for most people.  Pensioners in the UK are already <a href=\"http:\/\/politics.widmann.org.uk\/2007\/08\/pensions\/\">much worse off<\/a> than those in other developed countries.<\/p>\n<p>The way I see it, defined-contribution schemes (which basically means you give people some money to invest in shares, without any guarantee how the investment will turn out) are far too risky for normal people.<\/p>\n<p>Final-salary pensions, while great for the workers, are far too risky for companies, and they put established companies at a disadvantage compared with newer companies and companies in other countries without similar pension systems.<\/p>\n<p>So a third way is needed.  I would suggest something along the following lines:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Set up some big pension organisations\/companies (let&#8217;s call them POCs) to take contributions from workers and companies, invest this money and pay out generous pensions to retired workers.<\/li>\n<li>Make it obligatory for all companies, for self-employed people and the public sector to pay in a specific percentage of salaries to one of the POCs.<\/li>\n<li>Make sure sure the POCs insure each other and give them some sort of state backing to ensure people can be confident their pension will not suddenly disappear.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In this way, public and private sector workers would have equivalent pensions, and old companies wouldn&#8217;t struggle to compete with newer ones.<\/p>\n<p>Also, when people change jobs, their pensions could still remain with the same POC, instead of having small pensions in many different places.<\/p>\n<p>The reason I&#8217;m suggesting setting up multiple POCs rather than a single one is to avoid having an organisation that is too big to fail and too big for the state to save.<\/p>\n<p>Can anybody spot any flaws in my suggestion?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Old People Sign Originally uploaded by rileyroxx More and more people are complaining about the fact that the public sector are still enjoying generous final-salary pensions while the private sector has mostly moved to much more modest defined-contribution schemes. The solution recommended by most commentators is to reduce public-sector pensions. This, however, is not likely to be enough for a comfortable retirement for most people. Pensioners in the UK are already much worse off than those in other developed countries. The way I see it, defined-contribution schemes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[159,130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-en","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1346\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}