The looming demographic pensions disaster

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I am becoming more worried as time goes by that we are heading for a demographic pensions disaster.

The more government refuses to talk about NZ Super, the more the opposition also fall into line with endorsing the status quo, the sharper, less well-judged, more distributionally unfair, any inevitable correction will be.

In the 1990s, the age of eligibility was raised by 5 years over just a decade, an incredibly fast rate of change with little warning. My concern is that we are heading the same way as it becomes ever more apparent that NZ Super spending is on a runaway track at the same time as social services spending of all kinds are impossibly squeezed and the government is obsessed by tax cuts.

So how best to save costs in superannuation?  It is almost impossible in this country to discuss any form of clawback of NZ Super from the top earners who clearly don’t need this generous universal payment.  But as no-one wants the level to be cut which would recreate elder poverty, or the link to wages removed, raising the age is about all that is left.

What is different in the 2010s compared to the 1990s? Can’t we just shove the age up to 70 so as stop payments to those reaching 65 and still working?

What is different, sadly, is that the employment prospects for those over 50, especially older women have become bleak. As the UK lifts its age for women to 66 there is groundswell of alarm in that country:

“Clearly, something has to give in a state pension system never designed for 21st-century life expectancy. Living longer inevitably means working longer too. But that’s no help to older women who can’t just grit their teeth and work longer as a result of Osborne’s measure, because they’re not even working now: women made redundant late in their fifties, who can’t persuade employers that they’re not past it; women who are sick, or caring for sick partners, or who retired early thinking they could live off their savings for a bit and now realise the money won’t stretch until the pension comes in.”

Insecure periods of work can make it a pipe dream to pay off the mortgage or even to own a home. Women are often affected by care duties to their children and to their parents and many of those currently in their 50s and 60s will not reach retirement in a healthy financial state. Recovery after divorce redundancy, and ill health can often decimate the retirement pot. Some women have not even taken out KiwiSaver or are not contributing. In any case, KiwiSaver wont be the answer for women without traditional male career paths as social provision tied to paid work does not work well for them.

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The Salvation Army report Homeless Baby boomers  painted a grim picture and concluded:

“It is already the case that rates of home ownership have declined in a structural way – that younger people have substantially less chance of owning their own home than people their age did a generation earlier. This decline applies as much to younger baby boomers as it does to members of Generation X which is following them. This decline will mean that more and more people will reach retirement without the security and imputed incomes which come about through home ownership and lower housing costs. The adequacy of current retirement income entitlements to meet the housing and living costs of this growing group of older tenants is already being tested. Evidence of this pressure is available in the rising proportion of those people receiving the Accommodation Supplement who are also receiving New Zealand Superannuation. The forecasts offered here suggest that this current demand for supplementary income is a tip of an iceberg – this demand will grow as younger baby boomer cohorts reach retirement age.”

Treasury warns that demographic change associated with ageing produces marked fiscal pressures from NZS and Healthcare.  The day of reckoning is close and some rational discussion would be nice. May be an apolitical taskforce could examine all the issues.  

Over the years I have changed my mind about raising the age. I believe it would be much better to pay NZS as a basic income with a tax scale for additional income. By doing so we could save at least 10% of the costs, see suggested reform without hurting anyone. Most would see no or little difference in their weekly disposable income while those who earn a great deal are unlikely to notice the effective loss.

We know that technology is rapidly destroying jobs as society’s material needs become more efficiently met and the demand for labour falls.  Yes, this time it does seem to be different and it looks like technology will not magic up enough jobs as it has in the past. This is a huge opportunity to give those that desire it, more free time. Thus the age for NZ Super might actually be usefully lowered over time as the idea of a basic income takes hold, releasing more women (and increasingly men) from the drudgery of paid work to do the creative and caring work that they would like to do and that is valuable to society on many levels. Such an approach of course would not discourage an older person from supplementing  their unconditional basic income when appropriate with casual, intermittent or part-time paid work.

 

19 COMMENTS

  1. Agree with most of your post but disagree

    “We know that technology is rapidly destroying jobs as society’s material needs become more efficiently met and the demand for labour falls. Yes, this time it does seem to be different and it looks like technology will not magic up enough jobs as it has in the past.”

    Actually technology has the ability to create more jobs!!!! The demand for Labour is falling due to neoliberalism and Globalism. Under TPP 500,00 US jobs will go, 6000 NZ jobs will go. This is not due to technology this is due to using the cheapest possible global labour supply and working them as hard as possible so you can fire more workers.

    If anything, agreements like TPPA are stopping technological change for the better. Want a solar panel in India, No way says WHO. Offshore power companies don’t want that – it’s unfair to corporates!!! Apparently it will be even worse under TPPA – soon Disney will be making NZ cops rush around arresting people over copywrite infringements that have not even hurt them. Big Pharma can just keep those patents going as long as possible, even if there is not really any change they can just re patent their same patents!

    If you are worried about Super, I would worry a lot more about TPPA because they aint going to be any Super under TPPA – it will all be going to keep the 20th century super Corporations going in corporate welfare!

    • We have so much productivity per worker and such deficient demand that we have excess unemployment to the tune of 240k people. Letting them retire instead of grope around for employment that is not forthcoming will both increase demand and directly decrease the number of unemployed.

      It’s not a choice between living like fifty years ago and today.

      The Business Roundtable people do not understand this, and want to make a demand-deficient situation more fucked up by de facto increasing the supply of labor (fewer opening slots because baby boomers will be working even longer).

    • Slowly, due to one idiotic neoliberal policy after another, slowly the collective pressure of their deficiencies will build to a breaking point.

      The implosion? – it won’t be pretty, but I’m kind of looking forward to it.

  2. +100 Susan St John …”Over the years I have changed my mind about raising the age. I believe it would be much better to pay NZS as a basic income with a tax scale for additional income. By doing so we could save at least 10% of the costs, see suggested reform without hurting anyone. Most would see no or little difference in their weekly disposable income while those who earn a great deal are unlikely to notice the effective loss.”

    This seems to be the logical and fair thing to do…but what about women/men who are not ’employed’…but living in a partnership with someone who earns a high income…will these women/men be taxed/penalised by their partner’s income ?

    • I’d say – if this is paid as a tax on income – it would only be on actual personal income so what your partner earns would be irrelevant. This would be the fairest way (and much fair to Gen Xers and Millennials than raising the age.).

  3. Quite easily fixed by revamping the fiscal policies that are so full of tax loopholes to put to shame gruyere cheese, to claw back the $9.6 BILLION DOLLARS of tax evasion that happens EVERY SINGLE YEAR in New Zealand, from the corporations and the extraordinary numbers of Kiwis with declared annual income of $70,000 who drive around in Lamborghini and live in multi-million dollars mansions.

    • Tuan Nguyen::

      If it’s tax EVASION you’re talking about, then it’s illegal by definition and the IRD are pretty good at following up on this.

      If it’s tax AVOIDANCE then maybe you’d could cite specific examples of loopholes that exist in NZ, because it is internationally recognised that we have one of the simplest tax systems with the fewest loopholes of any nation.

      (It is noteworthy that the current National government closed tax loopholes during their first budget: Loopholes that previously favoured landlords and which Labour had not closed, maybe because both Clark and Cullen were landlords)

  4. Key has said that he won’t touch Super, or tinker with it while he’s Prime Minister.

    A good turn-out in the fishy-tea-towel referendum should motivate Mr Key to resign “for personal reasons” and take up a nice little sinecure as NZ’s Hawaiian ambassador.

    Flag and Super….nearly sorted.

  5. debt is the killer i fear what is ahead every time i look at the house hold debt figures it looks like a basket case people arriving at retirement hopelessly in debt.
    i cant see how the current system can survive i mean with national destroying or crushing saving schemes we are approaching the day reckoning and country is not prepared .the next financial crash is going to be a big one and new Zealand will not escape

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