No, gross mismanagement of the public's assets by corrupt and self-serving politicians is what is pushing taxes higher.
Pensions in and of themselves have nothing to do with it. A pension is merely a deferred portion of the employee's income. Instead of receiving X amount of dollars in each paycheck for the work performed, the employer and employee both benefit by deferring some of the compensation to a later date.
Exactly how? It's not deferred at all, except in Final Salary schemes, which most employees are not in, & EVEN then it's still not guaranteed - there've been enough defaults to prove that over the years! Deferred? Aah!
Defined benefit schemes are themselves a Ponzi scheme, relyimg on perpetual growth to finance themselves - unless it's the public sector, in which case it's future taxpayers - who will NEVER - get the same idiotic benefits.
I'll be nice here. I'll just say that you've got rose tinted glasses.
Fuck me - I would be shocked if anyone here knew better than I did
exactly how these schemes work globally, having dealt with US & UK monumental shortfalls (picked up by shareholders -i.e. those in private schemes to a large extent).
Have a look back in the thread to my real term calculations to see just how expensive, & underfunded pension schemes are.
If the employer decides to blow the money he is obligated to pay the employee at the later date for work already performed , that's HIS problem, not the employee's.
???????????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAHHHHH! Nothing to do with work performed - ever heard of Maternity/Sick Leave, rounding up of years? I won't even get into the fact you're talking about a defined benefit scheme, which isn't on offer to 99/100ths of the world, & is being wound up, accrued to date, benefits intact to a far earlier date than maturity, by the majority of the others.
In a perfect world where no one goes bust, or spunks the fund on a couple of feisty Lat/Pol/Any inos - these schemes cannot work EVER without a perpetual expansion of employees at the base of the pyramid, or massive drawdowns on distributable profits at frequent points.
The amount that needs to be accrued/annum, never is - for good reason - the employee costs become untenable.
To me, the exact opposite is occurring compared to what needs to occur. We should not be letting employers (especially govt) walk away from their pension obligations, we should in fact be strengthening the laws to ensure that pensions get paid no matter what. if a company goes under or experiences financial difficulty, the pensioners should be getting paid FIRST, ahead of all other interests.
What?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Exactly why? Given the fact that they probably received bonuses in the past that ignored the yawning gulf between their productivity & their future benefits - you wanna pay them twice!
For no risk?
A pension is quite literally back pay for the company workforce, and there is no investor (or in this case taxpayer) who should be getting any kind return on their investment before actual working employees are paid for their time.
What!!!! MR A creates a company, takes loans, takes risks,but dozy Dolores - who couldn't give a stuff should be paid before him!
She can always put into a private scheme eh?
Why would anyone start a private enterprise in order to let other people reap the benefit first? Maybe prostitutes will also make sure that the people who deliver the flyers get paid first, & have their pensions guaranteed too!
When you're at Vegas, do you make sure you tip the dealers heavily BEFORE YOU WIN!?
But this is what happens when the rich buy off the government, direct that government to serve themselves to the detriment of the rest of society, and that society does nothing but roll over and take it up the arse, and then complain about how their arse hurts.
