But how to do that?

I've had this conversation various times.

The DB scheme looks great in theory, but it's only as reliable as the counterparty offering to pay it. Because of the precedence given to people already on pension, and the tendency to let things get to the wire before calling halt, that means that those who are towards the end of their career when it gets closed/rationalised will tend to do disproportionately badly out of it all (they get cut hard so some others don't get cut at all).

But the DC world is pretty precarious, and hard to build up the pot required (or even to be confident at this remove, 20-30 years in my case what that pot would be). And we've seen in the form of pension levies that that money is not safe either. You say that the state DB scheme will fall last, but the private DC funds have already been raided to pay state DB pensions, so that could be quite some time.

Fundamentally, pensions should be DB, at whatever level we manage to fund them. Also, no matter what saving and other mechanisms are put in place, when retired you end up being funded by those still working, at least to the extent you need to use labour and current production. The meat and potatoes you eat are grown by the people working at that time, and if you eat them it means that another person who's working can't.

I have to say the whole thing makes me feel very precarious (working, decent job, decent salary, DC scheme)

There's no way to escape the fact that retired people have to be supported by those working, one way or another, because assets=liabilities.

For instance, if I accumulate a load of rental properties during my working life, there still need to be tenants to pay the rent when I retire.

If we end up with one pensioner for every working person, then clearly the average pensioner can't have more than one working tenant paying them rent.

Feels like a zero-sum game.

There are key life essentials and then there is everything else.

Irish pension class wishes to have both.

But really unless you paid for it you cannot be expecting it. And even if you did pay for it there are no guarantees for the little people, unless you are willing to revolt and loose all for what might be even more tenuous gains.

A key matter is that older people are going to have to keep working longer to support their longer lifespans. i.e. keep actively supporting the economy. This could prove very very difficult for some as re-training for many older persons proves to be highly ineffective and many of those older persons probably have a dream in mind of retiring and having good times from age 65 or 68.

It's a very difficult situation. I'm very unprepared. But I do sometimes feel that for the little that I did prepare that it was better to have just that little than more since Michael Noonan decided to steal from my former earnings for his buddies.

the latter I would have thought;

I guess the assumption is that the company pays on your behalf and you take a lower salary as a trade off...

I didn't see Prime Time but that sounds odd? putting money in like that - for a DB scheme? - either that or the Indo scheme is like the Waterford WedgeWood clusterfuck,

Correct. And its not like its any kind of surprise.

Back in the mid'70's to mid '80's, when most of the current batch of recent or about to retirees would have been starting their working careers, there was plenty of discussion in the media at the time about the Baby Boom retirement crisis, the likely increase in life expectancy , making it even worse, and the likely unsustainability of the then current system. Which is pretty much what we still have today. If you were paying the slightest bit of attention to the news back then you would have heard something about this future crisis. Which is now upon us. But only the Ozzies and Kiwis seemed to deal with the problem in a half sensible way back then. The UK made a bit of a mess, good initial idea, completely gutted by Gordon Browns taxes. The US punted in '86 with its pure Ponzi "Trust Fund". And Ireland did nothing except belatedly up the retirement age by a year or two. Rather than the 10 needed just to keep it aligned with the rise in life expectancy in the last 40 years.

I always have assumed that the Boomers would gut the system and leave the next generation with little but wreckage. Which is the current trajectory. I have also assumed that our generation would have to earn our keep till we keeled over. Or else live in a downward trending genteel poverty.

And that was before the current ZIRP, NIRP insanity which will destroy the private pension system if continued much longer. Even if it does survive I fully expected it to be expropriated in some form or other some time in the future in the name of "social justice". Most likely to pay for public sector pensions which are de-facto partially or completely unfunded.

If the mid/tail end Boomer want to keep their pensions, or even part of them, long term they better face up to having every single sacred political cow of theirs taken out and shot and thrown on the bon-fire of the carcasses before they totally destroy the Wests economic future once and for all. But given Japans recent history over the last 20 years I'm not exactly optimistic.

Bingo..

I can certainly sympathise with you on that basis; I'm in the very same situation with a family member who is going to have to rethink the retirement plans, but that doesn't take from the fact that INM has been a tool for the implementation of the very policies that have destroyed workers rights, driven up the costs of living, and protected a political class that has beggared large swathes of our society while enriching their patrons.

Of course this is not the fault of 'back-room' workers, but they should understand how they have contributed to it. The 'news' has become nothing more than contrived opinion pieces written by fools whose existence is now so precarious that they have set aside even the most basic journalistic standards and ethics.

Ethical Journalism Network., - Corruption and self censorship.

Good post jmc.

This is just an extension of the screw workers/enrich patrons policy except they are doing it on their own doorstep.

I agree with your (low) opinion of the Indo's columnists and editorial standards but if you're a printer or a driver or an engineer you don't have any real connection to the owner or the editor. You've probably never met them; you probably have a separate Christmas party!

I do some work that involves pharma companies. Am I responsible for their over-pricing of CF drugs? Do I share credit if they help eradicate polio?
If you've worked on projects with unduly large carbon footprints, or used machines made by companies with questionable human rights records, do you feel culpable?

Sorry for dragging this thread off topic

@Ixelles, I completely accept your point and I should have expressed myself in a way that wasn't so offensive.

But, just like the DB pensioners over the last twenty years, unfortunately the INM workers who aren't effected by this will keep their heads down and will wonder why in ten or twenty years they are subject to the very same treatment.

On a theoretical note, I do think you need to take some responsibility for who you work for. If you work for someone morally repugnant, you need to expect the whiff of repugnance to follow you. Otherwise it devolves into "Just following orders" pretty fast.

Of course, that's not to say that I find INM morally repugnant -- They're annoying and vacuous but I don't detest them like Coles does -- I'm talking on a general level.

New York Times to vacate 'at least eight floors' in Manhattan headquarters - -> http://www.politico.com/media/story/201 ... ers-004896




More Wretched News for Newspapers as Advertising Woes Drive Anxiety - -> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/28/busin ... apers.html

Broadsheets in freefall. Link to iLevel.ie for the full story.





Link to iLevel.ie for the full story.

Astounding 25k per edition average drop in circulation over a year with the Sunday World. Can't be long till INM put the Sunday World to bed for good with no significant digital presence and no real future. Profitability margins must be razor thin at this stage.