I think you'll find that a lot of people join the public service, and have "enjoyed" the traditional lower pay precisely because they know that they will have a pension in their old age. It's a career decision, but only works out if you join relatively young. If you join the public service at an older age, you still get defined benefit, but it may not be much of a benefit, unless you climb quickly up the ladder.
However, what really gets my goat with people like the Emigrant is the implication behind their thinking - it is basically "fuck everyone but myself".
Personally, I believe that a society has a duty to everyone who lives in it, and must look after the weaker members and those who have made their contribution, or who aren't able to make a contribution. In my working life I have spent equal periods in public and private employment. In the private sector, unless you work in a large company, you are treated as totally dispensable, and most employers that I have worked for are only interested in what they can get out of you. They are happy to flout laws, pay you under the table, and use any other method they can to cut costs. One of these is not making pension contributions of any sort.
Certainly, there is a cost to providing pensions for people, but there is also a cost to not providing them. TheEmigrant, are you suggesting that, for instance, your parents be turfed out onto the street, or starved to death because you don't want society as a whole to pay for their upkeep? Because I think that is the logical conclusion to the route you are suggesting. Then again, maybe you are so wealthy, or you come from such a wealthy family that you don't need to worry about little things like that.

Well I am sure Emigrant is a big lad who knows what he said and what he didnt say, and will explain it in more detail...

But sorry I think you are trying to put words in his mouth?

Saying that the DB schemes simply will not and cannot work given our demographics and market history, and trying to honour the DB pensions may well destroy us all is NOT the same as promoting euthanasia a la "Logans run" or whatever else you are trying to say he said?

When a boatload of people are washed up on a desert island for an indefinite period and the captain then promises everyone all the food and water they could want for as long as they are on the island, someone at the back pointing out that there is isnt enough to go round so stop making crazy promises is not the same as saying "lets kill and eat the weakest people"?

Cash King's desert island analogy is perfect. The public sector (and some private sector companies) are making promises they cannot keep. Defined contribution pensions bring clarity and realism. Defined Benefit pensions bring a huge burden to next generation - causing them to be thrown out on the streets and to die of starvation.

So the only logical conclusion is that Mantach wants to see your kids grow up and starve to death after they have been turfed out onto the streets in a world full of wealthy retired Public Sector landlords.

Guys, the problem is an economic system based on inflation, for the sake of the banking and financial systems, at the expense of the rest of the economy, and vast majority of the population.
Question for TheEmigrant, what would it happen if we have an economic system without inflation?

Inflation can be viewed as a tax by the government on the holders of cash. I don't see the economic system changing drastically if this tax was removed.

Don't you love it when you solve two problems at once?

According to the Sunday Times (page 1 of the Business section..sorry no link) the irish pensions industry has the answers.

Brian can't get anyone except the ECB to buy his bonds and their funds are can't earn enough returns to pay out to retired members.

The solution to release money "tied up" in German and French bonds at 2%-3% and get some of those tasty yields on Irish debt.

Hey Presto the pension funds are solvent again an Brian gets access to €20bn.

Enough money to maintain the status quo for about 12 months.

What could possibly go wrong?

what was once unthinkable is becoming both thinkable and sayable....

chip, chip, chip away....

http://money-news.dailyfinance.co.uk/ar ... ons_report


Former Labour minister Lord Hutton said long-term structural reform was needed to public sector pensions, including an end to the current final salary schemes.

He called for a new model of pensions to be introduced that shared the risk more fairly between the Government and workers.

But he ruled out replacing final salary pensions with individual funded defined contribution ones - under which the employee bears all the risk - as has happened in much of the private sector.
Lord Hutton said he would consider a range of alternatives in his final report, including a career average scheme, under which pensions are based on a worker's average pay during their career, rather than their salary immediately before they retire.

Other options include hybrid schemes, which share the risk, and collective or notional defined contribution pensions.

He added that if the Government wanted to make short-term savings, it should raise pension contribution rates for workers.

But he stressed that it should protect the low-paid from the increases and not hike rates for the armed forces at this time.

Lord Hutton was commissioned to carry out the review by Chancellor George Osborne, who warned that the "unsustainable" rise in the annual bill for public sector schemes must be tackled.

Lord Hutton said he did not want to see "good, decent people" facing poverty in retirement, but he stressed that the problem could not be "buried" any longer because of the problems being stored up.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/bre ... tml?via=mr

Ireland's welfare and pension bills are “on the table” in discussions on the four-year plan to be announced next month, and in the December budget, Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan said yesterday in New York.

“We have already reduced public service pay by nearly 14 per cent on average . . . Likewise, we’ve looked at our welfare bill, at our pensions bill. All of these areas will have to be looked at. They’re on the table,” Mr Lenihan said.

A spokesman for Mr Lenihan said afterwards that the Minister was referring to “the medium and long- term cost of pensions”.

The exchequer spent just over €9 billion this year on public sector pensions, as well as those paid through the social welfare system.

It is understood that new measures might affect tax treatment of pensions, such as tax allowances given against pensions.

The Government has already changed the rules for new entrants to the public service, and there may be a re-examination of what they qualify for in the future.

The European Commission was not negotiating a plan with the Irish Government to reduce the deficit, a Commission spokesman said today.

“We are not telling the Irish Government what kind of budgetary measures it has to take. It was not the Commission’s job to be prescriptive,” said Amadeu Altafaj Tardio, the spokesman for the EU Economic Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn.

“Our role is to assess whether these measures are effective in order to make sure the budgetary targets are met,” he told RTE’s Morning Ireland.

A series of proposals for the forthcoming budget will be put forward this morning at the annual pre-budget conference organised by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).

Hasn't nearly every survey found that public pay here is higher than private pay? Plus the pension.

Surely some mistake? Or is it just a badly placed comma?


Thank the unions, they have the interests of the low-paid, er, the existing senior members at heart...

I hope they now introduce a two-tier funding scheme for PS pensions, so that those paying average salary pay less...

It's worse than that. What the pension industry want is a change in pensions legislation to allow them to pass the default risk on to the pensioners. The Sunday Business Post had this last week:

trouble at the BBC.....basically, pensions being unilaterally downgraded...?

Am just recording the constant chip chip chip on this thread, hope that is ok.

http://news.aol.co.uk/main-news/story/b ... %2F1361386

Perfectly fine.

Oh Noah they won't!
They'll live even LONGER!!