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The Forum > Article Comments > The retirement incomes fiasco > Comments

The retirement incomes fiasco : Comments

By Everald Compton, published 1/9/2015

The National Economic Summit was a non-event, a sad spectacle of influential and intelligent people dancing around the fire instead of jumping in and taking the heat for advocating what cannot be ignored.

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Much of the failure of the National Economic Summit is due to the lack of leadership and imagination of national Treasurer Joe Hockey.

For someone with considerable flab he doesn't appear to have guts.

"Cabinet ministers say Prime Minister Tony Abbott is being urged to dump Joe Hockey as Treasurer if the Canning byelection goes badly for the Liberal Party."

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbott-being-urged-to-consider-dumping-joe-hockey-and-calling-a-march-election-cabinet-ministers-20150830-gjaysw.html
Posted by plantagenet, Tuesday, 1 September 2015 9:45:44 AM
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While one can agree with most of this there are a few points I would like to make, I don't see a case for using your super as a deposit or part of your mortgage payment.

Which rather than making housing more affordable, will increase the demand, and realtors profits, making it less so, and indeed, place ordinary folks at extreme risk when interest rates, as they must, start to rise again.

With the very real prospect of not only losing their homes, but a decent retirement income as well!

On another point, I envisage that tax reform is essential to lift the burden from ordinary taxpayers and onto the broader economy!

If the total tax take is just 4% of the gross national product, and if the GNP is just a measure of our total combining spending; then a 5% stand alone unavoidable expenditure tax would logically raise more revenue, plus relieve most of the burden of those currently paying all our tax?

And given that were done, increase the average Australian based bottom line by around 37%, given we'd be able to abolish all other tax imposts (30%) and return the averaged 7% ripped from the Australian bottom line by tax compliance costs?

And given all other tax imposts were removed, and they could be, increase household income by as much as 25% averaged; which in turn would make a 15% super immediately doable!?

Moveover, microscopic adjustments to the actual tax rate all that would be needed to control all inflation?

Meaning we could just reduce interest rates to a set and forget historical low, so as to put on the afterburners in economic stimulus; and indeed,literally invite all the cashed up self funded retirees from around the world to settle here along with their demand for low skill domestic service.

And given visionary Leadership, would then set about to decarbonize the economy with far cheaper option than now in use, Cheaper than coal thorium and homemade biogas, add the high tech industries of the world to that queue!?
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Tuesday, 1 September 2015 10:14:12 AM
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The fundamental flaw in super was created by Keating when he taxed the contributions and earnings of super funds. Both contributions and earnings should be tax free and the withdrawals taxed as normal income.

The present system punitively taxes low income earners and is layered with excessive legislation to stop the wealthy from rorting the system.

Please let's draw a line in the sand so our children don't have to go through this nonsense. It's too late for people like me but my children would benefit from a fairer and more equitable system.
Posted by Wattle, Tuesday, 1 September 2015 12:10:48 PM
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Rhrosty,

I have not seen the numbers crunched recently, however, in the past it has been calculated that a debit tax of between 0.3% and 1% would be enough to eliminate all other taxes both federal and state.
Posted by WTF?, Tuesday, 1 September 2015 1:24:29 PM
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Yeah ya gunna haf to listen to WTF Brave Sir Rhrosty

None a ya coal thorium or homemade biogas emissions pardner.

Poida
Posted by plantagenet, Tuesday, 1 September 2015 2:04:53 PM
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WTF: Cheaper than coal thorium has no emissions and homemade biogas scrubbed and consumed in ceramic fuel cells produces mostly pristine water vapor as the exhaust product!

WTF is wrong with you people? You like our future cites to all look just like Shanghai?

I mean WTF future is there if we don't beat the emerging economies as low cost manufacturers and value adders?

And given very localized, publicly owned and operated thorium based industrial energy supply we can!

Look, locally supplied thorium based energy connected to microgrids, will enable us and our locally invented direct reduction one step steel smelting in electric arc furnaces; to not only make the world's cheapest steel, but that with the lowest carbon footprint: ditto aluminium!

And with that industry and clear sighted future vision, have the high tech industries, cashed up retirees queuing to relocate here!?

Even more so, if we're smart enough to rollout/initiate real tax reform, as laid out by me above! It's too easy!

WTF indeed! This is how Galileo must have felt Pete, when he tried to explain to the WTF flat earther that the world was round?

Sure some folks are going to be hurt by a decarbonized economy, just not those folk (households and business) bled white by price gouging, WTF foreigners!?

WTF don't you get? You like paying through the nose for gold plated energy? Or having the patent price gouging energy industry, practically destroy the remaining discretionary spend our economy needs to survive?

Don't you get that India and China will beat us hands down in the, (anybody can do it) service provision, we seem to be exclusively relying on for virtually all our future export income; but particularly in the very next global contraction already waiting in the wings for the unwary or the just plain; WTF were you thinking stupid!?

WTF we can export coal and iron ore for a declining pittance as price takers, or the steel made from those two, for a handsome return!

But particularly those folk who have invested their retirement nest eggs in it!?
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Tuesday, 1 September 2015 6:03:25 PM
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Rhosty,

I just wanted to thank you for your immediately identifiable writing structure, which allows me to completely skip all of the BS and twaddle you produce on these pages.
Posted by Stezza, Tuesday, 1 September 2015 10:50:26 PM
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Oh god NO!

Not another independent authority. Is Everald looking for a job?

What the hell do we elect a government for. It would appear so it can stack highly paying independent authorities with their mates.

Surely we elect governments to govern & make bloody decisions, rather than pass the buck to some group of academics who are highly regarded by other academics. That alone should disqualify them from the public purse. Just look at the human rights commission for a view of stupidity in independent authorities.

We have to decide on how much pension we can pay oldies, single parents or dolies by what the economy can afford, not by what will guarantee a comfortable lifestyle for the recipient.

With the possible dramatic reduction in our earnings with a slowing demand from china, we could find these handouts have to be halved if we are to avoid a Greek future. Much better to make reductions in our expenditures ourselves, than have them dictated by our creditors.
Posted by Hasbeen, Tuesday, 1 September 2015 11:54:55 PM
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Why do these articles ALWAYS assume that everyone spends their entire working life in a full-time permanent wage-earning position?

I can't give exact statistics, but at least one in two people do not fit this scenario. The present superannuation system is outrageously unfair to non-earning adults (carers, homemakers), the self-employed, the underemployed and casual and part-time workers. Under the present system, the chances of these people ever becoming 'independent retirees' is minimal to zilch. Every time our hyper-superannuated, 6-figured salaried politicians put the retirement age up, these mostly non- or under-superannuated people are the ones who have to desperately find a way to survive yet another few years.

Also, why do these articles always assume that all people over 60 have a 'choice' to retire? While loving to yakkety-yak about raising the pension age to 70, and now 75 (now doubt soon it will be 80), these articles remain stubbornly unwilling to consider the horrific unemployment situation many people over 60 are facing.

In ten years, the number of over-55s on Newstart has doubled and the chances of them ever finding another permanent, full-time job are bleak. I know 7 people over 57 who have lost their jobs since 2011 (3 of them due to Campbell Newman's Qld public service hatchet job) and none of them have found permanent work. Other than the dole, they get by on the occasional casual or freelance job. All of them have gone through most of their savings, sold off most of their investments and drawn down much of their super just to survive. All of them have become clinically depressed and two of them admit to having contemplated suicide, despite never having considered it before.

Yet all these articles ever seem to care about is the macro-economic picture. They don't give a flying rubber duck about people's lives or dignity.
Posted by Killarney, Wednesday, 2 September 2015 12:18:00 AM
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