Rehctub , I think this Government could find some of the money by cutting down the number of wealthy parents eligible for the overly generous paid parental leave scheme for a start!

Cutting out many of the politicians 'perks', like having drivers for the ministerial cars, flying in first class, paying for spouses expenses, etc.
I have no doubt we could add millions to the coffers after a pruning of those little extras.

Why do some of the most money-poor people in our society (pensioners) have to bear the brunt of Australia's debt problems?
Why not tax the high income earners more?

As is so often the case no one is thinking of the demand side of the equation. That is; all the stuff that we need to spend money on.

The key to a financially secure future is to CAP the demand!!

Rehctub, you ask:

< All thiose against the raising of pension age need to consider one VERY IMPORTANT fact. WHERE WILL THE MONEY COME FROM. >

Sorry, it’s the wrong question. We need to ask: how do we stop or reduce or slow down the rate of increase in all the stuff that the money needs to be spent on!

And guess what… the answer is very straightforward.

Reduce immigration to net zero. Then we’ll have something in the order of an extra 80b$ per year, that won’t need to be spent on duplicating infrastructure and services for our current huge rate of population increase.

Hey, this business about increasing the retirement age is a DIVERSION!

The REAL issue is to strive to balance supply and demand. And to do it NOT by striving to constantly increase supply, and the money that is needed to for it, but rather; by stopping the demand from ever-rapidly-increasing!

We need to spend that ~80b$ pa on pensions, infrastructural improvements and other quality-of-life things for the CURRENT population instead of on new residents!

If we could do that, or even a fairly small fraction of it, we wouldn’t need to increase the retirement age to 70.

Crikey, Rudd has pushed it up to 67. That’s enough! No further increase….PLEASE!

Suseonline - Quote "Why not tax the high income earners more?"

Simple answer if they already are not rich the politicians aspire to being rich in the future, therefore they would be stupid to enact a tax that will get them in the future.

Hi Ludwig,

You pose a very exciting situation, in which the number of relatively young people is to be cut back, at the same time as the number of older people increases.

There are a number of ways around this problem:

* increase the superannuation contributions to much higher levels (and slow down any wage rises accordingly);

* massively increase the tax rates for workers;

* print much, much more money;

* not soon but eventually, say, in thirty years, encourage older people to bring their years to a peaceful conclusion.

OR - as work become more automated, less physical, even more pleasant - even for women and all those ethnics doing the crummy jobs for us - and as our life expectancy keeps rising each year by three months, i.e. a year of extra life every FOUR years, kick the pensionable age up by one year every FIVE years.

Just trying to help :)

Joe

Robert LePage said:
"It would probably surprise you how many there are that are on a pension and are also grey nomads."

No, but it must surprise you as to how much our pension bill has escalated. From 1980-85, the pension bill for the government doubled in just those 5 years. In the mid 1980's, the average life expectancy for a female was 73, and a male 70. Today those life expectancies have increased by 10 years each, respectively. Don't forget to add the cost of free health care for those people too, and/or subsidized medications. All from the tax-payers. Don't get me wrong, I don't begrudge it one little bit, but I'm trying to point out that there are some stupendous costs involved in people just living longer.

Most people also had the idea of putting money into superannuation, but to suppliment their pension, NOT to live independently. We Aussies have a strange mentality, whereby we believe it's our right to receive a pension for all the taxes we paid during our working life. Well, that attitude is about to bite the bullet...rather hard. And I know this for a fact, as in the 1980's I worked in the industry, and I was continously astounded at the responses I got from people about ensuring that they didn't fund too much, as they didn't want to miss out on the pension.

In the short term, there's no way around it. Our future generations need to understand that they need to fund their own retirement FULLY, and to start from day one of their first job. They won't be ale to rely upon a pension when they're old enough to retire.

Free health will likely go, in the not too distant future, or at least reduce funding dramtically. With the loss of infrastructure for revenue, tax-payers are about all that's left for the government to fund things with, besides fuel, and it's not enough for all the pensioners and their medical costs added. Once we use what's left of fossil fuel, that's billions per year the government will be short.

@ Robert LePage, Tuesday, 22 April 2014 1:25:47 PM

You should try again, this time substituting any of the politically correct victim groups instead of the aged and you might be surprised by the results.

Just as a thought you could mention illegal migrants. That is a thought, have those grey wrinklies so despised and blamed in Oz tried claiming asylum? Asylum from the Lefties for starters? The aged seem to spook the Left, maybe because there are so many rule-breakers on the Left, or is it because the Left-sanctioned politically correct victim groups are playing dog-in-the-manger and do not want to share those guvvy teats with old buggers?

Heh, heh, maybe suggest that the aged who pioneered before and have raised, educated and supported all the generations that follow, should be honoured with the status of eternal victim and identified in a new Constitution and 'Rights' Charter as such.

Hold on, in some quarters it is anything but respect the aged. The aged just can't be 'Progressive(s)'. Honestly now, just how many of those greys vote Labor (Julia Gillard criticised them for that to deny any pension increase) or for the lunar Greens? Now can you see why the 'Greys' are yuck factor and are disliked and disrespected?

Does that help you to understand why the Greys make such perfect whipping boys? Or should I say whipping girls since many surviving are women?