Hi Issy,

There was such a fund set up, but it was short lived as there was no clear allocation of funds to it as in the case of Medicare. It was not until the introduction of 3% compulsory supa that things started to move in the right direction. From earliest times Labor has supported some form of worker retirement plan, conservatism opposed on the grounds of it being an unjust cost on employers.

Hi Foxy,

Unfortunate yes, as you can see from the immediate two posts under my first, disgusting claims that I want to gas people NAZI style, or I want to deny people vaccines so they die. When attacked I retaliate in kind, I'm not saying that is the right thing to do. How long have we been chatting on this Forum, over 10 years now, and I have seen the huge amount of abuse heaped upon you, with little retaliation on your part. Your participation on the Forum is far harder than mine, you being sanative to abuse, and I'm not, remember the 'Armadillo Principle', easier said than done.

Here I am questioning these Old Farts personal privileged pensioner position, of course I expect abuse, par for the course for these old coots. Pensioners are not a homogeneous lot, at one end of the scale are the poor and destitute doing it very tough, barely getting by with no assets. At the other end of the scale are the elite with assets, owning a million dollar house, hundreds of thousands in the bank etc, people who can afford to top up the pension to the tune of thousands per year, and still afford to be buried in a gold coffin. This is funded by an inequitable and unsustainable system.

Eighty percent of people over the age of 65 receive some Age Pension. That's around 4 million voters politicians are not going to mess with, just because of a few anti-social, ageist, Green, haters.

The Age Pension is less than 3% of the total welfare bill, and it is easily sustainable.

People now on the Age Pension, in their working years, also paid taxes to support retirees.

Little Iceland, Holland and Denmark have better Age Pensions than Australia; all with much smaller GDPs than Australia's.

There will always be nasty, mean and grudging people. It's a damn good thing that they represent only about 8% of the Australian population. Although, unlike their angry acolyte, Paul 1405, the Greens Party does claim to believe that: "All older Australians are entitled to a guaranteed adequate income".

Angry Man Paul would quite likely enjoy the MSM story currently doing the rounds about an 80 year old man who has worked here for 58 years, but has been denied an Age Pension, or part thereof, because he changed his name from Youssef to Joseph. He ticks AMPs boxes: ethnic, still working at 80.

It has been announced that the Morrison government will foolishly, in my opinion, increase permanent immigration to 160,000 in the lazy man's way to grow the economy. That will help pay for pensions. Pleased about that, AMP? Lots of new foreigners and ethnics for you to fawn over while you continue rubbishing Australians.

Yes ttbn, each migrant, even those who stay on welfare for years increase the gross domestic product a little, while reducing the individual domestic product a little.

Every one makes the current population a little less wealthy, apart from those running big business.

Hasbeen,

Dick Smith, who knows how to make money far better than politicians and bureaucrats, has been telling them for years that mass immigration makes the general population poorer, but they don't want to know. It is also accepted wisdom among economists and demographers.