Retirement and Superannuation Policy

Very good discussion going on here. I would like to try and keep discussion to working out how to handle the act of a person going from full time work to retirement and how we should keep that person in check. I believe that a UBI would be a good way forward to ensuring that people have at the very least a fallback and an assurance that as a Citizen you have a right to acquire basic needs for oneself. But we run into an issue where a UBI would be enough for the ones that can work but not enough for people that are unable to work as long when they get older. Henceforth either a retirement add on would need to go on the UBI or the retirement pension would still be separate.

Discussion the UBI on its own should go in the UBI thread. But certainly interactions between UBI and retirement can be discussed here.

https://www.loomio.org/d/xAB9ThWv/universal-allowance-basic-income-

I've got no problem with the Pension age being raised, I had pretty much committed to working till I died anyway so it doesn't really bother me.

What does income testing entail?

The economy is only viable while the economy is viable.

And there is an elimination of trust because you have just f'd over the banking system by removing their money creation ability. To do so you would have to give the ability for to reserve bank to create money, essentially nationalising the banking sector. Nationalising your banking sector would remove you from the International banking system, the banks would call in their loans. Credit ratings would drop and interest rates go up.Then you are faced with the choice of creating vast sums of money to pay the loans...and not just govt debt....which would place New Zealand in default. Inflation would go through the roof.

So to insure trust you would have to pay New Zealand's debts first.

Countries can go bankrupt, it is called default.

It wasn't a slight drop. It hit a record low in 2008 and each time quantitative easing happened it just about hit that low again in 2010 and 2012.

Military power - If you look at the countries the US has tried to/or has overthrown is recent years quite a few of them had dropped the US dollar in the years before. Iraq dropped the dollar in 2000 (invaded 2003), Libya in 2009 (military intervention 2011), Syria dropped the US dollar in 2006 (the same year the U.S. and its allies began discussing plans to overthrow it).

New Zealand also went through a dairy boom which forced our dollar up and saved us from extended recession.

And there is an elimination of trust because you have just f'd over the banking system by removing their money creation ability.

It's either them or us. Leave it as is and it will be us.

To do so you would have to give the ability for to reserve bank to create money, essentially nationalising the banking sector.

The Reserve Bank already has that ability. IIRC, Labour used that ability to extend a non-repayable loan to a foreign corporation to set up here.

Nationalising your banking sector would remove you from the International banking system, the banks would call in their loans.

So? If they try they simply lose immediately whereas if they maintain relations they'll get their money back eventually.

When you loan some one money you're taking the risk that you're not going to get it back.

BTW, I'm only talking about removing the private banks ability to create money which is rightly called a Ponzi Scheme. They'd still be able to loan out any money that they have deposited for that purpose. The government won't guarantee it at all though and if the bank loses so do the depositors.

Credit ratings would drop and interest rates go up.

Interest rates would be at 0%. That's the beauty of using a Sovereign Money System. The government never has to borrow and, in fact, shouldn't.

New Zealand also went through a dairy boom which forced our dollar up and saved us from extended recession.

More likely to have deepened it actually. A higher dollar would have decreased our exports and thus decreased employment. And you'll note that that boom ended resulting in our farmers so far in debt that they can no longer maintain the farms. The banks did well though.

The mistake you're making is to assume that a high dollar is good but it is neither good nor bad. You're also assuming that a high dollar represents people wanting buy our stuff which isn't exactly true either - it's more because we have the highest interest rates in the world.

Then there's the purpose of exchange rates (which is taught in economics) and that is to balance trade between countries. A high dollar would, if the exchange rate was operating correctly, show that we're importing too little while exporting too much. It's actually backwards because of that high interest rate and we're actually importing too much and not exporting enough.

If the exchange rate was working correctly our dollar would be significantly less than it is now.

There's a difference between the way things are and the ways things should be and I'm specifically saying that we need to change to the latter.

(Imho UBI is the way to go, as above) but imo 1 is your simple question: yes, leave it at 65. Raising it won't be a huge fiscal saving and afaik not even the Nats want to raise it until around 2040, so imo let the 65 yo's be.

A thought on UBI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNE2BF2gMjo

I think his response to Q on UBI, from 1m57s, is utter utter BS: "The question of 'what will that do?' is completely unanswerable. We have no idea what that will do." What?!! NZ Superannuation is already a UBI ffs. The Corporatocracy will stonewall UBI as it empowers people, aka 'the workforce'. To hear them tell it, it will always need more testing & trials.

We actually have a very good idea as to what it will do from all the trials over the last 40+ years. It appears that a few people don't what it will do and so rant against the UBI.

We do know that mice die off in utopian conditions.
We do know that inherited wealth seldom makes it past 3 generations and the grandchildren are oft rotten.
We know many people have quite negative reactions to retirement. Even wealthy early retirement.
Its not an argument against UBI, its more of a warning not to think its going to be a magical panacea.

We do know that mice die off in utopian conditions.

Citation needed

We do know that inherited wealth seldom makes it past 3 generations and the grandchildren are oft rotten.

That would explain all those families that have been wealthy for centuries.

We know many people have quite negative reactions to retirement.

Yep. One reason why I think a UBI would work as people simply prefer to work than do nothing.

Its not an argument against UBI, its more of a warning not to think its going to be a magical panacea.

Nothing's a magical panacea but UBI as a replacement for most of our present welfare system would be a hell of a lot better to everyone but especially to those who are dependent upon it and those administering it.