-8 upvotes, 4 direct replies (showing 4)
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….. I think you didn’t understand what I said. When you’re giving 20-40% of your income to the government a part of it goes to your pension. What I’m saying is, lower the tax, and remove pensions. That way people make more money and pay less tax therefore have more money to save.
Comment by huhwe at 04/11/2024 at 09:50 UTC
6 upvotes, 1 direct replies
But the issue then is, do we trust EVERYONE to use that extra cash to save? Historically speaking, this is a very, very idealistic view of human nature.
Comment by alstegma at 04/11/2024 at 09:55 UTC
6 upvotes, 0 direct replies
In countries with relatively high cost of living, Wages for simple jobs that require no special qualifications are often dictated by how little you can pay people so they can barely get by. Unskilled labour without unions has no bargaining power because they need the job to pay for their basic needs. The companies can't pay less than that because then there wouldn't be anyone who could work for them.
If the government doesn't mandate saving for retirement, companies would cut wages, because now you need less money to get by. They don't care what would happen to you in a couple decades when you don't work for them anymore.
Comment by ocelot_piss at 04/11/2024 at 10:09 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
In most places, tax funded state pensions are a fixed amount per week.
Your tax money isn't put into a special pot just to be paid back to you and you alone. Your money goes into a giant pot along with everyone else's and every pensioner gets paid a similar amount from it.
This is a small safety net for those on the poorer end of society. They probably have not contributed much to the pot but they get a payout from it from retirement age until death.
Short of knowing when they are going to die, how would somebody know how much to save to be able to pay themselves that much each week?
Comment by Rubber_Knee at 04/11/2024 at 10:42 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
What part of:
Some people are too poor to have any money to save up
did you not understand?
These people have such low incomes, that they often pay the lowest percentage in taxes possible anyway.
Some don't even pay any at all, bacause they have no income, or it's so low that it's below the threshold for what that government is willing to tax. These people would have no pension, no matter what they did, without that system.
This isn't rocket surgery