But you do realize that not every job allows someone to continue indefinitely, right (I’m sure you do, but your post seems dismissive)? Many jobs - particularly manual labour/blue collar work - kind of become impossible to do with age, as vision, strength, manual dexterity, stamina and attentiveness fail. How old do you want your bus driver to be? How about the guy who built part of your car? Even in white-collar jobs, technology and required skills eventually outpace the learning abilities of older people, making it that much harder for them to keep their jobs.
Pension systems - either private or government - are an important part of the way our entire society is built. No everyone can work until they die, nor should they.
As for specific reforms… I have no idea. I’m not even managing my own future to any extent, let alone able to think on a broader scale. The first few years of whatever career I eventually start are going to have to involve setting aside large amounts of money to get things started.
I thought the topic coming up was Old Age Security anyway, and not the Canada Pension Plan?
Rumours of having to wait an extra two years to receive OAS are all I’ve heard. CPP is a completely different animal.
I’m not going fishing for cites, but since OAS was introduced in the 1960s, average life span has increased by about 10 years. And now we’re on the cusp of having the baby boomers retire.
I completely get that waiting a couple more years is not that big a deal, if you give people 10 or so years to plan for it, which also has been rumoured.
That’s my understanding too, but every time I turn on the news, it’s, “YOU CAN’T TOUCH MY PENSION! RAEG!” Oh, and the MPs - “YOU CAN’T TOUCH THEIR PENSIONS, YOU CONSERVATIVE BASTARDS! RAEG!”
It’s not like they’re taking pensions away from people who are currently on them, either. Every time I see the news stories, they’re always showing and talking to 80 year olds. That’s not who this is going to affect - it’s us mid-forties people, and yeah, thanks for the head’s up - we’ll plan accordingly. I’d much prefer to have OAS delayed for two years than have the whole friggin’ pension plan go tits up in the next 20 years.
On top of that, OAS is just astoundingly wasteful in its generosity; it is in effect a vote-buying program. Consider that it’s not clawed back until the recipient has over $66,000 in personal income - which is FAR above the national average. Think about it; it’s a welfare program given to people who aren’t the slightest bit poor. It’s crazy.
Why in heaven’s name are we sending cheques to people making $60,000 a year just because they’re old? It’s absolutely ridiculous; someone making $60K (and hell, most people making $50K, or $40K) doesn’t need OAS and doesn’t deserve it. OAS needs to be seriously scaled back and directed at people who actually, legitimately need the money.
The Conservatives are absolutely the authors of their own demise here. To have the Prime Minister announce these changes to a Swiss audience, instead of in Parliament or at least in Canada was asking for trouble. To follow that up by refusing to provide any details as to what changes were forthcoming was absolutely moronic. I’m all for having a rational discussion on the structure of our “pension”* programs, but that Conservatives haven’t provided that. They’ve given us a vague speech in front of a foreign audience and precisely one piece of data – that the cost of OAS is projected to triple by 2032 or something like that – without any context, like the effects of inflation over 30 years.
Pension in quotes because OAS isn’t really a pension – it’s really just welfare for seniors.
Yes, I do, and upon re-reading, my post does seem dismissive. Apologies to all; it was not meant to be that way.
I think I was somehow reminded that I’ve never worked for anyplace that has a pension plan. I worked for a number of high-tech startups that may have paid pretty well, but had few benefits–and if they did, a pension plan was not among them. And I was self-employed for a number of years, so there was no pension plan then either. Regardless, it is my responsibility to look after myself; and I do, with an RRSP.
I did get myself into a career where I can either work for myself or others (I’m a lawyer); and if self-employed, can work as long as I am able. Still, at this stage of my life, I’m a little jealous of those who took nice, safe, jobs for large, established, companies that have pension plans. For example, my younger sister can safely retire at an early age with a nice pension from her employer (an insurance company); while I’ll still be working.
Oh well. As a wise man once said, “Fortune has its cookies to give out.”
As touched on previously, there are a whole lot of people out of work before 65 because of a rapidly changing economy where their skills and abilities are no longer wanted due to their age. A two year extension of the waiting period is a kick in the face.
With all this talk of OAS going tits up, I never here anyone talk about raising taxes. Why not raise taxes? Do we need a humming economy to produce multi million dollar yachts, airplanes , multiple homes and multiple foreign vacations for multiple individuals or do we want a humming economy to produce reasonable shelter, food, clothing and viagra for all our elderly citizens ?
Yeah, but Greece’s problem isn’t so much about unrealistic pensions (although they did go overboard with them) but that they pretty much ignored the whole “collect taxes” side of the equation. I had to laugh when their PM announced tax increases as an action to deal with their debt. The government wouldn’t act to collect the taxes already in place - how will increasing the amounts they don’t collect help?
As for OAS, it only *starts *to be cut back at (currently) $69,562. It isn’t *completely *clawed back until your income reaches $112,772! That’s definitely something that needs revision.
I didn’t know we were providing OAS for such high-income seniors - that does seem a bit…generous to me. As I’ve often said when seniors go on about being “on a fixed income,” some of them have a pretty damned high level of income that it’s fixed at.
Dutchman, this is the stink that’s raised when a government dares to raise the idea of looking at anything related to pensions; I agree that we might have to look at the money coming in as well as how it’s budgeted, but raising taxes is a very hard sell.
Is OAS/CPP (QPP?) something that expires at some point (prior to death)? Is it just a little bit of supplemental money? I realize that I have no idea how the whole system actually works. :smack:
I’m thinking of my grandfather, who was an accountant and planned his retirement such that the money he’d saved for that would be doled out by the time he hit 90 years old. He figured he’d be dead by then, being a pack-a-day smoker. He figured wrong, and his income dropped significantly after that to what I assume is just QPP/OAS and I think it’s less than $20K a year, if I remember what my mom was saying correctly. He is now 96 and is living in a basement apartment at his daughter’s place (from first marriage) and is still pretty much independent, albeit deaf as a door knob. He cooks and does the NYT crossword every day, and still smokes like a chimney.
What happened? Is the $20K (or something in that range) what he’s getting from the federal and provincial pension plans? Is it really that little, or was there likely something more complicated going on? If that is his income, why are people making $60K/year getting anything out of this system when my grandfather gets so little?
I need to do some research, I think, but if anyone can give me a simple explanation, I’d appreciate it. Clearly, finances are not my forte. :smack:
OAS never ends. If you make less than the limit Bookkeeper notes above, you are paid the full amount (currently $540.12) every month, until the day you die. (There are residency requirements, too, whichcould lower it, but let’s assume we’re talking about someone who’s pretty much always lived in Canada.) Doesn’t matter if you need the money. While it obviously does help low income seniors, it is deliberately paid in full to virtually all seniors; it’s a vote-buying scheme.
The reason your grandfather’s getting so little, while old people who don’t need the money are being paid the same amount, is that your grandfather can’t vote more than once.
Dutchman, I have to be honest; I don’t see the point about taxes. If taxes should be raised that’s fine, and if they shouldn’t that’s fine too, but OAS is either wasteful and unaffordable or it isn’t. It doesn’t matter what the deficit situation is or is going to be; we shouldn’t be sending full welfare benefits to people who make a lot of money. It’s preposterous. My parents are loaded with money and they’re starting to collect OAS, and they get the full amount because their investment income is designed to spit out money at a level below the OAS cutoff. It’s ridiculous that my parents are being sent welfare cheques.
It’s precisely equivalent to expanding the welfare program to include people with middle class jobs making $65,000 a year who own their own homes; If I suggested a plan to do that, saying “well, we have to give it to almost everybody to ensure poor people get it, and let’s raise taxes to pay for it” you’d think I was insane. You’d say “That’s stupid. Why not limit welfare to people who need welfare?”
The simple fact of the matter is that we’re living longer than we used to, and so long as the retirement age remains at 65 we’re trying to support more non-productive years with fewer productive years (especially as the Boomers retire). As time goes on and we live increasingly longer, it’s just a simple fact of the matter that we’re going to have to remain in the work force longer. While I’m sure being unemployed and just under retirement age sucks, the essential math of the situation is inescapable.
Now, on the other hand, I admit I don’t quite get this.
The most obvious problem with OAS isn’t what we define as “Old Age,” it’s what we define as “Security.”
If a 65-year-old person needs help keeping the heat on and the fridge full of food, we should give that person some money. It doesn’t really make any difference if we call it OAS or Welfare or the MFPWNMP (Money For People Who Need Money Program.) If you bump the OAS retirement age, you may encourage people to work longer, or maybe not; some people at 65 are just out of gas. You’ll end up with people collecting welfare instead of OAS for a few years.
What makes no sense at all about OAS is that it is paid to people who simply shouldn’t need it. I don’t mind handouts to old people who have little income, but the ones that are doing okay no more deserve a free check than I do. Where the hell’s my free money?
This is unfortunately not the only case of a wildly misguided government program that gives benefits to people who don’t need benefits (subsidized electricty prices, for example) but it’s one of the most obvious fixes; just lower the clawback. Only give Old Age Security to people who otherwise lack financial security. It’s a crazy idea, I know.
But for adults, it hasn’t increased nearly as much. The average 65 year old Canadian man could expect to live for around 13 more years in 1960 (PDF; page 29). That had only increased to 17 years by 2000 (the last year I can find a life table for).
