Monday, November 10, 2014
O Beholden Canada by Steven Malanga, City Journal Autumn 2014
To me, the heart of the problem is elected officials having too much control of other peoples money, using benefits to bargain for votes, and the reality that they won't be around when the SHTF...
This Canadian City-Journal article, by Steven Malanga shows that Canada has pension problems caused by the same factors as other countries:
"At the heart of Canada’s pension woes are some of the same forces that have helped rack up several trillion dollars in state and local pension liabilities in the United States. For years, Canadian governments have provided generous pensions at low costs to employees. Workers could earn full benefits while retiring in their mid-fifties, even as they lived longer. Politicians relied on optimistic assumptions about stock-market returns to justify those benefits. Governments were quick to grant additional benefits to politically powerful employee groups, but they underfunded pensions when budgets got tight.
Now, unsurprisingly, workers are opposed to giving up their lavish benefits."
