Retiring at 67? Baby boomers need to think about who pays
By Mike Booker,
I've yet to see or hear anything about how the people who are going to have to pay the baby boomer retirement bill feel about raising the age of retirement to 67 – that is, anyone whose hair hasn’t turned grey or started to disappear or has a face full of wrinkles.
The young people of New Zealand are, at the moment, invisible in this issue.
This isn’t surprising. We baby boomers have a habit of getting what we want. This won’t change as more and more of us retire, reversing the flow of our cash into the government’s coffers.
The reality is that the sheer weight of numbers at the ballot box means we’ll continue to get our way for a while yet.
And unless we have a change of heart, the losers will be our children.
For sure it’s not our fault that we are so numerous. Blame our parents.
And yeah, we paid our taxes (but not for our Super).
And we deserve dignity in our old age.
But if we put ourselves in the shoes of our children, these arguments can look like financial tyranny.
They’ll be the ones who’ll increasingly be paying for our ever more costly Super, medical treatment and hospital care.
The financial crisis, and the financial system that spawned it, have boomer mitts all over them and our children are already paying for that on the unemployment line.
2010 kicked off a significant shift in who pays for what. The oldest of the boomers (born 1946) are leaving the work force so from a national budget point of view boomers have begun the move from being contributors to costs.
So we boomers need to think carefully about things like the retirement age.
We’re not the ones who are going to be paying.
This post originally appeared on BigCake.
Comments
Sally Brochocka
If only more boomers thought like you. As part of the 'younger' generation I can understand that the retirement age needs to go up, but funny how it won't actually happen until all the boomers are nicely tucked away into retirement. so they have time to plan…unlike giving our parents time to plan for uni fees, no student allowance etc etc. the younger generation are quiet because we are resigned, this is just one more thing that is something the generation above us enjoyed but will be taken from us, free uni, student allowance, jobs after university etc etc. while we all understand the necessity it would be nice for more acknowledgement. it seems the answer to who has to pay, is never 'the baby boomers' but always the young. by it times to come for me to retire i fear teh generation below me whom i'm hoping to pay for my retirement as i pay for the boomers, will not be resigned but bitter….and angry….and vengeful!
Johnny
How about a Logan's Run solution, but lifting the age from 30 to 60?
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