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发帖数: 29846 | 1 People’s retirement savings are a convenient source of revenue for
governments that don’t want to reduce spending or make privatizations. As
most pension schemes in Europe are organised by the state, European
ministers of finance have a facilitated access to the savings accumulated
there, and it is only logical that they try to get a hold of this money for
their own ends. In recent weeks I have noted five such attempts: Three
situations concern private personal savings; two others refer to national
funds.
The most striking example is Hungary, where last month the government made
the citizens an offer they could not refuse. They could either remit their
individual retirement savings to the state, or lose the right to the basic
state pension (but still have an obligation to pay contributions for it). In
this extortionate way, the government wants to gain control over $14bn of
individual retirement savings.
The Bulgarian government has come up with a similar idea. $300m of private
early retirement savings was supposed to be transferred to the state pension
scheme. The government gave way after trade unions protested and finally
only about 20% of the original plans were implemented.
RELATED: Europe's 5 most generous pension systems
A slightly less drastic situation is developing in Poland. The government
wants to transfer of 1/3 of future contributions from individual retirement
accounts to the state-run social security system. Since this system does not
back its liabilities with stocks or even bonds, the money taken away from
the savers will go directly to the state treasury and savers will lose about
$2.3bn a year. The Polish government is more generous than the Hungarian
one, but only because it wants to seize just 1/3 of the future savings and
also allows the citizens to keep the money accumulated so far.
The fourth example is Ireland. In 2001, the National Pension Reserve Fund
was brought into existence for the purpose of supporting pensions of the
Irish people in the years 2025-2050. The scheme was also supposed to provide
for the pensions of some public sector employees (mainly university staff).
However, in March 2009, the Irish government earmarked €4bn from this
fund for rescuing banks. In November 2010, the remaining savings of €
2.5bn was seized to support the bailout of the rest of the country.
The final example is France. In November, the French parliament decided to
earmark €33bn from the national reserve pension fund FRR to reduce the
short-term pension scheme deficit. In this way, the retirement savings
intended for the years 2020-2040 will be used earlier, that is in the years
2011-2024, and the government will spend the saved up resources on other
purposes.
It looks like although the governments are able to enforce general
participation in pension schemes, they do not seem to be the best guardians
of the money accumulated there.
The table below is a summary of the discussed fiscal-retirement situations (
source):
*These figures do not include the costs of higher taxes, price inflation and
low interest rates, which additionally devaluate retirement savings.
[This article was originally posted at mises.pl]
RELATED: Europe's 5 most generous pension systems
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