Letter to the Editor: Tuesday December 20, 2016

Not enough taxpayers for super

The Retirement Commissioner showed the usual lack of analytical thought when she released recommendations to the government on Wednesday.

Determined to ignore the cause of the looming fiscal problem of the affordability of the retirement benefit, sometimes called New Zealand superannuation, she follows the feminist ideology of lazily advocating a blanket raising of the age of entitlement, as if we are all equally to blame and thus must all be equally penalised.

Firstly, we are not all equally to blame.

This fiscal dilemma is caused by too few taxpayers, and that's caused by most Baby Boomers having failed to adequately reproduce.

The Baby Boomers are the want-to-have-our-cake-and-eat-it-too generation.

If you want to penalise those baby boomers, have the decency to credit those who have reproduced adequate taxpayers.

If you want to insist on raising the age of eligibility, at least make concession for those. Not hard to do, although not favoured by feminists.

Secondly, remember that this is a retirement benefit. Like the unemployment benefit, if you're receiving a wage, salary, or self-employment income, you're not entitled. You get it when you retire.

Is this too hard for the average bureaucrat?

LEO LEITCH
Pikowhai