Your views: Readers' letters

Rates rise

Reporter Simon Waters (Chronicle, March 3) falls into the same thinking of many after each QV revaluation: that if values go up, so must your rates accordingly.

That, of course, is incorrect. Rates are gathered to offset the shortfall between council's income and its budgeted spending for the coming year.

If council's proposed expenditure is the same as last year (or in fact less) then rates will not rise overall, as council only needs to alter the divisor over the new rateable valuations.

I trust our newly elected councillors will be prudent and trim all non-essential spending. Surely it is not unreasonable to contain rate increases to the rate of inflation only.

Perhaps, with the cost cutting our new CEO is reportedly achieving, we may see a nil increase.

P L FRASER
College Estate

Rates anomaly

Here we go again. Property valuations rise, and so do our rates.

The proposed rates rise is not based on rising incomes of the ratepayers, positive economic growth, or even the addition of services to the ratepayers.

It is simply because some Government department decides that our property values should be assessed as having risen.

Funny thing, though -- when that same Government department decided our property values should be assessed as having dropped, I did not hear anything about any ratepayers having their rates drop.

If the council is going to make us pay more rates when our valuations rise, they should be prepared to make us pay less when the valuations drop.

Of course, they could just stop raising our rates for such a nonsensical reason.

K A BENFELL
Gonville

Lower super age

An increasing number of pundits are suggesting we should, in fact, be lowering the retirement age, not raising it. Life expectancy has remained stagnant for the poor, whereas it has skyrocketed for the upper classes.

President of the Center for Global Policy, Maya Rockeymoore writes "People who are shorter-lived tend to make less, which means that if you raise the retirement age, low-income populations would be subsidising the lives of higher-income people."

It took New Zealand workers almost half the amount of time it took them in the late '70s to produce the same amount of wealth -- productivity has been up 82 per cent since 1982, while, according to Statistics NZ, wages had declined 25 per cent in inflation adjusted value.

Journalist Jeff Spross suggests: "As the economy becomes more productive, the sane and decent thing to do is lower the retirement age".

Spross suggests that "when you lay it out like this, the push to raise the retirement age begins to look more than a little perverse.

Retirement is a valued and time-honoured part of Western culture.

It's an acknowledgment that people deserve a break after putting in their years in the economy, and that the elderly among us should have a chance to enjoy themselves, spend time with their families and give back to their communities in other ways."

According to the data, higher productivity has easily outstripped the increased ratio of retirees to productive workers of baby boomers.

It is time to lower, not raise the retirement age.

BRIT BUNKLEY
Whanganui