Whut is your countrys Retirement Age?

[PigsnieLite]

The Lazy French are having disruptive rallies today becuz they want to retire at 60, not 62, like that weasel Sarkozy wants. I haf to agree wid Sarkozy though -- 62 is a more than reasonable age to retire. I mean, we cant collect a state pension until we're 66! How about Americuns, Canadians & the Antipodiesels? When can you start collecting?

PS. Today, the UK undergrounds are also on strike becuz .. just becuz. Obviously these people havent seen that RICH & HOMELESS show or they wouldnt be messing up the traffic. Ughhh, whut a pain!

[Avril]

This is from the site that hands out pensions in Oz:

I get to retire on the age pension when I'm 65. Wombat is a year younger so he has to wait until he's 65.5. ;D

www.centrelink.gov.au/internet/internet.nsf/payments/age_eligible.htm

[shoegirl]

I think in Canada people can choose to start collecting pension at age 60. Some people wait much longer though.

Some people collect pension and still work. I don't know if that is by choice or if they don't have enough income with pension alone. Probabley some of each.

[PigsnieLite]

Waahhh, canadians are lazy too, hahahaha!

60 is rather youngish to collect pension. But Im retiring sooner than that becuz assorted concerned peeples keep starting all these bank accounts for me which I cant touch until Im as ancient as Avrila.

[PigsnieLite]

French riot some More! How very dull.


French horror at 'Anglo-Saxon' reforms

By Christian Fraser
BBC News, Paris


In France this week, more than two million workers took to the streets to protest against proposals to raise the retirement age. But the harsh economic climate may continue to threaten the traditional French way of life.

All right, so they were not blockading British ferries at Calais or burning English lamb in rural Normandy.

Nonetheless, the French strikers who brought the country to a standstill this week still had the Anglo-Saxons in their sights.

In France, I have come to realise, the term "Anglo-Saxon" is rarely one of endearment.

It is a useful umbrella description that seems to cover any number of perceived national weaknesses the other side of the Channel.

Last week, French scorn was reserved for the British retirement age, now set to rise to 67.

"Incroyable!", cried a population that jealously guards its savoir-vivre .

Last Tuesday, I was by the statue of Marianne, who personifies the values of the French republic, when I encountered one particularly vehement demonstrator at a central Paris rally.

"We should not be imitating our neighbours," she barked, perhaps noting my English tweed.

“ The French have always expected the state to provide - not only for their short working week, their excellent free schools and hospitals - but also their retirement ”

"We must defend what we have. Ours is not the Anglo-Saxon way."

Indeed not.

The French are scandalised by President Nicolas Sarkozy's determined push to raise the state pension age from 60 to - horror of horrors - 62.

A modest rise in European terms and in the current economic climate, you might think, not unreasonable.

'New mindset'

Yet the French have always expected the state to provide - not only for their short working week, their excellent free schools and hospitals - but also their retirement.

Most people here do not contribute to private pensions.

The vast majority rely on the state pension, and compulsory membership of industry schemes.
The politicians, however, know that this has to change.

Jean-Francois Cope, the head of the ruling UMP parliamentary body and a rising star of the centre-right, says the French need a new mindset.

"By 2018, the French might have to wait until they are 63 for retirement," he whispers.

"We can still provide a state pension. But if we live longer, we work longer."

He added: "The language and the psychology will have to change in France."

More sleep

Change will not come easily or quickly.

Consider these figures from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development:

On average, a Frenchman will spend 135 minutes eating every day - his American and Canadian counterparts take just 50 minutes.

The French get more sleep, and then there are those famously long summer holidays.

In August, French society heads for the hills, the beaches, the mountains. Anywhere but the office. At least this year's break gave President Sarkozy some respite from the restless French unions, which are supported by three-quarters of the French people.

Though it did not go unnoticed that most of the workforce had been back at work for just one week before they were all out on national strike again.

To be fair, despite the "down-time" the French are still hugely productive, even in a 35-hour week.

“ When it comes to the welfare state, successive presidents have dodged the ball ”



The problem, some experts will tell you, is that the span of their working life is just too short.

Most do not start working until the age of 26 or 27, youth unemployment runs at 10%, and come the age of 55 they expect to be winding down to a long and enjoyable retirement.
A colleague came across one very spry demonstrator this week who finished work 20 years ago and is now an accomplished hang-glider.

Mr Cope is having none of this.

"From now on an employer will not ask what a 55-year-old will do with his retirement," he warns.

"He will ask what he wants to do in the next stage of his career."

Reform battle

France's top business brass are very much onside.

I rubbed shoulders with some of the country's leading directors at a glitzy business conference the other day.

Many were talking "Anglo-Saxon" - the language of a longer working life, more enterprise, more reform, less bureaucracy, a smaller state and a bigger society.

"You have to have sympathy for Mr Sarkozy," said Gerard Lannelongue, director of one of France's biggest education providers.

"When it comes to the welfare state, successive presidents have dodged the ball," he added.

"Mr Sarkozy has no option but to carry it."

Carry it he must - to the unions.

They have already ensured that some 700 amendments to the pensions bill be debated in the parliament, including proposed exemptions for those in "dirty or dangerous jobs".

These include not only the steelworkers or those employed in public transport, but shop assistants and teachers. They are also clamouring for recognition too.

EUROPE'S RETIREMENT AGES

France - 60
UK, Italy - 65 for men, 60 for women
Germany, Netherlands, Spain - 65
Greece - 65 for men, 62 for women
"The idea that a teacher cries at retirement is reserved solely for the movies", gasped one seemingly exhausted maitresse.

More action is due in a few days time, and another demonstration after that. It is a question of who blinks first.

But perhaps President Sarkozy can draw some straws of comfort.

The mood last week was sullen and resentful, but two-thirds of the marchers surveyed said they did not think their protests would make one jot of difference.

They appear stolidly resigned to their fate. Very Anglo-Saxon.

[sunfrog]

Incroyable!~

[PigsnieLite]

[PLite giggles.] ;D

SPOILED TWITS! Oh no, 63 (or 62) is too muchy for their tender French constitutions! But We Anglowed Sexons will soon haf to retire at 67! Can you imagine AdoraBLE Cutesome PLite at 67? {PLite shuddurs.]

[PigsnieLite]

From the NY Times: THE SCOURGE OF THE BRITISH PENSION SYSTEM or WHERE THE HECK IS PLITES MONEY?

LONDON — It may be the age of austerity for many in Britain. For a former doctor, Geoffrey Lipman, it is anything but.

Dr. Lipman’s annual government pension of £48,000, or nearly $78,000, nicely supplements the £144,000 tax-free payment he received when he retired from Britain’s National Health Service in 2007 after 35 years of service.

He also makes use of the wide menu of universal benefits available to older Britons — including free bus travel and annual payments of £200, or $324, to defray winter heating costs. Next month, when he turns 65, he will qualify as well for a second government pension payout of £104 a week, plus a £10 bonus at Christmas.

Dr. Lipman’s payments are emblematic of what Britain’s Conservative prime minister, David Cameron, is up against, having hitched his political fortunes to the coalition government’s ability to cut the national budget. Despite Mr. Cameron’s efforts to curb public outlays and reduce one of Europe’s biggest budget deficits, government spending is higher than when he took office two years ago. This continues a climb that began with the creation of the British welfare state after World War II.

The cuts Mr. Cameron has made — a public sector pay freeze, a reduction in outlays for local governments and cutbacks in personnel at government ministries, to name a few — have drawn howls of protest. The outcry has come from unions; the Labor Party, which now has a strong lead in the polls; and even a growing faction of Tory-supporting business leaders.

But overall government spending, as a portion of the economy, continues to rise. It is projected to approach £700 billion this year, or about 45 percent of gross domestic product, compared with 38 percent a decade ago. That is partly a result of social benefits, mainly for the elderly, that are deemed politically off-limits and are being propelled up by a demographic curve that will add millions of Britons to the retiree ranks in coming years.

The issue in some ways parallels the challenge facing the United States, where growing numbers of retiring baby boomers threaten to bankrupt the Social Security and Medicare systems within decades unless those systems are revamped. And as in the United States, because people still working are paying for retirees’ benefits that are more generous than younger people can expect to receive, the budget struggle has elements of a generational dispute.

Younger doctors in Britain do not expect to receive the same benefits as Dr. Lipman. This year they held a one-day strike to protest the government’s decision to raise their retirement age and their pension contributions.

With British tax revenue remaining weak because of an economy that is forecast to shrink 0.5 percent this year, it is becoming ever more likely that Mr. Cameron’s government will miss its goal of cutting the deficit this fiscal year to £120 billion, from £126 billion last year.

The International Monetary Fund estimates that Britain will have a deficit this year of 8.1 percent of G.D.P., surpassing Spain and even Greece and trailing only Ireland among the distressed euro zone economies.

For now, many bond investors are disregarding Britain’s deficit. Continuing to see the pound as a haven from woes in the euro zone, they are lending money to Britain for 10 years at an interest rate only slightly higher than Germany’s 1.6 percent.

Driving this increase has been spending on entitlements, which Mr. Morgan calculated to be 50 percent of spending last year, if interest payments on government debt were not counted. Benefits for Britons older than 60 are substantial. Retirees receive the winter heating payments regardless of income or where they live, even in the not-so-chilly south of France or coastal Spain. When they turn 75, retirees no longer have to pay the annual £145 fee that other British households pay for using a television.

Many economies in Europe, of course, say they are under pressure from benefit payments and are making cutbacks. But the strain on the British Exchequer is particularly intense because the benefits include some of the most generous pension plans in Europe. That is especially so for retired government employees.

According to research by the Intergenerational Foundation, about 100,000 public sector retirees receive pensions that exceed the country’s average annual wage of £25,900. Those ranks are expected to increase sharply in coming years as more senior government workers retire.

Not all of the 670,000 people collecting pensions from the National Health Service live at Dr. Lipman’s level. Many were lower-paid health service professionals — including support staff and nurses — who receive close to the national public sector pension average of £7,000 a year.

But the foundation’s research found that the richest payouts went to retirees from the health profession, with some doctors receiving pensions of as much as £100,000 annually.

The Cameron government has put in place changes that will require younger working doctors to increase their pension contributions to 14 percent of their salary by 2014. Dr. Lipman had to contribute 4 percent from the £100,000 a year he earned on average as a doctor.

It has also put in place the second increase in doctors’ retirement age since 2008, raising it to 68 from 65. It was 60 when Dr. Lipman left the work force.

Because this year’s changes affect only doctors younger than 47, any near-term savings will not be substantial. The effect is most profound on the doctors themselves. That is why the British Medical Association called for a strike in late June, the first time doctors here had taken such action in 40 years.

“We are really angry,” said Dr. David Wrigley, 43, who works in the Lancashire region of northwest England.

Under National Health Service guidelines, for his 15 years of experience, Dr. Wrigley qualifies for a yearly salary of around £85,000, about $138,000 at today’s exchange rates. He acknowledges that even with the new rules, doctors will remain well compensated compared with other public sector professions.

But he says the latest changes seem to single out doctors.

“When you first joined the N.H.S. you signed a moral contract to work until you are 60 and then get your pension,” Dr. Wrigley said. “Now that is being taken away.”

But not from retirees like Dr. Lipman, whose pensions will not be affected.

“We have a lifestyle that is very good,” said Dr. Lipman, who is married and has two grown daughters. “We just got back from Tuscany, we are going to Portugal in three weeks, the Canary Islands for New Year’s and are planning a trip to South Africa after that.”

That, he concedes with a chuckle, is the beauty of a legacy-style N.H.S. pension. “You get paid £48,000 a year to do nothing.” [/color]

Just for the Wecord: my pappy does not get £48,000 a year becuz professors dont make that much. But he has money from his daddy's daddy's da who got rich trading for the East India Company.

[sunfrog]

Your da' is a pirate!?
If Londoomed goes the way of Greece we're all doomed!

[PigsnieLite]

Yahh, my Da is a Professor of Piratical Economics!

UK is not as stupid as Greece. They give hairdressers pensions at 50! Very strange.

[sunfrog]

How much money does Papa P'irate make from his pension? Is it a lot?

[PigsnieLite]

I tinks £39,000. Then Pigsnit invests the rest of his moneys. Me, I dont make enough to invest even 10 quids. Its very sad.

[sunfrog]

That's pretty good. Would he like to marry my widowed mum?
Then we could be brothers! I will be much nicer to you than Pigsnie!

[PigsnieLite]

[PLite giggles.] But we're brudders already!