Mike's Minute: We can't get out of our own way on Super

From the "we can't get out of our own way" file comes the question, as posed this week by the Retirement Commissioner, as to whether people who have money in the bank should get the pension. 

The first part that is wrong with that is I thought we had decided many a decade ago, rightly or wrongly, that Super is an entitlement. 

Its trigger, rightly or wrongly, is age, therefore the other criteria you might like to add to the equation like height, weight, job, brain power or savings, are null and void because age is what does it. 

So are we changing that, are we? Because that is the inference in the question. 

The inference is also this sneering socialist bend some people have around success. 

"Don’t be too successful" is the message, and that’s what savings generally are. You had a plan, you worked hard, and you put a few dollars aside. 

Interestingly the numbers are depressing. This is where the question came from. 

There are 33,000 over the age of 65 who earn between $100-200k a year. There are 9,000 who earn more than $200k. 

That’s not a lot of people. It shows you how poorly paid we are, how bad at saving we are and how expensive life is to stop you saving. A whole bunch of stuff leads us to not being a very well-off sort of country. 

I have said this many times – I'm not fussed. I didn’t join KiwiSaver and I'm not relying on a pension. 

Why? Because when I started work in 1982 it was very well established that the pension may or may not be around at all, so why take the risk? And in 1982, on the minimum wage as I was, I had 45 years to get my act together and do something about it. 

The problem with keeping on asking these questions is it messes with people and their intentions. 

Governments have been bad enough already with their constant changing of the rules and their contributions, the last thing we need is thought bubbles on what should be a long term, leave it alone, get out of the way, understanding among us all that the pension is our society's recognition of a life's work. 

Change the age if you want. But penalising success is the opposite of what we want to promote. 

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