Why are the following not more fully buying into it or rejecting it outright?
- The senior civil servants responsible for implementing AE
- The Minister for Social Welfare and the government generally
In answer to the question as to why the Civil Servants and government haven't bought into the smoothing proposal, here's what I posted on the other thread (about my Irish Times Opinion Piece). BTW, I only noticed the newer threads on smoothing this morning. I'll try to respond to some of the other questions later in the day.
The question has been asked as to why I have failed to persuade Civil Servants of the merits of my proposal. Some in this parish have suggested that my character flaws, e.g. my irritation with critics and refusal to engage with them, may be part of the reason. That may be true, but the last message I got from government was that "
to my knowledge, the proposal has not been tested in a market setting (i.e., that no commercial pension scheme has adopted the approach proposed) and consequently, there is a lack of evidence as to observed outcomes."
Doh. Of course it has not been tested in a market setting - it's completely novel and hasn't been tried anywhere in the world, ever. And of course no commercial pension scheme has adopted the approach, because it's designed for a national auto-enrolment pension scheme, not for a commercial one. I have always insisted that it will not work in a commercial environment. The lack of "commercial" angle may be part of the problem. It could even be more important than my character flaws.
If we as a country take that approach to new ideas and concepts, will we ever achieve anything?
I should add, of course, that I am not asking government to endorse my proposal without question. All I ever asked was that they commission an independent consultancy, e.g., ESRI, to kick the tyres in order to check its viability. That's all I'm asking now. It won't cost much compared to the enormous benefits to society and to the state if it does work - a more than 50% improvement in value for money compared with a more "conventional" approach to AE. Brian Woods and I have offered to make all our calculations and stochastic simulations available to whoever is appointed to do the work, together with our other studies and analyses, and to help them in whatever way we can to complete the evaluation.
Is that too much to ask?