Social Justice Ireland - "Auto enrolment is doubling down on a failing system"

[Brendan Burgess]

Automatic Enrolment is doubling down on a failing system | Social Justice Ireland

www.socialjustice.ie

I don't really follow their argument and it's a long document. But they seem opposed to any private pension provision? Or, more correctly, any tax relief on pensions.

Until the State incentive under AE is finalised, it is difficult to comment on the overall cost, but we do know that, at present, the distribution of private pension savings and the associated reliefs is such that more than 70 per cent of the relief granted to private pension contributions accrues to the top 20 per cent of earners and that the cost of all pension-related tax reliefs and exemptions runs into the billions of euros every year. AE will see this increase this by hundreds of millions of euros each year, with the final number unknown until we know the exact format of the incentive.

Social Justice Ireland has been pointing out for years that State incentives to save in private pension schemes are an expensive means of subsidising retirement savings for the better off in society, with little or no financial benefit to the State. The cost to the State will only continue to balloon with the implementation of AE, at a time when the almost 20,000 extra people are qualifying for the State Pension every year, and the Minister for Finance is denying those in receipt of State benefits any increase in Budget 2020.

 

[NoRegretsCoyote]

This is a big shame. AE would actually reduce income inequality for pensioners as it would provide lower-earning people with an additional pension income in retirement, when at the moment often all they have is the SPC. Social Justice Ireland don't like this because they want to achieve complete equality by abolishing private pensions altogether and just having a higher SPC.

The perfect is generally the enemy of the good with SJI.

 

[galway_blow_in]

Those types want to see everyone dependant on the state