Archive for the ‘Social Security Debates’ Category
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Poor can’t afford more austerity
Friday, March 23rd, 2012
Mar 04 2012
… “taxes” is not a dirty word. They are the price we pay for a civilized society, for maintaining our common life. We need to share the costs involved more fairly… The provincial government must accept its responsibility as part of this call to action, and it can use tax policy to both address the rich-poor gap and to provide urgently needed help to alleviate poverty… We need a broad spectrum of society backing the call for fair, feasible tax increases on the wealthy, and to counter the anti-tax fundamentalism that has gripped so many.
Tags: poverty
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Harper’s pension cuts will hit the young hardest
Thursday, February 23rd, 2012
Feb 22 2012
Were Old Age Security a frill, this might not matter. But it is not. It provides a basic stipend of about $500 a month to people 65 and over — with all or some being taxed back from those who earn more than a net income of $69,562. Along with an add-on Guaranteed Income Supplement for the very poor, OAS is credited with vastly reducing the poverty rate among seniors… However, CPP doesn’t provide enough to live on for most. And some, such as homemakers, don’t qualify for this pension at all. An even more fortunate minority has recourse to employer-sponsored pension plans. But these are swiftly disappearing.
Tags: budget, economy, pensions, standard of living, youth
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Pension deficits aren’t the fault of public-sector workers
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012
Feb. 22, 2012
During those golden years, employers were making their pension contributions using money taken directly out of pension-fund surpluses. There was nothing strictly illegal about this. The surpluses legally belonged to them, just as deficits belong to them… Currently, a majority of Canadian workers do not have a workplace pension plan, and one-third has absolutely no savings set aside for retirement. The loss of supplemental pension plans would mean an increase in poverty among seniors, which in return would mean higher costs for the government in health care and social services.
Tags: budget, economy, pensions, rights, standard of living
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Stephen Harper’s scary scenario about Old Age Security is wildly overblown, budget watchdog argues
Sunday, February 12th, 2012
Feb 11 2012
After parsing the numbers, Page concluded that the crisis is a manufactured one. “You cannot argue the government has a fiscal sustainability problem”… There’s talk of hiking the OAS eligibility age to, say, 67 from 65. Ottawa could also claw back more benefits from better-off retirees. Or partially de-index benefits that now rise to offset inflation… Making seniors wait until 67 for OAS could mean that the very poorest would have to wait longer to get the Guaranteed Income Supplement, a linked benefit. The cost of helping these neediest may then fall to the provinces.
Tags: budget, pensions
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OAS not in crisis, no need to soak the seniors plan
Sunday, February 12th, 2012
Feb 10 2012
The affordability of a higher-quality health care system does merit debate. Also affordable housing, the cornerstone of poverty reduction. Also education reform that better matches students with a workplace that, as a business think tank complained last week, is suffering a “desperate shortage” of skilled workers despite 1.42 million Canadians out of work. The PM is wrong about the sustainability of Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement, paid to the poorest Canadians. And Canadians have let him know it.
Tags: budget, economy, pensions, standard of living
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Not a pension crisis, but reform opportunity
Friday, February 3rd, 2012
February 2, 2012
Lowering the threshold at which the OAS is taxed back would have the same effect on the bottom line as pushing back the age of eligibility, but it would still allow people to retire without fearing poverty at 65. Rather than legislate a solution during the current session of Parliament, the government should publish a white paper that lays out the problem that needs to be solved along with a range of possible solutions… An equitable solution should leave no aggrieved interests for opportunistic politicians to champion.
Tags: budget, ideology, pensions, poverty, standard of living, tax
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Best pension reform would be to take from the rich seniors
Friday, February 3rd, 2012
Feb. 2, 2012
A much savvier political option for the Harper Conservatives than raising Old Age Security eligibility to 67 from 65 would be taxing back all benefits from all 65-plus seniors not decidedly low income. If they do anything else, they will be pegged as mean-spirited and excessively ideological. Because the truth is, Canada, while better off than most developed countries, continues to have a fair number of low-income seniors, mostly women – a group that inspires empathy from most Canadians.
Tags: budget, featured, pensions, poverty, standard of living, tax
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Anger rising over plan to reform OAS
Thursday, February 2nd, 2012
Feb. 2, 2012
“He is not only dumping on the vulnerable senior citizens,” Rae told the House of Commons. “He is also dumping on the provinces, dumping on municipalities, creating a cascade of injustice because of a totally manufactured crisis on his side.” Harper shrugged off the accusation, calling his assertions “nonsense” and “fear-mongering.” Harper reiterated in the Commons Wednesday the planned changes to the pension system won’t affect today’s seniors or those close to turning 65.
Tags: budget, pensions, poverty, standard of living
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Stephen Harper’s long overdue talk about Canada’s pension crisis
Wednesday, February 1st, 2012
Jan 30, 2012
We can try to offset the demographic arithmetic directly, whether through increased immigration, longer working lives, or even — to the extent policy can — encouraging people to have more children. And certainly there is much room for improvement in our anemic national productivity performance: just a half-a-percentage point faster growth in productivity, compounding year after year, would make the next generations wealthy enough to bear those projected higher costs without having to endure the implied rise in taxes.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, pensions, standard of living, tax
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Old age benefits now slated for cost-cutting by Stephen Harper.
Wednesday, February 1st, 2012
Jan 31 2012
Harper had never mentioned changing the terms of old age security (OAS) in Parliament or any of his public speeches… The Prime Minister may have thought debt-enfeebled Europe, with its cradle-to-grave social programs, would be the perfect backdrop to signal a shift in policy. He might have assumed the economic logic of his stance would be self-evident to Canadians. What he apparently forgot was that he sought a mandate to govern for the next four years last May without telling voters that re-electing him meant their pensions were vulnerable.
Tags: budget, ideology, pensions, standard of living, tax
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