BartSimpson BartSimpson:
Speaking for myself, I'd like to retire early so I can enjoy life. But now with the Europeans seizing people's retirement savings and even private pensions I'm frankly worried that if the Democrats get back into control of Congress they'll do the same thing. It would not surprise me if the Liberals or the NDP propose the same thing in Canada.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysi ... nsions.htm$1:
Social Security: Europe is trying to dig out of its budget hole by seizing private pensions. It's a last-ditch effort to preserve socialism at the expense of the very assets that would sustain its future growth.
In Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Ireland and France, big government, a demographic death spiral and weak tax revenues have left fiscal coffers in trouble. Unwilling to stand up to voters — or rioters — most governments have little taste for doing the right thing: cutting their budgets.
So, they're going after pensions to make up for shortfalls. Public and private pensions co-exist in European countries. In some cases, public ones resemble our own Social Security, stressing budgets.
But instead of privatizing pensions, as Chile did in 1980 — which would have turned these obligations into assets — three former stars of European emerging markets have come up with heavy-handed incentives to turn private savings public. It's a step backward.
In November, Hungary's parliament ordered its nationals to fork over $14 billion in private pensions to the state, effectively nullifying the country's 1997 pension reform. Anyone who balks loses his right to a public pension, but not his obligation to pay into it anyway.
Bulgaria's parliament named its price first — $300 million — and told workers to pay that from private savings or else. The Christian Science Monitor notes that had trade unions not protested it, the amount would have been five times larger. But they still lost.
Poland's parliament, in a move strongly opposed by the NSZZ Solidarnosc union, cut contributions to private accounts by a third, diverting that money to the public system at a cost of $2.3 billion a year.
France and Ireland were less heavy-handed, but also aimed to avoid austerity. Both siphoned public savings set aside for future years of pension payouts to the spending spigot. In Ireland's case, they spent money citizens contributed for retirements to bail out banks, while in France's case, to pay for underfunded current pensions.
You're to late on that one. Chretien and that tax evading hack Paul Martin already went down that road to the tune of 30 billion by expropriating the PSAC, RCMP and Military Pensions. Then these two conniving wanks had the gall to proudly tell Canadians
they'd balanced the budget.
Edited for clarification.
They actually only took 1/2 the total of the 60 Billion dollar Pension fund.
$1:
The next chapter in the Federal Superannuation Surplus dispute begins at the Ontario Court of Appeal, April 19, 20 and 21, 2010 in Toronto.
PSAC and other federal public service unions took the then-Liberal government to court over 1999 changes to the Public Sector Investment Board Act which allowed it to expropriate $30 billion from the federal superannuation fund
CKA Uber 
