Pensions

There's a very populist debate going on in Finland right now about what to do with retirement age of people. For a few years now it has been 63, but now the government is suggesting that it should be raised to 65 on the grounds that with the declining population and other factors related to the financing of pensions, it is very possible that this bomb will blow up in our faces sooner or later and that we should attempt to counteract that by getting a few extra years out of people.

According to recent surveys, the majority of people are very much against this turn of events. I am not one of them. It's very selfish to assume shove the problem on the people who will be financing the pensions of tomorrow. In the past the retirement age has been even higher than 65. Additionally Finland prefers the model of pension financing where a part of the pensions are paid directly from the taxes collected each year and a part is paid from funds collected in the past. Obviously with the current financial crisis the situation is slightly more difficult with all investments deep in the red, so even on these grounds I think the raise is somewhat warranted. Although I have to admit that I haven't done the math myself; but then again, I get the impression that the social democrats have flunked their math too.

In fact, because of this debate I've started to wonder why we even have this central system of pensions. Why do I have to be a part of it? What if I want to arrange my future pension myself? If I think that I can get a better ROI on the money I currently pay to the government myself. In that case the argument about the retirement age would become smaller: you should be able to retire when you feel so yourself, and if you can afford it. If you can't afford to retire, that's of course a problem, but one that you should have thought about before. Now the social democrats will rush in and tell us that we can't leave anyone behind and we have to support the weakest. And they do have a point in that, but I'm increasingly fed up with their populist arguments and the fact that I have a feeling that I'll be one of the poor souls who will end up as part of the upper middle class who will be paying for the mistakes of other people.

If you think about it: the people who work the hardest earn the most. Not always, but there is a correlation, I would say. They also get taxed very much, thanks to the progressive taxation that is in place in Finland. At the same time if you work when you study, you cannot get any support from the government, unlike if you just decided to be drunk all day, every day at the campus. Then you graduate and start earning money, out of which you finance the elementary school dropouts and drug addicts. Then you also pay the retirement taxes to finance the pensions of people who are retired, either because of age or because they're in such a bad shape that they can't work anymore. And by the way, you won't ever be able to enjoy any of the benefits because you'll die of a heartattack at the office when you're 45.

So let me apologize, but I do not always understand how the world is fair. The current system, at least in Finland, is penalizing you for trying to succeed in any way. If we want to keep the current pension system working, then by all means raise the age requirement to 65. I'm quite convinced that I personally won't reach that age, but I am certain that whether I want it or not, I'll be contributing my fair share to the health and wealth of the nation at large. I'm, however, increasingly starting to feel that maybe I should go make my contribution somewhere else...