You folks need to learn MMT. Under a fiat currency floating exchange rate regime there is ZERO need for superannuation. Savings are the accounting records of *_past_* investments, so the saving scheme is necessary only if you either, (a) have a gold supply to defend (commodity currency, which NZ does not have), or (b) you desire a fixed exchange rate (to please your export oligarchs). Neither of those needs apply to NZ since 1985. The NZ Gov can make decent living income pension payments every month when they come due by typing numbers into retirees bank accounts. The pension "pay for" is the labour of today's workers, nothing more. Without employed workers the retirees have nothing to consume, no matter how much they saved in the past. But who puts today's workers to work? It's not the savers, it's the spenders. Today's spenders are the fiscal pay-for for today's retirees, and it will always be so (unless there is widespread counterfeit or wire fraud going on). There is no tax "pay for" nor future debt burden. NZD are a liability of the NZ Gov *_only_* because the government must accept them back as redemption for tax liabilities (if they do not redeem no one will/should accept NZD for payment). NZ Gov does not tax in order to get the currency only they can legally create (or issue via state licenced bank loans, all private banks issuing NZD are agents of the state). Tax as supply for government is an inapplicable concept. Taxation creates a vacuum of currency, a demand withdrawal, and that drives continual demand for the otherwise worthless currency --- this is the sole primary purpose of taxation (there are secondary redistributive and/or punitive purposes by policy discretion).
I am not dead against *_private_* savings schemes, it's a basic human right to put away some currency for saving, but the capacity to save came from someone else's past spending more than their income or from past government investment. Billionaires do not create the currency (that'd be counterfeit) and bank credit is eventually repaid so is not a net currency add (it can help to add to physical capital if not used purely for predatory rentier finance). The point is, the superannuation is a *_government_* scheme, and is regressive and unnecessary, it directly creates unnecessary unemployment, when, as I wrote above, what really pays for the output today's retirees want to consume is the employment of workers today. So superannuation funds artificially limit what today's retirees have available to purchase. The use of unemployment to limit demand is thoroughly regressive neoliberalism, because it does more to limit supply. In the modern world every typical worker has capacity (with help of machine automation) to create more output than they can consume (on average and in aggregate). So the optimum is full employment, not the NAIRU. Superannuation is fine (does little overt harm) if we run full employment, but then the superannuation fund is manifestly unnecessary if living wages are paid with a full employment program, because then no one is _forced_ to save for retirement, and all pension funds can be shoved off into the private sector. A currency issuing government has no operational need to save the digital records it alone monopoly creates by votes in parliament. Think of the NZD tokens as an I.O.U. of our government, because that is exactly what they are (and plainly evident if you read NZ Law Acts). You do not need to borrow your own IOU.
good discussion for a hard time. I run an internet company, its a logistics service
You folks need to learn MMT. Under a fiat currency floating exchange rate regime there is ZERO need for superannuation. Savings are the accounting records of *_past_* investments, so the saving scheme is necessary only if you either, (a) have a gold supply to defend (commodity currency, which NZ does not have), or (b) you desire a fixed exchange rate (to please your export oligarchs). Neither of those needs apply to NZ since 1985. The NZ Gov can make decent living income pension payments every month when they come due by typing numbers into retirees bank accounts. The pension "pay for" is the labour of today's workers, nothing more. Without employed workers the retirees have nothing to consume, no matter how much they saved in the past. But who puts today's workers to work? It's not the savers, it's the spenders. Today's spenders are the fiscal pay-for for today's retirees, and it will always be so (unless there is widespread counterfeit or wire fraud going on).
There is no tax "pay for" nor future debt burden. NZD are a liability of the NZ Gov *_only_* because the government must accept them back as redemption for tax liabilities (if they do not redeem no one will/should accept NZD for payment). NZ Gov does not tax in order to get the currency only they can legally create (or issue via state licenced bank loans, all private banks issuing NZD are agents of the state). Tax as supply for government is an inapplicable concept. Taxation creates a vacuum of currency, a demand withdrawal, and that drives continual demand for the otherwise worthless currency --- this is the sole primary purpose of taxation (there are secondary redistributive and/or punitive purposes by policy discretion).
I am not dead against *_private_* savings schemes, it's a basic human right to put away some currency for saving, but the capacity to save came from someone else's past spending more than their income or from past government investment. Billionaires do not create the currency (that'd be counterfeit) and bank credit is eventually repaid so is not a net currency add (it can help to add to physical capital if not used purely for predatory rentier finance).
The point is, the superannuation is a *_government_* scheme, and is regressive and unnecessary, it directly creates unnecessary unemployment, when, as I wrote above, what really pays for the output today's retirees want to consume is the employment of workers today.
So superannuation funds artificially limit what today's retirees have available to purchase. The use of unemployment to limit demand is thoroughly regressive neoliberalism, because it does more to limit supply. In the modern world every typical worker has capacity (with help of machine automation) to create more output than they can consume (on average and in aggregate). So the optimum is full employment, not the NAIRU.
Superannuation is fine (does little overt harm) if we run full employment, but then the superannuation fund is manifestly unnecessary if living wages are paid with a full employment program, because then no one is _forced_ to save for retirement, and all pension funds can be shoved off into the private sector. A currency issuing government has no operational need to save the digital records it alone monopoly creates by votes in parliament. Think of the NZD tokens as an I.O.U. of our government, because that is exactly what they are (and plainly evident if you read NZ Law Acts). You do not need to borrow your own IOU.