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Australia Takes a Hard Look at Requiring Reverse Mortgages for Some Pensioners
Australia wrestles with the challenge of funding old age pensions amidst crippling debt. Both the United States and Australia face the same challenge of funding payments to aging pensioners or seniors, and that’s where the similarities stop.
According to a recent article in the Daily Reckoning, Australia is facing a demographic bomb of sorts not unlike the U.S. with more than half of Australians projected to be age 50 or older by 2050. Today the Australian government spends $42 billion on the cost of aged care which is expected to balloon to $160 billion by mid century. Mathematically astonishing, economically unfeasible.
Timing is everything when it comes to the spending political capital needed to make hard choices. By 2055 pension reform down under may be impossible due to the fact that more than half of the electorate will be receiving their pensions by then. After all who wants to vote for their own pay cut?
Download a transcript of this episode here.
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4 Comments
NO it is not an entiltamnt it is insurance paid by the worker and employer it is not a government hand out ,,,, as some rich plliticians think that never received a pay check
Great story Shannon. It will be interesting to follow this while waiting to see what the U.S. decides to do to address our future economic realities.
No!! The government should start trying to pay back what they borrowed from Social Security to bring it back up to a stable level. We have been paying into it all our working lives and it is not an entitlement. It is our money.
Our government should cut back on their lifetime retirement plan and pay it out according to the time served, rather than across the board for their lifetime. We have too many politicians that served 1 term and qualify for lifetime benefits. This is just wrong. Then they want to cut our Social Security? Not a pretty picture.
I am no student or expert on Aussie history, politics,or society but just looking at the population of Australia, many things come to light.
The US is the third largest population on earth at about 25% of that of China or India. Australia is about 7.5% of that of the US. Even the population of Texas is larger than that of Australia.
Trying to impose the Aussie social entitlement experience onto the US with a population thirteen times the size of Australia seems very, very far fetched.
“That dawg won’t hunt!!!!”