Well managed Pension Funds are the key to the UK future and prosperity, allowing investment to meet the needs of the growing and diverse population. Instead of taking the begging bowl round China and the rest of the world, asking them to buy our assets or build our infrastructure, we should sort ourselves out.
There is no clear economic policy in the UK; we have lost our way and are too busy following the myth of the global economy and pacifying the business Mongols, the Commercial sector and large global Business, who are more concerned with profit than ensuring a future.
The global economy does not exist, it is a pipedream, like the European Union; what we have is a collection of individual Nations, who by necessity and nature are insular. If the World’s wealth was spread out equally, we would all live in a grey world of poverty; of course the aim should be to improve the human lot, but this will not occur in the anarchy and exploitation, which is the Third World today.
We need to get our own house in order first, balance our budget with the rest of the world and then control overspending at home. The Government appears to have no clear policy or sense of direction; they are making drastic cuts in internal spending, tightening the belt so hard that some are starving, whilst others can loosen a notch to grow a paunch.
There is an obsession with labour costs; Public Sector spending, which is mainly labour cost, is being reduced with redundancies, but what is this cost?. A| third of the wages paid goes straight back into the Treasury in taxes and NI, the other half circulates paying for food, services and goods with the majority going back to the Treasury again. It is then replaced by increased benefit spending to support the new unemployed and their families. Only spend abroad is lost unless covered by income from exports.
The overseas spending is the real cause for concern and need for drastic cuts, every penny spent has to be earned by exports otherwise it undermines our living standards. Loans to the IMF have to come from somewhere, it may appear as fictional paper money but it is a real spend, if you lend your children the deposit on a house, you have to find the money, it is pointless borrowing it and paying interest.
We spend and buy too much abroad from food and flowers we can grow ourselves, to toys, hi-tech gadgets, clothes and luxury goods that we don’t really need. What is more worrying is the invisible “imports, the defence spending abroad to maintain the British image, the EU costs, Foreign aid and the money exported by immigrants to support their families.
Another major area are the Pension and other funds being invested abroad to create growth and prosperity there, meanwhile we have a growing sell off of our own assets abroad and the consequent critical loss of control.
Our basic Utilities and a large part of our manufacturing base and even property are owned abroad, their profits and rents are “exported “ and we are dependent on overseas generosity to keep our jobs alive and are subject to their uncontrolled cost rises. New Nuclear Power Stations, deemed essential, are cancelled as the French and Germans no longer wish to build them, they cannot be relied on.
Yet the Pension funds essential for our retirement future could supply our investment needs, even ignoring the present funds, current annual contributions and the new NEST ones represent a large potential, which would be considerably increased by a NI rebated universal pension scheme.
This money would not be lost and if run as an ongoing dynamic scheme need not be repaid only serviced at a modest return to give adequate pensions after forty years. The amounts are large, some £100bn per year, which would build almost two million affordable homes, many many hospitals and schools etc.etc.
This is just a bonus to the adequate pension provision and worry free retirement, taken when you want and under your control, not at the dictate of petty officials or Ministers. Only people pressure will cause the change and the return of pension savings to their true owners, who have saved and paid NI and other contributions all of their working lives. Our MP’s don’t even realise there is a problem.
Annuities, Public Sector, NHS, Teachers, Police, Local Government, Hutton, State Pensions, Transport, Comment
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