Quote:
Originally Posted by Jedi Ninja
This isn't a birth rate issue or an immigration issue. And neither of those silver bullets will resolve the problem either. The problem is that the modern concept of retirement is based on unrealistic expectations and is unsustainable. If we need an additional pool of labour to care for aging boomers, the pool will come from eliminating mandatory retirement and extending the CPP eligibility age to 67 or even 70. That's the only thing that's going to work.
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You're absolutely right. There is no magic bullet.
However, your idea, while prudent, doesn't address the whole issue either.
Say you have 50-60 year olds who choose to retire early because they do not want to work anymore and have the money to so. Even if that is only 10% of the boomers, that's still enough to tip the scales the wrong way. They make not draw from CPP for 10-20 years. However, their tax burden drops since they earn much less, and they still use government programs, especially healthcare.
Now, imagine these people live another 25-40 years, so say the average person lives to 85 by then, and that's a lot of years of untaxed, expensive healthcare, since elderly people draw from that system the most. Normally, this isn't an issue because in the past, more taxpayers take their place. Yes, many older workers will claim they've been paying for their programs their entire life, but in reality, they've been paying for the generation before them, and this time for the baby boomers, there aren't going to be enough workers to pay for them. Having the lower and middle class seniors work an extra 3-5 years will only postpone the inevitable.
They'd essentially have to postpone CPP until the mid to upper 70s to make the hit from the baby boomers diminish via attrition, but that is political suicide.
Its really a policy nightmare.