POLL: ALMOST HALF OF TODAY'S 50 - 59 YEAR OLDS HAVE LESS $100,000 SAVED FOR RETIREMENT

Most Canadian 50-somethings plan to work in retirement to offset low savings: poll

The national online survey, conducted last month for CIBC by Leger Marketing, found that Quebec residents were least likely to say they'll work after retirement, at 47 per cent.

TORONTO - A new survey of Canadians in their 50s found that 53 per cent of those polled said they plan to continue working after retiring in their 60s, in many cases to supplement their income.

The national online survey, conducted last month for CIBC (TSX:CM.TO - News) by Leger Marketing, found that Quebec respondents were least likely to say they'll work after retirement, at 47 per cent.

Manitoba and Saskatchewan respondents were the most likely to say they planned to work after retirement, at 59 per cent.

Atlantic Canada (54 per cent), Ontario (55 per cent), Alberta (57 per cent) and British Columbia (49 per cent) were closer to the national average of 53 per cent.

Meanwhile, about 29 per cent of those surveyed said they were not sure if they would work after retirement, while 14 per cent said they would definitely not work post retirement.

According to the survey, almost half of today’s 50-59 year olds polled have less than $100,000 saved for retirement and many planned to use employment income in retirement to make up for lack of savings.

“The retirement landscape is shifting as baby boomers reach traditional retirement age with a smaller nest egg than they expected to have,” said Christina Kramer, executive vice-president, retail distribution and channel strategy at CIBC.

“Many Canadians are now planning to draw on multiple sources of income including employment to fund their retirement, and that makes getting advice about how to manage your income, savings, and investments even more important.”

Overall, the survey found that of those who plan to keep on working, 37 per cent said they would do so part time.

And only one third of those who plan to work post retirement said they would do so just for the money.

Two-thirds — or 67 per cent — saw working either as a way to either stay socially active or that they just found work enjoyable and wanted to stay involved in the workforce in some capacity.

The average age at which the respondents plan to retire varied by region, with those in Atlantic Canada, Quebec and Manitoba and Saskatchewan looking to retire earliest at age 62. Ontarians were next at 63 and followed by those in Alberta and British Columbia at age 64.

CIBC says results are based on a poll conducted online by Leger Marketing via the LegerWeb panel that it says comprises more than 400,000 households. It said the poll used a sample of 805 respondents aged 50 to 59 and was conducted between July 5 and July 8.

The polling industry's professional body, the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association, says online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.

By Hugh McKenna

The Canadian Press | The Canadian Press

20 Aug, 2012

 

THE RYAN CHOICE - SOCIAL DARWINISM by Robert Reich

The Ryan Choice

Paul Ryan is the reverse of Sarah Palin. She was all right-wing flash without much substance. He’s all right-wing substance without much flash.

Ryan is not a firebrand. He’s not smarmy. He doesn’t ooze contempt for opponents or ridicule those who disagree with him. In style and tone, he doesn’t even sound like an ideologue – until you listen to what he has to say.

It’s here — in Ryan’s views and policy judgments — we find the true ideologue. More than any other politician today, Paul Ryan exemplifies the social Darwinism at the core of today’s Republican Party: Reward the rich, penalize the poor, let everyone else fend for themselves. Dog eat dog.

Ryan’s views are crystallized in the budget he produced for House Republicans last March as chairman of the House Budget committee. That budget would cut $3.3 trillion from low-income programs over the next decade. The biggest cuts would be in Medicaid, which provides healthcare for the nation’s poor – forcing states to drop coverage for an estimated 14 million to 28 million low-income people, according to the non-partisan Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

Ryan’s budget would also reduce food stamps for poor families by 17 percent ($135 billion) over the decade, leading to a significant increase in hunger – particularly among children. It would also reduce housing assistance, job training, and Pell grants for college tuition.

In all, 62 percent of the budget cuts proposed by Ryan would come from low-income programs.

The Ryan plan would also turn Medicare into vouchers whose value won’t possibly keep up with rising health-care costs – thereby shifting those costs on to seniors.

At the same time, Ryan would provide a substantial tax cut to the very rich – who are already taking home an almost unprecedented share of the nation’s total income. Today’s 400 richest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million of us put together.

Ryan’s views are pure social Darwinism. As William Graham Sumner, the progenitor of social Darwinism in America, put it in the 1880s: “Civilization has a simple choice.” It’s either “liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest” or “not-liberty, equality, survival of the unfittest. The former carries society forward and favors all its best members; the latter carries society downwards and favors all its worst members.”

Is this Mitt Romney’s view as well?

Some believe Romney chose Ryan solely in order to drum up enthusiasm on the right. Since most Americans have already made up their minds about whom they’ll vote for, and the polls show Americans highly polarized – with an almost equal number supporting Romney as Obama — the winner will be determined by how many on either side take the trouble to vote. So in picking Ryan, Romney is motivating his rightwing base to get to the polls, and pull everyone else they can along with them.

But there’s reason to believe Romney also agrees with Ryan’s social Darwinism. Romney accuses President Obama of creating an “entitlement society” and thinks government shouldn’t help distressed homeowners but instead let the market “hit the bottom.” And although Romney has carefully avoided specifics in his own economic plan, he has said he’s “very supportive” of Ryan’s budget plan. “It’s a bold and exciting effort, an excellent piece of work, very much needed … very consistent with what I put out earlier.”

Romney hasn’t put out much but the budget he’s proposed would, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, throw ten million low-income people off the benefits rolls for food stamps or cut benefits by thousands of dollars a year, or both.

At the same time, Romney wants to permanently extend the Bush tax cuts to the wealthy, reduce corporate income taxes, and eliminate the estate tax. These tax reductions would increase the incomes of people earning more than $1 million a year by an average of $295,874 annually, according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center.

Oh, did I say that Romney and Ryan also want to repeal President Obama’s healthcare law, thereby leaving fifty million Americans without health insurance?

Social Darwinism offered a moral justification for the wild inequities and social cruelties of the late nineteenth century. It allowed John D. Rockefeller, for example, to claim the fortune he accumulated through his giant Standard Oil Trust was “merely a survival of the fittest… the working out of a law of nature and of God.”

The social Darwinism of that era also undermined all efforts to build a more broadly based prosperity and rescue our democracy from the tight grip of a very few at the top. It was used by the privileged and powerful to convince everyone else that government shouldn’t do much of anything.

Not until the twentieth century did America reject social Darwinism. We created a large middle class that became the engine of our economy and our democracy. We built safety nets to catch Americans who fell downward, often through no fault of their own.

We designed regulations to protect against the inevitable excesses of free-market greed. We taxed the rich and invested in public goods – public schools, public universities, public transportation, public parks, public health – that made us all better off.

In short, we rejected the notion that each of us is on our own in a competitive contest for survival.

But choosing Ryan, Romney has raised for the nation the starkest of choices: Do we want to return to that earlier time, or are we willing and able to move forward — toward a democracy and an economy that works for us all?

Robert Reich

August 11, 2012