Bolivia moves to nationalize pensions, lower age

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Reuters

Bolivia moves to nationalize pensions, lower age
Tue Nov 16, 2010 5:24pm EST

By Carlos Alberto Quiroga

LA PAZ, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Bolivia's leftist government said on Tuesday it had agreed a bill to nationalize the country's pension system and lower the retirement age to 58.

The ambitious pensions reform bill, which would dismantle the two private retirement funds that have administered the system for years, will immediately be sent to Congress, President Evo Morales said.

The bill was agreed after four years of negotiations with trade union leaders.

In addition to reducing the retirement age in the impoverished country to 58 from 65, mothers and miners would be entitled to pension at an even younger age.



Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1613521620101116

[billlll]

1. turkey retire= age 45..turkey the nation.... what is Chile doing?

Chile trying to be rid of Milton Friedman's theft plan last I heard.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Bolivia becomes a maritime nation once again

Bolivia becomes a maritime nation once again
Long-awaited coastline lease with Peru marks economic and political rapprochement between neighbours
By Jonathan Manthorpe, Vancouver Sun November 15, 2010

Bolivia is returning to the fraternity of Pacific Ocean nations after 126 years as a landlocked country.

~snip~
"This opens the door for Bolivians to have an international port, to the use of the ocean for global trade and for Bolivian products to have better access to global markets," said Morales during the ceremony with Garcia.

According to the Bolivian minister for planning and development, Viviana Caro, direct access to the ocean will cut the distance goods have to travel to Asian markets by 40 per cent.

Most of those products are natural resources such as zinc, tin and silver, with which Bolivia is well-endowed. But in the future, the new port will have much greater significance when Bolivia starts developing its massive reserves of lithium, the essential metal for modern lightweight batteries used in cars, cellphones, laptop computers and many other electronic gadgets.

More:
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Bolivia+becomes+maritime+nation+once+again/3828483/story.html

[Scruffy1]

9. thanks for the info

[pattmarty]

3. What a novel fucking idea! Meanwhile, in the richest country in the..........

............world, we will RAISE our retirement age AND cut benefits.

[molly77]

4. South American countries

becoming more Socialist. North American becoming more Fascist.Immigration may be entirely different in the next decade.Taxes actually are used for citizens under Socialism. Not the war machine and corporations.

[Larry Ogg]

11. In order to create the illusion of the richest country in the world

you have to count the assets of ten percent of the population while strapping the other 90 percent with all the liabilities and debt that you don't want to count. Why? Because that's what works best for the successful psychopaths at the top of our pretend democracy / pyramid financial schemes made in hell.

And why burden those who have no conscience - those who have looted our National treasure and supported our venal politicians - with the hardships of those suffering from outsourced jobs, and the sick and elderly who cant work?

[bossy22]

13. and we should raise our retirement age

maybe not now, but in the future it will have to be done as our lifespans increase. It's not as simple as "well we have more money so we should do it", you have to look at population distributions. Many latin american countries have the bell shaped curve lower down on the age scale (more young people when compared to elderly)- such a distrubtion would allow for the a reduce in the retirement age. If you are like most developed countries- with a more even spread- it may not be possible. You can't run into a situation where you have 50% adults living off the other 50%- thats not sustainable.

[pattmarty]

15. First of all, we don't have to do ANYTHING now. The system can.........

..........pay out IN FULL until around 2040. Secondly and more importantly, there are a relatively few simple fixes that will make it completely solvent and make it EVEN possible to LOWER the retirement age. What I am basically saying is you don't know what you are talking about.

[melm00se]

5. they can afford to do that

as the life expectancy in Bolivia is 65.7 years (as opposed to the USA at 78.4 years) so lowering the age from 65 to 58 actually allows the "average" worker to actually retire ahead of the average age of death.

the point that is not covered is from where did the money going into the private pension funds come? If it is comprised of personal, private money, I am not so warm and fuzzy towards the government seizing that money.

If the US federal government were to do that, I think that you would see lawsuits to delay that from happening and a rapid draining of retirement accounts and that money transferred overseas or stuffed in mattresses to avoid seizure. I know that I would take whatever retirement savings I have and act to protect it.

[Unvanguard]

6. Both of those life expectancies are meaningless.

They presumably include infant mortality.

What you want is the life expectancy at retirement.

[melm00se]

10. any idea where that number can

be pulled?

[Mika]

7. Yep. Country last.

One of the things I like about Bolivarianism - it puts the interests of the impoverished majority first.
Of course, there will always be the greedy who will run with "their" loot before sharing it, like the Batistanos who, feeling entitled, ran like rats to Miami with Cuba's treasury safely ensconced in foreign banks in 1958/59.

Since the rats jumped ship, Cuba has been ever improving itself and currently ranks among the highest in social indices.

---

[fasttense]

8. I understand the life expectancy stats are an average.

But when you break it down, you find that past the age of about 12 most people live to about 75. What you see in Bolivia's numbers is their high infant mortality rate at 43.41 per 1,000 live births. In the US it is 6.4 per 1,000 live births (and rising).

Also if you break the life expectancy down by socio-economic status, you find the uber rich are increasing their life expectancy far more rapidly than the average worker. So, we should make the janitor work until he is 70 years old because the lawyer is living longer?

Wherever the money comes from, really doesn't matter. It is going back to those same people who put the money there. I don't see the problem. Except that if they move the money back under the government's control, they will very likely not have to pay out for private administration or excessive CEO salaries.

[fascisthunter]

12. people first, business last

very humanitarian and an agenda to inspire and aspire to.

[Kingofalldems]

14. Uh oh......Clever repub not liking this one

K and R

[ProudDad]

16. What, no cat food?

What an incredible contrast to our capitalist masters' government...

[Peace Patriot]

17. The difference between Bolivia and the U.S. is TRANSPARENT vote counting.

Believe me. They can elect "New Deal"-type leaders and we cannot.

Part of our problem is our filthy campaign contribution system, and another part is the corpo-fascist press, but both of those problems can be overcome--as many Latin American countries have shown, which have both multi-millions in USAID and other U.S. taxpayer money pouring into rightwing groups AND horrible corpo-fascist press--yet they have been able to elect leaders who are beholden to the People. LEFTIST leaders. REAL leftists. FDR-quality leftists.

The difference is that, here, our votes are now counted by ONE, private, far rightwing-connected corporation--ES&S, which just bought out Dieobold and achieved an 80% monopoly over the U.S. voting machine 'market'--all run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, with virtually no audit/recount controls. This gives far rightwing billionaires the easy--EASY!--capability to fix any election in the country. And it is naive to believe that they haven't done so. They have the power and they are using it. Combined with out-of-control corporate money in campaigns and the fascist propaganda press, 'We the People' have no chance. With vote counting iN THE PUBLIC VENUE, we have a chance. We can counter the money. We can counter the propaganda. We can't counter the 'TRADE SECRET' code!

Bolivia still handcounts the ballots--which provides the advantage of slowness and visibility. Yes, of course, you could try to stuff the ballot boxes, etc., but not at high speed, not massively and invisibly, and not without quite a risk of getting caught.

Venezuela uses electronic voting, but it is OPEN SOURCE CODE--anyone may review the code with which the votes are tabulated--and they do a whopping 55% audit (automatic check of ballots against machine totals)--over five times the minimum necessary to detect fraud in an electronic system.

Do you know what kind of audit we do here--in a 'TRADE SECRET' SYSTEM? Half the states do NO AUDIT AT ALL! And the other half do a completely inadequate 1% audit!

THIS is why Bolivia is lowering the retirement age and the U.S. is RAISING it! It has noting to do with demographics or actuarials or any other goddamn Milton Friedman school of economics bullshit. It is because Bolivians can elect good leaders and we cannot.

And I hate to tell people about this without saying that it IS changeable! There is NO federal law requiring 'TRADE SECRET' or any kind of electronic voting. This coup was accomplished with corruption--a $3.9 billion e-voting boondoggle from the Anthrax Congress and filthy dirty lobbying of our state and local officials. It can be undone, locally. But it will take a real 'Boston Tea Party,' in every state and county.