Robotic Democrat Idea #203 - The floating retirement age

Floating retirement age? what is that? What are you talking about? 
Well, in Australia the growing number of retirees is going to place a huge burden on the average tax payer. The lowering of the ratio of tax paying citizens vs retirees means that the population will be facing significant budget restrictions. Inevitably if nothing is done, the government is going to have to cut some services in order to continue to support tax paying and retiree citizins.

"We'll either generate some large unsustainable budget deficits into the second quarter of this century, or else we'll need to reduce government services,"
Kevin Rudd

 Rudds solution, work harder. 

 "Australia must take decisive action to drive productivity forward to improve living standards, to deliver better services, while keeping the budget on a sustainable footing and to improve Australia's international competitiveness"
Kevin Rudd

Well that just isn't a real solution. Compensate for a failing solution by banging your head against it harder, yeah that'll work...

So, the options seem to be cut services, cut pensions or work harder. There is another option.

The Floating Retirement Age
Well. The Rudd government increased the retirement age from 65 to 67 starting 2014 in hopes of mitigating the upcoming retirement of the baby boomers. It won't be enough. Lets look at the situation from an historic point of view
The retirement age has been 65 for men (we'll exclude women for simplicity) since before 1935. Yet the life expectancy has increased steadily from that point. (based on Centerlink and ABS data)

As you can see there has been a significant change in the dynamic. We are retiring at the same age, yet living longer. So what do we do for the nation and its ability to keep us living longer? We clog up government services until the government is forced to reduce legitimate services to the needy to pay for aged Australians. According to an article in the Journal of Population Research, Australia is projected to approach a life expectancy of around 100 years by 2050. So what's the remedy. We float the retirement age according to life expectancy.

The Float
We have the CSIRO and other firms determine the age at which people no longer are capable of participating in the employment sector, expressed as a margin between the life expectancy extending backwards. For instance, stating that the margin is 15 years tells us that someone who has a life expectancy of 85 should be working until they're 70. While that margin stated here is random, the CSIRO and other firms would be able to state with a reasonable degree of certainty where that margin does lie. It is reasonable to assume that a person who had reached the age of 70 in 1930 is less capable than a person who has reached the age of 70 in today and future years. Medical advancements have made people live not only longer but more meaningful lives. Australia as a nation should be capitalising on on that.

We could go to the extent of reserving low reaction time low cognitive ability jobs for older Australians. Sure, a 70 year old Australian may not be able to be a nascar driver, but they should be able to work as a cashier or a greeter or a telemarketer. The government could institute tax incentives for older Australians who remain in the work force, a lowering of income tax perhaps. A lowering of the hours in an older Australians working week (20 perhaps instead of 40).

Conclusion bit
So there does exist a legitimate problem that an arbitrary raising of the 'pension age' isn't going to fix. Floating the retirement age stops the growing discrepancy between life expectancy and retirement age shown in the graph above. It ensures that Australia gets the optimum amount of output from every Australian and permits the country to continue offering top notch services to its people. While raising the retirement age to 67 is a bandaid solution, floating the retirement age is an ultimate solution. One that doesn't need addressing in 50 years.


Any criticisms, comments, questions, please put them in the comment section.

Robotic Democrat Idea #347 - The forward and reverse Fat Tax.

Introduction
So, first blog... exciting... The general idea is to express some of my many ideas to improve the political landscape of Australia. Some are legitimate, some are not legitimate. Most are simply political commentary, designed to spark debate and thought.

Anyway lets get right into the thick of it...

The forward and reverse fat tax? what is that? What are you talking about?
Well yeah, I just made that name up for the title. I call it my fat tax idea. obesity in Australia is a serious concern. Australia's obesity problem, depending on who's definition of fat you use ([2][3][4][5]) is quite obviously out of control. we rank between 1st to 21st in various reports. Regardless of the legitimacy and accuracy of those reports, their results are undeniable. we're getting fat. To understand the tax you need to understand my supposed reasoning about why Australians are getting fat to begin with.

Why are  Australians getting fat?
Take a stroll down your local shopping centre. Endeavour to gauge the number of stores selling food. If you were to derive a ratio between the number of shop fronts selling healthy food compared to the number selling unhealthy food you'd no doubt find that the far greater majority of all shops sell unhealthy food. Fat food. Indulgent food. When we combine that with the prevalence of fast food outlets, more than 27 major chains within a 10 minute walk from my place, we get presented with a serious issue of the quality of our food supply. The argument could be made that cafe / fast food / food court operations are supposed to be indulgent, limited experiences. However that's not something I happen to agree with. I think that logic is reversed. We are forced to buy fast food infrequently due to the almost exclusively gluttonous nature of the food presented to us at these stores. I'd be willing to concede the fatness of fast food and blame fatness on people without the will power to say no to that 2nd double quarter pounder. (don't ever buy one... its got almost a days worth of fat intake in just that one burger [6]). However, take a walk through your local supermarket. You'll struggle to find products that don't either have a high fat content, high salt content or a high sugar content. I'd argue that much of the only way to ensure your food intake contains a normal level of fat salt and sugar is to make the stuff yourself from scratch. The fact that not only do food vendors sell far more unhealthy products than healthy products, but its supermarkets as well. You'd struggle to find a niece marketplace where you could buy normal human food. Our entire country is stocked with fat peoples food, and its making everyone fat.

What can we do about it?
Well, we can do a lot. I think people tend to go for the fattening things because they're cheap. I don't buy the argument that people buy fatty food every day because it tastes better. If that was the case, we'd all be munching on ferrero rochers all day long. We only buy those things on special occasions because they're so expensive. So How do we apply that dynamic to the problem. The forward and reverse fat tax.

You increase the taxation on all foods declared unhealthy. You get the CSIRO and a few other independent firms to start categorising food, somewhat the way we categorise books and movies. However the categorisation would need to be somewhat convoluted and complex. You'd tax fat salt and other bad ingredients proportional to the Recommended Daily Intake (RDI) and the size of the food. If you have a doughnut that has 2 times the RDI of fat, 2 times the RDI of salt and 2 times the calories (random figures here, to illustrate the concept), then you tax the crap out of it. You open end the tax, so the food is taxed proportional to the unhealthiness of the food. On the other hand, foods that have have such low levels of fat salt and calories, proportional to their sizes and RDI's would be negativity taxed (prices actively lowered by the government, if the apple costs $0.55 then at the checkout you pay something like $0.45). The negative tax made proportional to the healthiness of the food. In that the far majority of cases, items on supermarket shelves and sold in shops and restaurants would be classified as unhealthy, the policy itself would not only break even, but make the government money. Money could go to campaigns to battle obesity and fund the categorisation of food by the CSIRO and other firms.

With the introduction of the forward and reverse fat tax, the appeal of healthy food will grow when compared to the appeal of food that is generally not healthy to eat. In the algorithm like policy used to classify the tax on food (it wouldn't have to be like I said, I'm no nutritionist, however there are many ways to tax food to get the result i am mentioning) you would make size a negative factor in need of taxation.

While it is true that large families may require bigger bags of crap to feed everyone, this is not a legitimate argument as to why we should not tax products marketed as more servings than is reasonable. I brought a cup thing of yoghurt and fruit the other day, in a container like the one you get cream in, and it indicated that it contained 3 servings. Yet there was no real way to store the thing after you opened it. It was just a scam to make you think the yoghurt had less fat in it than it does. A bag of 2 kilos of chips is more likely to be over indulged than a 500g bag of chips. Buying multiple bags would suit the need for large families, and in cases where large families are buying largely good food, they would be getting significant tax reductions on their food. That would far outweigh the loss attributed to "large value packs".

What impact would such a thing have on people?

The benefit of buying a 400g block of chocolate over a 45g bar would be decreased, and buyers would actually be charged for the negative impact the 400g block (which is quite large) has on themselves.

I think you get the general idea. Small portioned things would go down in price, it would become more profitable to offer appropriate serving sized treats to people. It would also offer more motivation for firms creating treats to create them so that they are more healthy. More motivation to create food in general in appropriate sizes and creating them so that they are generally healthier. People would stop the trend of saving money buy buying the oversized block of chocolate and then eating it all in one day. that's (110g [7]) of fat in one day. Guaranteed to make you fat.

End bit that's not a conclusion as the last bit already was
So, I hope you had fun reading this :D. If you think its not feasible, that it wouldn't do anything. Want to yell at me and call me fancy internet profanities. Leave a comment. I have many more ideas, some way more outlandish and other way more feasible that I'll include as time goes on. Keep up to date by doing the twitter following thing. the twitter follow thing is in the top right hand corner (well not the top, and only at the top right of this container) 

References
1. World's Fattest Countries, <http://au.pfinance.yahoo.com/special-features/fattest_countries/index.html> 
2. Worlds Fattest Countries, <http://www.forbes.com/2007/02/07/worlds-fattest-countries-forbeslife-cx_ls_0208worldfat_2.html> 
3. Australia world's fattest nation, U.S. 2nd, <http://www.japantoday.com/category/world/view/australia-worlds-fattest-nation-us-2nd as sdv> 
4. Australia now fattest country in the world, <http://www.health-fitness.com.au/australia-now-fattest-country-in-the-world/> 
5. Obesity statistics - countries compared - NationMaster:, <http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_obe-health-obesity> 
6. McDonald's Nutrition Information, <http://mcdonalds.com.au/sites/mcdonalds.com.au/files/images/Nutrition-Information-9-March-2010.pdf>
7. Cadbury Lite vs. Cadbury Dairy Milk, <http://www.chocablog.com/reviews/cadbury-lite-vs-cadbury-dairy-milk/>