. @DavidSligar banging on about super is going to make me have to read this fucking retirement income review

648 pages, fuck me.

A review that came from another review...

... which in turn came from another review ...

... which thankfully ends the chain there. But this this is seven boring years in making, have its genesis in the rash of reviews announced by Abbott and Hockey in 2013 as they sought to manufacture a cover for going full regressive.

Glad we get to the point nice and quick on page 13.

This is kinda of funny, because for the last 20 years the APS discourse has been full of "oh, the ageing population will blow out the estimates for Program X".

Now we get a review that disputes that, and is instead leading the charge with "oh, COVID will blow out ..."

A plea from the few dozen people in the APS who understand how this shit works: please make us stop reviewing this

a sign of progress: AWOTE gets spelled out, but not MTAWE

I also refer to my shitty excel chart workbooks as a model, and demand they get a definition in government reports.

I mean, you're going to get obsessive enough about throwing in a definition for EMORI, but you then use this for Centrelink?

Centrelink's not an agency these days. It is neither NCCE, CCE or CC. It's a brand name.

OK, we're getting to the good bits, which looks like a retelling of poor dad rich dad, and it's off to a great start as the review of retirement income deliberately leaves off anyone who earned below the tax-free threshold.

This seems crazy enough that I must be reading this wrong. Or maybe only people with jobs need to worry about retiring from those jobs? I will have to go read Appendix 6A at some point

Everything's great, but no one understands it, there's huge factional forces fighting one-another, and there's no clear objective.

So long as aged pensioneers can afford to eat cat food, and hedge fund managers can maintain their standard of living, then we have an adequate retirement system.

This is all bleak stuff, but the report is so far fairly honest

It's just, y'know, the same problems everyone's been pointing out for 20+ years.

etc. etc. etc.

The grand program of wealth accumulation in Australia is to spend 40 years buying a house to then sell it off to survive in retirement.

Labor stans cover your eyes for this next one.

Liberal stans, your turn

Every APS wanker who included this line in their presentations for the last 20 years, I have bad news.

That text was all in purple because of it was the "Key Observations", which is a distinct section from the foreward, the letter of transmittal, and the "overview and summary". Somehow, this thing doesn't have an executive summary.

The authors really wanted to make recommendations, I think.

If this thing had come out 12 months earlier this would've instead been "Bushfires: A sounds retirement income system in volatile times"

"Disease and suffering are but temporary, mortal. But a well set up SMSF? That - that is eternity".

First quote of the report. Stirring stuff.

This is apparently the best quote they have about how great Australia's retirement system is. "Some people, uh you wouldn't know them, use us as an example!".

Compare and contrast.

"... and so we wrote a 648 page report."

I get their dilemma here: the system is so complicated that almost no-one understands how it works. However, you're not allowed to change it. So you have to, futilely, try to instead change the users of the system instead through "education".

But if that's your choice, why not take it seriously? Start holding big surveys measuring the change in understanding of the retirement system over time. Implement national awareness campaigns. Make changes to cirriculum.

And now we circle policy nihilism. Modelling's hard, people are phonies, so why even bother trying.

Oh shit, for real dog? Mind = blown.