CPP
First up we have CPP, which everyone pays into and what you get is proportionate to what you paid in. The more you worked, and the higher your salary, the more you get. This is totally funded by you.
OAS
This is paid to anyone 65 or older, depending on income. This is totally funded by taxpayers, you do not have to pay a nickle into it to get these benefits.
As shown above, the guaranteed income supplement is also available to seniors, curtsey of the taxpayers, but is subject to income cutoffs.
It looks like one person, without any income, pulls in over $1500 a month from all the social security benefits. Two seniors could pull in around $3,000 a month without a pension! When the average Canadian looks at their pay cheque after tax, I bet they are not making much more than seniors are getting.
Try this little exercise to see how much in OAS and GIS you can expect to get depending on your income level, at around $25,000 excluding CPP and OAS your GIS runs out, but OAS is still around $500 a month.
Is this "sustainable" (a favourite lefty term)? Right now we have 4 workers for every retiree, in the next 20 years that will become a 2:1 ratio. We have a government that wants to prepare our children for the future by acting now, and the opposition and lefties are screaming bloody murder.
We can act now, or our children can be put in the same position that Greek children are in today. In Alberta, we took 20% decreases in government, education, health care, and other sectors to get rid of our debt. It was hard, but we did it.... for the next generation. If we vote the Alberta PC's in again, all that hard work will go down the tubes.
It's time for all of Canada to suck it up, and get it done, for our kids. Maybe the have not provinces should look at themselves, and their spending, and try to get off the gravy train, same goes for our First Nations. Maybe the seniors or soon to be retired, also need to save for their retirement and stop expecting our children to pay for them in their old age. Sure you worked hard all your lives, but that doesn't mean that you can now suck off the teat of the taxpayers. It's time to stop with the "I earned/deserve it" attitude, and get to the "my kids deserve better" attitude.
3 comments:
One correction: OAS is clawed back. In 2011, the maximum OAS was $6368.25. Clawback began when a person's net income was over $67668.00, and was completely clawed back when a person's net income reached $110,123.00.
However, you haven't mentioned another nuance re OAS. As you know, a person 65 or over can begin to collect OAS after being in Canada 10 years, though at a lesser rate. However, what is rarely mentioned is that said senior is now also eligible for the GIS, and that does NOT appear to be at a lesser rate. You'll see a T4(OAS)for an immigrant senior (with no other income) with a small amount of OAS because the person hasn't been in Canada that long, but with a large GIS to make up for it.
Thanks Frances, I didn't know that about GIS. That should be fixed. No GIS until 10 years as a Canadian citizen.
I knew about the clawback for OAS. Clawbacks only starting at 67668 is ridiculous! Assuming the person has paid their mortgage off, and that they own their home, 67668 is a pretty hefty income! Start the clawback at $50,000, end it at $70,000.
Hunter - haven't you been reading the papers: it's the rare Boomie who has paid off the mortgage these days, let alone car loans, credit cards, etc. They're going to need all the money they can get. That being said, I agree with you. The OAS was never designed to supplement an already decent income: it was designed to allow seniors who - for one reason or another - had no other resources to live out their last years in frugal dignity.
And my point about the GIS is that - though I think it only begins when the senior qualifies for OAS - it is NOT pro-rated according to the number of years the senior has been in the country. So you'll hear all about how immigrant seniors don't get much OAS and how mean we are (see Ruby Dhalla) but not a peep as to the extra GIS these seniors get which puts them on a par with Canadian-born seniors.
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