Posts

Showing posts from March, 2011

The Great Savings Fallacy

This blog was sparked by my reading of Richard Murphy's proposals for radical reform of private pensions, Making Pensions Work .  I had to read it a few times to get my head round exactly what it was saying, but in the end it boiled down to the idea that the most effective provision for retirement is made by SPENDING money rather than SAVING it.  Most of the people who commented on his linked blog Making pensions work - don't duck the issues  missed this (or chose not to comment), but a few did. The last comment on the blog before it closed essentially said "Saving for retirement is a good thing. We should be encouraging people to do it." This statement runs absolutely contrary to Murphy's proposals - but it is what we are hearing all the time.   People should be saving money, not spending, shouldn't they? On the BBC's excellent Comic Relief programme the other day, a female slum-dweller was shown an expensive apartment block by the visiting journalist,