Savings for Retirement Australia-Style

Savings for retirement the way they do it in Australia could enhance the American standard of living, according to Investment News and Strategic Ethos. They also look to Canada and New Zealand for models.

Mandatory Savings for Retirement as in Australia or New Zealand

Savings for retirement with Australia and New Zealand as models would fit the bill in the United States as well, according to Strategic Ethos in 2010.

Strategic Ethos is a business ethics consulting firm. It came to its daunting conclusion about savings for retirement in early 2010.

Strategic Ethos, in fact, is calling for a complete overhaul of the U.S. retirement system and pitching for mandatory savings for retirement system as a way of enhancing the standard of living in the United States.

As Australia and Canada Go So Should Go the Standard of Living in the United States

By mid-year, Investment News published an article touting Australia—as well as Canada—as a national retirement system model. Among reasons, the economies and scales of living of those two nations, among all countries, are the most similar to the standard of living in the United States.

Here’s what Investment News gleaned from Canada: The Canadian government is looking to allow banks and insurance companies to offer broad-based defined-contribution pension plans to multiple employers, all employees, and the self-employed. The proposal is aimed at cutting costs, enhancing savings for retirement, and enlarging pension coverage.

Australians have come up with a way to bolster savings for retirement by making a 9% employer contribution to individual-retirement-account-like plans compulsory. The mandated high rate of savings for retirement has left the Australians with a much thicker asset cushion than that of most Americans.

Topic: Fixing the Retirement System Subtopics: The American Retirement System • What Is Retirement Age? • Pension Retirement Plan Reform • Lifetime Annuities • 401k Annuities • 401k Annuities: A Proposal from TIAA-CREF• 401k Annuities: Popular Support • Cash Balance Accounts • White House Reform • Obama Retirement Reform • Social Security Statements as a Model • Models from Australia, New Zealand, and Canada • What the Public Wants • Multi-Employer Plans • Automatic 401k • Automatic IRA • Tom Harkin • Herb Kohl • Other Advocates of Pension Reform • Opposition to Reform