Pension pettiness

There was a story on the Google News feed this morning about the Samsung “whistle.” New Samsung phones won’t have the irritating ringtone whistle many have grown to hate. There was also the usual quotient of stories about the Apple Watch and Google Glass: “Look, a computer you can wear on your wrist!” “Look, a computer you can wear on your face!”

There was not as much about the continuing massive die-off of the world’s bees, but then again, only some people can wear bees on their face (http://bit.ly/1EjoZiP).

Everyone, it seems, can imagine what it would be like to have the latest phone.

And that’s what we’ve been taught is so important, right? Ourselves.

And nowhere is that more obvious than in the battle over pensions

Successive groups of politicians with their own particular agendas have taught us that, when we see people with better pensions and benefits than our own, we should think about dragging them to our own level.

“If I can’t have it, you can’t either” isn’t a great philosophy; with five-yearolds, it generally leads to someone breaking someone else’s favourite toy. Then, except for a little momentary Schadenfreude smugness, everyone loses.

I know there are people who have negotiated their way – usually with unions – to far better pensions plans than I have.

I also know that, given the pension plans and salary levels available to me, I will probably be working well past the normal age of retirement. (The sad part is that, in the process, I will be keeping a job from a younger person. Just another way, like deficit spending, to live well and pass the costs on to our kids.)

But does it really do me any good to say that if I don’t have a good pension, then you shouldn’t either? (The only exception to that for me is with political pensions; I seriously dislike being told to tighten my retirement belt by people who vote on and set their own spectacular pension rates.)

I don’t think it should work that way. There are plenty in the corporate world who would love us to live that way, gleefully pulling each other down to the bottom rung of the ladder and saving mon- ey at the top while we do it. It’s notable that, while things like defined benefit pensions have vanished from the worker bees, the queens and kings generally negotiate far better regimes.

When we see workers who have found a way to retire close to comfortably, we probably shouldn’t be saying “take away what they’ve fought for.”

Instead, why don’t we say, “They’ve found a better pension package – why don’t we reach for that as well?” The final takeaway? Dragging others down is a bitter, small and petty way to live. And there are plenty who find it quite profitable when we can be convinced to think that way. When others do well, we should cheer, not grouse.