Our pensions must be funded

Sir, - Alex Orr (August 22) thinks immigration is the answer to paying the pensions of an ageing Scottish population.

Like most socialists, Mr Orr fails to grasp the idea of creating an invested fund geared to provide for the future retirement of the population, preferring instead to pay for pensions from current tax revenue, which would suggest a need for immigrants.

But those immigrants must be productive and pay tax right from the start.

That does not happen of course, and many become dependents from day one.

Then those immigrants retire, and by Mr Orr’s thinking, more are needed to pay for their pensions, and so on. The mathematical conclusion to this process is that the population of the world

“Properly controlled immigration may well have some advantages for a sparsely populated country such as Scotland, but it has no bearing on our ability to pay pensions, which can only be done by sound fiscal management

ends up living in Scotland.

Properly controlled immigration may well have some advantages for a sparsely populated country such as Scotland, but it has no bearing on our ability to pay pensions, which can only be done by sound fiscal management.

Malcolm Parkin. Gamekeepers Road, Kinnesswood.