Economists in agreement

Tell me it can't be true!!!!!

At TVHE Matt Nolan writes,

So Don Brash spoke out against compulsory savings, as did Gareth Morgan (note that both would benefit personally from the policy, to a large degree).

John Carran’s article sums up how Infometrics feels about the policy. And I am under the impression that every single NZ economics blogger that has touched the issue has said that compulsion is the wrong policy.

As Eric Crampron says in the comments to Matt's posting,

Count me as against too. I thought it so obvious that I’d oppose that it wasn’t worth blogging.

I'm with Eric on this. What exactly is the case for compulsion anyway? One size does not fit all, let people make their own decisions on how and what to save for their retirement. People themselves have the best information and incentives to base their savings decisions on, let them do it. As Brash writes,

But a compulsory superannuation scheme not only deprives people of the right to choose when they save, it would do little for our national savings rate, would do nothing to ease the future fiscal burden of NZ Super unless NZ Super were means-tested, and might not even help then if the Government felt obliged to offer subsidies to persuade people to sign up for a compulsory scheme.

So there you have it, economists do agree!