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To the extent there is a problem, it’s increasingly unclear the plan the nation’s finance ministers have cooked up together offers a solution. Remember, the CPP doesn’t “help” you to save, it forces you to. If you’re already saving as much as you’d like to, it’s unclear why the government’s judgement should be substituted for yours; or if you’re already saving as much as you can afford to, forcing you to save more hardly makes you better off.

And so far as forced savings are justified, it’s never been clear why they must also be invested through the CPPIB, rather than held in the contributor’s own personal investment plan.

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Enter the insurance principle. You can’t be sure how long you’ll live after retirement, runs the argument. Left to yourself, therefore, there’s a risk you might outlive your savings. Lumping everyone together in one big fund, on the other hand, allows this risk to be pooled, such that the CPP can pay out a guaranteed benefit.

It’s not a bad argument. It’s just not the clincher its heavily-sighing proponents believe it to be. Insurance is one of the objectives a pension plan might pursue. But it’s not the only one: the level of the benefit matters, not just its variability. Indeed, there’s a trade-off between the two: insurance, whether provided by the private sector or the public, doesn’t come free. There’s always a cost, and in the case of the CPP it’s an exorbitant one.

The good news is: the CPP isn’t the only option,. It is perfectly possible for large private plans — I envisage contributors choosing between a limited range of ultra-low-cost, index-based ETFs — to provide the same sort of guarantee as the CPP. A system of mandatory personal savings plans could be designed to automatically convert to annuities on retirement.