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(This point bears emphasizing: no one — not the Conservatives, not the Liberals or the NDP, not the government of Ontario — is proposing simply to give more money to people. The proposal is to take more money from them now, and give them more later.)

So the argument about forcing people to save more than that is really about people higher up: the third, fourth and fifth quintiles, about one in six of whom are not saving “enough,” by that 50-per-cent standard. But the further you climb the income scale, the hazier the case for public intervention becomes.

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It’s hard to argue that these under-savers, as well off as they are, are somehow gaming the system: no one’s going to rush in to rescue them from having to shop at Costco. If they’re saving less than other people think they should, it may simply reflect their own life preferences. Maybe they’d rather live a little better now, at the cost of living a little poorer later. Who’s to say?

This raises a further difficulty. If people are saving about as much as they want to now, then forcing them to save more in one way, through an expanded CPP, may simply result in an offsetting reduction in their other savings, in their RRSPs or TFSAs.

All in all, it’s difficult to make the case for forcing even these alleged under-savers to save more, let alone forcing everyone to, regardless of their circumstances.

Still, suppose that were the policy. Does it automatically follow that they should be forced to save through the CPP? Put it this way: if it were left up to them, as the government prefers, would anyone choose to invest in the CPP?