People voted no because they don‘t care about their kids and grandkids. It‘s egoism in its purest form.
We are talking about the people that bought houses for 25-33% of todays prices with pensions based on 6.8-7.2% conversation rates.
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I was looking for some data. I could only find the vote by region which all seems to be quite „no“
Is there any data on how the vote was amongst different genders and age groups?
I don’t think they publish that data.
I am part of the younger generation (25yo) and voted yes mostly to prevent redistribution from young to old. I am disappointed by the results but I guess it’s a hard sell to decrease the conversion rate.
Usually there’s some polls published afterwards.
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Then why not just tell them that these rates were too high and pensioners will receive less rather than stealing/cross-financing from the young generation? What makes the pensioners think they have the right to get more out of the system as they have paid in just because the estimates several decades ago were off?
Also their real estate 3x and made most pensioners millionaires on paper.
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Sure, that would also be an option. But the vote would never go through with the current demographic. Also, its much easier/popular to keep a system that punishes people in 30 years, rather than punish* people tomorrow.
*punish in comparison to their status quo
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Look at the propaganda from the left parties. Cedric Wermuth (SP) talks about greedy pension fund managers and the banks ripping of retirees. As if they don’t have a clue about the demographic problems.
And most votes just go with that rhetoric. The no was about protest against “big banks” and “big pension funds”.
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In my opinion any reform where people have a right to vote and they are negatively impacted would not go through. As far as I can read from articles , it seems the „transition“ was the main issue as there are lot of people in transition range. It seems that’s why the reform didn’t go through as transition was not deemed enough.
We need to understand that people who have already contributed to pension plans for 25-30 years might not be able to manage the reduction so easily. Even though I fall under the group which can be termed „negatively impacted“ , I do not really blame the people voting NO.
I know when companies push people away from defined benefit to defined contribution schemes, they also provide a transition support. But in most cases someone (generally younger) gets negatively impacted and impact on older people is minimised. Rationale being that younger ones might have more time to deal with the situation.
So when mandatory portion of pension need to be changed, someone need to foot the bill. Either support from govt, one off payment by companies, future generations, improvement in fund management costs or allowance for higher (equity)asset allocations.
I believe 1E plans were introduced to fix the negative impact on contributing members for „non mandatory „ part of the pension. Looks like another attempt needs to be made to fix the situation for „mandatory“ part.
And this time perhaps also to include costs side of things and also how funds are organised. Like we always check what’s the return and TER for our ETFs, the pension funds also need to be challenged to reduce their TERs and increase their returns. How is it possible that some funds guarantee interests of 3.5% and some can’t even manage 1.25%.
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This no is a real shame. Yes, the proposed revision wasn’t ideal and came with lots of costly side effects. But the general way forward was the right one. I think most people agree that the current state is unfair towards younger generation and disadvantages modern living styles with part time working for both people of a couple/family. It will take years to have a new proposal. Years that the people mentioned before (young, part-timers) will have to pay for.
Many pension funds already lowered their blended pension to some 5% years ago. Some employers accompanied these moves with more generous contributions, fix or over time.
My current fund mildly supported a yes-vote in their newsletter, but basically they congratulated themselves on their wise policies and said it won’t really impact its members, either way.
Investment choices and resulting interests also depend on the demographic of contributors and retirees, I guess.
Maybe there are studies or research out there, I bet those factors weight at least as much as good / lucky investment choices, let alone fees.
These guys – gfs.bern | Political and communications research (gfsbern.ch) – typically publish their analyis post vote (I think it’s usually in the order of days, i.e. you can read about it in select newspapers next week).
This is a succinct commentary in the NZZ: Nein zur Rentenreform: Die Pensionskassen können ihren Laden selbst aufräumen (nzz.ch)
Personal opinion (I voted yes): this was just a matter too complicated to be explained to the proverbial simple man on the street. The left and even some towards the middle just took advantage of how simple it was to attack a too-hard-to-understand matter by spreading catchy mistruths à la “Rentenklau!”
I discussed the topic with my son last weekend and he came into the discussion – from what he’s read, mostly social media and some “free” newspapers – that he should vote no, but since I know a thing or two about finances, he wanted to discuss it with me.
It only took about half an hour with the main point about the young paying for the old to change his mind. Not sure everyone has a dad like that.
And even if they do, the young are now in a minority against the old who nowadays just seem to look after their own interests … ;-(
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And this is the main reason why you won‘t see any reforms that will fix the system. Nobody wants to cut back and stop robbing the future generations.
Other countries will fix their retirement systems by just not letting people vote on it. See Germany.
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By the way , all this also shows how much important pension fund plans at company are and people should pay attention while changing employers
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In general I agree with you.
But bringing up Germany as a good example for change in retirment system is probably the worst example known to man.
It‘s utterly fucked and the proposed changes are not going to change that.
The system in Germany is CH‘s problems on steroids x100.
The social controbutions for the young working population will increase at a far greater pace than here.
Also they will still indirectly adhere to old people, as they make the majority of voters. So they will make sure they are benefitting and not the young. The demographics are even worse and the influence of old even greater.
I don‘t know whats going on there. I just know that they are steadily increasing the retirement age and there is nothing people can do about it. Sounds harsh, but might be the best for society.
That‘s by necessity, nothing to do with good politics. It‘s literally just so the system does not collapse.
1/4 of total current taxes already is used for pension payments for example.
But even increasing the age won‘t help soon.
And do you want to only start retirement with 70 in the future?
That‘s also not good for the young, as they are old one time too.
Well the retirement age of 65 was set in the late 40s when life expectancy was much lower. If you manage to get to 65 today, you‘ll live another 20-23 years on average. This number is only increasing and soon 90+ will be just normal. So we have to rethink the age groups.
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Easy fix, just borrow 10x the pension fund capital as loans from the national bank, put everything into 3x leveraged ETFs and give everyone a 20% conversion rate.
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what surprises me is low attendance for voting, only 45%~ of population care about their pension?
I know that it is more or less average attendance in all recent referendums but still…