Pension (money)

“ We passed pension reform legislation to protect the pensions of 40 million workers, and we're working to get money that is owed to pension funds paid in. We're also proposing to simplify rules so that small businesses can provide pensions for their workers and the owners of the businesses more easily. ”

“ Several have been continuously receiving relief since taking their pension. In all these cases, except in six, when the pensioners came into the workhouse, they continued to receive their pension. One pensioner who had been admitted to the infirmary on five occasions stated that one reason for wishing to be admitted was in order to save money against his discharge. Some pensioners allowed their pensions to accumulate, whilst others allowed a relative or friend to draw the pension. ”

“ My own feeling is that we should make the pension, like the superannuation benefit of Trades Unions, claimable by those aged 65 and upwards who have not an income of more than £1 a week or property valued at more than £250. We should then probably have to provide for about 1,400,000 to 1,500,000 pensioners, at a cost of £18,000,000 to £20,000,000. Administration would cost about £500,000 and we should save about £4,000,000 in poor rates. ”

“ This meant that the holder of a perpetual pension of a hundred pounds might receive a ready-money sum of three hundred pounds provided that he agreed to have his pension reduced to twenty-four pounds, and that the holder of a life pension of the same amount could obtain cash to the extent of two hundred pounds and a perpetual pension of sixteen pounds. ”

“ This act, putting comparatively large sums of money within the reach of pensioners, excited the greed of many veterans, and served to establish the procuring of pensions in great quantities as a regular industry and one of the most profitable in the country. ”

“ That such is the case, and moreover that it is usual to define such pensions as being given in consideration of past services, has led to the putting forward very generally the argument that pensions, whether given by a government or by private employers, are in the nature of deferred pay, and that holders of posts which carry pensions must therefore be rewarded by a remuneration less than the full market rate, by the difference of the value of the pension. ”

“ A share of the net earnings of the business is to be set aside each year, and applied for the benefit of the employés in three ways—as pensions, insurance, and endowment. Every male employé who becomes unable to work after a continuous service of ten years receives a pension equal to fifty per cent of his wages. Each three years of service over ten up to twenty-five, increases the pension ten per cent. A disabling accident happening to an employé while on duty entitles him to a fifty-per-cent pension, even if he has not served ten years. ”

“ As you are perhaps aware, a small percentage of our earnings is always appropriated by the State, and a proportionate pension becomes our due as soon as we wish to claim it. If we claim our pension at the age of seventy or eighty, it is relatively smaller than if we wait until our hundredth year or thereabouts. We are usually not in a hurry to place ourselves upon the pension list, for our active period of labour ceases then, and this source of income is lost. ”

“ By the paper which has been placed in my hands I observe the pensions which are contributed by this ancient corporation are very numerous. I see that a sum is set apart for the support of five persons exceeding 65 years of age who have occupied a respectable social position, and who have a permanent income of not less than £15, but not more than £30 per annum; for 20 poor and infirm persons exceeding 72 years of age, to whom a pension of £15 each per annum is allowed ”

“ I shall wait for the infirmity and, if it comes to me, I shall consider.
"There! are great lords of the Empire linked to their pensions by sacred and indissoluble bonds, whatever be the hand they fall from: a pension is in their eyes a sacrament; it stamps a character, like orders or marriage; no pensioned head can ever cease to be so: pensions being charged to the Treasury, they remain charged to the same Treasury. ”

“ Ten per cent each year was paid for interest on these shares until the pension was paid, but had to be left to accumulate with the society until then. When a member begins to draw a pension the amount will have to be according to the number of shares and the age of the members when the first allowance is paid. ”

“ Since the first pension law was enacted, the amount of the annual allowance has been several times increased. Already the government has paid out more than forty-five million dollars in doles to the aged, and there are, I am told, about twenty thousand people now receiving these pensions. This is considerably more than one pensioner to every hundred persons in the country. ”

“ It extends old-age pensions to every person over the age of sixty-five who has resided thirty-five years in the colony and not been imprisoned for a criminal offence, nor has abandoned his wife, nor neglected to provide for his or her children. It does not, however, appear that any previous employment is necessary. The pension amounts to eighteen pounds, say ninety dollars, a year and is not given to any one who has an income of fifty-two pounds a year. The machinery of the law is largely conducted through the post-office and the entire expense is met by the state. ”

“ The provision for the system is raised by contributions to the extent of nine-tenths by the employers and one-tenth by the workers, deducted from their wages. Instead of the German method by which an annual payment equal to the amount disbursed is required from each employer, he is required to provide the full amount necessary for the complete payment of the pension, this amount being placed to the credit of a special insurance fund. ”

“ For old age merely, he cannot begin to draw his full pension until he has attained the ripe age of seventy-one years. Then he will draw the full amount. He may anticipate that if he be incapacitated; but in that case the pension will be on a lower scale, proportioned to the amounts paid in and the length of time of the payments. ”

“ From the larger economic as well as from the larger moral standpoint the plan of a contributory pension seems to promise least danger to society and the greatest result. I am inclined to believe from such evidence as the pension systems which now exist can furnish that a justly regulated compulsory contributory pension system, on the whole, promises most both for the individual and for the social organization. ”

“ A pension is a payment made by one's actual employer for work done—it is wages, and the man who has earned his own pension, or has provided it by his own saving, feels himself and is an independent man. It is right to maintain the 400,000—whether out of national or parochial funds is a detail—but sound policy would rather aim at raising the 400,000 to be as the 1,300,000, than at lowering the 1,300,000 to the level of the 400,000. ”

“ The pension granted by the government is a matter of bounty. 'No pensioner has a vested legal right to his pension. Pensions are the bounties of the government, which congress has the right to give, withhold, distribute, or recall at its discretion. ”

“ The law on the subject, although frequently amended, is still based upon the Superannuation Act of 1859, which grants to "persons who shall have served in an established capacity in the permanent civil service of the state" for ten years, and retire at sixty years of age or by reason of infirmity, a pension equal to ten sixtieths of their final salary. ”

“ If a man serves the full term of thirty-five years he gets thirty-five fiftieths of his salary in pension. This pension system, recognized as essential to a good civil service, has this weakness: A man pays two and a half per cent, of his salary for twenty years. If the salary is $3000, his payments would have amounted to $1200, with interest, in that time. If he then dies, his widow gets only two months’ salary as a solatium; all the rest is lost to her, and goes to the superannuation fund of the treasury. Or, a man is superannuated after thirty-five years ”

“ The Government has imposed upon the taxpayers an enormous financial burden by an uncommonly generous pension system. I do not feel that I can, consistently with my well settled opinions, seek to increase that burden for my own benefit beyond the understood conditions under which I entered the service. ”

“ If pensions were to be given to the value of the estate, I ask, What has this violent act done? You shake the security of property, and, instead of suffering a man to gather his own profits with his own hands, you turn him{13} into a pensioner upon the public treasury. I can conceive that such a measure will render these persons miserable dependants instead of independent nobility; but I cannot conceive what financial object can be answered by paying that in pension which you are to receive in revenue. ”

“ What follows is mainly contained in the 7th clause, that, "subject to the provisions of this Act," every person of the full age of sixty-five years and upwards, being of our own blood and not guilty of any offence "dishonouring him in the public estimation" (a phrase, by the way, we seem to have heard, somewhere, before!) , shall be entitled to a pension of £18 a year. ”

“ The funds were provided in equal contributions by employers and employed—the principle underlying the system being that of deferred wages. It was a question whether it was encouraging thrift to withhold from such wage-earners 2 per cent. of their wages. The State bore the cost of management, and added to every pension a bonus of £2 10s. a year. For the working of the system the wage-earners were divided into five grades: (1) Those who earn up to £17 10s. a year; (2) those who earn any sum between £17 10s. ”

“ The service need not be continuous, and the act makes provision for counting service in lower classes as a qualification for pension in a higher class. These pensions are limited in number to twelve, but a holder must not receive any other pension out of the public revenue, if so, he must inform the treasury and surrender it if it exceeds his political pension, or if under he must deduct the amount. He may, however, hold office while a pensioner, but the pension is not payable during the time he holds office. ”

“ With this question of pay there is linked that of pensions. It is often urged that men join the public service at a less rate of pay than the same abilities could obtain in other walks of business life, not merely because of the security of tenure, but because they know there is a pension to follow the work. ”

“ In addition to all these arrangements for promoting a real community of interests between the company and its employees, there is a pension fund out of which retiring pensions, varying from one-fifth to one-fourth of the wages earned by the pensioner, are granted to employees who have served the company for a certain number of years, or who find themselves disabled from further service by age or by disease. ”

“ The maximum amount of the pension is thus £18: but for every complete £1 of income above £34 the pensioner has his pension reduced by £1, and a similar amount will be deducted for every complete £15 of the net capital value of all his accumulated property above £50. ”

“ The employer, the employee, or both, make a contribution each year toward the pension to fall due on the retirement of the employee,” who receives a bond each year that assures him a pension when he retires, each bond being complete in itself. This scheme costs little to administer and it meets the objection against a non-contributory system, that although pensions defer pay only the employee who survives in the same service until retirement receives the benefit promised, by the provision that this bond is given each year and becomes his property, to be realized at a fixed age in later years. ”

“ The first provision made by Congress for pensions was a resolution passed on the 26th of August 1776, promising invalid pensions to officers and men of the army or navy who lost a limb or were otherwise disabled in the War of Independence, at a rate equal to half of their monthly pay as officers or soldiers during life or continuance of the disability, those not totally disabled to receive an adequate monthly pension not to exceed half of their pay. ”

“ Government pensions for both husband and wife are paid when they have reached the age of 60 years, and when their income does not exceed $250 a year. The pension paid is $2.40 a week each, $4.80 for the old couple. Citizens who are incapacitated, and have not reached the age of 60 years, are also paid the $2.40 a week. Young persons deformed or mentally incompetent also receive the pension, or, rather, their guardians do. In cases where a man dies and leaves a widow and children without means of support the government looks after them. ”

“ I admit, that, when called to account for the execution of a trust, he might fairly be obliged to prove the affirmative, and to state the merit for which the pension is given, though on the pensioner himself such a process would be hard. If in this examination we proceed methodically, and so as to avoid all suspicion of partiality and prejudice, we must take the pensions in order of time, or merely alphabetically. The very first pension to which we come, in either of these ways, may appear the most grossly unmerited of any. ”

“ The Revolutionary War cost the United States about $70,000,000 in pensions, and every subsequent war, except the recent world struggle, has added to the pension roll, which reached its high-water mark in the year 1905, with a total of 998,441 pensioners, while the annual payments rose to a maximum of $174,171,661 in 1913. ”