New research commissioned by Industry Super Australia from Rice Warner actuaries shows the pension changes, without any change to superannuation, would over time squeeze middle income earners the hardest because they would have saved just enough in super to lose the pension.
But it's not entirely clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs or legal consultants to similarly vanish".
Only 35% of the necessary cash has been set aside to pay for pensions already accrued, according to actuaries.
Northridge 1994, the most recent major Californian earthquake, had a magnitude of 6.7, killed 60 people and caused property damage of around $20 billion, prompting both lawmakers and actuaries to drastically re-evaluate the risks of living on the fault.
The government's actuaries expect it to start rising more quickly, as Obamacare expands insurance, the population ages and the economy recovers.There are factors that may constrain costs, however.
The strains are starting to show: chief executives say that they need more actuaries and other professionals, as there are not enough skilled islanders to fill the gap.So what is to be done?
Quite how issuing debt does anything at all to reduce pension liabilities, except by accounting sleight of hand, is beyond Buttonwood's understanding the firms' actuaries assume, dubiously, that they will make more money investing the proceeds than it costs to raise them.
Internal morale needs lifting, too: like the wealth managers at banks such as UBS and Merrill Lynch, AIG's actuaries are seething that their relatively healthy business is subsidising huge losses in the smaller financial-products group.
"If the government doesn't want any risks with the PPF then it should run it like an insurance company and invest in bonds," says Michael Pomery, president-elect of the Institute of Actuaries.
Someone working intermittently would need to accumulate even more".On earnings that won't grow beyond £15,000 in today's money, it's probably not worth taking out a stakeholder pension," says Deborah Cooper, a member of a recent Institute of Actuaries task force on pensions.
Surely Mr Fisher read a paper published in July by the American Academy of Actuaries entitled "The Impact of Inordinately Low 30-year Treasury Rates on Defined Benefit Plans"?
