O.K. arandar, I agree with all your choices and control of your personal money (savings) the way you put it.
But don't forget, govt. has the job of running the country, including paying NZ Super at the rate we are effectively asking for, or demanding, and volunteering to pay compulsory taxation for it.
To keep our NZ Super SUSTAINABLE, we have to pay a certain rate of COMPULSORY taxation - to include a PROPORTION of NZSF savings.

This is done most effectively and fairly in bulk through the NZSF, and the PA (Personal Account) factor is there only because of demonstrable fairness, simplicity, and the urgency of more effective economic education in practice and theory - and the immediate benefits they deliver from their 1st year of introduction - and it has been proved already that we could have 100% of citizen particpation in the effort already NOW, if National had raised only GST, and not reduced income tax.

So, arandar and all esteemed grownups so deeply upset and concerned about spreading child poverty - why are you so opposed to NZSF accumulation on PAs , when they could release $450 million of taxation revenue for spending in other areas than NZ Super for a start NOW - and initiate child poverty alleviation through "free" meals at decile 1 and 2 schools, and in the long term reduce and even eliminate the real cause of child poverty altogether, which is parental poverty?

The REAL cause of child poverty, Jens, is insufficient fairly paid jobs.

We are a low paid economy. Why?

More and more jobs are being exported. More and more workers are being discarded into unemployment, or underemployment, or lower paid / casualised work, or into self-employment (say as cleaners, lawnmowers, gardeners, window-cleaners, pool-guys,) or contractors who don't have the capital or the financial expertise to successfully manage or fairly pay the people they employ - i.e. seasonal fruit pickers and so on. Almost all the above require taxpayer support to survive.

The many paying more tax or having less disposable income or saving more / spending less does not solve the problem of labour costs being driven ever downwards for the sake of more profit to the few - who, let us remember, have a god-given right to minimize or avoid paying tax at all and whose businesses, in fact, are subsidized by the taxpayer.

We are NOT trying to catch up with Australia at all. We are competing with other low-paid economies, the islands and Asia, to be the cheapest producer. It is self-destructive madness.

Been reading an interesting book about the Us Economy, About Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac how they were lending 110-120% on low cost homes for the poor in the UK then cooking the books by not taking in to account liabilities in their accounts so it looked like they were making a profit. Now we wonder why the US economy have gone down hill fast. Problem is they have taken the rest of the world with them. (except China)

arandar - how could we possibly be as high an income country as Australia, when our population owns less capital per head than what they own in Australia, and there is about 30% less capital employed per worker to assist our productivity, than what they have there?

So, the most urgent priority to eliminate poverty is to crank up our savings and investment rate like they did in Singapore - which fact should be adequate to prove the point. - Or, if not, then why?

Opponents to poverty alleviation through free meals at schools say, the parents of the poor would have even more then to gamble and booze (up North), and the state should not encourage that.

But I still have faith, that while many parents of our children in poverty at present might be "beyond repair", for them to be partcipating in systematic NZSF Personal Accounts savings together with its wealth ownership creative publicity, will increasingly estrange more of their children from their parents' spendthrift hand-to-mouth lifestyle.

Narroc - what you say about the American happenings is correct, and they still don't seem to understand their crucial mistake (even without the deplorable actions you mentioned) - of talking the poor to take up houses without initial depostis nor any evidence of their saving capacity and willingness.

A systematic basic universal personal savings rate would "save even America" from its relative devcline recently.

I'd love to know how those people granted home loans they could never repay and called NINA loans by the way- no income no assets - how cynical is that eh? could be assisted by having personal retirement savings accounts.

They'd be far better off having a damn job.

I didn't say we ought to be catching up with Australia. John Key said we ought to be. In fact, he promised that we would under his expert business guidance. How's that going, btw?

We cannot possibly catch up with Australia when everything we are doing is catching us up with China - and as long as our business leaders see labour as a cost not an asset, to be cut and crushed and disenfranchised, we are going to continue on the road to feudal serfdom.

Big business and foreign corporations are offshoring huge profits, Jens, the Aussie Banks make great profits out of NZ, e.g., and there are many many others with more queuing up to buy our power cos, our ports, our coal, oil, gas, aluminum, and our food producing land. They aren't doing that for love of us or our beloved country - they are doing it for the money they can make out of us. Not for us... for themselves and their investors.

Re children being estranged from their parents spendthrift lifestyles! Good grief, Jens! Children, if forced to choose between their horrible parents who they love unconditionally in all but the most dire of circumstances and being cared for by comfortable kind strangers will choose their parents every time. They will look across the fence to pastures so much greener than their own and do not blame their feckless parents and vow to do better and differently.

Rather, they excuse their parents and blame the neighbour who 'has so much more', the community that excludes them, or patronizes them, the law that protects the rich and influential and punishes more harshly the poor and downtrodden.

How many more times do we have to say to you, yes, we agree saving is A Good Thing. It benefits the saver and the country, business and community. Personal, individual, and collective saving is A Good Thing.

Those that can, should. Those that cannot should have the reassurance that their neighbors and communities will do so and that they too will live a decent, basic life in retirement more or less just like most others'. They willing pay tax to support today's retirees during their working lives and should be able to rely on tomorrow's workers to do the same for them if need be. That's fair.

Oh, and Singapore is a place we should emulate? Really? It's hardly democratic. It may be a wealthy STATE now but it certainly has its share of the poor & downtrodden - witness the street cleaners with their straw brooms, the hawkers desperately demanding you buy their watches and shirts and tat, the multi-storey skyscrapers of tenements housing the poor. I love the place but give me the frenetic garish freedoms of Hong Kong any day.

arandar - aren't you contradicting yourself when saying saving is a good thing, but then oppose the idea of the poor being introduced to it in a way that is proven to be possible at the initial rate of NZSF accumulation through the increased rate of GST, if this did not have to replace the govt. revenue lost though income tax reductions?

That would not transform us into the way of life in Singapore you seem not to think much of (including reduced drug addiction, more tidyness? ), but it certainly would raise our wealth creation and ownership rate, and help us nationally - and the poor individually - to become more independent and self-reliant.

And by the way, I am told by my Chinese acquaintances, that they also have compulsory saving in Hong - Kong - and yes, in our brotherly Australia!

arandar, you sound as if you like the continuation of poverty just for the sake of promoting anti-capitalism?

How then do you propose to achieve a higher wages earning New Zealand, if not through more capital creation and investment - by whom?

Hurraaah arandar!

- The NZ Super Fund has helped to keep in New Zealand ownership an even bigger farms conglomeration than the Carafar Farms!

Is that not enough evidence on HOW TO SAVE NEW ZEALAND for you to build up enthusiasm for amending the NZSF into a PERMANENT institution with us all contributiong to it through our taxation system, as we have to anyhow for our NZ Super, whichever way you look at it.

I bet even welfare beneficiaries would feel better, if they know some of their benefit also automatically contributes towards that cause of building up NZ wealth ownership and saving New Zealand.

And would you not even favor just a little more of Singapore style "law and order" here, in view of the "human right" of prostitution invading residential areas in Ch-Ch and school and Sky Tower neighborhoods in Auckland?

The whole problem is people's greed. That is the beginning and end of all our problems. Me first, Me second, and damm it if there is anything left over that's mine too.
It's not that money is the problem. it's the LOVE of money.

I wouldn't mind a lot of that too.

Haha, Narroc & Mona - actually, it is not so much "the love of money" that is the cause of our troubles and poverty, as the love of consuming it as "spendthrifts".
If we were all on the miserly "tightwad" side, we might live more modest lives - but as a nation and individuals have more emergency and investment reserves than what we have now - wouldn't we?