on Harper and retirement age, OAS

(D - that 2nd chart starts at 2%, not 0, which is a bad chart. And from the government!)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/economy-lab/the-economists/does-harper-really-need-to-raise-the-retirement-age/article2316982/

The Prime Minister explicitly (and correctly) pointed out that the Canada Pension Plan is not in financial difficulty. Instead, the target of reform appears to be Old Age Security.

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D - ahem. See yesterday's entry. A year from now, the triennial review will say otherwise. Just look at the fund value since the stock market crash. Even allowing for recovery, we're still way shy.
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On the other hand, Canada is different because, unlike most other countries, our public pension commitments are not a substantial threat to our public finances. The Canada Pension Plan is in long-run balance. Old Age Security currently takes only 2.41 per cent of GDP. Very few OECD countries have lower levels of public pension spending as a share of GDP than Canada. To take the extreme example, Italy spends more than 14 per cent of GDP on public pensions -- up from 10 per cent only a few years ago.

How will spending in Canada grow as the baby boomers age? By 2031 -- at the peak of the baby-boom retirement wave -- the share of GDP spent on Old Age Security will rise to 3.14 per cent, for an increase of 0.73 per cent over today’s level. Now, an increase of 0.73 per cent of GDP cannot be ignored, but neither is it disastrous. To provide some scale, David Dodge and Richard Dion project that spending on health will grow from 12 per cent to 18.7 per cent of GDP by 2031, for an increase of 6.7 percentage points. In the fight for government spending dollars in 2031, health is the elephant and the Old Age Security pension is the mouse.

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D - true, dat. However, health is a provincial jurisdiction. Whereas OAS - and pensions - are federal. Plus the above commentary ignores the 1-2 punch combo of shrinking workforce (to 2 seniors for every working 1 - plus the youngsters so that's, what 3-4:1 ratio?)and increasing social program costs in combination.
Gen XYZ will be carrying quite a heavy enough load on its shoulders. The goal should be to minimize this, while ensuring retired Boomers the pensions they expect and planned for, plus to ensure no senior citizen poverty. Beyond that, the Boomers can be accused of 'conspicuous consumption' and bleeding their children dry.

D - it also ignores the risk (and I do say RISK) that medicine suddenly allows for great increases in longevity. This would overturn the apple cart and render all the demographic projections incorrect.

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http://www.121doc.co.uk/news/new-pill-to-increase-life-expectancy-to-150-6549.html

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D - clearly a bogus site, but you get the idea. A polypill that contains a cocktail of now-generic health-enhancing drugs that increases lifespan by even a few years would wreak havoc on the financial stabiity of any pension program.