Last Tuesday, President Trump said he is looking “very seriously” at the compulsory Australian retirement savings program, which former Prime Minister Julia Gillard has called “our trillion dollar sovereign wealth fund.” While President Trump offered no details about what he finds so attractive about “AustralianSuper,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave possible indications that the administration is less concerned about reducing unsustainable entitlement obligations and more drawn to the financial predictability that compulsory contributions by Australian employers on behalf of millions of workers provide for the fund.At the Superannuation Investment Summit in February 2025, Bessent said he “was struck by the confidence you have in the growth. It’s not what one might expect for Australia.… Any other sovereign wealth funds … the volumes are dependent on a particular commodity price—whereas your regularity, sustainability and trajectory are really preferable.”Turns out, forced contributions collected from workers’ wages are a much more stable source of investment fund income than revenues from inherently volatile commodities that fluctuate with market prices. American workers, beware: The government may be coming for more of our earnings.There are four possible pathways an Australian-inspired retirement policy could take:
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100 sats \ 3 replies \ @Undisciplined 14h
I've been predicting for a long time that forced allocations to US Treasuries would be how they look to finance the ongoing deficits.
That was before stablecoins stepped in and soaked up so much of that supply.
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69 sats \ 0 replies \ @deadmanoz 4h
If you're self-employed, you don't actually need to contribute. You can choose to make personal contributions voluntarily, but there's no legal requirement to pay the super guarantee (SG) for yourself. It is, however, tax advantaged to make contributions.
Employers must pay the SG for eligible employees, where eligibility is something like:
- Aged 18 or over, generally eligible to receive SG super contributions
- Aged under 18, they typically need to work more than 30 hours per week to be eligible
There has recently been noise and some changes around additional taxes on large balances. I'm sure this noise will only grow louder over time. Eventually IMO there will be some substantial change in terms of additional taxes on large balances - it's simply too large a pool of money for the Aus government to ignore..
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69 sats \ 0 replies \ @unboiled 6h
Most of that damage is done by the cookie-cutter allocations of 60/40 stocks/bonds and friends. Likely even worse for (whole) life insurance schemes.
In the Australian system, you can allocate your super as you see fit if you jump through some hoops. And even the "standard" allocations available usually include an MSCI World equivalent so you can sidestep bonds if they don't manage to scare you out of it by labeling that strategy as very high risk.
What's more concerning about the system to me is how they keep bumping the forced savings rate and how politicians keep thinking of ways to get their filthy mittens on that pot.
For the first 10-ish years the savings rate was 3-4%, then that got bumped to 9% for the next 10.
In the last decade, it has gone from 9.5 to 12%.
Only recently, did they start to discuss (still are? not sure) adding additional taxes on some balances. Obviously also to be applied to unrealized gains.
It was marketed as targeting "only the super wealthy" of course, starting from 3 million dollarydoos.
That's about 2 million in freedom-bald-eagle-cries dollars. Super wealthy my ass.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @anon 11h
The whole situation is so ridiculous
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