Who’s stealing your Superannuation funds? The Fund Managers, that’s who.
According to an article in ‘Dissent’ Autumn/Winter 2010, by David Ingles and David Richardson.
They point out that Funds charge for fees a percentage of the funds invested in the Fund.
Not a flat fee.
Not a percentage of earnings: gains.
I never thought of it. Never knew it.
Turns out that if you’ve got say $100,000 in a Fund (and, of course, you’re adding to it periodically, via your salary or somesuch) then they’ll charge you a percentage of that $100,000
So the more you’ve got the more you pay.
Typically about 2%
So that’s $2000 per annum you’d pay that Fund for ‘managing’ your money.
If there’s any justice, any fairness, any rationality, then that’d mean that the more money you got the harder it’d become for them to ‘manage’ your money.
Which essentially means ‘make money’ from your money.
Which in fact is a nonsense.
The more money you’ve got the easier it gets to make money.
That’s the whole capitalist paradigm.
If you had enough money, for instance, you could start a Super Fund, or a Bank…..
So if that Fund earns $4000 for you that year – a 4% return on your investment – you’d only get 2% – $2000.
Their article states that we pay, nationwide, about $14 billion to have our funds ‘managed’ for us.
Elsewhere you can research it for yourself it has been shown again and again that Funds return no better profits than random investments in the market.
In fact it is shown sometimes in some studies that the more management the smaller the return.
These are gross returns, I believe.
‘Net’ returns – i.e. what you actually get after fees and charges, taxes, whatever, would be of course considerably less.
So we’re spending $14 billion a year on nothing, essentially.
Nothing except supporting a certain class of people: professional financial sector managers, Fund managers, finance gurus, professional CEO’s, professional Board members, ‘Executives’, the professional ‘Executive’ class.
It is fashionable now to mock and scorn conspiracy theorists.
But here’s a fact: there’s a conspiracy to maintain this kind of robbery, this kind of unfairness, this kind of deception.
It is not a formal ‘cloak and dagger’ , ‘meetings in secret’ of a devilish club of villains. It is not formalised at all as a ‘conspiracy’ by those who participate in it.
They would stoutly deny that they conspire at all.
But they do.
It is human nature.
They don’t ‘let the cat out of the bag’, they don’t tell the truth, they don’t rock the boat, they do whatever they can to maintain the status quo, they preserve the current system, they love the current system, they make their livings and their lives from the current system.
It is a de facto conspiracy.
Why call it a conspiracy? Isn’t it just an example of like minded people working together? No more a conspiracy than the collective actions and thoughts of all those who believe and do everything they can to bring about anything else at all: perhaps a prevalence of goat farming or a nationwide adoption of green values or buckminster fullers architecture?
No… though the ‘informal’ and ‘de facto’ aspects of it are exactly the same – a sharing of enthusiasm, a concerted action without overt organisation, direction, goal – it has this distinguishing feature that makes it worthy being labelled ‘conspiracy’:
It is to the detriment of the nation as a whole and to the free individuals in the nation, it is contrary to the intent of the very thing itself (Superannuation Funds), it is a despoilation, a destruction, a deceit, a trickery and a theft.
It is to the benefit of the weak, the sly, the tricky and treacherous, the plausible scoundrel…..
And we let it happen……..
That’s something else in that article, I think, they point out that we simply let it happen………..
We get what we deserve..