Tico retirement benefit reduction?

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I heard a comment from an interview with Dr Jim Willie, an American financial adviser living in Costa Rica, that Retirement benefit checks for Costa Ricans have been cut in half. He further stated that the new CR president is taking advice from the US on how to improve government revenues with such measures as well as with new taxes. If this us true, it does not bide well for expats in Costa Rica.

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First, tell me who exactly says Dr Jim Willie is a kook.
If you start quoting Fox News or ANY government official or anyone who is equally credentialed as Dr Willie but who also subscribe to government propaganda, then I think the real kook will be obvious.

Secondly, before trying to discredit the source, can you answer my query?

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[quote=”sprite”]I heard a comment from an interview with Dr Jim Willie, an American financial adviser living in Costa Rica, that Retirement benefit checks for Costa Ricans have been cut in half. He further stated that the new CR president is taking advice from the US on how to improve government revenues with such measures as well as with new taxes. If this us true, it does not bide well for expats in Costa Rica.[/quote]

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[quote=”sweikert925″]
So it is the same guy eh? I see he charges [url=http://www.goldenjackass.com/subscribe.html]$110 for a six month subscription to allow his disciples to receive his pearls of wisdom.

Whether he is a kook or not is personal perception. To MY personal perception, he seems to believe the sky is falling and he is running around in circles with one foot nailed to the floor, with a golden gleam in his eye. Many of his frenetic pronouncements are nothing if not laughable. [Also, with little or no primary relevance to Costa Rica].

[costaricafinca]

[i]Seemingly[/i][b][/b], it is the intention that those who are presently receiving a pension of thousands of dollars a month that are being ‘cut in half’….not the ‘ordinary’ pensioner.

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[quote=”pharg”][quote=”sweikert925″]
So it is the same guy eh? I see he charges [url=http://www.goldenjackass.com/subscribe.html]$110 for a six month subscription to allow his disciples to receive his pearls of wisdom.

Whether he is a kook or not is personal perception. To MY personal perception, he seems to believe the sky is falling and he is running around in circles with one foot nailed to the floor, with a golden gleam in his eye. Many of his frenetic pronouncements are nothing if not laughable. [Also, with little or no primary relevance to Costa Rica].[/quote]

So you do not suspect any great change is coming; no dollar collapse, no great depression, no hyper inflation or defaltion….everything is just fine…right?

[Imxploring]

[quote=”sprite”][quote=”pharg”][quote=”sweikert925″]
So it is the same guy eh? I see he charges [url=http://www.goldenjackass.com/subscribe.html]$110 for a six month subscription to allow his disciples to receive his pearls of wisdom.

Whether he is a kook or not is personal perception. To MY personal perception, he seems to believe the sky is falling and he is running around in circles with one foot nailed to the floor, with a golden gleam in his eye. Many of his frenetic pronouncements are nothing if not laughable. [Also, with little or no primary relevance to Costa Rica].[/quote]

So you do not suspect any great change is coming; no dollar collapse, no great depression, no hyper inflation or defaltion….everything is just fine…right?[/quote]

Don’t waste your time…. it’s just another case of someone with the Normalcy bias…. and yet this same person is looking to relocate to CR! Why make such a radical move from Chicago if the weather and cost of living were the only factors? There’s many places that one could relocate to within the US to achieve those goals…. perhaps there’s that little voice telling him something is wrong in the US and it’s headed for a reckoning…. he’s just choosing to ignore it as long as possible and be a contrarian in the meantime!

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So you do not suspect any great change is coming; no dollar collapse, no great depression, no hyper inflation or defaltion….everything is just fine…right?[/quote]

Dollar decline? Deep recession/depression? Hyperinflation? Deflation? All these events have happened in the history of the Republic; and the world for that matter. All these things are volatile. They will undoubtedly continue in future. Did you buy a house in Reagan’s 1980? The mortgage rate was 14.5% for me then; and higher for others. The real overwhelming future worry is human population, and its imminently disastrous increase. Here are some worrisome world population facts:
To go from
1 billion to 2 billion took 127 years (1800-1927)
2 billion to 3 billion took 33 years (1927-1960)
3 billion to 4 billion took 14 years (1960 – 1974)
4 billion to 5 billion took 13 years (1974-1987)
5 billion to 6 billion took 12 years (1987-1999)
6 billion to 7 billion took 13 years (1999-2012)

As of today we are over 7.2 billion. Even if we hold at 12 or 13 years to add another billion, by 2050 we will be over 10 billion, which is about the maximum carrying capacity of the Earth. Beyond that point, the projections are for – who knows? Optimists say we will adapt to a new paradigm, pessimists say we’ll have a total collapse of civilization. In the absence of global war, disease pandemics, or massively expanded birth control, it’s difficult to argue that “everything is just fine”. Nor would I, though these things may be fearsome on a personal level. My grandchildren will be around by 2050, perhaps yours as well. I will not, nor will any readers of Scott’s forum, I suspect.

Based on carefully researched population projections by the U.N., there is an 80% probability that the world’s population will be between 9.6 and 12.3 billion by the year 2100. Anyone with a perspective beyond their immediate needs & biases ought to think a bit about this. (My 10 colones.)

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It sounds like your disagreement with Dr Willie is only a matter of timing and degree. That hardly makes his position crazy, does it?
It also sounds like you might be in agreement with those who desire a drastic population reduction. If so, the question of degree and timing becomes very important.

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[quote=”sweikert925″]And you believe that even though there has been nothing reported in the local press even remotely like that?

Is that the same Jim Willie who has [url=http://www.silverdoctors.com/tag/jim-willie/]published this series of preposterous “predictions”[/url] which qualifies him as a thoroughly insane kook?[/quote]

I am a positive person so I have to be careful to not foster false hopes… And I hope that Dr Willie and the many, many other credentialed experts who agree with him are all wrong.but, as the saying goes: you can put hope in one hand and you can defacate in the other and at the end of the day, guess which hand will still be full?”

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[quote=”sweikert925″]Maybe the population pessimists need to read and ponder [url=http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304773104579265520447488200]this[/url] or [url=http://www.economist.com/node/14744915]this.[/url]
Costa Rica has, by the way, already [url=http://www.ticotimes.net/2014/03/25/costa-rica-reports-the-lowest-fertility-rate-in-its-history]reached a birth rate which means a shrinking population.[/url][/quote]

Statistics, as usual, can be manipulated to promote one’s viewpoint.(mine and everyone else’s).
The world birth rate (2000-2012) has indeed declined from 22 per 1000 to 19 per 1000 population, while the death rate has gone from 9 per 1000 to 8. However, who will argue that we will not have any serious impacts until we reach the nebulous maximum carrying capacity of the planet? Has the world not changed, at least partly due to population changes in the last 50 years?

But to get this discussion subtly back to Costa Rica, the birth rate for C.R. has declined from 20.7 to 16.4 per 1000 population (2000-2012) while the death rate has increased slightly (4.3–>4.4). In keeping with the validity of statistics, whether or not pensionados/residents/illegals are included in these data will skew the numbers one way or another, since C.R is a small country.

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[quote=”sweikert925″][quote=”sprite”]I am a positive person…[/quote]I’ll take your word for that, but that certainly isn’t the impression I’ve gotten from your many comments here.
[quote=”sprite”]I hope that Dr Willie and the many, many other credentialed experts who agree with him are all wrong[/quote]You seem to dismiss out of hand all of the evidence presented by even better credentialed experts who point to a different outcome. You automatically question their motives without questioning those of the doom and gloom peddlers who quite openly make money off their gloom-peddling.
[quote=”sprite”]you can put hope in one hand and you can defecate in the other and at the end of the day, guess which hand will still be full?”[/quote]Very colorful, but belief in the ability of people to figure things out and forestall cataclysms is not based solely on hope. There are certainly foolish, venal and corrupt people among those who run things but there are also wise, honest and well-intentioned people among them too. I happen to think there are more of the latter than the former, others can disagree. But the evidence of history shows that, mostly, we – all of us humans – have gotten to live better lives over the long arc of history, so which conclusion does that tend to reinforce?[/quote]

We will not agree on much since our information sources are mutually and diametrically opposed. Time will tell which of our world views was correct. I sincerely HOPE yours is correct but I strongly suspect mine is.
I prefer to err on the side of caution so I make whatever preparations my limited resources allow. Costa Rica is part of that preparation. I f I am wrong, no great damage is done to my position. If, however, I am right, and you make no preparations, you will suffer great damage.

Dr Willie apparently thinks as I do. He lives now in Costa Rica. This is a strong recommendation, in my view, to choosing Costa Rica as a refuge from the coming storm. Many of the wealthy class have already made such a move, buying compounds and land in Central and South America, among them the Bush family (Paraguay).

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[quote=”sweikert925″][quote=”sprite”]If, however, I am right, and you make no preparations, you will suffer great damage.[/quote]
Where did you get the idea that I don’t believe in making [b]reasonable[/b] preparations?[/quote]

Careful, you are going to contradict yourself. For what event(s)would you prepare if you truly believe the kooky nonsense to which you claim to subscribe in the main stream media? Are you perhaps giving some credence to Dr. Willie?

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So you believe the Fed and the government have things under control and that a dollar collapse or substantial revalue of the dollar is not going to happen?

There is a difference between being a practical optimist and being naive. Please list one source-individual who backs up your positive world view on the future of the world economy.

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Just as I thought, Sweikert, you have no knowledge on this matter,just ignorant opinion. Thanks for wasting my time.

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