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While Ambachtsheer makes some valid points, he overlooks a strong point against his action: the current government is led by a right-wing party (VVD) that has a long tradition of destroying pension capital for the sake of political dogma. The party knows about supply and demand, but not about market failure. It likes high finance, but dogmatically abhors social security. It has no knowledge of people's wishes to build up a good pension and inability to do so if left to their own devices. That probably sounds more normal in Canadian ears, but it is unbalanced in the long run, creating reforms that have to be repaired soon again.

Just to illustrate how superficial pension thinking is: IPE recently reported that at least one politician wants to reserve pension questions for the ministry of finance alone, shoving the ministry of social affairs away from decision making. If pensions are not a social service, why not privatise the sector and accept the ensuing poverty among the elderly as normal and unavoidable? In this climate and with such leaders, doing nothing is better than reform.