Your pension duty
Ex-CNB Gov. Zdeněk Tůma, now of KPMG, went further than anyone else and wrote last week in HN that it is socially irresponsible not to sign up for the second pillar of the pension system. He suggested that we have a duty to future generations to protect the pay-as-you-go system. Compare this to what Miloš Zeman said on Mon. There are better ways than the second pillar to increase the value of your savings, he said. The main thing he fears, he said, is the failure of private pension funds. Who's to guarantee, he asked, that after putting your money in one for 30 years, they won't say to you, "Sorry, we had bad luck on the stock market." He then pointed to the 97% drop in the stock price of CME over the past two years (six years, actually). Duty, it seems, is in the eye of the beholder. It's either to society, to our children, to ourselves, or to the private pension funds. Only in a perfect world can it be to all of them at the same time.
Glossary of difficult words
pay-as-you-go - the first (mandatory) pillar of the pension system; relating to a system of paying debts or meeting costs as they arise;Zeman - to hear his comment, go to the 14:18 mark of the video (the time is in the bottom left corner of the screen);
beholder - one who beholds, watches or looks on;
duty is in the eye of the beholder - a word play on the expression "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," which means that beauty cannot be judged objectively - what one person finds beautiful (or a duty) may not appeal to another person.