A couple of weeks back Mr Muldoon announced National's first major election plank — a superannuation scheme. Since then accusations have been flying backwards and forwards, and a storm of letters has appeared in the Evening Post, most of them critical.

There is little point in joining the statistical games some people have been playing with the alternative super schemes. Such figures are a) highly misleading b) highly unreliable and c) highly confusing. All that this side of the debate has shown is that Roger Douglas seems to have read Darrell Huff's How to Lie with statistics more carefully than the National Party spokesmen. For just one example of how ludicrous figures are, take Douglas's estimate that the average worker will have $250,000 in his personal fund after forty years contributions. That seems like a lot of money but if you make some allowance for the inflation rate (a technique known as discounting) this sum quickly diminishes. If we assume a constant 4% inflation over the next forty years, the $250,000 will buy as much as $52,000 today. At 5% inflation the present value is $35,500 and at 6% S24.300. If there is a much higher rate of inflation the sum is that much smaller — at 15% inflation the present value of $250,000 in forty year's time is only $900.

The point to be stressed is not the absolute size of these figures (which are estimates anyway) but the wide disparity of value, even between 4% and 6%. Obviously with this margin of error no-one (not even Super Douglas) can accurately predict what anything will be worth in 40 years time.

The statistics aside, there are several basic issues raised by the two schemes, which are here briefly outlined: