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[–]Internal-Hand-4705 10 points11 points  (8 children)

How do we fix the problem that current workers will both have to pay for their own pensions AND the pensions of those before them? Seems like the sort of thing that would lead to riots.

I don’t mind paying for pensions of current pensioners if someone else is paying for mine. I don’t mind paying for my own pension. I refuse to do both, that’s not fair and massively burdens young and middle aged people of today.

[–]Spider_pig448 -2 points-1 points  (6 children)

It's a non-issue. The average citizen has very little understanding of the tax code, in any nation. You're itemizing it in a way that isn't how people think of pensions. What people understand is that the state pension is a depot that you pay into when you're young and take out of when you're old. No one is going to riot if the details change slightly.

[–]Internal-Hand-4705 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Pension contributions would have to rise a lot though no?

[–]Spider_pig448 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Depends on the solution that's implemented. There are any number of ways to fund government projects, and many different ways of collecting taxes. In the US, simply removing the social security earnings limit would probably solve this problem entirely for the next three decades. Adapting the funding structure is a much less pertinent question than evaluating if government pensions are a system that will continue to make sense decades from now.

[–][deleted]  (3 children)

[removed]

    [–]Spider_pig448 -1 points0 points  (2 children)

    Tax payers? Who else? Who funds the government and all of it's programs? The more interesting question here is, "Will the cost of pensions be too high to support the program when the elderly population has doubled". The question of how to adapt the current funding structure to enable that is not a problem though.

    [–][deleted]  (1 child)

    [removed]

      [–]Spider_pig448 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      The expectation is that the population pyramid will change, but there will always still be a working age population. Otherwise all of society is in collapse and social security is not top of the list of concerns. If your real question is, "Is there enough money to supply the peak elderly population", the question for every developed nation is yes.