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by user5994461 3097 days ago
It varies vastly by country. In France, the state calculates a percent of your income during the 4X years you were working and gives you that as a pension. The estimation can be pretty complicated, but that's fair enough for a one line explanation.

The system will collapse eventually. More and more elderly to support by less and less active workers. The younger population is suffering from vast unemployment (25%) and they will never achieve 40 years of continuous work in their lifetime.
1 comments
selestify 3097 days ago
> More and more elderly to support

> The younger population is suffering from vast unemployment

It appears there is a lot of work to be done and a lot of idle workers to do it. The fact that both can exist in tandem seems like an indictment of how horribly inefficient our economic systems currently are.

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user5994461 3097 days ago
Not sure what you mean. Retirees don't create jobs. They just get money handed to them monthly as promised by the pension formula decided decades ago. (that money is supposed to come from taxes on active workers's salaries)

The whole system collapse when taxes are not enough to cover the pensions that were promised. It's a ponzi scheme.

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mwfunk 3097 days ago
That’s a problem of demographics and unemployment, not a Ponzi scheme. Ponzi schemes are scams, but they do effectively take money from people and give it to other people, which doesn’t happen if there’s no funds to transfer.

I don’t think any country can sustain a 25% unemployment rate for any length of time without it having catastrophic second- and third-order effects. That’s the problem, not the concept of taxpayer-funded pensions. All sorts of things are going to be underfunded or otherwise hosed if you’re struggling with 25% unemployment for any length of time. Nations have imploded over far less.

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user5994461 3096 days ago
It's not the percentage for the whole population. It's 25% unemployment for young people. 50% unemployment for young people without higher education.
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expertentipp 3097 days ago
> Retirees don't create jobs

They do in countries with extensive social systems. Look at Germany. There is boom for daycare services, retirement homes, various mobility devices, the country is sucking in females aged 40-60 from Poland employed (gray/black market mostly, I'm wondering who will take care of them in 20-30 years) to take care of Germany elderly, etc.

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typomatic 3096 days ago
Yeah, we've outscaled capitalism and it no longer allocates resources well.
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