[rayiner]

Unless you "save for retirement" by putting canned food in a basement, all you're doing is arranging for some sort of entitlement to a share of the production of a future generation of workers. That's true whether you're talking about social security paid with tax dollars, dividends paid on stock holdings, etc. Those are all abstractions over an arrangement in which a working generation gives up some of the surplus of its labor to the retired generation.

[zimablue]

That's a good point and fairly true I think but there are some caveats that limit it's application to this argument as in (do we want more american kids). 1. It's not only the production, we also work for tangibleassets, mostly housing like you said storable food, machinery etc. That's relevant because if population decreased all of these would become cheaper. To take to the extreme - 1000,000 humans in the near future could probably sustain an incredible standard of living assisted by robots. Pragmatically, if I owned a house my outgoings would be tiny. 2. You're paying for the work of ANY future generation, it absolutely doesn't have to be American. Most of the most expensive things (electronics, cars) are already produced abroad. Food, haircuts and social care are a fraction and only decreasing.

So social security doesn't have to be that shape and an equally large young American population isn't necessary to sustain the current older population. Deeper than this thread but I guess relevant, a lot of hours go into producing products for the 1%, or jobs which don't make sense which our system protects because it's built around having 100% employment so we force you into a min. wage job in order to pay the rest of your income in benefits from taxes on the top percent. If our system didn't optimize to 100% employment and had more extensive welfare you'd see much higher unemployment and the trains would still run.