[rglullis]

No account for inflation? No account for the rising costs in healthcare, and diminishing returns on that "investment"? No account for the fact that 35 years ago the proportion of economic active people to retired ones was completely different?

If you are going to dismiss a (very middle class, by social standards) dude, at least you should do a little bit more than hand-waving.

[chrismealy]

2% is real. The US has average around 3% for years now. And since I don't believe in the tendency of the rate of profit to fall I don't think assuming at least 2% is unreasonable. But let's say zero. Does anyone really think we'll lose the ability to care for the old?

Here's the simple way to think about pensions/SS: we take about 4% of GDP and cut checks to old people. They buy food and pay their rent. Nobody starves. It always works, in 1961, 2011, 2061, whenever. Anybody who says otherwise is trying to fool you.

[jshen]

He mentioned this, "Part of the magic is that they don’t promise unlimited inflation indexing. If their country gets poorer, the pain will be shared by the working and non-working alike. "

Will we have the political will to do it any time soon?

[rglullis]

Define "old people".

[urbanjunkie]

In Japan, pension outlays, right now, are more approximately 10% of GDP. In the US RIGHT NOW, pension outlays are approximately 6% of GDP.

As the ratio of earners to pensioners moves closer to 1:1, this % outlay is only going to get worse.

Am I trying to fool you?

[edited to remove pointless ad hominem]

[bluedanieru]

It should be this simple. Hopefully circumstances will force society to cut some of the bullshit and implement it. At the moment there is a lot of waste and mis-allocation of resources.

[bluedanieru]

We might be forced to stop spending such absurd amounts of money on the military, and we may also be forced to restructure our healthcare system to something resembling sane and efficient, but the parent's got a point.