[smat]

Germany is even worse than you describe. The pension system managed by the government is not backed by any assets at all, but works by taking from the working population to the retired population. Given the age distribution in Germany this means young people are increasingly paying more to this system, while retired people receive less and less per person.

This was of course obvious already a while back, so the government decided to introduce additional ways to encourage saving for retirement (by giving tax discounts). However, they also managed to screw this up, because only contracts from certain insurance companies apply for these tax discounts. And these contracts have such a high management fee, that the real return of those constructs is negative.