[Detrytus]

> A contribution towards your pension is not a tax. It's a deferred payment. You will get that money later, with interest.

That's quite a naive take. European public pension systems don't work like that. The money is not invested, it is spent immediately to pay pensions to those who have already reached retirement age. What you get is a promise that some day you'll also get paid pension. But there's no guarantee that this will happen, since, as I said, this money is not invested, or set aside in a vault, it's spent immediately. And given current demographic trends you have very slim chance of ever seeing that money again.

[david-gpu]

> European public pension systems don't work like that

People should have voted for a better system, then. In Spain I've heard the same people complain about the unsustainability of the pension system while also complaining about the "Austrian backpack" approach, which is one way to address that problem.

Personally, I would prefer something like every person born in the same year contribute to the same pension fund, to be invested and redistributed as they turn 65, sort of like a mandatory annuity. It would avoid introducing these sort of inter-generational tensions.

> And given current demographic trends you have very slim chance of ever seeing that money again

That can be solved via immigration. People may not like the solution, but it is available to them, should they choose it.

[manuelabeledo]

People complaining about the current social security ”demise”, and people claiming that the Austrian backpack is the solution, are the same, i.e. people who believe that individualized plans are preferable to socialized ones, but fail to understand that it creates more disparity, and less security.

The Austrian backpack is extremely beneficial to large companies, thus is of no surprise that it gets touted in the news from time to time.

They don’t talk that much about its biggest drawback: in a market where wages are already low and talent is rarely valued, it would make firing people so cheap, companies wouldn’t really have any incentive to keep highly paid employees, even if they are excellent performers.

[veave]

>People should have voted for a better system, then. In Spain I've heard the same people complain about the unsustainability of the pension system while also complaining about the "Austrian backpack" approach, which is one way to address that problem.

Spain is a... pathologically left-wing country, I would say. That indicates, among other things, a profound lack of knowledge of economics, which explains what you say (and some other stuff).

>That can be solved via immigration. People may not like the solution, but it is available to them, should they choose it.

Spain's youth unemployment rate is at around 28% right now. As long as there is a single unemployed Spanish person, especially young people, we shouldn't be accepting any more immigrants.

[Detrytus]

> Spain's youth unemployment rate is at around 28% right now. As long as there is a single unemployed Spanish person, especially young people, we shouldn't be accepting any more immigrants.

You can expect commenters on HN to interpret this as racism, but actually, it is just a simple logic: First you need to fix the economy so that it can create jobs, then you invite potential workers to immigrate.

Take Poland as an example of this: they way are ahead of Spain on "demographic collapse" curve, but also have a blooming economy - unemployment rate is one of the lowest in EU at 2.7 percent. Two millions of Ukrainian refugees came in there in the past year, and you know what? Most of them found jobs.

[manuelabeledo]

> That indicates, among other things, a profound lack of knowledge of economics

The assumption here is that economies led by right wing governments are more successful, which is hilariously untrue.

Having strong social protections and higher taxes does correlate with higher living standards, though. No social protections and no taxes correlate mostly with failed countries, so there is that.