[jltsiren]

And capital gains are actually property taken from the workers and given to capitalists. In both cases, the recipients have magic tokens that legally entitle them to some of the value created by other people.

I don't know how this works in other countries. In Finland, it was established decades ago that pensions based on past contributions are constitutionally protected private property. Because people made explicit pension contributions and because the government promised that the future pension would be based on the individual contributions, the government can't alter the deal substantially without a constitutional amendment. If the contributions had been general taxes, or if the promised pension had been independent of the actual contributions, ordinary legislative process would have been enough.