[myrmidon]

This is reductive, and incorrect. You simply need working-age people to run stuff, full stop. Approaching a 1:1 ratio of workers/retirees is simply unsustainable (yet), for very obvious reasons.

While wealth disparity is also a problem, solving it would NOT solve this one: In Germany, completely disowning (!) the richest 10% (!!) would not even pay for a decade of pensions.

[triceratops]

> Approaching a 1:1 ratio of workers/retirees is simply unsustainable (yet), for very obvious reasons

Society would be very dull with that many old people. But other than that the reasons aren't obvious to me. Let's say the worker ratio was 4:1 80 years ago, which was sustainable. If 1:1 is unsustainable, that means each worker today doesn't produce 4x as much as a worker 80 years ago.

But that's not true! In fact in the US, labor productivity is 6 times what it was 80 years ago. [1] A worker today is equal to 6 from 1947, in terms of the value they create. So ask yourself: why isn't the math working out?

1. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OPHPBS

[myrmidon]

Rising productivity is a weak argument imo for several reasons:

Pensions have to not rise with wages for this to be useful. Which simply isnt happening in practice (yet?)

Also no meaningful increase in housebuilding, nursing, plumbing, childcare productivity; even worse, rise in general productivity increases costs (Baumol effect).

I'm very confident that we can make the math work out one way or another, but this might involve sacrifices that people dont even want to contemplate (yet!).