[soco]

And why wouldn't the elderly need to keep working longer? They did benefit from all the new medical stuff extending their active lives, so how about giving back by working a few years more? It's also their own decision to have less children, thus less workers, and also they generally don't want more immigrants, so there - it's either more work, or magic. And we don't know how to do magic.

[skeledrew]

Elderly means old enough for certain classes of issues to pop up that makes continuing to work less feasible. There's only so much more years that can be added before their contributions become absolutely net negative. Unless we also find general medical solutions to freeze/reverse the issues.

[spwa4]

You mean spend more money on the elderly? You seem to misunderstand the purpose of this whole exercise.

I will point out that the tax increase being proposed here is, of course, ALSO extra money for the state that people are expected to pay in trade for elderly care that the state, of course, ALSO doesn't have the money to deliver when it's needed. In other words, it's demanding the general population pays for a service now, a service math dictates they will never receive.

Oh AND the state is further defunding child care, schools, universities, ... which of course is also being put forward as "families need to take more responsibility".

[skeledrew]

And your solution is? The problem is many eldery are currently going without sufficient care. How do you address that?

[spwa4]

They voted and paid taxes based on a deal that was presented to them, in writing. Now the deal is being changed.

[soco]

Deals kept changing, both the economy and politics never kept the same line over time. We even vote every few years for a deal presented in writing and it never turns out as written, so I'm not sure why some folks could claim with a straight face whatever historical promise. And let's be honest, there was never a "written deal", ever - what you mention here is simply an expectation building up for the last decades and currently ebbing down.

[spwa4]

My father was a teacher, a public servant. At one point he showed me "the deal in writing". Signed by the director of the school. It had a reference to the law, but everything was copied into the contract. The pension plan, including the age he would be allowed to go onto pension, how sick days are handled, how holidays are handled, how long-term illness would be handles, sickness insurance, what was covered, how ... It was over 20 pages, which was certainly not the norm for a contract in the 70s.

They updated the law and the contract meant nothing. I mean, he and other teachers occasionally, through long term and sometimes very wide strikes, got some new policy struck down. But never through the courts. They won several court cases against the government, mind you, that was not the problem. But the government simply voted in a new law, including a stipulation that the court case result meant nothing (because of course a bunch of people were owed back pay due to the court's decision. Out of over 10.000 teachers that got court judgements against the government, TWO got paid what the contract explicitly said over 1 million teachers had a right to)