[jraph]

IMHO, we do want retirement (it is essential that past a certain age, you are not forced to work anymore - at least because you are too tired to work, at best so you can enjoy life full time as you see fit - retired people also babysit and run a lot of important stuff thanks to their free time, so they still work but outside wage labor in a way - so much so that many things would break if they didn't).

This being established, retired people obviously need money to live. You have basically two existing systems for this:

1. You make the working class pay for currently retired people

2. You make each people put money aside for later

The first choice is a collective solution to a collective problem, and also provides guarantees.

The second choice is liable to economical crises, mistakes and is an individualistic solution to a collective problem. The risk is having people who don't have any money and who are forced to work at the end of their life (if they can still find a position and are still healthy enough for this).

Of course, 1 is not perfect: there are laws defining the minimum amount of work you need to do in your like to have a good pension. If you don't work "enough" in your life, no good retirement for you. But that's a problem both options have.

It's unclear what benefit that second solution brings to the table, in both cases there's some amount of money that needs to be set aside for stuff to work. Only, in the first solution, that's safely managed for you, you pretty much don't have to worry about it.

Pensions don't seem that fat as well.

As someone currently working, I'll take the "Europe pays the pensions" aka "We, the working class, pay the pensions", aka the first option, any day. I'm happy to pay for the retirement of my retired fellows.

I would worry more about the ultra-riches stealing money from everyone and digging the inequality gap.

[barrkel]

The second mode is another way of doing the first, actually.

Either way, working people's output today needs to support the non-working people today (unless you let them starve). Whether that is done via taxation or via wealth accumulation, one way or another, more and more young people will be supporting old people.

And it's not even clear the wealth accumulation angle is good. It requires young people to own a lower amount of wealth so that old people can dangle it in from of them to keep them supported.

[jraph]

> The second mode is another way of doing the first, actually.

The two major differences are that in the first, no money is stored, has to undergo inflation or risk disappearing. It's also not your individual money coming back to you.

I agree with the rest.

[nec4b]

Why would you limit yourself to only those two options? E.g. You could also have a collective system of pension funds where money you pay for your future pension would accumulate (invest) instead of pay as you go system, where the money is immediately spend by the state.

[jraph]

I'm sure there are plenty other options, those are the ones I know exist (there are variants).

I'm not sure what benefits your proposal brings.

Whenever you have an amount of money you don't spend immediately, you have to worry about inflation and investing (that's also of course true for the second option)

And the first option force pensions to be in the country's annual budget. For the better and the worse.