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Pensions are not sustainable. Current mandatory CPP contribution in Canada seems like that. It's a promise that government makes that we contribute now which is

Pensions are not sustainable. Current mandatory CPP contribution in Canada seems like that. It's a promise that government makes that we contribute now which is taken to cover the current senior citizens. What if there isn't enough working force when we get older? How would the government keep the promise?

snarf21 7y ago
That's right, pensions are all pyramid schemes. Even when you factor in "stealing" back the money from anyone who dies early. We need a more standard X% towards retirement for people who are working and anything else is a needs based system. If you are retired and poor you get $X each month. If you have lots of money, you get nothing.
Sileni 7y ago
Social Security in the US as well. Most of my generation that I've talked to have just accepted it as another tax; there's not going to be anything left of it by the time we would actually expect to withdraw from it.
- goodells 7y ago
  I (and many others) maintain that social security at the federal level is completely unconstitutional, and lament the system that has evolved around using it as the de-facto national identification in the United States. Of course there are externalities associated with the lack of a social safety net for the elderly, and at this point it very well may be "worth it" for the younger generation to pay it to avoid the consequences. What a mess.
cryptonector 7y ago
Not only pensions. Individuals cannot save any kind of money for retirement on their own if there will be no one to give to in exchange for services after retirement. We cannot save without children, and the only answer is more automation, or just tough it out until the hump is past and we can have a more stable population. Toughing it out is not easy: young people put off having children or avoid it altogether if they feel they can't afford it. Of course, young people today don't have to deal with the privations of yesteryear -- they have no idea, but no matter, they won't have children if it feels too difficult.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > young people put off having children or avoid it altogether if they feel they can't afford it. Well, people describe their behavior that way, and it may be true to an extent over very short timescales (like a short recession), but economic development empirically leads to decreased population growth overall; people don't have more kids because they are prosperous and less because they are not, but the reverse.
  - cryptonector 7y ago
    That's the general arc, yes, but I think for Europe the specific effect lately has been the opposite. Perhaps it's part of the same effect, just a generalization. Economic growth -> longer life expectancy / lower child mortality -> population boom -> people figure this out -> baby bust -> ??? -> stable population. We're in the ??? part, and we may overshoot both sides of equilibrium for a long time for all I know. My sense is very much that fertility rates below replacement rate is due to young people feeling incapable of affording child rearing.
    - phil21 7y ago
      I'm curious if any modeling has been done around 1 vs. 2 working-parent households in developed countries, in relation to population growth. Would we really be having a problem with "natives" not having kids if a single parent could work full time for a (very) comfortable lifestyle as it was just 40 years ago? It seems to me there is at least a correlation around the time a 2 parent household more or less became a requirement for the middle class to simply survive and when it became such a burden to raise a child. Since everyone is now more or less competing with 2x dollars for the same amount of fixed cost "stuff" (housing, education, healthcare, etc.) prices for those things rose substantially faster than inflation. Then you add in the second or third highest cost a dual-income family has (child care) that didn't really exist 40 years ago.... It seems at least obvious on it's face that this was going to happen. We removed any and all slack from our family lives, and wonder why we can't seem to get ahead when we have multiple decades of income hyper-planned in advance. I also think car culture and suburbification of many western countries also heavily contributed - at the same time we were forcing parents to both work outside the home, we also decided it wasn't cool to live near extended family or within a close-knit multi-generational community. Thus making the need for child care even more acute. I'm not entirely sure the point I'm making really - just that it seems so obvious. This outcome was practically written in stone on the policies (fiscal, social, and energy) western governments put in place since WWII.

snarf21 7y ago

That's right, pensions are all pyramid schemes. Even when you factor in "stealing" back the money from anyone who dies early. We need a more standard X% towards retirement for people who are working and anything else is a needs based system. If you are retired and poor you get $X each month. If you have lots of money, you get nothing.

Sileni 7y ago

Social Security in the US as well. Most of my generation that I've talked to have just accepted it as another tax; there's not going to be anything left of it by the time we would actually expect to withdraw from it.

goodells 7y ago
I (and many others) maintain that social security at the federal level is completely unconstitutional, and lament the system that has evolved around using it as the de-facto national identification in the United States. Of course there are externalities associated with the lack of a social safety net for the elderly, and at this point it very well may be "worth it" for the younger generation to pay it to avoid the consequences. What a mess.

cryptonector 7y ago

Not only pensions. Individuals cannot save any kind of money for retirement on their own if there will be no one to give to in exchange for services after retirement. We cannot save without children, and the only answer is more automation, or just tough it out until the hump is past and we can have a more stable population. Toughing it out is not easy: young people put off having children or avoid it altogether if they feel they can't afford it. Of course, young people today don't have to deal with the privations of yesteryear -- they have no idea, but no matter, they won't have children if it feels too difficult.

dragonwriter 7y ago
> young people put off having children or avoid it altogether if they feel they can't afford it. Well, people describe their behavior that way, and it may be true to an extent over very short timescales (like a short recession), but economic development empirically leads to decreased population growth overall; people don't have more kids because they are prosperous and less because they are not, but the reverse.
- cryptonector 7y ago
  That's the general arc, yes, but I think for Europe the specific effect lately has been the opposite. Perhaps it's part of the same effect, just a generalization. Economic growth -> longer life expectancy / lower child mortality -> population boom -> people figure this out -> baby bust -> ??? -> stable population. We're in the ??? part, and we may overshoot both sides of equilibrium for a long time for all I know. My sense is very much that fertility rates below replacement rate is due to young people feeling incapable of affording child rearing.
  - phil21 7y ago
    I'm curious if any modeling has been done around 1 vs. 2 working-parent households in developed countries, in relation to population growth. Would we really be having a problem with "natives" not having kids if a single parent could work full time for a (very) comfortable lifestyle as it was just 40 years ago? It seems to me there is at least a correlation around the time a 2 parent household more or less became a requirement for the middle class to simply survive and when it became such a burden to raise a child. Since everyone is now more or less competing with 2x dollars for the same amount of fixed cost "stuff" (housing, education, healthcare, etc.) prices for those things rose substantially faster than inflation. Then you add in the second or third highest cost a dual-income family has (child care) that didn't really exist 40 years ago.... It seems at least obvious on it's face that this was going to happen. We removed any and all slack from our family lives, and wonder why we can't seem to get ahead when we have multiple decades of income hyper-planned in advance. I also think car culture and suburbification of many western countries also heavily contributed - at the same time we were forcing parents to both work outside the home, we also decided it wasn't cool to live near extended family or within a close-knit multi-generational community. Thus making the need for child care even more acute. I'm not entirely sure the point I'm making really - just that it seems so obvious. This outcome was practically written in stone on the policies (fiscal, social, and energy) western governments put in place since WWII.