the social contract used to be: each generation nurtures a new one and cares for the old one. obvious problems with childlessness, infertility, accidents, bach

the social contract used to be: each generation nurtures a new one and cares for the old one. obvious problems with childlessness, infertility, accidents, bachelors, orphans. assuming you live in the US one obvious solution is to move somewhere with a better pension system the economic trend is that the things needed to live get cheaper (and we constantly raise the bar for what's considered "needed") still as long as efficiency gains are left (and we are veeeeery far from nowhere to look for more gains) it's likely that basic necessities will continue to be provided with higher efficiency. the question is what society optimizes for? more suburban sprawl, spending more of our economic surplus on building more hard to maintain, hard to heat/cool houses? spreading the population even more thin, requiring even more inefficient cars, more and more miles of pipes, roads and whatnot, or ... (and I'm not saying to have cheap retirement we need to live in a Borg cube).