I was replying to a comment which lamented the fact that people's pensions depend on the stock market. I brought up that the alternative - financing current pen

I was replying to a comment which lamented the fact that people's pensions depend on the stock market. I brought up that the alternative - financing current pensioners directly from taxes or an "insurance" fees - also has some large drawbacks. You are probably talking about Norway's sovereign wealth fund[0] (funded by oil revenues); the actual pension fund is only for government employees and structured almost exactly like any non-government pension fund. There are of course many financing models that are some combination of the two, but these models have the exact same problem to the degree that they invest in the stock market. Also, there are very few countries in the world that invest their oil surplus as wisely as Norway. Most democracies would just use the funds to hand out election presents to their voters. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor...