#retirement #fail
By 2030, people over sixty-five in Germany, the world’s third largest economy, will account for almost half the adult population, compared with one-fifth now [..]. The German demographics are far from exceptional. In Japan, the world’s second-largest economy, the population will peak in 2005, at around 125 million. By 2050, according to the more pessimistic government forecasts, the population will have shrunk to around 95 million. Long before that, around 2030, the share of the over-sixty-fives in the adult population will have grown to about half.
Life expectancy—and with it the number of older people—has been going up steadily for 300 years. But the decline in the number of young people is something new. The only developed country that has so far avoided this fate is America. But even there the birth rate is well below replacement level, and the proportion of older people in the adult population will rise steeply in the next thirty years.
By 2030 at the latest, the age at which full retirement benefits start will have risen to the mid-seventies in all developed countries, and benefits for healthy pensioners will be substantially lower than they are today. Indeed, fixed retirement ages for people in reasonable physical and mental condition may have been abolished to prevent the pensions burden on the working population from becoming unbearable. Already young and middle-aged people at work suspect that there will not be enough pension money to go round when they themselves reach traditional retirement age. But politicians everywhere continue to pretend that they can save the current pensions system.
Rule #1 for designing robust systems (take it from an systems designer) - reduce dependency. Forcing an entire generation depend on another generation will lead to fail. Solution: Let me take out my most favorite hammer as of late: retired and in need of social security? Print your own money. Out of work? Print your money. Want to make extra cash? Sell your services, and.. print your own money.
at
February 03, 2014