There's nothing about it that it's not "sustainable". Pensions aren't and shouldn't be a pyramid scheme (of younger vs older generations etc).

Let's consider UBI.

A UBI of $1000/month for 300M Americans comes about $3.5 trillion/year. That's around 18% of the US GDP.

And that's flat out giving the money.

Now reduce that by the current welfare spending which is $1.2 trillion (and which you could replace with the UBI, or perhaps just keep the 0.2 trillion of it for special cases), and you get to $2.5 trillion/year, or ~13% of the GDP.

For comparison overall government spending was 38% of GDP in 2017.

Of course "free pension" would be far less than that amount, because this UBI amount is calculated for 300M people. Whereas pensioners will be only people > 65 y.o or so -- a much smaller number.

We're getting to something like 5% of the GDP or less.

And that's assuming everybody is equally entitled to that money. Which people already having wealth need not be, living even less people entitled to that "free pension" -- if you have a million in savings you don't really need that $1000/month, do you?

And of course, workers pay (or can be made to pay, with an automatic tax of say 10% month, as most civilized western countries have) for their pensions throughout their careers. So a large amount of pensions can come from that.

Not to mention the pension money wont magically disappear -- it'll be reintroduced into the economy (and further taxed etc).

With sane housing laws and no crazy lifestyles, people can live just fine on $1000/month. In fact they do just that, even with less, all over the world, including in places with more expensive food and consumer products than the USA.

The two things that need to be kept low are rent (which should be: the US has ample space to built on --nobody said pensioners have to live in Miami or NY, and should not be costing more than a few tens of thousands for the kind of constructions that pass for homes there) and healthcare (which in the US is laughably overpaid for what it offers -- I have been asked to pay $200 for perfectly common and safe procedures one can do themselves, and which in other western countries you can have at your average pharmacy for $10).

>How do people who think a feasible UBI future is possible square with this?

Because this was done to calm down the markets. The debt is approaching 100%.

Perhaps because it's true. In my relatively short life, the retirement age went up by over 5 years, and by the time I reach it it's going to go up by at least another 5 years. And let me tell you, there's no chance in hell I'm retiring at 70. A conservative fund would 'outperform' any government pension system in the long term.

Remember, the pension system was devised in a time where a lot of people died before the pension age. It is impossible for the pensions to keep up without overtaxing the young or increasing the pension age.

On top of that, you may contribute north of 100k in your lifetime towards your pension 'fund' that you will never see if you die a day before retirement (as my father did).

Not to mention the fact that there's no actual pension 'fund', not up to the full amount at least (or anywhere near). Most of the funds I pay in today will be paid out to pensioneers tomorrow.

Due to the economic downturns of recent decades and some poor decisions, both my parents, and at least a half dozen other 50-60+ people I know will never be retiring because they have no personal retirement funds left, due to having spent them all due to cost of living increases, job insecurity, medical expenses (hahaha USA) forcing them to consume their IRAs, where both had 15+ year single-position careers, but got 401Ks instead of pensions.

Its only going to get worse for newer generations.

> studying or living on welfare will steadily increase

But thats not what is happening. It is an outlier and a corruption of the current political paradigms (again, US) to be able to break out of wage slavery. Social Security Disability is, if anything, a necessary evil for the rich and powerful to somehow avoid 40%+ unemployment overnight. But it is a horribly broken and wrong system to have. Same with all the other benefits programs. In reality many people are working 2+ dead end jobs, and cannot retire at all, almost exclusively due to a lack of connections or social wit to get on welfare programs or into cushy jobs.

We should have a UBI, one that is tied to the real growth of automation and technological efficiency, that can start however low it needs to be (look at the Alaskan oil dividend) and as we automate more (and thus put more and more means of production ownership in fewer and fewer hands) the benefits can actually uplift society.

Good luck ever passing that, even in the most socialist European countries like Sweden. There is just too much profit in keeping 90% of the first world population on a downward spiral of insecurity and desperation.

The government redistributing wealth, i.e. Social Security. A federal defined benefit pension plan, if you will. And if it were up to me, I would take it even further and make it universal basic income.

> Pensions are supposed to legally outlast employers. Judicial failure to enforce that is evidence of a corrupt and politicized judicial branch that is actively waging class war against those with lower economic status.

Decades and decades of evidence indicate that the system does not work. But more importantly, automation and technology have obviated employer sponsored defined benefit pensions.

There is no value add from having employers in the middle of the wealth transfer chain. It is just extra paperwork and overhead and chances for corruption.

The pension funds invest in the same place as everyone else, the stock and real estate market. And then the government comes and bails out asset owners time and time again, so that the pension recipients get bailed out. But then why not hand the pension recipients the cash directly?

> I just really wish the "eat the rich" UBI crowd wasn't so innumerate.

It was +3.2b in 2022, + 0.9m in 2021, with a slight deficit predicted in the short term and equilibrium from 2030s (average scenario)

tl;dr : it's not a big deal, and certainly not the real reason of the change in retirement age

You're falsely trying to paint the choice as only between driving retirees into poverty and paying the full pension.

I certainly won't be receiving 60-100% of my maximum salary forever after I retire, and I won't need nearly that much in order to not be in poverty. And IMO it borders on unjust to underfund a pension with tax dollars while those workers are working, then force younger workers that weren't even old enough to vote when those benefits were created to now shoulder the burden.

Why can't we cut pensions, without eliminating them? Why can't the state switch from defined benefit to defined contribution plans, like practically ever other non-government employee gets?

> If you drive a political wedge between the young and old, I can't say what will happen, but it won't involve the young ending up on top.

This is true only up to a point. The old aren't exactly going to be the ones who will win if the economy collapses or the country descends into chaos, are they?

They are being forced to plan for the next 75 years now. in 2006 They were given 10 years to have the money needed for all pensions up to 75 years in the future. That is an unreasonable burden because no company does that. No company is planning 75 years from now on anything.

> In my humble opinion I think that all government pensions should be funded

No one is saying Pensions should stop being funded or paid out.

> because it is not fair for us to artificially lower costs now and expect everyone's children and grandchildren in the future to somehow pay for this generation's unfunded promises.

They are not artificially lowering costs, they were making a decent profit without this burden at the current price point. They were more then capable of meeting their obligations including pensions due now, and still making a decent profit. Nothing was being pushed off to future generations.

Wrong.

The only difference is that your pension fund will not be "looted", it will have to cut its payouts because its investments don't yield the same returns as they did before. Inflation will do the rest.

Private pension funds and investments are no more sustainable or "honest" than public pensions.

The underlying problem is the same: the currently working population has to produce the goods and services for themselves as well as for pensioners. If they cannot produce enough of something, some people won't get that thing, and it doesn't matter what some numbers in accounts say.

That's your view, not mine. Bankrupt governments are a fact for the both of us.

I would stop immediately if I could. I am, however, required by law to save for a pension I will never receive.

The retirement age has already been raised to 67 where I live and is now linked to life expectancy. The second someone finds a cure for old age my retirement will be cancelled. Even if they don't, by the time I'm 67 the pension age will be >70.

It took multiple decades for it to become unsustainable thanks to increasing life durations.

> Also, I wonder, if the law is such controversial, why not hold a referendum

Because fundamentally, if you ask people if they want to work 2 more years, very few will say yes. This is an unpopular decision, like carbon cutting measures, that is needed at the higher level, but few will choose to make the sacrifice.

Yeah, and I say that as someone on the wrong side of forty.

The relative growth in wealth from pensioners to working groups in most Western nations is completely unsustainable, and will end very badly eventually. Trying to flatten the curve now is preferable to the alternatives.

Because they have no money and I have a fair amount, and because letting them starve on the street would be unfair. Someone's going to have to finance their waning years.

When you put it like that it sounds like they had zero responsibility for the situation. It's usually populist policies that are democratically elected that lead to this situation in the first place - it's interesting how politicians always get the blame but the people who voted/campaigned/supported them because it was in their direct interest at the time aren't even considered.

Reality is a lot of pension systems around the world are unsustainable and built on the assumption that population and economy will continue to grow. Even the mandatory "private" pension funds in my country (Eastern Europe) mostly buy government bonds and that ends up being spent by the government. And nobody is even talking about reducing government spending or getting a sustainable budged they are just worried their privileges don't get touched and throw around nonsensical demagoguery to rationalize their views.

I find it hard to be sympathetic with people that cause this kinds of problems in the first place and impose it on others trough democratic process.

This is happening, based on my own experience. I am 22, I have a safe job with an above average salary but I still cannot find an apartment with my partner. I can’t imagine affording my own place with the current prices, especially not at the age my parents were able to. And all of that concerns are completely ignoring the current price hikes which make everything even worse.

For as long as I can remember teachers and my parents told me that the pension system won’t be able to support my generation. Everybody my age who can afford to does not expect any substantial pension payments and tries to support the own future by own investments (which is pretty hard when you pay +400€/mo into the mandatory public pension)

The situation is even worse for people with lower incomes.

This is not projection. Admittedly, this is my experience. But I know many many people who had similar experiences when they first entered the workforce.

Hear, hear, especially given the historical priors : (hint: across a generation-sized time spans, governments never keep their promises. Why should they, they usually are in power for decades at most).

And yes, relying on governments to handle your retirement money is completely insane, but the vast majority of folks in e.g. the EU have drunk that kool-aid even though it was guaranteed to fail since day one.

Retirement plans the way they work in Western Europe were always an absolute con, very much like a ponzi scheme (new players pay for the earlier players).

When the young, working population was vastly larger than the old retiree population (because the retirement age was designed so that most people died before reaching it), the government milked their working young for all they were worth.

Now that the age pyramid has inverted (large retiree population, few working youngs), there simply isn't enough income generated by the young to pay for the old and retirement income is paid using debt.

What a freak show.

Which they will use when they've grown old.

What I'm getting at is that there is no such thing as a secure long term store of value and such a thing has never existed. Not even gold can be that. We can all wish for it, but it cannot exist.

So how they do it today is by using violence to forcefully exploit the surplus production from younger generations to support the elder generation. All political "systems" and ideologies today serve that goal. Any young person in the Western world who is working gets exploited in at least the following:

- Receiving less in salary than she produces, so that the company can turn a profit. This profit in general goes to stock owners who are pension funds or elderly individuals. This is how capitalism exploits the worker and it could be fine if it was only this.

- Paying taxes on their salary and hidden taxes before receiving a salary. A young worker has almost no benefit of government spending, while a huge amount of the government expenses goes to supporting the elderly. This is how socialism exploits the worker and it could be fine if it was only this.

- Paying pension fees / forced retirement investing. All this money goes to the elderly, with the promise that the young worker will receive when she is old - even though it is a fact that all pension funds are rapidly going broke and retirement ages are constantly being increased. This is how liberal democracy exploits the worker and it could be fine if it was only this.

- Paying rent/mortgage. This varies a bit, but lately it has become the rule that workers in Western countries are massively siphoned of their income in paying huge rents or having to go into debt for life to buy a home. This money goes to the elderly, who had the good sense of being born early. This is how feudalism exploits the worker and it could be fine if it was only this.

Since workers are exploited by at least four different political systems being imposed on them, there are also several classes of exploiters and an opportunity for the rulers to divert all fighting for freedom and change. But in the end, all of them work to benefit the elderly while taking their own cut - and that cut is huge since the amount of wealth being transfered is gigantic. So they can tell the exploited workers to blame "the 1%", the corrupt government, the greedy landlords etc - but they are simply working on behalf of the elderly generation, who refuses to acknowledge any responsibility for what they have done and what they continue doing, while reaping the benefits. Comfortable.

Younger generations sacrificed greatly in order to please the elderly - mainly by not having children of their own since they were trying to fight to establish themselves in a society where all odds are against them. Now they are rapidly diminishing their quality of life in order to continue to serve and if we continue on this trajectory, young people in the Western world will be reduced even further.

The only long term store of value that works in the long run is "values" instilled from parents to their children, so that when the parents are old their children will actually want and take pleasure in caring for their elderly relatives and the elderly in their communities. The current generation of elderly have chosen to band together to deceive and exploit the younger generations - their children and grand children - for their own benefit. That circle has to be broken for traditional and sensible values to return. We break that circle by treating our children and young in a completely different way than what has been.

I wonder how pissed these people would be if the government continued to pretend that everything is fine, did nothing, and in a few years the pension system simply crashes, due to being no longer feasible.

The current system in many european country relies on assumptions that were true in the 60s and 70s, when many of these systems basics were designed: Continuous population growth generating net positives in the pension funds, a certain life expectancy, and taxable incomes rising with economic power.

None of these assumptions hold true any more: Population growth has stalled or even reversed, people live a lot longer, and incomes stagnate despite decades of economic growth.

So the systems can either be adjusted, or they will stop functioning at some point. Even if the budgets are balanced at the moment, the factors listed above are not going to change in the other direction. Sooner or later, adjustments need to take into account the new reality.