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Comment by shorttime | Hacker News Reader

Terrible spot to be in, hoping I will avoid it with a traveling retirement plan (401k). How do other 1st world countries manage elderly workers/people that should no longer work? SS is an option and I don't believe it will go bankrupt, wages of about 125K contribute to SS, anything larger does not. Just have to adjust that limit to keep it where it needs to be. So that helps a little bit.

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I think most European countries have more generous/realistic state provided, financial retirement support.

It varies vastly by country. In France, the state calculates a percent of your income during the 4X years you were working and gives you that as a pension. The estimation can be pretty complicated, but that's fair enough for a one line explanation.

The system will collapse eventually. More and more elderly to support by less and less active workers. The younger population is suffering from vast unemployment (25%) and they will never achieve 40 years of continuous work in their lifetime.

> More and more elderly to support

> The younger population is suffering from vast unemployment

It appears there is a lot of work to be done and a lot of idle workers to do it. The fact that both can exist in tandem seems like an indictment of how horribly inefficient our economic systems currently are.

Not sure what you mean. Retirees don't create jobs. They just get money handed to them monthly as promised by the pension formula decided decades ago. (that money is supposed to come from taxes on active workers's salaries)

The whole system collapse when taxes are not enough to cover the pensions that were promised. It's a ponzi scheme.

> Retirees don't create jobs

They do in countries with extensive social systems. Look at Germany. There is boom for daycare services, retirement homes, various mobility devices, the country is sucking in females aged 40-60 from Poland employed (gray/black market mostly, I'm wondering who will take care of them in 20-30 years) to take care of Germany elderly, etc.

That’s a problem of demographics and unemployment, not a Ponzi scheme. Ponzi schemes are scams, but they do effectively take money from people and give it to other people, which doesn’t happen if there’s no funds to transfer.

I don’t think any country can sustain a 25% unemployment rate for any length of time without it having catastrophic second- and third-order effects. That’s the problem, not the concept of taxpayer-funded pensions. All sorts of things are going to be underfunded or otherwise hosed if you’re struggling with 25% unemployment for any length of time. Nations have imploded over far less.

It's not the percentage for the whole population. It's 25% unemployment for young people. 50% unemployment for young people without higher education.

Yeah, we've outscaled capitalism and it no longer allocates resources well.

Is it the case though? The Netherlands _full_ state pension is 70% of the minimum wage, which ammount to something like 15K euros annualy. The Netherlands have a strong economy, but even there people have to rely on corporate pensions.

For comparison, the _average_ SS benefit in US is ~$15K, and max is ~$31K

In Germany there is a lot of talk about "Altersarmut" which means poverty when aged. It's not as bad as the US but a lot of people also have a very uncertain future.

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