Does stability in retirement add enough value to society and the economy for it to be a good investment? I've been an adult less than a decade, so without a return why should I pay for the promises of my predecessors? So many questions.
Second, old people vote. 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.
Third, retirees are a huge consumer group, and also a non-obvious but important source of support for families.
In fact, telling young people that they will see nothing of social security is a propaganda position intended to drive that wedge.
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?
I left the UK partly because between insane housing prices and paying for the triple-locked pensions of the elderly - the economy has little to offer young people and there are better opportunities elsewhere.
In fact, this problem of unfunded pensions has impacted municipal credit ratings and wound up costing taxpayers more in higher interest rates than they would have had to pay in higher taxes to stabilize the pension funds.
Thomas Jefferson's view of deficit finance was that one generation has no right to impose its debts on the next. He would have refused deficit spending that would not be completely paid back within 19 years (roughly, a generation).
I don't think many people listened to him on that. Here we are.
I think we do have the right to ask this question. We should have the option of denying that the previous generation ever had the right to impose this upon us.
At the very least, we should learn from this, recognize these types of short-sighted promises for what they are, and reject them when we see them. This is one big way we can be better than our forefathers.
This is way too absolute and simplistic. Past governments can make bad policy. Past governments can be corrupt or make decisions based on personal interest against the public or incomplete or bad information at the time. The obligation of future governments has to be balanced with whether the past government instituted good policy or not.