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Comment by kazen44 | Hacker News Reader

social security goes far beyond just a pension system. things like housing, healthcare and social support for the less fortunate in society all fall under social security.

the current pension system in most of the world is just not scalable because people getting older and the birth rate declining, but this does not mean that money couldn't be sourced from elsewhere. in most countries today, workers contribute the majority of the pension for the current retired generation.

mind you the free market also does not have a solution for this problem, except to tell poor people or disabled people to be poor or keep working until they drop dead.

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> the current pension system in most of the world is just not scalable because people getting older and the birth rate declining,

Is does scale in this situation: simply increase the retirement ages properly such that always at least roughly "inflow of money = outflow of money" holds. The problem rather is that there is no political will to do that.

And somehow important thing that has been forgotten is that you can't pay out more than has been paid in. On average for generation. Too bad boomers are the entitled generation and ruined it for their children. They talk about their contributions, but I see no hard numbers if they have truly paid in as much is being paid out.

At the risk of sounding butthurt, it's kind of strange and unfair to claim that "boomers are the entitled generation." They merely happen to have been born at a time when the social and economic situation for future generation changed due to changes in ecology, world economy, and in this case the demographic of industrialized countries.

By the way, the changes have been going on for much longer. When I was young we were called "Generation X" and newspapers told us that we were going to be the first generation much poorer than their parents, with "patchwork CVs" and a "decline of traditional work opportunities." Overall, these predictions turned out to be true. So I guess we could call our parents the "entitled generation." After all, the Club of Rome warned in 1972 that economic growth was not sustainable but the warnings did not lead to major changes of the socio-economic systems, although many smaller positive changes were made.

> At the risk of sounding butthurt, it's kind of strange and unfair to claim that "boomers are the entitled generation." They merely happen to have been born at a time when the social and economic situation for future generation changed due to changes in ecology, world economy, and in this case the demographic of industrialized countries.

Also, it is good to remember that the "boomer generation" is a mainly american phenomenon. Most other western countries had a period of rebuilding after world war 2, which was not a time of economic prosperity.

A good example of this is the late 1940'and 50's. American's wealth grew quite a bit during this time. Most (western) european countries had wage freezes, a corve system or even rationing during that time.

Western european economic power started to increase in the late 1950's and early 1960's. (wirtschaftswunder etc)

Ofcourse, eastern europe was far worse off considering the lack of marshall aid and heavy restructuring of the economy to a soviet style command economy.

People can afford those things with the cash that the market generates for them. And the free market solution to "the problem" is higher economic prosperity of society and thus fewer people in poverty. There is no other answer.

And in some instances US SS is more generous than the "socialistic" UK.

Single persons unemployment benefit

the UK is considering one of the most liberal economies in europe with very little if no state involvement of the economy.

Most of this happened after thatcherism ofcourse.

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