Hacker News Reader

Comment by cs137 | Hacker News Reader

Public pensions are pretty much gone these days, for better or worse.

I don't think an inverted pyramid is as bad as it sounds. It's a check against ageism and falling wages (there's no longer a horde of hungry young people who want the jobs) and, given how little of the work people do is actually necessary--white-collar jobs are 85% sending passive-aggressive emails--I think society can afford it. It might be the only thing that provides enough value of labor to keep conditions relatively humane.

View on HN

> Public pensions are pretty much gone these days, for better or worse.

Taxpayer funded (which is what “public” generally means) pensions are basically the only defined benefit pensions left in the US. I do not know of a single city, county, state, or federal government that has gotten rid of them, especially not for cops.

“public pensions” usually refers to schemes like social security in the US.

“public employee pensions” are a different thing.

(But neither is gone, in general or in the US, though more and more government employee positions in the US are relying more on defined contribution retirement plans and less on defined benefit pensions.)

If the inverted pyramid is in an "old-fashioned" economy and society, where the great majority of adults generally work hard until the last few years of their lives, and families mostly do their own service work, then the inverted pyramid might not be a serious problem.

But if you're hoping for something closer to the modern, Western ideal - education until age ~25, work until age ~60, retirement until age ~90 - then the inverted pyramid is going to need at least one of:

(1) Armies of imported service workers - to staff all the nursing homes, retirement homes, cruise ships, restaurants, etc. that the huge "top" of that pyramid need / want.

(2) Armies of robots so advanced that they can fill the great majority of those jobs. WithOUT requiring an extra army of humans to build, pay for, maintain, run, etc. those service worker robots.

(3) Huge changes in medical technology and social expectations, so that most of those service workers are never needed.

By public pension, I mean what we in the US call Social Security. Most developed economies have an equivalent.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com