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Comment by general1726 | Hacker News Reader

Unless you are having state pensions and taking money from taxable population and giving it to pensioners. This group keeps getting bigger thanks to constantly improving medical care, while taxable population is getting smaller thanks to declining birthrates.

Cutting pensions would probably cause massive riots, so raising retirement age is only logical way forward to keep this social pyramid scheme alive a little bit longer.

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There are lots of ways. Looking at ss specifically - https://www.crfb.org/socialsecurityreformer/

Social Security will be solvent over the next 75 years, but 16% of the gap between spending and revenue remains in the 75th year, meaning the program is not yet sustainable.

YOUR POLICY SELECTIONS % OF GAP CLOSED

Slow Benefit Growth for Top 20% Of Earners 11% Limit Spousal Benefits for High Earners 3% Create Minimum Benefit at 125% of Poverty -3% Means-Test Benefits for Higher Earners 16% Tax All Wages Above $400,000 67% Apply the Payroll Tax to "Cafeteria Plans" 10% TOTAL 104%

And I increased benefits.

There are also lot of ways how to sabotage this especially if you are a political party aimed at pensioners and your whole program is "we will increase pensions" which is more and more common in Europe.

As amount of pensioners grow, their political power does too and their interest in future of the country is about zero. Why should they care, it is not their future.

This is another reason why market based, self directed, retirement accounts make far more sense than pensions: they scale with production. With pensions you have the option of pissing people off or crushing the people who are working (whether that's the company or the working population of the state.)

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