There is no reason to discuss pensions as long as the super-rich don't pay taxes. The pension funds and every other social fund could be filled to the brim with even slightly higher taxes and they wouldn't even notice anything missing. They would stay bloody rich.

We have been getting older and having fewer children since we came down from the trees, and we have always been able to raise standards anyway. The only thing that doesn't work is 1% of the people taking it all and putting it on a pile and sitting on it like a dragon.

I am tired of the same old discussions, get the money from the people who have more than enough! Don't let them drag you into discussions like this to point fingers away from themselves towards everyone else. Young vs old is not the fight we need to fight, poor vs fantastillion rich is the fight.

Isn't it amazing how we're supposedly so much richer than we were as a society in the 1950s, when they didn't have computers, they didn't have cellphones, they didn't have jet airplanes or genetic engineering and yet:

1. we could afford healthcare for everyone
2. we could afford housing for everyone
3. we could afford defined benefits pension plans for everyone?

How did 70 years of supposed progress leave us unable to afford the basic necessities of life?

"experts"

Option 4: tax the shit out of the rich.

This is the answer to most of the problems in most 1st world countries, but since the rich own all our governments the rest of us get a little less each year.

In the UK, state pension age would need to be 70 or 71 compared with 66 now, to maintain the status quo of the number of workers per state pensioner.

There isn't a real problem here, it's literally just to keep an arbitrary metric stable.

There is one more choice that could easily improve everyone's standard of living. Tax the rich. Which isn't realistic because politicians across all large parties are in the rich people's pockets and, on top of that, the rich own the media, so they can manipulate public opinion. Not that they would have to do much manipulating, this is a western world problem, everyone has been fed trickle down bullshit propaganda for decades.

4. Tax billionaires and companies the same way you tax the working class. Somehow not a very popular idea with the elite

Increases in life expectancy accrue primarily to the better off. Whose longer retirements are being paid for by robbing the poorest of any retirement at all.

Tax the fucking rich.

The idea would simply be to stop giving so many taxes cuts to companies.

In tenace we recently raised the retirement age because according to the government there was not enough money, the usual bullshit.

Why bullshit you ask? Because it is the very same government that removed three times as much as what they said was missing from pension funds in taxes on companies. They also reduced taxes on capital gains, to bring it to a lower level as what someone middle class would pay on their salary, part of which goes to finance pensions.

We have the money, we always have, it is just a matter of choosing where to put it. Most government of the West decided to put it in the hands of the few richest.

To the Tories, there’s no difference between someone who doesn’t own enough property to live off the passive income and a beast of burden. It is the fate of both to die in harness.

The only real solution is to raise the pension age, despite how unpopular it is, and make affordable to have kids.

The raise in the age is obvious: as long as the life expectancy increase you have an increasing part of the population to pay. It is cynical but there is no way that a system designed to handle a 75 years life expectancy could handle a situation where a 85 years life expectancy is the norm and not the exception. Moreover, probably a 60 years old today is more able to work than a 60 years old in the 1980's. (the ages are just an example, but you get the point).

And the only obvious way to compensate for more old people is to have more kids (the other is to increase immigration, but you should only allow people who do not burden welfare).

In other news, UK’s so called experts have completely lost their collective minds.