Retirement Sustainability Crisis

This is everyone's problem if we ever hope to retire

Agreed. you can not. There are just too many pensioners: "Between now and 2050,the number of older persons will rise from about 600 million to almost two billion. In less than 50 years from now, for the first time in history, the world will contain more people over 60 than under 15"https://www.cassandracapital.net/post/the-unprecedented-d

The scheme of there being a retirement age when you get older relies on there being a lot more young than old people. If, hypothetically, there were a 50/50 split between the retired and the working, the living standards of the working would decline and working aged people wouldn't themselves be able to retire at the same age as those before them. They'd probably resent the old retired people and the previous generations for both having no children and retiring, leaving them to de

Is it widely agreed that (barring massive productivity improvements or changes to the birth rate) the current retirement age and quality of life is not sustainable without a massive burden on young people?

Retirement is about having other people take care of you. If there are less people overall there are less resources to care for the elderly who aren't working. With expanding populations this is easier to manage because the fraction of people who are elderly is smaller, but it can be a huge drain if that changes. This is about resources and no amount of financial engineering can solve it, though financial engineering will probably keep people off the streets

Economically, old people are a burden on society. If you want to have a long and easy retirement for your elderly, you need a growing population, forever. Like a ponzi scheme. The alternative is that you break young people's back by burdening them with providing for the elderly. No amount of redistribution will help a country with poor productivity. 60 was a reasonable retirement age years ago, because most people would be dead soon after retirement, but with people regularly reaching 80+,

When implemented those scheme goal was to make sure people who could not work anymore would have a decent end of life.The problem is the baby boomer generation transformed it to the point retirement was "when you started living your real life". People being retired perfectly healthy for more time than what they worked is not an exception for them.And that generation managed to pile more shit on the next generations: regulations to make housing more expensive, requiring more educa

Those people are thinking they will never be able to retire, so why include that?

In the US at least, the original retirement age, set in 1935, was 65. The average life expectancy was 60. Today in the US it's 77.8. In France, it's 82.As populations age into a higher percentage of retirees, the system is forced to cope with more people who are purely consumers, and contribute nothing to the system. In a post-scarcity world, this would not be a problem, but currently with the oldest generations owning the vast majority of wealth and real estate, and with college, h

yes, but those workers will at some point retire and live off their investment income, no?