Behind a technical viewpoint such as pensions, there are questions about the relationship between the generations and about the confidence in the stability of the world in which we live.

 

The pension system is facing a severe crisis not only in our country.

 

The World Economic Forum two years ago came up with a study according to which the pension "hellish machine" is inexorably: in 2050 the deficit of six of the largest economies (US, China, India, the Netherlands, Canada, Japan) would be $ 400 trillion , i.e. four times more than the entire world economy today.

 

The crash that emerges may be just what we are doing to climate change.

 

And the reasons here are even clearer. On the one hand, we have the demographic transition phenomenon, where the birth rate decreases in parallel with the lifting of the standard. On the other hand, human life is prolonged thanks to the fantastic advances in medicine.

 

Take a simple account: if, in the 2050 year in question, a person in the developed world lives on average 105 years (very likely, according to experts) and if he started work at 25, 65 would have worked as long as he would have the right to receives a pension.

 

Add to this the growing number of children themselves, on whom the pension for two parents will lie, as well as for four ancestors (the trend is most visible in China due to the restrictive demographic policy for one child 1979-2015).

Add the growing number of people who are not insured due to the non-fluid labor market and the shadows in the global economy.

The latter concerns most people in India, but we know that this problem is also experienced by Bulgaria, where they are likely to return to retirement age, very uninsured, working abroad.

Refusal for ideological reasons

In Bulgaria, the problem has long been discussed; it is increasingly clear that, for ideological reasons, we are abandoning the only solution, namely to stimulate immigration of suitable populations ready to work and give birth to children.

In Japan, too, they do not want migrants, but they at least rely on robots that will not appear here soon.

The gradual lifting of the retirement age was swallowed, albeit after a number of battles; people in us retire not to lie on their backs but to be able to work in a situation of certain security.

I might fantasize, but it seems to me that a step-by-step form of getting insurance supplements would have a great effect, and would motivate people to make much more money into the system (thus transforming workplace allowances, for example, that would be an alternative to unconditional basic income ...).

But the theme of the day is the private forms of insurance from the so-called second pillar, which had to support the alleged state insurance.

Everyone understood the difference between the solidarity system where the state makes contributions and then gives pensions by redistributing to the most disadvantaged; as well as the liberal "cricket and ant" model introduced with this "extra" assurance: everybody gets what he has saved himself, that is. the rich and the prudent - more, the poor and the carefree - less, maybe and nothing.

The reason for this duality is the contradictory nature inherent in our ideas of justice. If only the state is responsible for pensions, there will be no incentive to import more. If it is private, however, it is bad, because if tomorrow people start dying around us without a penny, we will not survive and we will change the pattern again.

Pension insurance (first introduced by Bismarck in 1889) does not release the old; it removes young people from the moral duty of caring for their parents - they can pick up the hammer and seek happiness in the modernizing mobile world. The goal is for every generation to get some security and get rid of dependence. However, sharp changes put this security under increasing pressure. The state, the guarantor of the solidarity model, has proved to be quite ephemeral, especially on the periphery of the developed world: who has taken pensions in the 1990s, will understand what I mean. Then, in the euphoria of globalization, the liberal model seemed far more secure. Why were not American pension funds the safest investor?

Unexpectedly, however, it turned out that such funds did not earn much. Whether the problem is in the financial crisis that has led to almost zero interest rates and the impossibility of winning without risk (these funds are forbidding risky investments, they should guarantee existential security of society!). Whether there is malice, incompetence, high fees - I do not know. After media scandals, many insured went back to the state where too much ink was poured, and legislative decisions were made; today we learn that mandatory (private) insurance will ensure that citizens do not lose the money they have invested at least. Which makes the liberal branch of pension insurance itself a little strange - first mandatory (for the born