Voters want more of everything, and our systems encourage everyone within the system to want more.
We don't vote for reducing budgets, and politicians who try to economize get wasted. Everybody wants unlimited health services and the compromise we all select is to increase various tax takes.
Note everybody in the developed world is given relatively similar amounts of time. Yet most of us value our time poorly, since it is a resource we cannot replace.
‡ 90% taxation sounds silly, but it is closer to the truth than looking at $ or working hours. It is hard to choose what to measure - perhaps quality of life or alternatively (total disposable hours versus total waking hours). And choosing the basis of what is a fair amount of resources one person should receive is completely intractable.
Homeless retirement is the alternative. In fact it was my likeliest future until a just a few years ago.
I currently live with my 4 adult sons. In our 4-income economy, it's the only way each of us can stay housed.
...These longterm forecasts are useless.
And the pensions mentioned in the article are an example of this. It mentions that two workers supporting each pensioner is a problem. How? If that’s the case wouldn’t these two workers eventually need four workers to support them as pensioners? What makes this different from a Ponzi scheme?