Depends on how your system is set up. Here in the US, we have a program called Social Security which everyone pays into with every paycheck from the day they start working until the day they retire. Once you retire, you receive a monthly check until the day you die from the SS program. Sounds ok so far right? Enforced savings and all that.dayarath wrote:
don't know much about the whole retirement system, but doesn't a big pile of money open up once you retire (assuming you built one up in the first place) and you buy your retirement using it?
Except its not. It's a giant Ponzi scheme. Instead of the money paid into the SS program going into a giant pot to pay for future payouts, our government has been taking in the SS taxes, making the payouts to current retirees, and dumping the rest of the money SS earns every year into the general fund so they don't have to raise taxes. They've been doing this for the past fifty years, which happens to be the amount of time the baby boomers have been working. So, there is zero money saved up for the impending Retirement of Doom. It's scheduled to go completely bankrupt in approximately 10 years.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
-Frederick Bastiat