The government has raised pensions and increased social support.

Much of today s debates about the future of old age pensions hinges on this uncertainty.

A majority of today s French recognize that raising the retirement age is necessary to ensure the survival of the pension system.

Indeed, Bush s popularity has taken a beating over pension reform.

Indeed, America may well be in the process of adding a pension crisis to the unemployment problem.

Pension, investment, and hedge funds have taken the lead in this revolution.

It is the model with the lowest share of expenditures and is strongly based on pensions and a low level of social assistance.

But, rather than recognizing this reality and adjusting accordingly, Blanchard doubles down on pensions. He writes

Future generations already bear an excessive pension burden in all European countries.

Slowing the growth of the pension and health care programs for middle class retirees cannot be done abruptly.

This fall off in private defined benefit pensions all across the rich core of the world economy is a bad thing, because the configuration of asset prices suggests that young and middle aged workers value defined benefit pensions extremely highly. Historically, the gap between expected returns on low risk assets like government or investment grade bonds and high risk assets like stocks and real estate has been very high.

Pension funds, mutual funds, and investment banks are all long in the stock market.

But even so, as you go out into those future years, various pension costs, health costs go up enough, and the revenue does not go up enough.

Cities are declaring bankruptcy to escape the pressure of exponentially rising pension and health costs.

The risk from defined benefit pensions used to be offset by two benefits for companies that offered them.

The Greek crisis story began in 2008 with reports of widespread protests and strikes when the government proposed raising the retirement age to address a pension funding shortfall.

Pension funds would also be hit, imposing further costs on the PBGC.

As a result, an ever smaller slice of employers are offering anything like defined benefit pensions.

This trend will have many consequences, most obviously for the welfare state, notably pensions and healthcare.

The index fund would be similar to the ones held by so many workers today in private pension plans.

This keeps costs much lower than in France, and Greece, for example, where the retirement age is 60 or below, and where pension outlays are soaring as a result.

Persons who have reached the retirement age pursuant to the Law On State Pensions of 2 November 1995, as participants of the pension scheme have the right to the old age pension.

At the same time, Japan s demographic trends will boost demand for fiscal expenditure, as pension and health care costs rise.

According to OECD statistics, pensions in Greece, available after only 15 years of work, reach an incredible 111 of average net incomes.

And restructuring is a levy on bondholders wealth, including that of middle class pension savers.

While expenditure for both is rising rapidly, the offsetting revenues are coming from ever fewer people in employment.

By contrast, in Germany the average pension level is about 61 of average net earnings for people who have worked at least 35 years.

When consumers see the benefits of market deregulation, for example, perhaps they will feel compensated for having to work longer for their retirement.

26. The Republic of Serbia provides 50 per cent of pension, disability and health insurance contributions of priests. It also subsidizes some religious communities.

Important improvements have been made over the past year to expand the pension system s coverage, move toward universal health care, and provide public funding for basic education.

Outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti s government accomplished a major pension reform, cut public spending, and raised taxes.

Pursuant to the appeal of that resolution, Austria had introduced, in April 1993, a reform of the provisions of legal pensions, the main goal of which was to ensure the long term financing of the pension system by restructuring the adjustment and revaluation of pensions.

Specifically, that means social security, private pensions, and medical and unemployment insurance plans that exist on paper but are woefully underfunded.

In Germany, for example, the Council of Economic Advisors calculated the implicit pension debt to be more than 270 of GDP.

Reducing future deficits and reversing the rise in the national debt require raising tax revenue and slowing the growth of government pension and health care programs.

Sweden is a world leader in privatised pensions and pension funding problems are relatively small compared to many other Western European countries.

With household wealth seriously damaged by the housing crash and other asset price declines, pensions and retirement provisions are in disarray.

Equity holdings are somewhat more concentrated, but many middle class Americans have still benefited indirectly through their pension funds.

Governments typically have myriad ongoing expenditure commitments related to basic services such as national defense, infrastructure projects, education, and health care, not to mention to retirees.

China s retirement system has only about 430 billion of assets under management (national and local government social security and private sector pensions).

In practice, the state s reach often went beyond this conception (as, say, in the case of Bismarck s introduction of old age pensions in Germany in 1889).

And cutting pensions and health care for the elderly certainly qualifies as extreme as well as completely inappropriate and unnecessary.

Expanded individual retirement accounts and 401K pension schemes, special incentives for low income households (most of which have no retirement plans), and an end to the financial repression that the Fed s zero interest rate policy imposes on savers must also be part of the solution.

America s troubled private pension system now several hundred billion dollars in debt already appears headed for a government bailout.

Additionally, the Big Three are vital to national security, supplying important military transportation assets. Lastly, bankruptcy will impose massive costs on the government s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), further worsening the fiscal outlook.