Even so, they still have a lot left to understand. The report keeps to projecting the working age population, the active population and the number of retirees for every EU member state. It then calculates what pension spending will be for each member state over the medium term and comes away with a few conclusions. Through this simple exercise, they have learned that between 2004 and 2050 the working age population will fall by 16 percent and the number of retirees will increase 77 percent. As a result, pension spending for the entire EU will rise 4 percent of GDP. In Spain, the increase in public expenditures needed to maintain the public pension system would be 7.1 percent of GDP in 2050. These data led the report’s authors to seriously question the financial sustainability of these pension systems.  

 

However, the authors don’t even come close when they try to pinpoint the origin of the problem. The study always refers to the “aging problem” as if this were to blame for the outrageous situation. The problem does not lie in people freely deciding to have fewer children. Doubtless, they would also consider it a serious (environmental) problem if people decided to start having more children. Nor is increasing life expectancy to blame for the chaos. In fact, the perverse nature of the public pension system becomes clear in the following contradiction: freely deciding the number of children to have and longer life expectancy present a lethal problem for a system designed to improve citizens’ quality of life. What a disgrace!

 

The problem is much simpler. The state pension system is a fraud based on a coercive pyramid scheme outlawed in Spain by the Retail Trade Law. In this model, parents’ freedom and longer life expectancy present a danger. In a private pension system greater freedom and longer lives are a blessing. Most people do not seem to realize the problem because public schools have managed to brainwash such a large segment of the population that what many consider fraud in the private sphere, is no longer fraud if the state organizes it. Before privatizing pensions and moving to a healthy capitalization system, it wouldn’t be bad to get education out of the state’s hands. Maybe then, even the politicians would realize they’ve created a Frankenstein and how to eliminate him.