{"id":19221,"date":"2016-03-28T11:53:47","date_gmt":"2016-03-28T16:53:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=19221"},"modified":"2016-03-28T11:54:12","modified_gmt":"2016-03-28T16:54:12","slug":"how-stupid-do-you-have-to-be-to-let-this-happen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=19221","title":{"rendered":"How Stupid Do You Have To Be To Let This Happen?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"headline_area\">\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/dollarcollapse.com\/currency-war-2\/how-stupid-do-you-have-to-be-to-let-this-happen\/\" target=\"_blank\">How Stupid Do You Have To Be To Let This Happen?<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"share clear\">Europe is the birthplace of Western civilization and the source of most of the trends and bodies of knowledge that define modernity. The average European speaks several languages versus sometimes less than one for Americans. They are, in short, a well-schooled people with vast accumulated wisdom.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"format_text entry-content\">\n<p>So how do we explain this: After World War II most European countries set up generous entitlement systems including government pensions designed to offer dignified retirements to citizens who had worked hard and paid taxes and obeyed the rules for a lifetime. BUT they didn\u2019t bother putting anything aside for the inevitable \u2014 and mathematically predictable \u2014 retirement of the immense baby boomer generation. Here\u2019s an excerpt from a recent Wall Street Journal article outlining the problem:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/europe-faces-pension-predicament-1457287588\" target=\"_blank\">Europe Faces Pension Predicament<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>State-funded pensions are at the heart of Europe\u2019s social-welfare model, insulating people from extreme poverty in old age. Most European countries have set aside almost nothing to pay these benefits, simply funding them each year out of tax revenue. Now, European countries face a demographic tsunami, in the form of a growing mismatch between low birthrates and high longevity, for which few are prepared.Europe\u2019s population of pensioners, already the largest in the world, continues to grow. Looking at Europeans 65 or older who aren\u2019t working, there are 42 for every 100 workers, and this will rise to 65 per 100 by 2060, the European Union\u2019s data agency says. By comparison, the U.S. has 24 nonworking people 65 or over per 100 workers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWestern European governments are close to bankruptcy because of the pension time bomb,\u201d said Roy Stockell, head of asset management at Ernst &amp; Young. \u201cWe have so many baby boomers moving into retirement [with] the expectation that the government will provide.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How Stupid Do You Have To Be To Let This Happen? Europe is the birthplace of Western civilization and the source of most of the trends and bodies of knowledge that define modernity. The average European speaks several languages versus sometimes less than one for Americans. They are, in short, a well-schooled people with vast [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[200,2889,9021,284,7544,1816,783,861],"class_list":["post-19221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-default","tag-demographics","tag-dollarcollapse-com","tag-european-union","tag-john-rubino","tag-pensions","tag-taxes","tag-wall-street-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19221"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19223,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19221\/revisions\/19223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}