Roger Ferguson (President and CEO, TIAA-CREF) on the Retirement Policies of the 21st century
I like this and I definitely think that you should have a look. It raises a lot of interesting and important issues although it is exclusively framed in a US context (not strange thinking of the source).
The basic message is pretty simple. People should save more and be better at diversifying their assets as well as they should think about how they actually want to dissave (if at all). I agree, but this is also a somewhat selfdefeating argument in the context of our current capitalist system. Essentially, when fewer people of working age are asked and incited to save more and longer they spend less and as their share of the population declines they become a drag (in relative terms) on aggregate demand and not a boost (as they are supposed to be). This is a trap then by which a paradox of thrift locks in across generations in the aggregate.
The alternative then? I am not sure. We need to focus on the core too though and essentially do something about the inverted population pyramid as such.