[moshmosh]

> If you gave europeans those 25% as an extra net pay, there would be a lot more new cars on the road, a bit more savings/investments, and a lot more problems when people get old. "Smart" people would save and invest, and have better "pensions" than they'd have in the current system, and "stupid" people would work until 85yo, and die of hunger.

Part of the problem with giving everyone more money and expecting them to invest it is that it frees up that money for competition for things like better schools (housing in better school districts, private school tuition). You can sacrifice your retirement to give your kids a serious advantage. Tons of people do this, in part because once some start doing it, everyone has to a little or their lives actually get worse than if the money were taken out for retirement before they ever saw it. Then there's the "keeping up with the Joneses" effect which is very hard to entirely resist when the spending-norms for your income-peers are set by people who aren't putting away enough for retirement.

[biomcgary]

I'm curious about the net societal effect of a large fraction of successful people investing in their children's education. From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that previous selection would lead to this type of psychology (i.e., selection favors parental investment when it increases fitness, which is particularly true when humans are near carrying capacity, see K-selection). However, this pattern leads to increasing inequity and, historically, societal instability (which would favor R-selection).