[dpeckett]

I think this is the fundamental cultural difference between countries like the USA (and Australia) vs most of the EU.

Folks here expect and trust the state to provide for the future, private provisions are easily dismissed as unnecessary. As a result of this the median household wealth of the area I live in is 5x lower than my home country of Australia, despite incomes (adjusted for purchasing power) not being drastically different.

Whether that trust is wisely placed we'll have to wait and see[1]. However I do need to narrow that down a bit, it's not the whole EU, mostly France/Germany. There are other nations moving ahead with private pension schemes etc and much higher household wealth (Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands).

1. My main concern is government investment is inherently slow, politically charged, and pathologically risk averse vs the private sector. This means in the aggregate, over the long term, private household investments will out perform.

[itsthejb]

This is entirely a problem of putting all of eggs in one basket. Or rather, only having one basket in which you’re allowed to put your eggs. The German pension system is already insolvent, and I suspect it’s not the only one. European welfare states are great n’all, but it would seem they were set up when the going was good and populations were growing. Now with stagnation, they don’t look much like staying solvent and populations don’t have anywhere else to turn

[dpeckett]

The German pension system is completely insane. There is no fund backing it, and disbursements already exceed contributions to the tune of 127B EUR per year (which is subsidized from the general budget) and the gap is only growing.

Probably explains a good chunk of Germany's and the EUs anemic growth. Simply put, that's 127B EUR that can't be spent investing in the future and growing the economy.