The contents of the government meeting soon appeared in the newspapers. Naturally, the matter of inheritance tax had been cut out—Ferdinand had no desire to stir up trouble!
The issue everyone cared about now was pensions. How could a lasting, stable pension system be established?
The pension systems of every European country were dragged out and flogged. No matter the country, their systems considered only short-term problems. Once an aging society arrived, they would face funding shortfalls.
Unlike other countries, Bulgaria's traditional forces remained strong. Its current old-age support system still relied on children supporting their parents.
Some people also received retirement pay, of course, but they were only a minority. Usually, only those who had rendered great service to an enterprise would receive a certain pension from the capitalists after retirement, as a way of winning hearts. Ordinary people could forget about it.
Once the paper window had been pierced, many people began doing the math: how many years could pension insurance last? The final conclusion was far from encouraging—eventually, it could only rely on government appropriations.
Many scholars proposed that, as medical and public health conditions improved, people would live longer and longer. In the future, society would see households of four generations under one roof, even five generations under one roof.
Once the pension system collapsed, people in their sixties would have to support people in their eighties, and above those eighty-year-olds there might even be centenarians still alive. With that burden crashing down all at once, probably very few people could bear it!
That was right. By the most pessimistic estimates, Bulgaria's average life expectancy would surpass eighty by the 1950s. By the twenty-first century, exceeding ninety would not be a problem. Speculation that average life expectancy might one day break one hundred had also been