Penalties on capital formation are a luxury that a society under pension-fund socialism can ill afford.
We have so far given almost no thought in this country to the ways in which capital formation could be increased to offset the actual “dis-saving” resulting from the rise of pension costs, which springs in turn from the growth in the number of older retired people whose consumption has to be financed out of the “pseudo-savings” of employed workers. Only one thing can be said with certainty: obstacles to, and penalties on, capital formation are a luxury that a society under pension-fund socialism—and a society in which a large number of older people have to be supported in retirement—can ill afford. But one can say definitely that capital formation rather than consumption will of necessity become the central problem of domestic economic policy in the years ahead, and the acid test of the economic viability of America’s pension-fund socialism.
ACTION POINT: How can capital formation be increased?
The Pension Fund Revolution
* Source: The Daily Drucker by Peter F. Drucker