Rjan:
when you save fiat currency (or anything denominated in fiat currency), it merely acts as a claim on future workers’ labour.
If you spent the money immediately, it would be a claim on the labour of your contemporaries.
and previously
Rjan:
It isn’t possible to enjoy a retirement of material wealth, without somebody manning the means of production and ceding a share of what they produce to you.
Exchanging currency for labour (paying for goods/services from a pension pot) surely isn`t the same as claiming a share of a current workers wage to provide those same goods/services.
Rjan:
when you save fiat currency (or anything denominated in fiat currency), it merely acts as a claim on future workers’ labour.
If you spent the money immediately, it would be a claim on the labour of your contemporaries.
and previously
Rjan:
It isn’t possible to enjoy a retirement of material wealth, without somebody manning the means of production and ceding a share of what they produce to you.
Exchanging currency for labour (paying for goods/services from a pension pot) surely isn`t the same as claiming a share of a current workers wage to provide those same goods/services.
It actually is exactly the same concept.
I think the distinction you have in mind is that the existence of the “pot” acts as a voucher for your previous contribution, and thus establishes the legitimacy of your claim against other people’s labour later on.
But the analogy to the “pot” in a defined benefit scheme is “number of years worked”, or for the state pension it is your national insurance record.
And in practice, most employers do maintain pots to fund defined benefit schemes. They only became difficult to afford once economic reforms allowed companies without any pension schemes at all, to compete with those that did have decent pension schemes.
Only the state (as far as I’m aware) has the right to provide an “unfunded” pension scheme, and that is because it has powers of taxation upon the entire economy and doesn’t need to maintain pots or extract rents on investments (e.g. if the state builds a road and thus generates wealth, it can just tax the economy to gain the return, it doesn’t need to operate a toll bar like a private sector investor does).
But funded or unfunded, the person who pays the pension is the worker who is actually manning the means of production at the time.