> If you have properly set pension system

In large parts of Western Europe, at least, these systems were robbed and then slaughtered in the 90s.

In human societies younger working people take care of elderly people who can’t work. Financial systems can’t change that fundamental dynamic, it can only shift things around. You can’t eat stocks. They are just an earmark on the productive capacity of the working generation.

You can't have a proper pension system if you don't have enough young and middle-aged workers to pay for it, and to work all the jobs necessary to keep a society running.

you can, you can have your pension in savings investments without anyone's else financial contribution

it's just that most of the world is using archaic thorough/continuous model for pension system which is basically pyramid scheme everyone would avoid if it were used in any other area, but somehow is acceptable for pensions

if you really worry about pensions, you could start with children contributing to their parents pension and nobody contributing to childless people, that should solve declining population very fast, your can combine it with raising retirement age and raising fees everyone pays towards their own retirement

On a national scale, private retirement savings are not that different from pensions. Both are based on tokens that entitle you to some fraction of the economic output of those who do productive work. The value of a token depends on the total number of tokens, the size of the real economy, and the fraction of value the people doing productive work are willing to pay as taxes to the government and the capitalists.

Investing internationally changes some things. Retirees bring in money from abroad, but that does not increase domestic production. Prices will go up, as there is more money competing for the same goods and services. The people doing productive work will want more money for their services. Imports will be relatively cheaper, but the economy suffers, because the exports will be less competitive due to higher wages.

Saving for retirement is rational for any individual if the demographic structure cannot support the pension system. But while anyone can do it successfully, it's not possible for everyone at the same time.

> you can have your pension in savings investments without anyone's else financial contribution

Those investments still need workers to work in the underlying companies, and that doesn't count products that don't usually get covered by pension income e.g. healthcare. Those investments _will_ go into terminal decline if the labour and demand provided by the non-retired starts collapsing.

But you're allowed to invest worldwide, and across the whole world the population is still growing.

That just means old people have to work until they die. Problem solved.

Pension is a privilege I doubt I’ll get to enjoy, but that’s ok. I’m glad my parents, and maybe my children will.

>If you have properly set pension system population decline is completely irrelevant and beneficial for everyone.

excuse me? pensions need a robust young population to work. otherwise who is going to be providing all those goods and services the pensioners want to pay for?

exactly, you can have all the paper money in the world, if there's no actual human beings to do the work, the money is useless.

declining population doesn't mean there will be no young people at all, just slow decline with less and less people including less old people not replaced by anyone

pensions don't need young population at all, you can save your own money for retirement without anyone's contribution towards your pension

>you can save your own money for retirement without anyone's contribution towards your pension

No, that won't work. Money is only worth as much as the goods and services it will pay for, and those goods and services have to be provided by the labour of the working young. If there aren't enough young people to meet that demand for labour, prices will rise, and the purchasing power of those pensions will evaporate.

(This is why the "triple lock" and other such schemes are so evil; by pegging state pensions to inflation, they unfairly lock in the purchasing power of a lucky generation, in defiance of all economic logic.)

I think the terminology you are using might be confusing to some. If I am correct based on your adjacent comments, what you mean by “pension” is the societal agreement to provide for older/disabled people from taxes.

If so, then yes, getting rid of that societal agreement would solve the problem of decreasing productivity.

yes, only you should be contributing towards your own pension without state (financial) assistance, it should be your savings/investment pension account

your kids can help you voluntarily without any system involved

if you didn't work/save and don't have kids them you can get some basic support same as people in productive age get, but it's not really enough even to survive

A significant part of economic growth is the assumption that there will be more consumers tomorrow. If that goes, general growth goes, and with it the investments that usually fuel retirement