How to get someone else’s grandson to take care of you when you are old?

Sir, Michiyo Nakamoto reports “Japan requires age-old wisdom on problems of productivity” April 23, on how a country of saver “who have long been happy to keep the bulk of their wealth in bank deposits” now have to start looking for improved returns on their money in order to make ends meet in an ageing society with declining workforce.

This is just the beginning of some truly important intra-generational transfer challenges that have been surprisingly little studied, and planned for, and simply accepting more risks in order to get better returns does not really cut it as a sustainable solution to this problem. For instance the Japanese society might need to take an urgent look at issues such as the saving propensity of the coming generations in Japan and the rest of the world, since if those generations do not want to save as much as theirs, then with whom are they in the future to barter with their investments and savings against the cash they need. Could it even be that they could be better off by simply cashing in their investments today and holding the cash?

Needless to say this is a question that affects many countries and I can already see a young generation of nurses in developed countries asking and getting six figure incomes… or even much more if they restrict the competition with foreign nurses.