> I was referring to working age people who attempt to save for their own retirement.

Which they will use when they've grown old.

What I'm getting at is that there is no such thing as a secure long term store of value and such a thing has never existed. Not even gold can be that. We can all wish for it, but it cannot exist.

So how they do it today is by using violence to forcefully exploit the surplus production from younger generations to support the elder generation. All political "systems" and ideologies today serve that goal. Any young person in the Western world who is working gets exploited in at least the following:

- Receiving less in salary than she produces, so that the company can turn a profit. This profit in general goes to stock owners who are pension funds or elderly individuals. This is how capitalism exploits the worker and it could be fine if it was only this.

- Paying taxes on their salary and hidden taxes before receiving a salary. A young worker has almost no benefit of government spending, while a huge amount of the government expenses goes to supporting the elderly. This is how socialism exploits the worker and it could be fine if it was only this.

- Paying pension fees / forced retirement investing. All this money goes to the elderly, with the promise that the young worker will receive when she is old - even though it is a fact that all pension funds are rapidly going broke and retirement ages are constantly being increased. This is how liberal democracy exploits the worker and it could be fine if it was only this.

- Paying rent/mortgage. This varies a bit, but lately it has become the rule that workers in Western countries are massively siphoned of their income in paying huge rents or having to go into debt for life to buy a home. This money goes to the elderly, who had the good sense of being born early. This is how feudalism exploits the worker and it could be fine if it was only this.

Since workers are exploited by at least four different political systems being imposed on them, there are also several classes of exploiters and an opportunity for the rulers to divert all fighting for freedom and change. But in the end, all of them work to benefit the elderly while taking their own cut - and that cut is huge since the amount of wealth being transfered is gigantic. So they can tell the exploited workers to blame "the 1%", the corrupt government, the greedy landlords etc - but they are simply working on behalf of the elderly generation, who refuses to acknowledge any responsibility for what they have done and what they continue doing, while reaping the benefits. Comfortable.

Younger generations sacrificed greatly in order to please the elderly - mainly by not having children of their own since they were trying to fight to establish themselves in a society where all odds are against them. Now they are rapidly diminishing their quality of life in order to continue to serve and if we continue on this trajectory, young people in the Western world will be reduced even further.

The only long term store of value that works in the long run is "values" instilled from parents to their children, so that when the parents are old their children will actually want and take pleasure in caring for their elderly relatives and the elderly in their communities. The current generation of elderly have chosen to band together to deceive and exploit the younger generations - their children and grand children - for their own benefit. That circle has to be broken for traditional and sensible values to return. We break that circle by treating our children and young in a completely different way than what has been.