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Comment by olivierlacan | Hacker News Reader

With your taxes. No sarcasm intended.

...of which a sizeable chunk will go to Western European's private pension fund: the Pension Fund of CERN manages approximately 4 billion Swiss Francs in assets, both internally and externally.

And screw the younger generation, while at it (most of whom aren't eligible anyway). Conditions for new members (see Table 1): https://cds.cern.ch/record/1694667

And the rest will go into salaries.

So?

Pensions are just deferred salaries. Do we expect scientists to work for free, or something?

We expect scientists' salaries to be based on merit, not based on discrimination on grounds of gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, disability, creed, cultural background or other factors, such as age or nationality.

"The cost [...] has been evaluated, taking into account realistic labor prices in different countries. The total cost is X (with a western equivalent value of Y) [where Y>X]

source: LHCb calorimeters : Technical Design Report

ISBN: 9290831693 cdsweb.cern.ch/record/494264

I have no idea what point you're trying to make with that quote. Companies and universities in different countries pay different salaries. That is outside the control of CERN.

What's the issue with what they are doing? Isn't it the case for most pension system that the retirement age has been increased over time to make up for life expectancy improvements?

Also the assets under management sounds pretty standard compared to similar funds in Switzerland.

The issue is that other people subsidize this luxurious lifestyle.

For example, in Germany it takes 1100 pensioners who are forced to pay "public" television fees to finance the pension and lifestyle of a single ZDF bigshot.

This includes people who are barely above social security level.

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