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Comment by paulpauper | Hacker News Reader

People have been making these sort of doom and gloom predictions for decades, whether about debt, inflation, or bubbles, and given their poor track record can be safely discarded.

For every event like the 2008 they get right, they get a 50 or more predictions wrong.

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This isn't any sort of wild speculation though. It is a hard mathematical fact that pension funds will be more sensitive to a stock market decline now than they were previously. The math says we'd need a small miracle to NOT have to deal with this problem, although it probably won't be as painful as the emotive language in the title makes it sound.

There's a difference between pointing out a risk, as this article does, and making a prediction.

Economists have predicted 8 of the last 3 recessions.

Economists have a good grasp of the underlying factors that cause recession, the one thing they can’t model is human economic exuberance, which is why they always predict recessions when they don’t happen. And then when they do happen they’re so much worse than anybody would have thought.

You might not be able to predict the year fair enough, but when all the trends point to a recession you can make an informed prediction.

I've been hearing things like this regularly since 2016, some of it on Hacker News. It's caused definite stress in the past and I actually get a bit angry when I see stories like this now - and regard it as clickbait.

Anyone with actual insights into market performance isn't putting those insights in a blog, they're putting those insights in a formula and making money with them.

How would you profit from pensions failing?

Short companies that receive much of their revenue from pensioners. Invest in companies likely to get government contracts related to dealing with hordes of destitute old people. Leave Florida before it's too late.

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