'Public' services will never be truly accountable unless the individual makes some direct payment on each occasion.

Robert, London, UK

Stephen,
I sympathise with your intent. I have a few comments to add.
Ageing is a slightly misleading term. We have been ageing since at least the Middle Ages. We have longer lifespans, but that means we are also economically active for longer. The only thing that matters is the distribution of the population within the age bands.
We have more expensive medical treatment for cancer, heart attacks and strokes, but this is our choice. Previously people were left to die in geriatric wards. There is no end to the cost of improvements in medicine if we wish to pay for them.
In our democracy, politicians are rewarded for providing immediate gratification. So tax will always be at the highest levels that can be sustained by the working population. Any money put into savings will be extracted through tax or removal of benefit.
The only "solution" is not to take now what we really can't afford. But credit card debts and the low savings ratio show we are not very good at that.

Anthony, London,

Yep, it's Fantasy Island, which isn't a member of the EU and so unlike the UK it doesn't get about 80% of its new laws from the EU. Including the Working Time Directive, which has already hit the NHS.

Denis Cooper, Maidenhead, England

The government is looking into a pension scheme along the lines of your suggestion - the National Pensions Saving Scheme - an opt-out scheme where salary contributions are automatically deducted from pay packets. That in itself wouldn't solve the health issue however, just pensions.

sarah, London,

I miss Stephen Pollard, he asks questions others avoid asking or answering. "Who is going to pay for Brown's or Cameron 's world class services ?" especially with the changes in our ageing population. Short of our young Eastern European immigrants staying and leaving before they are considered elderly, the answer is "no-one".The world class social state is not sustainable, it may be on a Fantasy Island or on an island in the middle of a sea of non-pollutant oil, but not in the U.K.

Stephen even omits the ever-growing cost of defending our State from the enemy within and without. Let Brown and Cameron continue to fantasise , until someone appears on the political landscape, maybe Stephen himself, and paraphrases John Kennedy's " Do not ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for yourself"-----------short of emigrating!.

M. Fishman, London UK,

two points

- if a politician says the truth as you point out they'll never get elected to government. They'll only be able to say I told you so later from the opposition benches.

- most people can afford this, but i'll require them living within their means for the rest of their lives. Again I just cant see the masses going fot it.

The country needs to be in a real mess as in 1979 for them to take the hard medicine. We're not at that point yet.

Al, Newcastle,

Surely the long term problem is that a career politician is, by definition, a person who plans his whole life around feeding from the public purse. Their pay-packet doesn't depend on making money, just gathering it in from us poor suckers that do the daily grind.

The rot set in a few years ago when Harold Wilson tried to prove that money was made by a printing press, not by trade. Apart from the brief interlude of Mrs Thatcher's reality program, we've been plagued with this lack of real trading perspective from politicians of all factions for years.

When are they going to learn that we make the money and don't mind clubbing together for essentials, but if they want to run a charity then they should call it a charity and run it properly under the approriate rules of governance, particularly with regard to fund-raising activity!

KR, Stockport,

Surely the answer is to encourage smoking by every means possible so as to increase tax revenue and diminish life expectancy?

Rassendyll, Cambridge, UK

Long term saving for a pension, which may not materialize, makes no difference to the demographics.

Who will provide the goods and services? Only a small group of workers/taxpayers.

Too many old not enough young. Don't invest in a pension, invest in children.

John R, Shefford,

Look on the bright side. The increased prevalence of obesity etc means life expectancy is likely to decrease... Yet another reason for this government to stop interfering in how we live our lives?

Rick, Surrey, UK

We should look at successful policies in other countries, notably the Netherlands. (Interesting how it is always the Netherlands which seems to be the best example.) There, workplace, employer-subsidised pension schemes have long been compulsory. Small employers had to co-operate to achieve what was required, which has led to the development of industry-wide pension schemes run by professionals, where risks are shared by all members of the pension schemes. Result: one of the best pension regimes in the world. Our Government has made a start, but it appears inadequate, possibly out of a desire to placate the employers and/or to protect insurance companies. They need to study what the Dutch do more carefully! (The Dutch also have good public health and healthcare, and their transport education and transport systems are streets ahead.)

Cathy, Bristol, UK

Hoorah! I open the paper everyday in the hope of finding a journalist or politician tackling this subject. This is the first for far too long. But as my great aunt used to say, " you can't have the penny and the bun". If you want to save for tomorrow you have to send less today. And Gordon Brown has been today's bigest spender. We need a public demand to insist that, either those deductions from our pay for "national insurance" are invested for that purpose, or they are not deducted at all. Lord Tebbit described the current arrangements as a 'chain letter across the gererations'. Politicians who perpetuate this fraud on the public (and misuse the word 'invesmtent' to disguise profligate spending) should have to pay the same penalty as Robert Maxwell and the Barlow Clowes people.

Philippa Pirie, London, England

"The beneficial impact of Mrs Thatcher's pension reforms"? Presumably this refers to pension contribution "holidays" introduced by her Chancellor (Lawson) which sowed the seeds of destruction of occupational pension schemes and has undermined long term savings in this country ever since. I agree though that each individual must take more personal responsibility for their financial welfare. This is not the role of the State.

David, bexley, kent

Where does Stephen Pollard get the idea that taxpayers are funding long-term care for the elderly? If you have assets of more than £21,500 and go into a residential/nursing home, you have to meet the full cost of your accommodation and personal care out of your own pocket. At current rates, £21,000 will buy you about nine months care in a nursing home so if you are a home-owner, this will have to be sold to meet future bills. All you will get that is funded by the tax payer is an Attendance Allowance of around £65 per week and the cost of your nursing care ( £400 a month). This will leave you with a bill of up to £1800 a month to be met out of your own resources. People with modest savings would be well advised to spend them before senility sets in.

Martin Litchfield, Wimborne, Dorset, England

The standard of analysis in this piece is embarassing. The demographic challenge of having more retirees per worker is broadly independent on the way of financing it. It certainly isn't 'irrelevant'. As we're talking about islands, imagine a desert island with two people. When one retires, the other has to work so that both of them can eat. This is the case whether the there is a tax levied on the worker, or whether the non-worker has hoarded cash or bought shares in the worker's company. The only way out of the problem is either direct hoarding of the goods and services you will desire (ie tinnned food) which isn't possible for most goods and services, or if you can get foreigners to send you goods.

Matthew, London,

Well done Stephen! Ostriches with their heads in the sand would be another good analogy. The NHS is a failed system and few wish to admit it.

Shane Frith, London,

By letting the insurance industry run the healthcare sector there would be a direct link between someones lifestyle choice and the cost of their healthcare. This would mean that I could pay less tax as I dont smoke, regularly partake in exercise and am not an alchoholic. This is good news for me however those less educated and generally lazy would not approve and that would be the majority of the British population. Great.

John Reekie, Egremont, Cumbria

Why hasn't anybody given G Brown the nickname Mr Bean senior?? He is a dead ringer for a 10 year older Mr Bean but nowhere near as funny.

peter, vienna, austria

In macro terms, funded financing and "pay as you go" are indistinguishable in terms of what actually has to happen. Savings and non-reciprocal entitlement are numbers written on bits of paper, and they have value only if society broadly accepts that this should be so. Those who actually produce current value need to be content with how much of this value is applied to the support of the non-productive. The key political discussion needs to be about striking the most equitable distribution of entitlement between the productive and the dependent sections of society. How the value is to be extracted from the producers, and how it is to be distributed to the dependents must necessarily be secondary questions.

It seems to me that the balance is dangerously skewed towards the dependents and that the goodwill of the producers is wearing thin. The well-being of society is completely at the discretion of the producers, and there is nothing more important than that they are treated fairly.

Simon Stephenson, Windermere, UK

It is the same the world over. They all promise, but where is the money? There is no money, don't forget this, only a little more debt. But as the soap opera says "as the world turns"

ben barr, cornwall, pei,ca

The existing pay-as-you-go scheme for state pensions and NHS provision for the elderly is a kind of confidence trick known as a 'Ponzi scheme'. We are promised a wonderful return from our tax investment, which can't really be paid for out of the money that we contribute. Instead, it is paid for by the next generation of investors/taxpayers. All goes well as long as there is a constant stream of new mugs joining the scheme, to pay for the older mugs who are now collecting under it. The problem now for our country and others is that the supply of new mugs is dwindling. and these Ponzi schemes are heading for collapse.

Frank Upton, Solihull,

The fantasy is that you can somehow solve the problem by writing on a sheet of paper "Mrs Bloggs, £1000" and then incrementing the amount by 5% each year. Economics doesn't work like that.

Malcolm McLean, Bradford, UK

"World-class public services"

Right up there with "nice-smelling flatulence"

That was funny!...Thanks Stephen!

Tom, VA, USA

Brown's aim is to raise the maximum amount of tax so as to be able to employ lots of bureaucrats who will control our lives from Whitehall with needless regulations and, above all, have a vested interest in voting Labour.

I doubt that Dave has given a moment's thought to long-term demographic issues. Like his proclaimed exemplar, Blair he just treats politics as a PR exercise.

Gervas Douglas, Andorra la Vella,

I am afraid that this is all still a fantasy since the proposal is just to move from taxes to charges - out of reach for most people.

This is the price of economic failure brought about by our love of the Roman System of Government - the Monarchy, and its pyramidal structure, which concentrates all power - and assets, in the hands of a tiny group at the top.

Now that we have two 'Kings' the PM and the current monarch, we have an impossible system. Our lack of a constitution or formal relationship between ruler and ruled, has broken this country, and I am afraid that, due to the influx of recent arrivals, with differing views and aims, we will never put it back into working order.

paul smith, Hull, east yorks

The scale of denial of the problem is truely scarey. No mention has been made of the cost of future new medicines that could bankrupt the NHS either. I reguarly share a pint with a middle rank NHS civil servant who tells me all ministers say is "i will be gone by then so don't bother me with that projection". Once the current 'luv in' is over, very hard questions need to be asked. I feel very let down by politicians, as a baby boomber who can see retirement coming I wonder what it is going to look like? certainly not my parents comfortable one and I wonder who will pay for it? Another 10 million immigrants according to a recent report, just to keep the taxes flowing in, truely scarey stuff especially if they are from Turkey, the last untapped pool in europe.

Fed Up , London, UK

This is a fantasy. Most people don't earn enough to do this. Thus taxes would fall onto those who have more money. Also, there would be a collossal cost to shifting to a new system - current tax payers would have to pay both for their future and other people's current needs.

There has been enough research to show the problem is not as great as it superficially appears, and that some relatively minor shifts in tax and public attitudes would resolve the issues, especially for Britain.

Never ceases to amaze me how many neo-malthusians there are.

Neil Murphy, cromer,