Expensive electricity, an inadequately funded public sector pension system, and high interest rates round out this negative picture.
Reforming the Czechs' pension system and their health service will be necessary but unpopular.
One sensible reform would be for the central government to take charge of the pension system.
Meanwhile no one is even thinking about reforms to the country's creaking pension system.
It is a great disappointment that so many workers remain outside the pension system altogether.
In Japan, a third of self-employed people no longer contribute to the basic pension system.
Unless it goes up, any comprehensive pension system that China might eventually introduce will be hideously expensive.
Instead of having a pension system that's a fiscal drain, we would have one that's a capital creator.
He shared his thoughts on how to fix the flawed public pension system in the U.S with me.
Mr Ozawa promises to restore the pension system, help the working poor and the old, and revitalise the countryside.
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It is also considering ways to fundamentally reform its social security pension system, perhaps privatizing a portion of it.
The centrepiece of his domestic agenda reforming the Social Security pension system is deeply unpopular.
Instead, to raise funds, the government nationalised the pension system and siphoned off some of the Central Bank's reserves.
He and his colleagues considered the pension system in the round, taking into account both state and private provision.
"He has destroyed the finest occupational pension system in Europe and turned it into the worst, " said Mr Benson.
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Activist institutional shareholders are still rare in Germany, not least because the country lacks a properly funded pension system.
And the government shows no sign of wanting to tackle really tricky problems, such as the country's unaffordable pension system.
Its board is weighing property tax increases as well as a new hybrid pension system that would be partly market-based.
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Letting charter schools exit the pension system leaves a smaller pool of public school systems to cover existing funding gaps.
Yet the state pension system is bankrupt, causing the legislature to put in place a 50% state income tax increase!
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To fix the pension system in the United States, according to Reynolds, a combination of changes need to be made.
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The result is that the federal government bails out the national pension system to the tune of 1.5% of GDP.
The Greek pension system is so broken that it cannot afford to buy new bonds to bail out the Greek government.
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Without these future workers our already tottering pension system will become even more untenable, as is occurring in Europe and Japan.
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The priorities now, says Mr Lagos, are reforming health services, broadening access to higher education and improving Chile's privatised pension system.
Reforms may be hammered out in education and immigration and (at a stretch) the environment and the Social Security pension system.
He has all but ruled out raising the retirement age or cutting pensions to plug the gap in America's public pension system.
Raising salaries or making legislators full-time isn't politically popular, so lawmakers instead arrange the pension system to provide greater benefits in retirement.
His main domestic goal reforming the Social Security pension system looks beyond reach already.
GDP, breaking the link between the minimum wage and pensions, and reforming the pension system, Brazil's version of welfare for the rich.
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