> the demographic/pension crisis.

This is the actual issue, which we often avoid talking about because it's grim. Like, health care is expensive, old people health care is really expensive, and the proportion of old people in many Western countries is increasing over time (because of a fall in birth rates). I believe the FT had a good article about this recently, where they showed that the vast majority of extra spending from government was on old people.

Now, clearly, society doesn't want to just shoot old people when they get sick, but I'm not sure how taxation is gonna look as the proportion of old people increases. Obviously increasing retirement ages helps here, but that's mostly just a massive tax on blue collar workers, who are much less likely to be able to continue working into their 70s, whereas for many cubicle jockeys, it's a lot more plausible.