Two of the five countries are Eeastern, one is Central and two are Western European countries.
What France and Ireland did is not that much different from Social Security trust fund’s mandate to invest in government bonds.
Back in 1997 Hungary did what Bush II tried and failed to achieve – they privatized a third of their Social Security funds. They are simply canceling the program, which was a high cost/high fee/low return (big surprise). The voluntary retirement accounts are not affected by this.
As a side note, almost all former Soviet-dominated countries practice very brutal form of Capitalism. The social net that we have here is more similar to what they had until 1990’s than what they have now.
