Or at least, that’s what I used to think (and have written in the past). But I’ve changed my mind. Not because I’ve become more relaxed about the problem of care-dependency ratios. If anything, the political problem has only got worse. Measures that seemed like a good idea at the time, such as the triple lock, the UK’s gradual solution to the problem of our relatively meagre state pension, now may be so hard to drop that further increases are prioritised over need elsewhere. Italy’s automatic linking of increases in life expectancy with the state pension age (a reform other countries should copy), may now be unpicked by Giorgia Meloni.