There are other indications that the United States and other mixed economies are abandoning a system in which each older generation invested its own resources toward retirement, replacing it with one where the old must depend on the young for sustenance in their later years, much as in the precapitalistic era. In discussions of health care programs, for instance, it is increasingly assumed that the health care costs of the elderly should be borne, not by the dollars they have invested or even by proceeds from their past taxes, but rather by taxation of the presently working generation—even though the ratio of current workers to retirees is rapidly dwindling. Similarly, "social security" payments are now funded largely through taxation of younger generations, in contrast to traditional pension systems, which draw upon assets accumulated through investment of the beneficiaries' own payments.

In summary, with the return of statism we seem also to be witnessing the beginnings of an atavistic return to the outlook of the preindustrial age, in which children were regarded as mere means of production.