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Intergenerational justice dominates the discussion about public pension systems. Especially the implicit tax rate, the internal return, and the generational accounts as measures of intergenerational redistribution have brought the debate from the scientific community to the headlines of the political debate. Each of the three measures came to the result that there is too high of a burden for the younger generations as a result of the given demographic change. If intergenerational justice is understood as a equal treatment of different generations, an improvement of the relation between contributions and benefits for the younger generations becomes a necessary item of social policy. To achieve such a situation the introduction of a funded pillar into the public pension system is, according to most economists, the solution. The pension reform of the year 2000/01 in Germany took this into account. The effects of this reform on the relation between the contributions and benefits, and as a result on the intergenerational justice will be investigated in this paper.

This paper deals with the German public pension system which is affected by changing demographics. It examines whether the problems can be solved more efficiently by either a fundamental change towards a tax-financed basic allowance augmented by a private capital accumulation sheme, or by adjustments within the present system of wage-determined contributions. The analysis shows that basic allowance and capital accumulation systems are inadequate, essentially for macroeconomic reasons and adverse effects on redistribution, to the demographically induced problems of the public pension system.

Starting from the fact that during the first days the mortality is essentially determined by the degree of severity of the infarction and its complications, a particularly critical evaluation of the results is required. Patients with a bad prognosis usually have contra-indications for the application of beta-blockers during that phase. After the early complications have been overcome, the obtained findings are much easier to interpret in the sense of a therapeutical conception, and they have caused us to make the generalization--observing the contra-indications--to use beta-blockers in the framework of a complex therapy of myocardial infarction wherever it is possible. The results obtained require further verification, but justify, however, optimism on their part.