There is currently much emphasis on the need to save to provide finance for old age.
This is premised on a naïve confusion between finance (or money) & real resources: you cant eat, live in, or wear, money, though in a steady state system the accumulated promises which are represented by banknotes or other financial instruments gives you command over these real resources.
Because, especially because, money does not equal real resources, there are myriad ways in which these promises can be reneged upon - for example the young, the workers, the salaried & employed can consent to runaway inflation. In the end the old, the infirm, the dependent, must trust the able bodied to support them, whether this is directly, through the family, or indirectly through the state or through a charitable organisation.
Tracing, or mapping, on whom these obligations fall, provides one method of defining whether a society is a democracy or something else
