One might argue that retirement should not be a private sector issue, that it should be handled by governments. This may be true, but a sober analysis of the state of public pensions around the globe reveals that most public pensions are not equipped to solve the world’s retirement issues in their current form. Here, the inadequacies of pension systems like Social Security are put on full display while analysis of pensions from a few standout countries and states like Denmark and Wisconsin are examined for their tontine like structures as learning points and arguments in favor of adapting tontine like structures at the public level.