There is currently a wide-ranging debate concerning the future of the pension system. The purpose of our paper is not to evaluate and conclude this debate, but to attempt to identify the basic macroeconomic determinants within which the "playing field" is defined. In our conception, there are certain economic givens, and only within them can rational policy solve problems. The second attempt is to point out the problems of certain chosen solutions, i.e. mainly to define the transmission mechanisms that are immanent to the operation of the economy and transmit interventions to other spheres of society. The aim is to define and describe the distributional and redistributive relations in the economy and their interrelations. However, given the space available, we will focus on only some of them. These moments are illustrated in the next section on the determinants of the Czech economy.