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Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

telegraph.co.uk

171–180 of 1001 posts

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#171
This comes about due to incompetent politicians running things. Australia is spending billions on nuclear subs it doesn’t need, and even paying France $300 million for not buying their subs.

Australia doesn’t have enough money for that? No problem, just make everyone work longer.

As an individual if I don’t earn enough to cover my spending I have two choices.

1. work more

2. Spend less

In all these discussions we never see politicians do anything about spending less, they just throw us under the bus to work more, while of course exempting themselves.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#172

Seems the US will have to do this soon. Just very very unpopular. Not sure which party will actually pull the trigger.

From my uninformed perspective this seem like a rather big and sensible lever toward rebalancing US national finances. The actuarial math must have changed significantly since the inception of the program, no?

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Birthrates are problematic as it usually take 20 to 25 years before they pay taxes. And in that time they require a lot of expenses. They talk abiut the squeeze, if Birthrates increase too suddenly - workers would both have to pay for the elderly and the kids.

This is the real demographic death trap, and why Taiwan and South Korea are probably past the point of no return. If one generation has a fertility rate of 1 child per woman, the next must have 4 children per woman to undo the demographic change. The people in the “corrective” generation must support their own two elderly parents plus four of their own children. It becomes practically impossible.

This is a nice explanation from Kurzgesagt showing precisely why South Korea is completely screwed long term, and why it's impossible to course correct through birth rate alone:

https://youtu.be/Ufmu1WD2TSk?si=3mMFke_Rj6b3jWld

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's what strikes me as well. Where is the productivity gains going? Why are we still working 40 hour weeks, and possibly even for many more years? If I remember correctly, Denmark even removed a holiday recently. So work more days a year as well. That's the problem here. That a few people reap all the benefits of this, while the rest of us toil.

> Where is the productivity gains going? I wonder what a good answer would be here. Intuitively we are increasing productivity in activities that does not increase social welfare. Take corporate lawyering, marketing as an example.

https://preview.redd.it/wealth-distribution-in-the-us-by-wea...

https://inequality.org/facts/wealth-inequality/

Etc etc

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's rising, but much slower than before - and plateaud in the 2010's for a good few years, UK stats - https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/gbr/uni...

So since 1950, lifespan has gone up ~14 years in UK. Retirement age has not gone up since it was created in 1940s. Not crazy to raise it a little. Quickly looking at Denmark articles, it seems they’re raising the age to adjust to life expectancy increases as well. I don’t see this a sign of the system failing.

We are not living longer, fewer infants / kids are dying.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#176
post #9

This is because of their low birth rate primarily right? I think the system has failed at this point, when you are expected to work that long.

No it isn't because of their birth rate, or at least, birth rates are an issue orthogonal to it.

In some rich countries people spend now more years of their life out of work than in work because of much longer education and much longer lifespans. If you want to keep the same social standards, all other things being equal, you need to raise the retirement age.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Getting immigrants who work is a non-issue. I never heard of immigrants from India, China, Africa or Latin America who don't work so long as they entered the country legally. The issue you are alluding to has to do with genuine refugees and illegal economic migrants, who are not filtered at the border depending on their employability within the local market. But the cultural shift is still inevitable. A foreigner is…

> you can give immigrants temporary term VISAs and make it clear their stay is going to be strictly temporary

In practice that rarely goes as intended. The first political party to say, "We changed our minds, you can all have citizenship," gets to secure power with an influx of loyal voters.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But people are living longer, in better health (I think but didn’t verify with data) and entering the workforce later (due to more secondary schooling). Setting aside the issues of declining birth rate for a minute, this seems like a reasonable adjustment to the other factors?

People are living longer (but not really in the US), but the health span is not seeing the same increase unfortunately.

The metric of “living longer” isn’t the same as “life expectancy once you reach the age of 65”, for example. In the US, when someone cites a statistic that our average life span decreased, it’s due to the effects of early-life mortality on the mean. If you make it past 65, it’s a different statistic.
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