Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

telegraph.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 1001 posts

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#361

Post by jopsen »

glorygut123 wrote: post #335
gandalfian wrote: post #272

Denmark, 6 million wealthy people, 4% economic growth, 1.5% inflation, 2.9% unemployment, national debt of 25% of GDP and budget in surplus. How did it all go so right?

If they're raising the retirement age, then it obviously didn't all go so right,

I feel we've known this was coming years.. and it won't effect until 2040 -- this gives me confidence in the system.

It's not an unfunded mandate running on deficit spending.

So probably it won't be wiped away by a global monetary crisis that forces us to cut deficit spending and reduce pensions.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#362

Post by jmpetroske »

satvikpendem wrote: post #327
dtgm92 wrote: 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.

How would you fix it? Note that even Scandinavian nations with very generous healthcare and childcare policies can't raise their rates, it simply seems that as people get wealthier, they have fewer kids, regardless of the status of their country's systems.

My take is that saying the problem is birth rates is misguided. Surely we have enough labor to provide for the elderly, why can’t our economy be structured to get this labor to the people who need it?

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#363

Post by bossyTeacher »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #2

*) by 2040. I hate it when titles are incomplete. How will this work realistically? How will you convince employers to keep workers employed till 70? Especially in fast changing fields like IT where a lot of old knowledge and experience gets considered obsolete by those screening resumes. Sure, people might survive longer, but that doesn't mean all workers will be equally mentally or physically fit to still perform w…

> How will this work realistically?

A new category of jobs will be created: retirement jobs. People unable to work till their retirement age, will be given simple low paid jobs to earn enough work hours to hit their retirement. Think of all the simple jobs currently outsourced: content moderation for social media websites, training data tweaking, LLM training, teaching assistants, street cleaning assistants, etc.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#365

Post by seydor »

enra wrote: post #312
gandalfian wrote: post #272

Denmark, 6 million wealthy people, 4% economic growth, 1.5% inflation, 2.9% unemployment, national debt of 25% of GDP and budget in surplus. How did it all go so right?

Ozempic & Novo Nordisk contributes something like 2% of the economic growth.

they were rich before ozempic

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#366

Post by cyberax »

neom wrote: post #311
nine_k wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The system has effectively failed most everywhere on the West. The post-WWII generations are numerous and have a long life expectancy, apparently longer than the pension systems planned for. Generations that came after them are less numerous, and, in a way, somehow less prosperous. They cannot pay enough to keep the pension systems afloat. The Japanese faced this earlier and harder than Europe, with about 30% of thei…

Do you have a sense of how you see it playing out?

It'll keep getting worse, as more and more people concentrate into large cities. And large cities are family-hostile. The birth rate in cities is strongly anti-correlated with the city size. People just don't feel content and happy to have children in dense cities.

Japan is very illustrative in this regard. Young people are forced into unaffordable cities, where they often live in cramped shoebox-sized apartments. While beautiful spacious traditional homes are decaying just 2 hours away by car.

What can help? Promote smaller cities, by focusing on making smaller cities more attractive for employers. This is already happening with the remote work, and it helps: https://eig.org/families-exodus/

How to make smaller cities more attractive? Put a stop to densification of larger cities, and tax (or cap-and-trade) the office space in dense areas.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#368

Post by jopsen »

joelthelion wrote: post #342
MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are living longer. Demographically there are fewer younger people to support them. Something has to give.

On the other hand, productivity has improved tremendously. It's not clear that we actually need everyone working.

You absolutely don't need to work 37 hours per week if you are willing to live 200km from the big cities in an old house.

You buy something dirt cheap for less than 80k USD. It's not great, it's old run down. But if you do minimal repairs and don't live the high life, you can get by with very little.

But if you want a new car and nice comfy house in a decent location, with all the modern amenities, well, that's expensive.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#369

Post by satvikpendem »

jmpetroske wrote: post #362
satvikpendem wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you fix it? Note that even Scandinavian nations with very generous healthcare and childcare policies can't raise their rates, it simply seems that as people get wealthier, they have fewer kids, regardless of the status of their country's systems.

My take is that saying the problem is birth rates is misguided. Surely we have enough labor to provide for the elderly, why can’t our economy be structured to get this labor to the people who need it?

Do we have enough labor? At least in the US there has been a shortage of elderly care workers. And even if we didn't, what does it mean, concretely, to structure the economy to get the labor to those who mean it?

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#370

Post by stevesimmons »

joelthelion wrote: post #313
gandalfian wrote: post #272

Denmark, 6 million wealthy people, 4% economic growth, 1.5% inflation, 2.9% unemployment, national debt of 25% of GDP and budget in surplus. How did it all go so right?

And yet they all have to work like idiots until they're 70, whether they like it or not. I feel they could do better than that with all this wealth.

They don't all have to work to age 70. Anyone can stop working earlier, and fund their own retirement.
Post reply on HN