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Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

telegraph.co.uk

531–540 of 1001 posts

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#531
post #409

This is truly sad. As a Swede I fear my country may follow suite. The retirement age in Sweden used to be 65 and now it's 67. Looking at older people around me, most lead a much less active life after 75. So, if we were lucky we used to have some 10 good years of doing whatever we wanted before old age and age-related diseases start affecting us so much we become limited to a much smaller world. But now we have maybe…

Isn't this more about letting people who want to keep working do that? What's stopping people in Sweden and Denmark from retiring earlier? I would imagine there are some pensions plan withdrawal requirements or criteria for government assistance but can't you just save money to bridge that gap?

Maybe we need to start thinking about these things differently. I would love to have more time off but still have a job and not need to make this so binary.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#532
post #517
post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d rather a robust pension starting at 70 than an anemic one starting at 55 or an underfunded one starting at 65. You can fill a gap before that pension starts with part time work etc. It’s much harder to make up a shortfall when you’re 85.

But for an individual that would die at 71, which pension would they rather have, in your opinion?

For me nothing changes.

The benefits of a pension start before retirement. I can avoid setting aside a huge pile of money for the potential of an extremely long lifespan and then worry as minor changes to that pile become really critical near and in retirement.

Suppose you’re 50 with 2 million USD in savings. How soon do you retire and what kind of lifestyle do you live in retirement? That’s heavily dependent on what kind of pension is waiting.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans need a constant supply of resources and shelter to survive. There is no "system" which avoids this inconvenient fact. In the absence of any "system" at all, you would still need to constantly work for survival - and in fact you'd just die as soon as you were no longer able to do so due to illness or injury much less old age. In other words if there were no "system" there would be no such concept as "retirement…

I don't think we need nearly as much as most people think. How much is being taken by the wealthy from the workers already? How much effort goes on the work of maintaining and protecting the system of inequality? How many people are already doing nothing when they would be willing to work?

These are the right questions to be asking. Suboptimal system configuration problems.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#534
post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pension is a Ponzi scheme. Explained in terms of economic theory, if everybody works and saves in time period 1, and retires and receives pension in time period 2, then... their pension is worthless, because there's infinite inflation, because no more goods and services get produced. You've created an impossible situation which will never exist and then offered it as an example of why taking care of the elderly, so…

> why taking care of the elderly, something humans have done since before recorded history Well yeah, but before government-organised pension, it was your kids taking care of you when you get older, so the system was much more balanced (or rather, only imbalanced on the micro scale, not at a mega scale we see now...)

> it was your kids taking care of you when you get older

This oversimplification has never been true. Humans evolved in extended family groups generally between 30 - 300 people. And humans are far more promiscuous and willing to adopt chosen family than most will admit.

The nuclear family is a shockingly recent invention.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is. And this is the case in all western countries. It is just being realized in different ways. Fundamentalle there are 3 ways to cope 1. reduce pensions 2. Raise taxes 3. Decrease amount of benefit receivers. Denmark choose number 3

Wouldn't the fourth way be via increasing either birth rate or immigration?

Yes and no.

The elephant in the room that is getting some attention is demographic collapse. It’s been politicized, unfortunately, and seized on by strange people, but the fact remains that we’ve stuck our heads in the sand here. The seriousness of demographic collapse cannot be overstated. Social and economic collapse are inevitable unless something (morally licit, of course) is done to boost birth rates to above replacement rates, or kept at replacement levels. Once we reach a point of no return, it will be impossible to reverse course.

There’s a lot working against healthy demographics. We have decades of alarmist, misanthropic, Malthusian propaganda from types like Paul Ehrlich. We have now a hyperindividualistic culture - politically, socially, and economically - that is hostile both functionally as well as in sentiment toward the healthy function of family, and secondarily the community life it produces, as well as mental health). The logic of consumerism does not sit well with family life, because family life is not something that can be monetized. Consumerism relies on maximizing spending of the atomized individual, and in order for that to work, one must maximize the work done by that individual. Family life interferes with the regime of constant spending and the reign of total work. (Ironically, this makes the celebrated careerism of feminism an expression of this all consuming capitalist drive. It stigmatizes motherhood with demeaning labels like “stay-at-home mom” and celebrates the very office jobs that are the stuff of comedies.) Today, we understand everything with reference to the individual, even anachronistically reinterpreting history according to its alienating categories. Some governments have enacted pro-natalist policies, but they’re typically weak, superficial, and ineffective. We’re addicted to patterns of life formed over the last 70 years that we don’t want to let go of. Governments need to take much more serious measures that drastically favor, prioritize, and protect the family, through and through. Good luck doing that in our democratic societies. Addicts typically change only after they’ve experienced a crisis and hit rock bottom, and by then, it may be too late.

Immigration, of course, is no solution. The belief that immigration can fix the problem is itself rooted in the logic of hyperindividualism, where atomized individuals can be replaced by other atomized individuals to achieve net conservation or even gain according to the numbers. Cultural realities are totally ignored. The rate of immigration that a country can successfully absorb is not enough to outpace demographic decline. Exceeding that rate undermines the whole point of using immigration to compensate for demographic decline in the first place, since mass migrations are always harmful to host populations. You’re basically talking the collapse of the host populace and the formation of new ones in its place. Furthermore, immigration drains the populations of other countries, ones that are likely also facing demographic issues, which basically makes richer countries parasitic and callous about the continuity and futures of other peoples, until there are no more populations to drain of people anymore.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#536
post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back when it was first introduced, it was based on life expectancy and few were expected to live beyond retirement age. [1] [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/how-ret...

Turns out retirement is just an illusion to convince you to give your best years for the system.

It's not to convince you of anything.

You can't retire if you don't have savings or children to support you.

Even if you have savings and/or children to support you, you can't retire if your society didn't make enough children so that your savings can have some value.

Social security was always a ponzi scheme that doesn't work in the long run as fertility rates _necessarily_ drop to or below (really, always below) replacement rate.

Even without social security, if you want to retire, and to have along retirement, then you need your society to have near replacement rate fertility. Or insanely high productivity. I guess you can look forward to AI rendering most jobs obsolete, and hope that humans can -as always before- create new jobs that can't be easily automated.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Bring in more young people via economic opportunity and immigration. Making kids easier to have really only has two real options: 1. Go back down the development timeline of a nation and remove rights from women (bad). 2. Implement more social programs to incentivize children. The reason we need to do 2 now and not in the past is we've developed. Women have rights now, and we need real reasons for them to have kids,…

Not having anyone to care for the old isn’t a reason?

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#538
post #288

Where I live, people have issues getting hired past age 50, and it’s near impossible past age 60. It’s a stroke of luck if you score a job then. So yes they can raise retirement age, but that will just create misery for all those who can’t cling to a job long enough. There‘s got to be a better way.

Part of the reason employees are reticent to hire someone past 50 is before they worry they’ll retire soon, even if they’re mentally and physically in good shape. So increasing the retirement age might actually improve the ability of folks in their 50s to find work. Not saying this is a great trend, but it’s unavoidable due to the low fertility rate (already a problem everywhere in the developed world and soon to be…

> (...) the global average total fertility rate will have dropped below replacement.

My pet theory is that when the system becomes untenable, procreation slows down, which will in time trigger a kind of reset - not that it's going to be fun to live through or anything. Self-regulation.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is entirely arbitrary. Society heavily favours capital above labour. That’s why we have very rich inheritors never working and people toiling until they are 70. It’s entirely a choice. This issue has solutions we collectively decide not to put in place.

Funny that we have a ton of people asking what people would do in a post scarce society. Stating that man needs work. Yet, it also seems to be said most by the people who have been free from the need to labor for generations. They still do, they still desire more, yet their lives are certainly post scarce. Hell, the whole goal of retirement is to become post scarce, and have a few years where you can live without the…

People will always yearn and wonder and imagine. Sure some people will spend their time fishing but a lot of people need things to strive for a and they will make things up or seek out others who feel the same way.
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