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Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#541

Post by dralley »

incompatible wrote: post #526
dralley wrote: post #491

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?

You can absolutely raise taxes on the wealthy and close loopholes (we should do those things) but it's not gonna fix the massive hole that is social spending in the budget of nearly every western nation. It's more structural than that.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#542

Post by SchemaLoad »

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #424
wyager wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think if you've put in 40-45 years for the man, you should be allowed to have some good 10 years for yourself. Who do you think would "allow" this? God? This is a resource constraint imposed by reality itself catching up to an excessively idealistic set of policies; this policy decision is downstream of that, not arbitrary.

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.

Isn't that exactly how retirement works though? Old people who produce no labour but just get everything given to them because of the capitol they built up previously.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#543

Post by downrightmike »

nine_k wrote: post #244
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.

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…

Generations after the boomers create more, with less energy, but the boomers rigged the system and captured the increases.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#544

Post by theshackleford »

tossandthrow wrote: post #440
amag wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there is no guarantee that your 65-75 years will be good, but it's a lot more likely that your 65-75 years will be good than your 75-85 years.

The point is, that the society does not owe you 10 years to do whatever.

And this is why I give as little to society as possible. If it owes me nothing, I owe it nothing and therefore it’s only right I give it as close to nothing as possible to balance the scales.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#545

Post by nullhole »

duttish wrote: post #435
intothemild wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's only one issue I can think of with your idea that someone who is 75 now leads a life as you're describing. The generation they belong to are predicted to live to what 80-85 years? Whilst we (assuming you're in your 40's now) are predicted to get to what 90-95 on average? Average lifespans are increasing, and on top of that the mobility of someone who's 75 now, won't be the same of someone who's 75 in another…

Does anyone know if there's any kind of metrics for healthspans? Meaning the "good" part of life before it's just doctors, medicine and retirement homes. My impression so far is that we've done a lot of work at the lifespan, less at the healthspan. What's the point of living until 90 if the last 15 years isn't that fun at all.

> Does anyone know if there's any kind of metrics for healthspans? Meaning the "good" part of life before it's just doctors, medicine and retirement homes.

The metric I've come across is Quality Adjusted Life Years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#546

Post by broken-kebab »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #496
timschmidt wrote: post #489

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…

I think what they missed is that people typically work for much longer than they are retired. If the periods were of equal length, I think the Ponzi scheme thing would be true. As is its sort of a modified fractionated ponzi.

Ponzi, or no Ponzi, it's still an illusion: let's assume that we all generate enough money saved in those funds during our productive years to sustain ourselves in senior periods, even counting in the almighty inflation. The problem is it's not money you need when old, and frail, you want somebody doing work for that money. So the whole scheme still requires enough young workers entering the market, and them be willing to perpetuate it. Which is kinda not guaranteed if each gen is smaller then the previous one.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#547

Post by buckle8017 »

kulahan wrote: post #523
tomp wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...)

This is missing the elderly with no young to support them for whatever reason, so some level of government support is necessary. You can’t just have old people dying in the streets of course.

Those people literally dug their own graves.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#548

Post by davejohnclark »

zeroCalories wrote: post #479
vintermann wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Economically, old people are a burden on society Only if they are poor. If they're rich, they can continue "producing wealth" from interest and investments even after they're dead. It's a silly thing to say, of course, but it's built into most people's assumptions who are discussing it.

A rich person doing nothing is not productive. They produce by giving their money to someone that is productive and getting rent on it. If billionaires and aristocrats were actually a sizable amount of a country's wealth it might make sense to redistribute their wealth to the actually productive people. But they're not.

> If billionaires and aristocrats were actually a sizable amount of a country's wealth

I might be misunderstanding your point, but I think they might be? E.g. in the UK:

> By 2023, the richest 50 families in the UK held more wealth than half of the UK population, comprising 34.1 million people

https://equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-economic-inequality-uk/

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#549

Post by timschmidt »

broken-kebab wrote: post #546
pfannkuchen wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what they missed is that people typically work for much longer than they are retired. If the periods were of equal length, I think the Ponzi scheme thing would be true. As is its sort of a modified fractionated ponzi.

Ponzi, or no Ponzi, it's still an illusion: let's assume that we all generate enough money saved in those funds during our productive years to sustain ourselves in senior periods, even counting in the almighty inflation. The problem is it's not money you need when old, and frail, you want somebody doing work for that money. So the whole scheme still requires enough young workers entering the market, and them be willi…

> Ponzi, or no Ponzi, it's still an illusion

What do you think money is?

> you want somebody doing work

This is one reason why the robotics work going on right now is so exciting. Without the demand for elder care, it wouldn't attract as much investment or development.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#550

Post by newswangerd »

amag wrote: 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…

It feels like the problem is that we've drastically improved people's lifespans, but not their healthspans. Back when these systems started getting implemented, you could reasonably work up to the retirement age without too many issues. Nowadays, people may be living to 80 instead of 60, but our ability to work and willingness to hire people past 60 hasn't gone up with the increase in lifespan.
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