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Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

telegraph.co.uk

651–660 of 1001 posts

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#651

*) 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.

But employees are not just pure net gains. If you hire a bunch of "retirement jobbers" you will still have to manage them. It sounds logical at first that you simply hire a few older people for lesser pay but in Europe the question is also why a 65 year old would accept a far lower paid job if he can simply go back on welfare and get paid the same? The reality will probably be that most old people will be unemployed so long that nobody wants to hire them even if they could hire them for a very low amount. People at that age will have a lot of pride built up, they are not going to want to stand in a supermarket for 3h a day either. Is society really going to force them? So far they are barely even willing to force young people to get jobs.

Just because you can hire a 68 year old to do content moderation or be an assistant teacher... does not mean that anybody actually wants him around at that age and that he will be a net gain to the environment. His speed and ability at work is inherently going to limit other people's speed in some way or form,not even just that. Even his vibe, his impact on the team. These things are all things that people consider during hiring. It's the concept of "the chain is only as strong as its weakest link" I suppose.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#652
post #256

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 nev…

How did you get from Denmark to Australia?

It’s happening all over the world

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

What a pile of .... Humans have lived for 2 millions years, had no system and were just fine and survived the freaking ice age.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are quite a few highly paid professions where the main purpose of that profession’s union seems to be to prevent there being an adequate supply of the professionals.

Like med schools in the US

I think this isn't at the behest of a union, but a lack of funding by the government for residency training

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#655
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.

We did not improve people's lifespans. At least not that much. What happened is that young people die less due to less hazardous conditions which improved the average age. Also the average age is not the problem. The problem is that social security was setup as a ponzi scheme (younger pays for older) instead of a saving scheme (each one build a nest for himself). A ponzi scheme will eventually implode but if you manipulate the parameters you can make it go further.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#656
post #483

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. Retirement depends on having young workers. People approaching 60, 70 simply didn't have enough kids to have good retirement. It's not…

> 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…

> You've created an impossible situation which will never exist

It can and does, albeit in slower motion (ie Japan, South Korea)

> why taking care of the elderly, something humans have done since before recorded history, is flawed.

Humans took care of THEIR elderly. The system was made to take care of THE elderly. Pretty sure most people don't want to see old people begging for food on the street but also prefer not to pay much to have it resolved (varies by country and culture)

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#657
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.

Some people really can't have kids or need extra help, but aside from that, social security sets up the wrong incentives.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing sad about this. Mandatory pensions are not a vacation sponsored by the government but a way to provide for those who can't provide for themselves. If you were born in the 70s, you should have known for most of your adult life that your normal retirement age is likely going to be around 70. The demographic situation is not new, the solutions have been discussed extensively since at least the 90s, and…

Taxes pay these pensions. Taxes that citizens have paid for their whole working lives, with the understanding that they would benefit from that pension fund in their later years. It's actually far closer to a "vacation", but not "sponsored by the government" -- closer to "that you've been saving for already for years."

You save for a state pension the same way you save for state health care - not at all. The current working people pay for the current retired people, and this only works so long as there are significantly more working than retired people. Advantage of this system: You dont need to be afraid of not having saved enough money if you end up living too long. Disadtvantage: Thid only works if there are substantially more working people than retired people, which is no longer the case, so pensions have to be reduced.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing sad about this. Mandatory pensions are not a vacation sponsored by the government but a way to provide for those who can't provide for themselves. If you were born in the 70s, you should have known for most of your adult life that your normal retirement age is likely going to be around 70. The demographic situation is not new, the solutions have been discussed extensively since at least the 90s, and…

Part of the deal with progress should be that we all start working less. If not is the progress all that attractive? Improved health so we can all work more is kinda stupid.

That's been happening, but not as quickly as earlier generations expected. In 1970, the average labor force participant (employed or unemployed) in Denmark worked 1845 hours. By 2022, the number had fallen to 1371 hours. The numbers are similar for most West European countries but not for East Europe or the US.
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