Live data from Hacker News

Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

telegraph.co.uk

711–720 of 1001 posts

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#711

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. Travel, play golf, cross a continent in a camper or climb a mountain. Not unless you've raised 2 more workers to pick up the shovel while you're playing golf. You could, of course, rely on your neighbor's kids through taxes and pensions but when your neighbor thinks the same it becomes problematic. On th…

Just let two immigrants in to replace me. Much cheaper and easier than raising kids.

It’s a profoundly sad trend. Our obsession with nuclear families and individualism has led us to a point where raising a family has become financially impossible and unimaginable.

The immigration fix is analogous to quantitative easing. The problems are systemic, and turning a blind eye to them won’t make them disappear.

Honestly, we need to rethink capitalism. By promoting shareholder returns over the wellbeing of employees, companies are destroying the social fabric necessary for a healthy civilization.

Of course, the rise in costs and the widening wealth gap are equally to blame. This situation compels both parents to work, sometimes even holding multiple jobs, leaving them with insufficient time to raise children. This cycle continues until the next generation has no chance of affording their own home (or even a rental). How on earth are they supposed to raise a family?

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#712

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. Travel, play golf, cross a continent in a camper or climb a mountain. Not unless you've raised 2 more workers to pick up the shovel while you're playing golf. You could, of course, rely on your neighbor's kids through taxes and pensions but when your neighbor thinks the same it becomes problematic. On th…

Just let two immigrants in to replace me. Much cheaper and easier than raising kids.

That's a great plan. Also make sure to deny citizenship to them and their kids, otherwise they'll eventually vote to stop paying your pensions. The glory of apartheid states of the past awaits us.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Part of the deal with progress should be that we all start working less. If not is the progress all that attractive? But we don't want to work less, we want more stuff.

> But we don't want to work less, we want more stuff.

Hold on. That's what tech is for right?

certain people on this forum keep saying we don't want to work. They say it's OK that they steal our art to train AI that takes our jobs, because then we can finally chillax and not work. But now apparently we also must keep working the remaining shitty jobs to not starve until we die? who is supposed to win here??

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#714
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…

That’s not a plausible theory to me. IME older people are just less likely to work hard. They bring a “rest n vest” mindset. If an older person rounds a 40hr week down to 35 hrs, and a younger person rounds up to 45 hours because they are passionate and ambitious, all else equal the younger get person is better ROI for the team. Obviously this is stereotyping and may not be accurate but that sentiment can explain many decisions.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#715

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. Travel, play golf, cross a continent in a camper or climb a mountain. Not unless you've raised 2 more workers to pick up the shovel while you're playing golf. You could, of course, rely on your neighbor's kids through taxes and pensions but when your neighbor thinks the same it becomes problematic. On th…

Just let two immigrants in to replace me. Much cheaper and easier than raising kids.

It would be hard to distill the fallacy of human fungibility into a purer form than this. If you’re say Danish, the kids you raise will be Danish. The immigrants won’t be Danish, they’ll be like the people from their country of origin: https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-tran....

And as a result, they won’t be nearly as economically productive as Danes, ironically undermining the whole point of immigration: https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/12/18/why-have-danes-t...

The tremendous contribution that Danes can make to the world is to have and raise more Danish children!

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#716
The idea since the early 80's was to prepare for the big boomer retirement wave by saving up in special retirement funds, aa demographic prohections were clear. In Belgium e.g. this was called the 'Zilverfonds'.

But no politician throughout the decades could keep their hands out of the coockie jar, so now al those accounts are empty.

Funny how when 'defence' creates fake emergencies there is no limit to how money can be found. But money for retirement? Oh no, we can't have that!

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#717

The best phrase I read by someone. "Retirement is a financial goal - it has nothing to do with age". And this makes huge sense...

How does this make huge sense?

It's a financial goal that is literally based on how long you plan to live, aka, your age.

Let's say I have €100.000 in the bank and that's two years of expenses based on my budget. Can I retire tomorrow? Well, what's my age? and what X do I plan to add to my age to determine if that amount of money is sufficient to retire?

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#718
post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if you have enough money to do all that then you probably have enough to retire a little early. Why not stop working at 60 and fund the first few years of your retirement out of your savings?

From what I understand if you retire early you must fund your retirement until the end. So you either work until the requested age and get something, or you don't and don't get anything. You can't just stop at 60, fund your retirement from 60 to 70, and then expect the gov to pay for your retirement from 70 to the end. Maybe I'm wrong tho.

I doubt this is true in most countries. It would introduce all sorts of problems if people stopped working because of illness or their employer went out of business when they were 60. Not to mention somebody who stopped working the day before their 65th birthday or other strangeness.

You also have people who have not worked much throughout their lives.

But there are a lot of countries and types of pensions out there and some (such as for government workers) may work the way you say. Checks first before you resign (don't be like some UK women).

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#719

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…

The "system" would fall apart if people didn't work for at least half their lives, true, but it is absolutely not true that we need people to work until they're 70.

Well, what is half their lives anyway?

Let's say you live to 80, half your life is 40 years. You only start working a decent job around ~22 years (4 year college degree).

22+40 = 62, pretty close to 70 already. Assuming some people die early, so others have to pick up the slack, some people work part time, etc. and you end up pretty damn close to 70.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#720
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…

> 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. Travel, play golf, cross a continent in a camper or climb a mountain. Not unless you've raised 2 more workers to pick up the shovel while you're playing golf. You could, of course, rely on your neighbor's kids through taxes and pensions but when your neighbor thinks the same it becomes problematic. On th…

1. Denmark has a special retirement system for people who started work life earlier than normal, allowing them to indeed retire after some 45-48 years of work. All these rules are broken though.

2. These ages only affect a minimal government pension, and a massive tax saving on cashing out a specific, government approved retirement investment. If you wait to start receiving payments on that till retirement age, you avoid paying income tax of it. You can start earlier with worse taxation, or use regular investment types altogether. The overcomplicated tax system and its incentives are quite broken though.

3. Danish politicians still have a retirement age of 60 and a massive retirement package, so they can't deem retirement age and available funds to be that important...

Post reply on HN