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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

#761

Post by ZeroTalent »

bronkic wrote: post #751
Night_Thastus wrote: post #728

Realistically, what are countries supposed to do? Almost every single industrialized country has a birth rate below replacement, so there's fewer younger people to help carry the burdens. Medical care means the elderly live on and on and on, draining enormous costs as they age. I'm not trying to be cruel, but from a pure numbers sense it makes perfect sense. Would you prefer taxes go up instead? Lessen spending on in…

Would you prefer taxes go up instead Yes.

100% yes. My father is 67, and to be honest, he really shouldn't be working anymore. Both physically and mentally. And he is not very sick or disabled in any way. He just doesn't have the same capacity as he had in his 50s so after a 9-5 he was just recovering and going to sleep for the last few years. Terrible.

He retired last year. He didn't have an easy life. Very few jobs would benefit from his work and continuing working would have a great toll on him.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#762

Post by wtcactus »

jampekka wrote: post #119

It's utterly insane that people need to work more and longer as technology increases productivity. A truly dystopian economic system. In 1930 Keynes projected that by 2000 their grandchildren could work 15 hours per week¹. Now the projection is that we will work more and longer in the future. And what is this labor supposed to even do? How much of even current work really increases wellbeing? Graeber's thesis of bull…

We don’t live with 1930s standards of housing, education, welfare, material wealth, services, etc, etc, etc. Compare the taxes you pay now with the taxes people paid in the 1930s.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#763

Post by sudahtigabulan »

sdeframond wrote: post #724
throwaway290 wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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??

Obviously it depends a lot but, as white-collars tech people, we can already work less. What's preventing us from going on sabbatical ? We would earn less, sure, but do we really need that money? I mean it is buying us things that our parents didnt have so it should be possible to do without, no? Again, that's a different story for poor people.

> What's preventing us from going on sabbatical?

Companies are not thrilled to hire people with long gaps in their resume, in my experience. (I have 2, 1, 1, years each gaps in mine.)

You risk making yourself unhirable. And, if not now, at some point you will need money.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#764

Post by karmakurtisaani »

lovich wrote: post #693
discodonkey wrote: post #690

This is perfectly reasonable. People are living and staying healthy for longer than they used to, while the overall population is aging disproportionally due to low birth rates. If they hadn't raised the retirement age, they would have to raise taxes very significantly. People should remember that retirement is about making sure the people who are too old to work can still live respectably. It's not an end-of-life va…

> But the alternative is fiscal armageddon Or possibly making a trade off on any number of other areas the government spends money on, or raising taxes. No wait I forgot, either pushing the burden onto labor or Armageddon, no alternatives

> Or possibly making a trade off on any number of other areas the government spends money on, or raising taxes.

A lot of heavy lifting was done here.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#765

Post by TFYS »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #728

Realistically, what are countries supposed to do? Almost every single industrialized country has a birth rate below replacement, so there's fewer younger people to help carry the burdens. Medical care means the elderly live on and on and on, draining enormous costs as they age. I'm not trying to be cruel, but from a pure numbers sense it makes perfect sense. Would you prefer taxes go up instead? Lessen spending on in…

Tax wealth. I know that's a very hard thing to do due to the mobility and political power of capital, but we need international co-operation and just do it. That's where all the money is and where it's going at an accelerating rate.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#766

Post by ygouzerh »

discodonkey wrote: post #690

This is perfectly reasonable. People are living and staying healthy for longer than they used to, while the overall population is aging disproportionally due to low birth rates. If they hadn't raised the retirement age, they would have to raise taxes very significantly. People should remember that retirement is about making sure the people who are too old to work can still live respectably. It's not an end-of-life va…

Peope are living and staying healthy for longer than they used to --> mostly impactful for middle/upper class and above. There is a correlation between life expectancy and job level/wealth: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7792745/ .

With retirement at 70, manual labours can already stop dreaming of taking a rest before dying.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#767

Post by ValentinPearce »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #728

Realistically, what are countries supposed to do? Almost every single industrialized country has a birth rate below replacement, so there's fewer younger people to help carry the burdens. Medical care means the elderly live on and on and on, draining enormous costs as they age. I'm not trying to be cruel, but from a pure numbers sense it makes perfect sense. Would you prefer taxes go up instead? Lessen spending on in…

> Would you prefer taxes go up instead?

Yes. Looking at my country, we've applied economic liberalism without any positive results at scale. I would prefer we go back to taxing companies more, go back to taxing the rich on their assets and crack down on fiscal fraud (20B€ estimate, about 6% of the national retirement cost).

Instead the government privatizes services that used to bring a steady income and defunds hospitals, education and public research.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#768

Post by tossandthrow »

AngryData wrote: post #750
tossandthrow wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If society doesn't owe me for working under its rules and constraints, why should I care about society and following its rules and constraints and putting anything into it? In my opinion such a stance makes governmental rule illegitimate, and completely kills the social contract, making me wonder why I should care about following the law at all except through fear, which is not a great long term motivator both histor…

I am curious: From where did you get that it owes you that?

So, I completely agree with most things you say. The core here is: Just don't work 40+ years for a retirement.

Take sabbaticals along the way.

Change your career when it is stale.

The counter for this: Don't buy into the hype. You cannot afford sabbaticals if you need two new cars every 4 years and a house that stretches your finances.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#769

Post by 4gotunameagain »

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?

Having lived in Denmark for quite a while, I will say that it is the societal coherence, and an attitude of working together for all which must have been influenced with the difficulty of surviving in that landscape in the past.

Societal coherence has been aided by the isolation, and here is the hot take: this cannot exist in "diverse" societies. Not because of bullshit genetic superiority justifications, but because no diverse society has so far demonstrated the capacity to have a shared purpose, coherence and high degrees of trust.

And yes, I do find monoculture societies (including denmark) very boring, and I believe diversity has other great benefits. But societal stability and long term prosperity in that sense? Doesn't look like it.

Before someone mentions the US as a counterexample, do not forget that all the prosperity of the US came from basically seizing an underutilised (in the industrial sense) resource rich continent, and now it is falling apart by internal divide.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#770

Post by AngryData »

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 don't know if I would so easily conflate necessity to political legislation. Both politics and politicians are very commonly out of touch with average citizens and what they need, and often ignore the policies that would benefit the state the most in favor of pursuing personal ideals and maintaining political positions and power. If a policy is good for a state 20 years down the line, but will cost them political positioning in the meanwhile or challenges their notions on what they are "suppose" to do either ideologically or socially, or results in their often substantial personal investments having lower returns, I wouldn't often bet on them choosing the state over themselves.
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