Live data from Hacker News

Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

telegraph.co.uk

211–220 of 1001 posts

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where is the productivity gains going? I wonder what a good answer would be here. Intuitively we are increasing productivity in activities that does not increase social welfare. Take corporate lawyering, marketing as an example.

https://preview.redd.it/wealth-distribution-in-the-us-by-wea... https://inequality.org/facts/wealth-inequality/ Etc etc

The rising wealth inequality is a blunt answer. Similarly saying that we are increasing productivity in activities that protect interest of the rich.

It seems that significant amount of productivity gains are lost because of activities that profit from deception and counter activities that accounts for them.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#212

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

Typically EU countries implement the 3 options together - option 1. btw is meant to make the pension irrelevant. It can't happen from one day to the next, but there is a shift happening where people contribute more and more towards private pension funds. It's easy to see that at some point, there will be the equivalent of the US 401K in Europe.

Denmark does have ratepension, which is exactly that.

People with good private pensions can decide to retire 5 years before they officially retire.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#213

I would like to point to a topic about extending pilots’ mandatory retirement ages. Most pilots plus or minus retirement age are unable to pass the physical or mental demands of the job, so only 25-30% are able to work and not on short- or long-term disability. Some choose to work privately past retirement age. I don’t have any numbers for pilots who decided to leave, were forced out, or could not pass the training.…

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.

Its just like nationality based employment rights(need to be citizens or have a visa/permit to work) but more granular.

It can have its place, i.e. a way to balance bargaining power with the employer. It’s inherently anti meritocratic though.

In some cases it’s not about merit or about limiting supply however. In some cases it’s impractical to test someones work continuously, so instead it becomes honor based. That is, you are expected to go through an elite track and succeed in an exam once and then you are good for life unless you commit fraud or show gross incompetency.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's rising, but much slower than before - and plateaud in the 2010's for a good few years, UK stats - https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/gbr/uni...

So since 1950, lifespan has gone up ~14 years in UK. Retirement age has not gone up since it was created in 1940s. Not crazy to raise it a little. Quickly looking at Denmark articles, it seems they’re raising the age to adjust to life expectancy increases as well. I don’t see this a sign of the system failing.

That's simply untrue.

Since 2010, the retirement age for women has raised from 60 to 65. Bringing it in line with the male retirement age.

See https://www.thetimes.com/money-mentor/pensions-retirement/st...

The age (for both) is gradually rising to 68.

Source https://www.gov.uk/government/news/state-pension-age-review-...

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#215
post #134

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…

It’s not insane. People are living longer than before, unfortunately when initially set up, people didn’t take increasing longevity into account as well as lower fertility rates. Quite a few people never got to retirement when initially instituted. Where is money supposed to come from? Historically, in multigenerational households of yore elders were productive till they could no more.

People live longer but the threshold is still the same when the age reduces your physical and mental capability to the same level.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#216

Seems the US will have to do this soon. Just very very unpopular. Not sure which party will actually pull the trigger.

"Not retiring" in the US will be more dictated by inability to purchase a home than Social Security. Look at all these people around you in their forties who are still renting. They are basically too late to buy. They will be "forever renters". This means they will have to work until death, as their rents continue to rise when their peers who owned homes took their downsizing premium and lived off of it for a few yea…

You can still find plenty of reasonable housing in the US. As for young people on the coasts, yea I don't know how they will own a house within the next 10 years.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe you don't like it to be called a Ponzi scheme, but the reality is that it is one. Definition of a Ponzi scheme: A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that pays existing investors with funds collected from new investor. Ponzi scheme organizers often promise to invest your money and generate high returns with little or no risk. But in many Ponzi schemes, the fraudsters do not invest the money. Instead, they use i…

i disagree. this is not at all a ponzi scheme. as you have pointed out the ponzi scheme has no value outside of the system and relies on deception to convince people to buy in to it. crucially the investment scheme provides no "value". pensions on the other hand don't have the quality of deception and the value is straightforward - it redistributes wealth from the younger population to the older ones. this reduces th…

> wouldn't you characterise any tax scheme as a ponzi scheme?

No, not exactly, that's different.

> unemployment benefits, healthcare etc? what makes them different from pensions?

That's certainly contributions I don't like either, because of how this system is abused. But to be fair, unemployment benefits or healthcare aren't a pyramid scheme, because you aren't paying for the previous "investors" - you might get back what you contributed (with a lots of caveats). In the case of the pension system, you clearly pay the previous "investors".

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#218
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.

No. It is about how the system is funded. If pensions were funded by actual retirement accounts, where employees invested money into some state fund and have it paid out for retirement this would be entirely unproblematic. But the pension system in many EU countries is set up in a way in which tax contributions now finance pensions now . This can only work with a steadily growing economy which continually generates m…

No, fundamentally it doesn't really matter. Retired people consume but don't produce. They are fed by the economy of today, not by economy of the past.

Whatever you accumulate for retirement (cash, stocks, gold, state pension points) it only represents coupons for your share of the economy of the future. Details may differ but fundamentals are the same: it a promise that the future generation will share some of their yield with you.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But people are living longer, in better health (I think but didn’t verify with data) and entering the workforce later (due to more secondary schooling). Setting aside the issues of declining birth rate for a minute, this seems like a reasonable adjustment to the other factors?

So what do we do with all the productivity gains we’ve had?

Give them to the wealthy.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#220
post #206

There is an obvious solution to the problem of ageing population and declining birth rates. Furthermore, it's a solution everybody's secret soul wants very much: keep people younger for longer. Invent rejuvenation. But politicians would never dare go in front of cameras and say that they will put a dollar into R&D for such an outcome, because the wall of insults and disdain we would hurl, for no rational reason, at t…

I'm pretty sure that "lack of market opportunity" isn't the reason that nobody has yet managed to invent eternal youth
Post reply on HN