Denmark to raise retirement age to 70 • Hacker News Board

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#421

Post by wyager » Sun, May 25, 2025, 9:42 PM UTC

deanc wrote: post #4

I’m not sure how I feel about this. I’m based in the Nordics and my estimated retirement age at the moment (where I can get my state pension) is 67y 4m. Whilst I understand the burden the aging population is having on society (lifespan) it doesn’t seem like there’s much proactive government input into people’s healthspan. Maybe instead we should try investing in this area (reducing the burden on services) instead of…

> Maybe instead we should try investing in this area (reducing the burden on services)

This doesn't require any investment or technological development; it just requires making rational-but-politically-nuclear policy changes reducing the infinite tap of publicly-funded extremely-low-ROI medical expenditures on old people.

An absurd fraction of medical spending goes to protracting the suffering of old people just a bit longer. We can simply stop doing that, given the political will to do so.

Extending people's lifespans won't do much to alleviate these expenditures, except perhaps to slightly dilute the amortization schedule.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#422

Post by Aurornis » Sun, May 25, 2025, 9:43 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #138

instagib wrote: post #128

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.

What I find interesting is how often casual discussions about unionization on the internet will organically reinvent this concept. Especially on HN, Reddit, and Twitter the banter about unionization always seems to pivot toward using the union to force companies not to hire certain developers.

The obvious one that comes up in every discussion is thinking that unions will protect their jobs from being outsourced to other countries. People like to layer various more palatable explanations on top of this to make it sound better, but when you ask them if the employees who receive the outsourced jobs should get the same union protections you usually get their real motivation: They want to keep the jobs local to their own market and exclude foreign labor supply in order to improve demand for their services (and therefore their leverage, and therefore their own wages)

It gets interesting when different demographics start imagining that their ideal union would protect them from other demographics: Commonly, older people like to think of unions that will protect them from losing their jobs to young people.

Then when I’m working with college students and they start discussing hypothetical unionization, they come up with ways to think the union will give them more jobs by protecting them from the old people “hoarding” the jobs. (Sorry, that’s the least likely outcome for a union)

What’s most interesting is that the people I know who are in unions (non-tech industries) don’t hide the fact that decreasing labor supply to increase their own demand is exactly what they expect from a union. The first time you hear someone complain that a non-union worker is “taking food off their table” by simply doing their job you realize that it’s not as simple as Unions versus Corporations like we’ve been led to believe. The Unions are advocating for the people in the union, not workers everywhere.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#423

Post by gessha » Sun, May 25, 2025, 9:43 PM UTC

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…

Back when it was first introduced, it was based on life expectancy and few were expected to live beyond retirement age. [1]

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/how-ret...

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#424

Post by StopDisinfo910 » Sun, May 25, 2025, 9:44 PM UTC

wyager wrote: post #414

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…

> 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.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#425

Post by intothemild » Sun, May 25, 2025, 9:44 PM UTC

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…

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 35+ years.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#426

Post by amag » Sun, May 25, 2025, 9:44 PM UTC

wyager wrote: post #414

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…

> 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.

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.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#427

Post by jltsiren » Sun, May 25, 2025, 9:45 PM UTC

nicolashahn wrote: post #85

jxjnskkzxxhx wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "reduce pensions" mean? Pensions are people's property. You can take pensions like you can confiscate property, a la communism.

So close! Pensions are actually property taken from the younger generation and given to retirees.

And capital gains are actually property taken from the workers and given to capitalists. In both cases, the recipients have magic tokens that legally entitle them to some of the value created by other people.

I don't know how this works in other countries. In Finland, it was established decades ago that pensions based on past contributions are constitutionally protected private property. Because people made explicit pension contributions and because the government promised that the future pension would be based on the individual contributions, the government can't alter the deal substantially without a constitutional amendment. If the contributions had been general taxes, or if the promised pension had been independent of the actual contributions, ordinary legislative process would have been enough.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#428

Post by markvdb » Sun, May 25, 2025, 9:46 PM UTC

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…

> It's utterly insane that people need to work more and longer as technology increases productivity. A truly dystopian economic system.

Keynes was almost right. He underestimated the ability of future generations to consume conspicuously. Also, the need for many to fit in by working, but I digress.

Many don't _have_ to work more and longer. I'm speaking of a large class, very much overrepresented on HN, of smart, healthy westerners with no dependents to care for. We have only one major problem. We live in this bubble nudging us towards conspicuous consumption - gently or less so.

My job closely resembles Keynes' 1930's prediction. Sometimes I work (much) more. Not because I need money, but because the job is interesting. Interesting as in, me learning, contributing something positive to other people's lives, growing my family's financial resilience and robustness, or just enjoying the flow.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#429

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Sun, May 25, 2025, 9:46 PM UTC

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #381

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy this at all. I've hired many people in my career, and: 1. I've never had more than a max 2 year time horizon when thinking about a hire. 2. If anything, I've found younger people more likely to job hop than those 40+.

This might not be the case for your hiring principles, but this doesn't reflect the reality and statistics in my European country. People after 50 have a near zero chance of getting hired here as confirmed by the unemployment office.

I responded to a comment that said the reason getting hired over 50 is difficult is because employers are reluctant to hire someone who may retire soon. I objected to that rationale, which makes no sense IMO. I have no doubt that getting hired over 50 is more difficult than for younger people.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#430

Post by nradov » Sun, May 25, 2025, 9:48 PM UTC

idiotsecant wrote: post #404

MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are living longer. Demographically there are fewer younger people to support them. Something has to give.

Yes ,what has to give is a tiny fraction of the corporate and individual wealth hoarded by the richest and most powerful members of society.

How tiny of a fraction? Can you quantify this for us?

In principle I think some kind of wealth tax on fortunes above a certain level would be a good idea. But there are a lot of practical implementation problems in terms of identifying and valuing illiquid assets. Like for example I have friends who own forestry land (for softwood timber harvesting) in a foreign country. Those assets have some value but trade infrequently so there's no reliable market price. And they probably hold the assets through a foreign corporation rather than directly in their own names. What is a "fair" amount for them to pay in taxes, and how would the government enforce that in a consistent and cost-effective manner?