Live data from Hacker News

Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

telegraph.co.uk

561–570 of 1001 posts

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't all have to work to age 70. Anyone can stop working earlier, and fund their own retirement.

That's true. But I'd argue that everyone is better off when most people can chose to retire early, rather than the select few who are smart and disciplined enough to plan an early retirement.

No everyone is worse off if their retirement date doesn't match when they want to retire.

the later you retire the less money you need. So if you are not personally ready why did you fund that much while if you sant to go sooner you need to save anyway.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#562
post #483
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…

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…

It depends on the system. In Holland they just abandoned this for a US-style "every man for himself" 401(k) thing. Luckily there are still parties fighting the implementation.

I don't think ponzi scheme is justified, it is too negative, it just makes no sense to actually accumulate all that wealth for so long.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#563
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…

Economically, old people are a burden on society. If you want to have a long and easy retirement for your elderly, you need a growing population, forever. Like a ponzi scheme. The alternative is that you break young people's back by burdening them with providing for the elderly. No amount of redistribution will help a country with poor productivity. 60 was a reasonable retirement age years ago, because most people wo…

I am Gen X and fully expect to be working until 70, hopefully.

I knew a guy who worked full time at a bank at 85. He said all the time he didn't have to work but what else was he going to do all day? A big reason he was able bodied at 85 was from working and not sitting home all day.

I think we have confused retirement fund/planning marketing with reality.

The retired people I know are physical mess from retirement. Alcohol and restaurant food all the time, will be needing long term care much sooner than if they had worked longer.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#564
post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you normally don't kill someone else if you fall off a roof. Running a car at highway speeds into something or someone else has a much higher chance of injuring or killing multiple people besides the driver.

“Older drivers have 3 to 20 times higher risk of fatal crash than non-older drivers” [1]. We simply don’t have those data for roofers. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01674...

Are you asserting that older roofers are in fact killing other people by falling on top of them?

If not, I think you may have missed the point that licensing is to protect others rather than the driver/roofer themselves.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With an aging population and increasingly long work lives, individual stressors will increase and societal capacity for healthcare (and overall prosperity) will dwindle. Baby boomers, having lived through some of the most incredible growth in human history, will perhaps turn out to be an anomalous blip in the life expectancy stats. Also, people age differently. There's a difference between living and being alive. Not…

You get downvoted a lot, but I challenge anyone to name a country that hasn't slashed _hard_ social benefits, pensions, % of GDP for healthcare, and similar.. I get it that some countries have had a plethora of scammers (prescribing pregnancy meds to men so docs can hit quotas and get bonuses/bribes from pharmaceutical companies, people trying to fake blindness to get an early retirement, etc. But overall reduction o…

I have similar concerns. We have nurses watching way more patients, working unbelievable hours.

16 hour shifts with no notice, 60 hour work weeks, and often disgusting work does not make for an attractive field, so I’m not surprised there’s a massive shortage issue.

This will probably only get significantly worse in the Certified Nursing Assistant field which mainly involves the most manual of labors - changing bed pans, cleaning patients, etc. with many of the same shortage problems. (And way less pay, of course)

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#566
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…

consider what humans did before society. they followed herds of ruminant animals and hunted them. they were working 90% of their waking hours. their work was their lives. but at night they would spend a few hours looking at the stars. what we have now is pretty similar. except instead of stars we have screens. i would say life is ok if you can read something interesting every day and have a job that you enjoy. i would say you should prioritize having impact or having a job you love. everyone accumulates as much money as possible at the expense of everything else… there are people with millions saved up at the age of 60… who then die shortly after and did a bunch of work for nothing. keep enough saved to cover modest expenses for a year. beyond that, priotize other things

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#567
post #483
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…

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…

I live in Australia where individuals are expected to fund their own retirement, and the government pension is intended just as a back-up for those who are too poor to do so. Everyone has an investment account ("superannuation", or "super" for short) which is taxed at at a reduced tax rate, and your employer is required to pay 12% of your salary into it. There are many providers of such accounts ("superannuation funds") to choose from (normally your employer has a recommended fund, but you aren't obliged to use the one they recommend) – and if you really want to you can set up your own superannuation fund (a Self-Managed Super Fund or SMSF) in which case you can make all the investment decisions yourself (subject to certain legal restrictions–you risk legal trouble if you make non-arms-length investments, like invest your superannuation into your own business, but other than that you can put the money in whatever you like.)

So, lack of young workers is not an inherent problem – you can invest your superannuation overseas (most funds invest a certain percentage of the money overseas, but if you want to take the risk of putting 100% of your superannuation into international investments, that's allowed), so even if the Australian economy were struggling with lack of young workers, you could still live off the investment returns from other global economies which lack that problem. And the reality is that Australia is unlikely to run out of young workers, because even though we have similar problems with low fertility as many other Western countries (although significantly higher than most of Western Europe), we've also always had a relatively high immigration rate, so younger workers immigrating makes up for the insufficient births.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#568
post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why taking care of the elderly, something humans have done since before recorded history Well yeah, but before government-organised pension, it was your kids taking care of you when you get older, so the system was much more balanced (or rather, only imbalanced on the micro scale, not at a mega scale we see now...)

This is missing the elderly with no young to support them for whatever reason, so some level of government support is necessary. You can’t just have old people dying in the streets of course.

They would work until they couldn’t, and then die?

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#569
post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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

Countries should be extremely focused on financial literacy education from an early age

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#570

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…

I don't think we need nearly as much as most people think. How much is being taken by the wealthy from the workers already? How much effort goes on the work of maintaining and protecting the system of inequality? How many people are already doing nothing when they would be willing to work?

There are approximately 87,296 people in Denmark who are already doing nothing when they would be willing to work.

https://www.dst.dk/en/Statistik/emner/arbejde-og-indkomst/be...

As for how much we "need", sure we can technically survive on very little. Most people choose aim to higher. Reducing inequality through a more progressive tax system is generally a good idea but taken too far that cuts overall economic growth and hurts everyone. At some point the most productive people just emigrate to countries with lower taxes; we've already seen that happen with numerous high profile entrepreneurs and companies moving from Europe to the USA.

Post reply on HN