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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

#571

Post by godelski »

CooCooCaCha wrote: post #539
godelski wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny that we have a ton of people asking what people would do in a post scarce society. Stating that man needs work. Yet, it also seems to be said most by the people who have been free from the need to labor for generations. They still do, they still desire more, yet their lives are certainly post scarce. Hell, the whole goal of retirement is to become post scarce, and have a few years where you can live without the…

People will always yearn and wonder and imagine. Sure some people will spend their time fishing but a lot of people need things to strive for a and they will make things up or seek out others who feel the same way.

I agree. Lots of evidence to suggest that this would allow humans to be the most human they could be. Calling it a new Renaissance is not a stretch. Nor reminding those that much of the scientific advancements in the past were made by those who had the luxury of enough free time to sit around and think. But I think too many confuse this message with suggesting some form of Communism or Socialism. I'm not advocating for that (personally, I'm strong believer in Capitalism, even if not the Laissez-faire kind. You can't control a wild horse, but neither should you let it freely destroy your farm). Those notions are related, but not the same thing. You can clearly, as demonstrated by rich elite and people retiring, have post scarce lives without the need for such direct control.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#572

Post by nradov »

tredre3 wrote: post #514
dralley wrote: post #491

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.

If not 70 then what should the retirement age be? Please show your work.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#573

Post by ahupp »

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #424
wyager wrote: post #414

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. 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.

Can you quantify what you think that choice looks like?

Say you seized the entirety of Elon Musk’s assets: that could pay for a year and a half of the Dept of Transportation. Say you seized all the wealth (somehow) of the world’s 100 richest people. That’s 2 years of US non-discretionary spending (social security, Medicare and Medicaid). I often see comments that assume all problems could be solved by just taxing the rich more, but I just don’t think that’s true.

The Nordic countries pay for their social safety nets by taxing the middle class more heavily than we do in the US. If you want to change that, it’s less about capital vs labor, and more about your dentist vs labor (dentists be the classic example of jobs that earn high incomes without being “capital owners”).

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#574

Post by RestlessMind »

incompatible wrote: post #526
dralley wrote: post #491

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?

> I don't think we need nearly as much as most people think.

It completely depends on what standard of living you want. People who would be considered wealthy by 1920's standards are considered poor today.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#575

Post by ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 »

cryptonector wrote: post #536
toomuchtodo wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's not to convince you of anything. You can't retire if you don't have savings or children to support you. Even if you have savings and/or children to support you, you can't retire if your society didn't make enough children so that your savings can have some value. Social security was always a ponzi scheme that doesn't work in the long run as fertility rates _necessarily_ drop to or below (really, always below) re…

Denmark has nice a nice page for fertility rates:

https://www.dst.dk/en/Statistik/emner/borgere/befolkning/fer...

I think GDP is somewhat disconnected from that rate though.

https://www.dst.dk/en/Statistik/emner/oekonomi/nationalregns...

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#576

Post by zajio1am »

cyberax wrote: post #366
neom wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a sense of how you see it playing out?

It'll keep getting worse, as more and more people concentrate into large cities. And large cities are family-hostile. The birth rate in cities is strongly anti-correlated with the city size. People just don't feel content and happy to have children in dense cities. Japan is very illustrative in this regard. Young people are forced into unaffordable cities, where they often live in cramped shoebox-sized apartments. Wh…

> The birth rate in cities is strongly anti-correlated with the city size. People just don't feel content and happy to have children in dense cities.

Or people in big cities have plenty of opportunities and interests than just to have children.

People often want to live in big cities due to social reasons, not just due to employment opportunities.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#577

Post by Aeolun »

Ancalagon wrote: post #551
SchemaLoad wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that exactly how retirement works though? Old people who produce no labour but just get everything given to them because of the capitol they built up previously.

No, the parent is talking about inheritors. Japan mostly solves this with very high inheritance taxes.

Those mean the government always gets its cut (and pisses off the inheritors), but functionally whether you inherit 10 or 5M doesn’t really make a difference.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#578

Post by CooCooCaCha »

jmyeet wrote: post #497
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…

Part of me wonders if capitalism is the solution to the Fermi Paradox because the endless chase of profits is driving us to extinction. In many Western countries, younger people are facing the prospect of never being able to own a house and never being able to retire. Beyond this basic lack of security, people are realizing the cost of having children is absolutely astronomical. In many parts of the US childcare may…

This is one of the more rational comments. I’m really surprised there aren’t more comments expressing how insane this topic is.

It’s absolutely insane that technology and productivity are increasing so rapidly, yet we’re talking about raising the retirement age and people being increasingly unable to afford children.

Something is incredibly wrong here.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#579

Post by SoftTalker »

YZF wrote: post #531
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…

Isn't this more about letting people who want to keep working do that? What's stopping people in Sweden and Denmark from retiring earlier? I would imagine there are some pensions plan withdrawal requirements or criteria for government assistance but can't you just save money to bridge that gap? Maybe we need to start thinking about these things differently. I would love to have more time off but still have a job and…

It’s not as easy to save individually when you’re also taxed heavily.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#580

Post by RestlessMind »

deadbabe wrote: post #555
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…

This is why it’s better to have a higher salary vs relying on government to provide a better standard of living at the trade off of a lower salary. With the high salary, even if the cost of living around you is high, you can still make choices to save and invest money to eventually become financially independent and retire when you want, where as if you have a low salary, you don’t have that flexibility, you are at t…

"Investing money" is insufficient. You still need kids and the newer generations at the end of the day.

Think where you are going to invest and how that investment is going to provide returns. Stocks? Those companies actually need to produce and hence need workers. There also needs to be a broad consumer class to purchase those products. Without younger generations, you have no workers and no consumers which means your stocks have no value. Same with bonds. Same with real estate.

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