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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

#671

Post by throwaway2037 »

jltsiren wrote: post #621
interstice wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this comes down to whether you view what you get back for devoting most of a life to work as a negotiated agreement with government or as a one way street.

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." That socialist principle has always been the essence of the Nordic model. While the Nordic countries chose regulated markets over actual socialism, they embraced that part of socialism. As a citizen, your moral duty is to contribute when you can. If too many people fail to do that, the system falls apart. In exchange, the government evens the burde…

    > Nordic model
I see this term used frequently in Anglo-American media. I don't get it. What is special or different about the "Nordic" model compared to France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany and Austria? Their regulations, tax rates, and social benefits are nearly identical.

    > with limited ambitions outside their borders
I don't understand this phrase. Can you explain more? Some examples and counter-examples would help.

Also, I don't buy the argument that "small democratic countries" are so different than larger ones. I hear this argument a lot from both sides (big and small). One difference that I do see is how they choose to use their military power, but that applies to non-democratic state also. Ultimately, the goal of a democratic state is to (1) get rich and (2) treat your citizens well (free speech, along with decent education, public safety, healthcare, and retirement).

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#672

Post by consp »

DanHulton wrote: post #637
jltsiren wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing sad about this. Mandatory pensions are not a vacation sponsored by the government but a way to provide for those who can't provide for themselves. If you were born in the 70s, you should have known for most of your adult life that your normal retirement age is likely going to be around 70. The demographic situation is not new, the solutions have been discussed extensively since at least the 90s, and…

Taxes pay these pensions. Taxes that citizens have paid for their whole working lives, with the understanding that they would benefit from that pension fund in their later years. It's actually far closer to a "vacation", but not "sponsored by the government" -- closer to "that you've been saving for already for years."

In almost no country those taxes work like a normal pension. They are an as is fund where people pay now for those pensions now. You do not save for your own retirement, you pay for the retirement of the current generation.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#673

Post by bertili »

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?

Dane here. It's not a coincidence that Scandinavian countries fare well in most stats. Most Danes point to a cultural bias towards very flat hierarchies in society and work life as the source of wealth, happiness and trust in each other.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#674

Post by throwaway2037 »

wkat4242 wrote: post #562
tomp wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

    > In Holland they just abandoned this for a US-style "every man for himself" 401(k) thing.
Do you mean the second or third pillar? Ref: https://www.pensioenfederatie.nl/website/the-dutch-pension-s...

EDIT: (added below)

    > US-style "every man for himself"
Also, the US system has (at least) two pillars: national pension (called "social security") and private, tax-sheltered savings as 401(k)/IRA.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#675

Post by antidumbass »

dsign wrote: 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…

[dead]

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#676

Post by m-schuetz »

Varqu wrote: post #669
m-schuetz wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You save for a state pension the same way you save for state health care - not at all. The current working people pay for the current retired people, and this only works so long as there are significantly more working than retired people. Advantage of this system: You dont need to be afraid of not having saved enough money if you end up living too long. Disadtvantage: Thid only works if there are substantially more w…

Then perhaps it should be said openly, that this is an elderly tax, not a pension and it should be just kept to the minimum, allowing people to save more of their own income for their own private pension. Currently, it's the worst of both worlds: you get taxed quite a significant portion of your income, and then, in the middle of the game, someone changes the rules and tells you to play longer in order to get the pri…

I agree that it should be kept to a minimum and that luxurious pensions at the cost of working people should not exist.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#677

Post by vitus »

jltsiren wrote: post #660
mchanson wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the deal with progress should be that we all start working less. If not is the progress all that attractive? Improved health so we can all work more is kinda stupid.

That's been happening, but not as quickly as earlier generations expected. In 1970, the average labor force participant (employed or unemployed) in Denmark worked 1845 hours. By 2022, the number had fallen to 1371 hours. The numbers are similar for most West European countries but not for East Europe or the US.

> 1371 hours

Out of curiosity, what drove that shift? Shorter workweek, fewer hours per day, drastically more vacation, or some combination of the above?

Based on a 40-hour workweek, this would be 34 workweeks. Adding on 2-3 weeks worth of paid holidays, that leaves the equivalent of 15-16 weeks of vacation a year? I know my coworkers in Europe get more vacation than we do, but somehow I don't think it's that much more.

With a 32-hour workweek, this instead looks like ~6 weeks of vacation, which is more believable.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#678

Post by insane_dreamer »

zemvpferreira wrote: post #127
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…

If you wanted to live to a 1930s standard of education, healthcare, food, entertainment, interior decorarion, transportation, savings etc etc you could most definitely do it on very few hours of work. Lots of people associated with homesteading, tiny houses etc do so. That said I agree we should be further ahead in paving a way to paradise.

That's not what Keynes meant.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#679

Post by missedthecue »

Spivak wrote: post #403
satvikpendem wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we have enough labor? At least in the US there has been a shortage of elderly care workers. And even if we didn't, what does it mean, concretely, to structure the economy to get the labor to those who mean it?

> least in the US there has been a shortage of elderly care workers Well yeah, because it's difficult, taxing, often traumatic work that pays the same as any other nursing job with a higher QoL and social status. And even then they're pushing out all the actual nursing staff that pays well in favor of MAs/CNAs who get paid like shit.

But at current unemployment rates, raising pay to get more workers into elderly care is just poaching them creating shortages in other places. I always say that the demographic challenges ahead of us are not about a shortage of dollars but about a shortage of humans.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#680

Post by missedthecue »

jordanb wrote: post #56
constantcrying wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Fundamentally any retirement plan that doesn't involve canned food in a celler is pay-go because the retirees will be consuming resources from the economy they retired into rather than the one they were workers in. Their retirement savings can be in public company stocks instead of government guarantees but that only works if there are people willing to buy those stocks (ex: younger people saving for retirement).

Exactly. A world where aggregate consumer demand shrinks year after year is a world where all asset prices slide forever. Retirement is simply not possible on any large scale.
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