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Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

telegraph.co.uk

741–750 of 1001 posts

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#741
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…

Pensions aren't a Ponzi scheme.

They just need to be calibrated that the years of pay-in and years of pay-out are balanced as to the ratio of the people in the age cohorts. If you have 10 people paying in for 40 years and only 2 people receiving pay out for 10 years then the system is cheap.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The society first has to provide for its citizens instead of giving socialism to billionaires instead of a proper social safety net, or they won't want to or can't have kids.

Most people would say Denmark has a proper social safety net. People aren't having kids because they don't want kids. And no amount of parental leave or childcare subsidies flips the switch when flights to *popular tourist destination* are a couple hundred euro.

This.Not even cash handouts have increased TFRs across Europe and East Asia.

I think the solution might be in taxes. No kid;you are taxed at 60% , one kid 50% two kids 40 % and three kids 30 % . 20 % for anyone with more than four kids.

VAT on people with kids 12.5 %

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#743

Realistically, what are countries supposed to do? Almost every single industrialized country has a birth rate below replacement, so there's fewer younger people to help carry the burdens. Medical care means the elderly live on and on and on, draining enormous costs as they age. I'm not trying to be cruel, but from a pure numbers sense it makes perfect sense. Would you prefer taxes go up instead? Lessen spending on in…

Realistically productivity increased by leaps and bounds over the past few decades. If leaders can’t figure out how to take advantage of that instead of taking advantage of the people then they have no business leading a country. The solution they are applying now is a dead end, literally. It doesn’t scale, the only place it leads to is people guaranteed to die “at work”. And elephant in the room, people in their lat…

1) Work less hours

2) Consume more

3) Have less kids

4) Live longer after the retirement age

Productivity increased a lot but expecting it cover all four is way too optimistic.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#744
post #288

Where I live, people have issues getting hired past age 50, and it’s near impossible past age 60. It’s a stroke of luck if you score a job then. So yes they can raise retirement age, but that will just create misery for all those who can’t cling to a job long enough. There‘s got to be a better way.

In Denmark, you also have to have a medical exam to maintain your drivers license after you turn 70, but they have no problem with carpenters running around on roofs until they're 74.

That requirement was removed in 2017 by the right wing government at the time. It was a populist move to secure the elderly vote.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be hard to distill the fallacy of human fungibility into a purer form than this. If you’re say Danish, the kids you raise will be Danish. The immigrants won’t be Danish, they’ll be like the people from their country of origin: https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-tran... . And as a result, they won’t be nearly as economically productive as Danes, ironically undermining the whole point of i…

Far right talking points! They'll be as Danish and any other Danes, just choosing to live life as they see fit. >"And as a result, they won’t be nearly as economically productive as Danes, ", how does someone with a different religion, or choice for music make them less economically productive? Are you suggesting they don't know white collar skills? Or are less intelligent due to were they were born?

It's as if culture and religion matters, what an insane idea...

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#746
post #739
post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We did not improve people's lifespans. At least not that much. What happened is that young people die less due to less hazardous conditions which improved the average age. Also the average age is not the problem. The problem is that social security was setup as a ponzi scheme (younger pays for older) instead of a saving scheme (each one build a nest for himself). A ponzi scheme will eventually implode but if you mani…

> We did not improve people's lifespans Are you sure about that? The statistic I always heard is that we have seen a 1 year rise in life expectancy every 4 years for the past 80 years. I don't necessarily agree with the Ponzi scheme. If the ratio of old people to young people is constant then the system can be made to work with setting the retirement age without changing the burden on the young. The issue is that thi…

I have a great grand parent that made it to 90+ with relatively little clinical care. So human's life expectancy didn't change much. What changed is that many humans died of what is now preventable causes (ie: diabetes).

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#747
post #221
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…

Get disdainin’!: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/adding-years-to-life-...

Ha! Sweet! That's very much a (lot of) step(s) in the right direction.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#748
post #288

Where I live, people have issues getting hired past age 50, and it’s near impossible past age 60. It’s a stroke of luck if you score a job then. So yes they can raise retirement age, but that will just create misery for all those who can’t cling to a job long enough. There‘s got to be a better way.

Part of the reason employees are reticent to hire someone past 50 is before they worry they’ll retire soon, even if they’re mentally and physically in good shape. So increasing the retirement age might actually improve the ability of folks in their 50s to find work. Not saying this is a great trend, but it’s unavoidable due to the low fertility rate (already a problem everywhere in the developed world and soon to be…

> they worry they’ll retire soon

Sorry but how is this different from hiring someone in their 20s and they are very likely to job hop to another company 1 / 2 years later ? I don't think anyone will believe this.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#749

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.

> Part of the deal with progress should be that we all start working less. If not is the progress all that attractive? But we don't want to work less, we want more stuff.

Who says that? Because that’s not the prevailing opinion among me (soon 40), my friends snd my family.

Benefits from «stuff» caps off ar a certain level. After that you want to work less so you have more time to, among other things, actually enjoy your stuff. The exception to this are wealth chasers with multiple yachts etc., but that isn’t «we», that’s a tiny tiny sliver of the elite.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#750
post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The point is, that the society does not owe you 10 years to do whatever.

If society doesn't owe me for working under its rules and constraints, why should I care about society and following its rules and constraints and putting anything into it? In my opinion such a stance makes governmental rule illegitimate, and completely kills the social contract, making me wonder why I should care about following the law at all except through fear, which is not a great long term motivator both historically and personally. If society isn't going to help provide for me when im feeble and old, why should I care about putting anything into it when im young and sharp? Especially when private capital economics is already so biased against me as just some regular working joe.

Sure such thoughts are not probably concerning for the majority of people, but it only takes a small percentage of people losing faith in society combined with a bit of public apathy about people living criminal lives or doing criminal things for them to bring the entire thing to its knees.

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