751–760 of 1001 posts
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…
Yes.
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> 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.
1) Unions say it when they always demand increased salary (= focus on private spending) rather than reduced working hours
2) Voters say it when the right and far right is polling high. Lower taxes = wish for higher private spending, if people are going to work less then tax rate must up for society to function as public expenditure will increase, not decrease, with lots of elderly needing care and fewer workers available.
3) Lots of people have the ability to reduce working hours by working fewer hours (in Norway, if you have kids you can always get 20% unpaid leave by law). And most could do so economically if they reduced their consumption and spending. But people do not seem to consider reducing their salary as an option. The option is available to lots of people and they are not taking it.
PS: You talk about getting more stuff, but to meet the future labor problems we are talking about reductions being needed to peoples consumption, not staying at the 2025 level.
Do people save their own money in Europe for retirement or do most people expect to rely entirely on pension? I honestly don't know, just curious.
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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…
> Mandatory pensions are not a vacation sponsored by the government but a way to provide for those who can't provide for themselves. Then why is it based on earnings? And why can't I opt out of this death pledge? > Your health is probably not going to be as good Ah, the old, "your life will suck anyways" play. > you should have known for most of your adult life That you are a slave to the state, until you cannot work…
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 woul…
Or look at ancient egyptions, they very clearly didn't need to work 90% of the time if they got time to build massive pyramids, and there is considerable evidence that pyramid workers were not forced to work, but simply offered extra booze and food for doing so. If you didn't work on those projects you weren't starved to death, you just didn't get to drink as much alcohol with your buddies or brag about how you helped build a wonder that will stand for hundreds or thousands of years.
Thus one is not able to collect retirement, because they are "young", while they keep trying to find a job, because "they are too old".
Meanwhile the politicians that decide these laws are enjoying their comfy life.
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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…
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…
IMO retirement isn't a long holiday but it's for people who cannot contribute to society anymore. That point might be reached earlier for some people, e.g. those who have a hard physical job, than others and a general retirement age is an approximation for when that point is reached for the general population.
What's stopping people from just saving up money and stop working before 70?
From the bit of research I did on the Danish pension system, workers pay heavy taxes during their working years, and some of that is paid back to them in the form of a universal pension. In addition, almost all workers are covered by mandatory occupational pensions, with contributions of 9-17% of annual earnings. That probably eats up the available savings for most workers. This change locks that money away until age…
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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 mo…
Denmark has (had) very strong labour movement and left-ish governments, though that has been changing over the last decade or so...