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Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

telegraph.co.uk

791–800 of 1001 posts

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#791
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…

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…

If pensions where not mandatory you would be almost right. But pensions are mandatory, the state will invest the money upfront and earn from those investments. It's just a way of making you pay more, and then give you back less. Another hidden tax to pay whatever operation their incommensurate ego want to pursue.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Holy dog whistle

While 20% of their population is foreign and their birthrate is below replacement, this economic issue shows why it's a failure. Foreigners are too well integrated which prevents the kind of dynamism that is needed in all territories that boosts the economy. Britain should set the standard.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#793
post #752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Assuming your country is similar to Norway: 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…

>The option is available to lots of people and they are not taking it.

They're not taking it because living costs are up across the board. The laws allows you to work part time, but your expenses don't so you have to work 40h week to keep up in the rat race with everyone else.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#794
post #669

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…

That's how it works in Sweden though: part of your pension is your own private investments, they aren't taxed as normal investments since you can only withdraw after reaching retirement age, the other part of it is a state pension. Even with this scheme we still got our retirement age risen.

So it seems it doesn't matter if it's public or private, the benefits of improved productivity is not trickling down to workers, a lot more is produced, generating a lot more wealth, and even with private funds we still get shafted because the capital class wants more and more of the pie.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#795
post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said there’s nothing sad about it and then followed it up with some pretty sad realities. It’s incredibly sad. People should be working less as we advance as a society, not more.

Working means that you are providing value to others. As we advance as a society a single person is able to contribute more and more value to others. Why maintain the same amount of total value being added to society when we can push further and accelerate providing value to one another?

Working just means that you get paid to do something.

What you're rambling on about is some Ayn Randian technicality that has nothing to do with reality. The word "value" here means "non-measurable quantity in the neoclassical paradigm, approximated by indirect measure through unit of account", not anything meaningful.

A childcare worker raising children is "value". A mother raising her child is not "value". In other words, you're just measuring how much human activity conforms to a specific formalization.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How do you know that this is separated from other factors, like woman being more educated and have more access to birth control in urban area ? How can we be sure that housing size is the single deciding factor as you said ?

You can't know that for certain, but you can look at evidence: the household size increases when people move away from dense cities.

The other way around is more difficult to quantify, and a lot of demographic studies look at immigrants from poor countries.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#797
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…

To tell you the truth I only ever see poor people (immigrants, mostly) that carry around like 3-4 kids in cities (I am in SF) while everyone else either has 1 or no kids.

They don’t speak English and I’m not sure if they will assimilate well. I already see street vendors, trash everywhere, and other 3rd world behavior in some parts of SF.

I’m an immigrant from 3rd world. It’s pretty sad to see here.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#798

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is. And this is the case in all western countries. It is just being realized in different ways. Fundamentalle there are 3 ways to cope 1. reduce pensions 2. Raise taxes 3. Decrease amount of benefit receivers. Denmark choose number 3

Wouldn't the fourth way be via increasing either birth rate or immigration?

Please only educated immigrants who will need to assimilate to the culture.

I’m an immigrant, and I think at least where I live in USA we need to stop immigration from any random place or of people who refuse to assimilate.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#800

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…

The problem isn't that it's a ponzi scheme. It's that humans have to be replaced the same way anything with a finite lifespan (e.g. cars, buildings) has to be replaced.

In theory your children are your pension deposit. People who don't have children should get a significantly reduced pension or they must provably support the children of a family that has more than two children per woman.

The problem with modern society is that you need children at the end of your life. Agricultural subsistence requires children very early. It's a scheduling mismatch that causes people to delay having children all the way until they are no longer fertile.

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