Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

telegraph.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

801–810 of 1001 posts

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#801

Post by nasmorn »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #701
Varqu wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. This doesn't fundamentally change the equation. Whether you save pension points or cash or ETFs it's just a coupon for your share of the economy of the future. It's a promise that the future generation will share…

Exactly. Saving is not a thing for an economy. The future economy needs to actually create all those goods and services for which you saved up. If the future economy doesn’t have enough labor because of demographics then some major price adjustments need to happen in favor of the future workers.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#802

Post by soco »

moktonar wrote: post #791
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…

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.

Allow me to remind you that Churchill quote: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others". Or in this situation, pensions are the worst form of retirement savings, except for all the others. Political parties struggle even imagining alternative solutions, but if you found a better idea by all means please come forward and we will all vote for you! I will for sure.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#803

Post by lnsru »

Retric wrote: post #500
bachmeier wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I will pay more than €600000 for this “retirement insurance” over my entire career. So with 30k/year pension and living under the bridge at 70 I must have superior health to break even at 90 Let's see. If you pay 15000 euros per year for 40 years, and get 5% interest, that's 1,800,000 euros at retirement. Even if you held that in cash, a 30,000 euro/year withdrawal would last you to 130.

Not sure how your system works but US SS also covers spouses, widows, disabled workers etc which limit the average benefit. Assuming full employment every year is a mistake. Also, 5% interest above inflation is an unpredictability good return, especially if you’re assuming it’s a safe investment. The stock market has mostly done well over the last century but start in 1969 and the 40 year return on the S&P 500 was 4.…

There must be full employment every year with a mortgage. And I will work 6-7 years of my career just for this mandatory insurance. Sounds stupid and absurd when I read what I wrote. The widow might get something from that. But let me invest half of that in stocks and another half in 2 rental apartments and I will do much better that state. Plus it stays in the family after I die.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#804

Post by soco »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #456
gessha wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back when it was first introduced, it was based on life expectancy and few were expected to live beyond retirement age. [1] [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/how-ret...

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

Wait until you find out about how the best years went before having any pension systems.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#805

Post by soco »

braaaahp wrote: post #593
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…

Sure. But given automation we need a lot less labor than 100 years ago. Some studies suggest (sorry am mobile right now, don’t have links) in the US automation has been able produce the average persons essentials entirely since the 1950s. But we still were taught growing up to put on the show of going to work. At great resource cost and ecological destruction now threatening everyone in deference to memes of long dea…

Like other commenters just said: just buy less. On the surface everybody agrees, but on the streets everybody buys more, and throw stones at the police when they are blocked doing it. So how is it? It seems this evidence "buy less" is not exactly shared, not even half-heartedly. Please stop claiming something is "easy" or "obvious" when it is neither.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#806

Post by pydry »

simianparrot wrote: post #749
rayiner wrote: post #697

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? 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.

>Who says that?

People who believe that consumerism was something that the general population opted into willingly rather than a result of a torrent of post WW2 psyops campaigns designed to deal with the "problem" of industrial overproduction.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#807

Post by IshKebab »

deanc wrote: post #786
IshKebab wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the actual pension payments have gone up massively. Almost doubled in the last 30 years in the UK. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/pensioners-incomes-...

So has inflation, and the cost of living.

That graph is inflation adjusted.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#809

Post by formerly_proven »

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…

What's sad about it? Even with raising retirement age, the average duration people receive pensions has increased A LOT over the last few decades simply because life expectancies have increased so much. Someone who retired in the 1970s would receive a pension for less than 10 years on average - someone retiring now will receive a 20+ year pension.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#810

Post by roarcher »

flembat wrote: post #784
monkeycantype wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pensions can be whatever we decide as a society agree they should be. Your perspective is an opinion, and many people share it, it has been a dominant view for decades, but it has never been a universal view.

There is a solution for young people they should look at this demographic disaster and realise they need to have children for the sake of their own future. Meanwhile the next generation or two to retire is going to have a very grim time surviving because we had two kids or none, compared to the five our parents had.

And those children will have to have even more children, and so on. The system is designed to work as long as it can grow forever, which it obviously cannot. Some generation is going to have to reckon with the demographic problem.
Post reply on HN