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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

#821

Post by halfmatthalfcat »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #769
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?

Having lived in Denmark for quite a while, I will say that it is the societal coherence, and an attitude of working together for all which must have been influenced with the difficulty of surviving in that landscape in the past. Societal coherence has been aided by the isolation, and here is the hot take: this cannot exist in "diverse" societies. Not because of bullshit genetic superiority justifications, but because…

The divide is a feature, not a bug. There’s a reason the US is called an experiment, with all the trials, tribulations, failures and successes that come with that. “We do things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#822

Post by munksbeer »

zurfer wrote: post #774
Night_Thastus wrote: post #728

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…

short term, there are only bad options. Long term: incentivize to have more kids. this will solve the problem in ~25 - 30 years. but that's too late for most voters and politicians today... there should be a term for that? how about democracies demographics dilemma?

Incentivising to have more kids is not going to work. Things have changed. A lot of people just don't want to have children, and it isn't a financial issue.

There does not seem to be a strong correlation between countries which make it easier and more affordable to have children, and the replacement rate.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#823

Post by bombcar »

layer8 wrote: post #269
bombcar wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 99.9% wealth tax on US billionaires would cover the annual deficit for about 1.5 years. The scale of the problem is absolutely mind-blowing.

I’d say that “super rich” starts well below billionaires. Not saying that the math would work out without problems then.

If we assume the wealthy own the stock market, it’s $52 trillion - enough to pay off the debt and leave $16 trillion left over - which would cover about ten years (assuming the debt service has been removed by the payoff).

Whether nationalizing the entire US market would be worth it is left to the reader.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#824

Post by maratc »

Retric wrote: post #532
maratc wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But for an individual that would die at 71, which pension would they rather have, in your opinion?

For me nothing changes. The benefits of a pension start before retirement. I can avoid setting aside a huge pile of money for the potential of an extremely long lifespan and then worry as minor changes to that pile become really critical near and in retirement. Suppose you’re 50 with 2 million USD in savings. How soon do you retire and what kind of lifestyle do you live in retirement? That’s heavily dependent on what…

Where I am, we have personal pension plans. You can check "what kind of pension is waiting" by going to the pension fund website and checking. Gov't doesn't play any role in any of that -- except (a) prescribing mandatory monthly payments and (b) determining the retirement age. (You only get small gov't pension if you haven't collected enough in your personal plan.)

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#825

Post by vitus »

simongray wrote: post #698
vitus wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Full-time in Denmark is 37 hours/week and most people have around 6 weeks of vacation/year (the legal minimum is 5). Some people will be working part-time, bringing the total hours worked down, so the numbers make sense to me.

Right. I thought about part-timers or people working reduced schedules bringing the average (mean) down; I just wasn't sure if I was missing something systemic or not.

It might be more interesting to discuss the median hours worked (or any of a number of other percentiles), but it's not obvious those figures are public.

In particular, counting unemployed labor force participants feels wrong, even if you're counting how many hours a week they're spending on job seeking activities (applying to jobs, prepping resumes, interviewing, etc). I know I would burn out if I spent even 5+ hours a day doing just that, 5 days a week, even if I didn't have a full-time job.

There's also a pernicious thing that certain companies do (I'm thinking retail) where they just won't schedule you for enough hours to qualify you as full-time, since if they exceed that threshold, then (gasp) they have to pay benefits like health insurance. I also would prefer not to count that in the discussion of "how much does a typical employee work?"

On the flip side, I'm also less interested in considering the workaholic lawyers and consultants who are putting in 60-80 hours a week (or more!). There are far fewer of them, but they still skew the numbers.

From my perspective, the stereotypical US workweek is and has been 9 to 5 (whether you count that as 35 or 40 hours after accounting for lunch) for the past 50+ years. We certainly fall behind when it comes to vacation, since we still have no legally mandated minimum (I think 2-4 weeks is typical; anything higher is good but not unheard of).

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#826

Post by rayiner »

nicbou wrote: post #736
rayiner wrote: post #715

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…

What makes Danish children productive is not their Danish blood, it's the culture and infrastructure that they operate in. The children of any nation would be equally capable. As an immigrant myself, I find the second article silly. You import people according to your own criteria, and they arrive pre-raised and pre-educated. A larger proportion of them will leave the country before retirement age. It's a hell of a d…

A Dutch study found that non-western immigrants have a negative contribution even in the second generation: https://docs.iza.org/dp17569.

It’s not a “hell of a deal”—no European country is in the black from its investment in immigration. It’s a Dutch Tulip bubble. The Scandinavian countries, the most well-governed in Europe, have already done the math and started switching course.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#827

Post by [deleted] »

SarahC_ wrote: post #732
rayiner wrote: post #715

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?

[deleted]

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#828

Post by 4gotunameagain »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #821
4gotunameagain wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having lived in Denmark for quite a while, I will say that it is the societal coherence, and an attitude of working together for all which must have been influenced with the difficulty of surviving in that landscape in the past. Societal coherence has been aided by the isolation, and here is the hot take: this cannot exist in "diverse" societies. Not because of bullshit genetic superiority justifications, but because…

The divide is a feature, not a bug. There’s a reason the US is called an experiment, with all the trials, tribulations, failures and successes that come with that. “We do things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

Portraying the largest conquest and ethnic cleansing of the Americas as a deliberate experiment to figure out multiculturalism leaves a bitter taste, I'm not gonna lie.

And if you gave me a choice between a world divided in small Denmarks or between the contemporary re-armament of the west due to the election of a populist buffoon combined with decades of mismanagement of a unipolar world, I wouldn't think twice.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#829

Post by tomp »

timschmidt wrote: post #670
csomar wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You've created an impossible situation which will never exist It can and does, albeit in slower motion (ie Japan, South Korea) > why taking care of the elderly, something humans have done since before recorded history, is flawed. Humans took care of THEIR elderly. The system was made to take care of THE elderly. Pretty sure most people don't want to see old people begging for food on the street but also prefer not…

> It can and does, albeit in slower motion (ie Japan, South Korea) Read what he wrote again. The scenario he created (everyone works, then everyone retires) has never and will never happen. Humanity is more likely to be wiped out by a meteor. > Humans took care of THEIR elderly. Point me toward the non-human elderly being supported by the social safety net. We're all related. You just have to look back far enough. >…

I mean, I literally said "economic theory", the basic idea is that you simplify the assumptions to make a point. That's literally what most of economics is!

In the real world, the assumptions are weaker and the dynamics are much more complicated than a toy model, but you can still transfer the same conclusions - in this example, that pension requires making babies and that without a good negative feedback mechanism, the system eventually collapses.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#830

Post by joshstrange »

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…

> Travel, play golf, cross a continent in a camper or climb a mountain.

Do that today. Tomorrow isn’t promised, let alone 10, 30, 50, 70 years. Don’t be one of those “When I retire”-people, do it now. _If_ you make it to retirement you may not be physically able or willing to do things you’ve been dreaming of for so long.

If you are waiting for retirement, then you are not living.

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