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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

#841

Post by bluGill »

jongjong wrote: post #818
bluGill wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those old narritives were consiedered out dated for ever generation - but those who do it anyway tend to do well.

Saving cash was actually a fine strategy when cash was backed by gold or even (to a lesser degree) some time later when the national debt wasn't over $30 trillion - This massive public debt is forcing the government to print money at a rapid rate to cover interest payments and this is creating enormous inflationary pressures. Society has become totally distorted around the goal of keeping this scheme going, the disto…

Saving cash is currently a bad idea I'll grant. However I was inclueing sevings in things like the s&p500.

debt is note as bad as it used to be, but most people are not using it for things that grow in value. You talk about 0% interest - but a car loan has much worse payback rates.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#842

Post by hoseja »

Retirement started as state charity for the very oldest and most infirm and grew into unsustainable pyramid scheme bribery operation. Nineteenth century unwillingness to let uncared-for metuselahs die in squalor doomed us all.

"In 1881,[3][4] the conservative German chancellor, Otto Von Bismarck, in a maneuver against Marxists who were burgeoning in power and popularity, announced that anyone over 70 years old would be forced to retire and that he would pay a pension to them.[1]"

Ah.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#843

Post by snapplebobapple »

sentimentscan wrote: post #817
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.

My friends and I would love to have 4/5 or 3/5 of working days with 4/5 or 3/5 of salary, but sadly I don't know any companies that offer that. I understand that it may be hard with meeting culture, but we can make 1 or 2 days with no meetings. I don't want to go back to the stress and uncertainty of freelancing; I want a predictable, safe income with simply scaled-back hours/pay. My salary (and my friends') in IT is…

Those don't exist because of unintended (but obvious) consequences of government regulation. For all sorts of reasons the risk and cost profile is pretty similar per employee whether they are 20 hours a week or 60 hours a week (non exhaustive examples: health insurance costs me the same to provide no matter how many hours an employee works. Depending on your regulatory regime certain payments like pensions/unemployment are capped so more workers earning less can actually cost more than less workers earning more, firing regulations makes more employees riskier because the probability you hire junk you can't get rid of or an employee turns to junk and you can't fire is higher with more employees, etc.) Since there is a very real cost with what you want your skill set has to be scarce enough to make the added cost worth incurring. As long as I can hire someone that will work full time for similar hourly equivalent pay, the part timers will not be seriously considered.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#844

Post by mcv »

jltsiren wrote: post #583
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…

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…

But what is the point of all of increases in productivity if not to let us enjoy life more? Longer life expectancy should be more than offset by the increases in productivity.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#845

Post by hoseja »

joelthelion wrote: post #313
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?

And yet they all have to work like idiots until they're 70, whether they like it or not. I feel they could do better than that with all this wealth.

Or they could build their own wealth/have children to provide for them in old age and retire earlier not rely on what should be government backstop for the most incompetent.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#846

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

#847

Post by mcv »

zilian wrote: post #839
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…

This is such a sad comment. Indeed, the demographic situation was known and predictable in the 80's, and for instance in France we did nothing to plan around it. So now the young generation is expected to pay longer and longer for retirees, who have a higher median revenue and a higher standard of life than the active workforce (per all studies). There is absolutely no way I'm working until 70 to finance errors from…

This was exactly my complaint when the Dutch retirement age was raised from 65 to 67. Baby boomers, the largest generation, were about to retire, and the argument was that the younger generations weren't large enough to provide for them, so they'd have to continue working longer.

But it wasn't the baby boomers who had to work longer, it was the younger generations who had to work longer for the baby boomers to be able to retire.

At the very least tax the generous pensions of the wealthier baby boomers to provide for the poorer baby boomers.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#848

Post by mcv »

snapplebobapple wrote: post #843
sentimentscan wrote: post #817

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friends and I would love to have 4/5 or 3/5 of working days with 4/5 or 3/5 of salary, but sadly I don't know any companies that offer that. I understand that it may be hard with meeting culture, but we can make 1 or 2 days with no meetings. I don't want to go back to the stress and uncertainty of freelancing; I want a predictable, safe income with simply scaled-back hours/pay. My salary (and my friends') in IT is…

Those don't exist because of unintended (but obvious) consequences of government regulation. For all sorts of reasons the risk and cost profile is pretty similar per employee whether they are 20 hours a week or 60 hours a week (non exhaustive examples: health insurance costs me the same to provide no matter how many hours an employee works. Depending on your regulatory regime certain payments like pensions/unemployme…

Health insurance being dependent on your employment, is a whole problem on its own. Of course these things need to be arranged differently, ajd with more freedom for the people themselves.

That said, I recently opted for a 40 hour work week for the first time in decades because otherwise this job is too big a step back in income.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#849

Post by oldpersonintx2 »

IndubitableCoil wrote: post #188
oldpersonintx2 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Not retiring" in the US will be more dictated by inability to purchase a home than Social Security. Look at all these people around you in their forties who are still renting. They are basically too late to buy. They will be "forever renters". This means they will have to work until death, as their rents continue to rise when their peers who owned homes took their downsizing premium and lived off of it for a few yea…

I hear this sentiment frequently but it doesn't pencil out. Renting an equivalent unit will typically, month-to-month, be cheaper than buying. Of course a significant portion of the monthly mortgage payment goes to principal which increases your net worth, but there are many cases where the money you save monthly by renting will actually exceed the principal you accumulate from your mortgage payment. In fact, there a…

the rent vs buy calculator does not tell me what to do when I am in my 60s and cannot find work

a homeowner in that scenario can sell their home; a renter is in trouble

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#850

Post by account42 »

timewizard wrote: post #627
tomp wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Pension is a Ponzi scheme. It's most appropriately a shared investment scheme. Your pension money should not sit idle while you are building it. That money can earn a percentage in many ways and dividend reinvestment makes the fund grow massively. > Retirement depends on having young workers. Profits do. Retirement is going to happen regardless of how many young workers there are.

There is zero advantage to a society-level investment scheme and many disadvantages - mainly due to distancing "investors" from the investment which means that the goal of the system becomes profit only without any consideration for ethics.
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