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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

#851
post #464
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…

I’d rather a robust pension starting at 70 than an anemic one starting at 55 or an underfunded one starting at 65. You can fill a gap before that pension starts with part time work etc. It’s much harder to make up a shortfall when you’re 85.

Most people won't get to 85.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#852

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How will this work realistically? A new category of jobs will be created: retirement jobs. People unable to work till their retirement age, will be given simple low paid jobs to earn enough work hours to hit their retirement. Think of all the simple jobs currently outsourced: content moderation for social media websites, training data tweaking, LLM training, teaching assistants, street cleaning assistants, etc.

But employees are not just pure net gains. If you hire a bunch of "retirement jobbers" you will still have to manage them. It sounds logical at first that you simply hire a few older people for lesser pay but in Europe the question is also why a 65 year old would accept a far lower paid job if he can simply go back on welfare and get paid the same? The reality will probably be that most old people will be unemployed…

The government itself could hire many of them at a lower price point. Similarly, firms relying on content moderation farms could use the elderly population. Low wages, social corpo cred and government support (see subsidies) are things they could get for using this. And this would be cheaper than outright paying for the full needs of an ever growing elderly population and an ever shrinking working population.

Sure, no will force to take up the jobs but when the choice is heating up your home in winter or working a couple of hours per day, the decision will be obvious

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#853
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…

> I think if you've put in 40-45 years for the man, you should be allowed to have some good 10 years for yourself. Travel, play golf, cross a continent in a camper or climb a mountain. Not unless you've raised 2 more workers to pick up the shovel while you're playing golf. You could, of course, rely on your neighbor's kids through taxes and pensions but when your neighbor thinks the same it becomes problematic. On th…

But if you don't have kids, it's easier to save money to fund your own retirement. Kids are expensive.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#854

If Denmark wanted to fund the same number of retired years per person as the US did when Social Security was established, the retirement age would be about 68, based on the 1935 and 2025 actuarial life tables for the USA and Denmark respectively.

But you also need to account for the changing ratio of contributors to beneficiaries, how many workers are supporting each retiree.

What would the age be to keep the same "ratio"?

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#855

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the reason employees are reticent to hire someone past 50 is before they worry they’ll retire soon, even if they’re mentally and physically in good shape. So increasing the retirement age might actually improve the ability of folks in their 50s to find work. Not saying this is a great trend, but it’s unavoidable due to the low fertility rate (already a problem everywhere in the developed world and soon to be…

Young people today job hop like there's no tomorrow.

What do you mean by "young"? I'm 51.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#856

*) by 2040. I hate it when titles are incomplete. How will this work realistically? How will you convince employers to keep workers employed till 70? Especially in fast changing fields like IT where a lot of old knowledge and experience gets considered obsolete by those screening resumes. Sure, people might survive longer, but that doesn't mean all workers will be equally mentally or physically fit to still perform w…

> How will this work realistically? A new category of jobs will be created: retirement jobs. People unable to work till their retirement age, will be given simple low paid jobs to earn enough work hours to hit their retirement. Think of all the simple jobs currently outsourced: content moderation for social media websites, training data tweaking, LLM training, teaching assistants, street cleaning assistants, etc.

>A new category of jobs will be created: retirement jobs.

Who will create these job? Especially given the push towards more Automation in the west or at least outsourcing these easy repetitive jobs to countries in with lower wages as it is the case right now. When you call tech support, does an elderly US person answer or a person from India/Asia/LatAm? Do you think they'll hold back technological development just to give meaningless work to unemployed old people in the west?

But say such jobs are created, given how many youths are unemployed(in Europe at least), why would they hire people close to retirement instead?

The west has built itself into in a pickle with needing to work longer till retirement but has fewer easy jobs left due to automation, high labor costs, and outsourcing. What are you gonna do then, go back to uni and study another Masters' degree at the ripe age of 60 so you can retrain for another specialized job?

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#857

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " By 2022, the number had fallen to 1371 hours. The numbers are similar for most West European countries " In France it is officially 1607 hours per year, but it could be legally much higher and the mean duration is 1 679 hours. From Eurostat, in 2021 the mean duration in Germany was 1 769 hours and 1 923 hours in Italy.

>, in 2021 the mean duration in Germany was 1 769 hours and 1 923 hours in Italy. That is strange, by this chart the Italy have 1694 and Germany 1340. In Poland it is still 1814 in 2024 hours. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_a...

Damn, I looked again at my source and it is https://www.eurostaf.fr, not Eurostat.

Sorry for not catching this.

When at look at OECD, they give other numbers:

Italy: 1723

France: 1501

Germany: 1347

https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/hours-worked.html?oe...

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#858

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There are several early retirement systems in place in Denmark for people who are unable to work.

Sure, but disability programs are different from what most people think of when they think of retirement. Forcing the majority of people to work until 70 means they burn through most of their healthy years.

On the other hand, people in Denmark work on average 410 fewer hours per year versus the US. In terms of total hours, working from 22 to 70 in Denmark is the equivalent of working from 22 to 59 in the US, or from 22 to 52 in Mexico.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#859
Recipe to fail:

- force your women to work 9-5 (sell it under "liberation" label)

- force young people into crammed cities with $4k rent

- be relaxed on crime, don't prosecute or enforce anything where victim is another person

- observe that people don't replicate anymore

- import people from other (primarily 3rd world) countries

- become a 3rd world country

What happens to the West is insane to me, it's literally a case of social suicide in slow motion.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#860

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…

It's definitely possible, and my current company were very happy to agree to 4/5 of the time for 4/5 of the salary and it's working out well for everyone. However, I've also found some organisations - that are otherwise good - to be hostile to working less than full hours. Since we work on interesting problems and they were happy to go with 80% it made it an easy task deciding which job to accept!

I should add that's it's a start-up so some weeks I work more and others less. But I still have the day my kids that I wanted.

Perhaps try quietly asking your current company? They might surprise you and start a trend.

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