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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

#941

Post by mike_hearn »

wsatb wrote: post #931
mike_hearn wrote: post #869

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are doing. When the pension system was created retirement age was roughly equal to life expectancy. Life expectancy went up but retirement age never did, creating these super-long retirements for healthy people who could easily still work. That is where a lot of the wealth newly created by technological progress went.

This is a nice outlook from a vacuum. The reality is those perfectly healthy elderly people are still going to struggle to compete with the younger workforce who will be anything from more physically/mentally apt to just simply cheaper. So they’re probably going to be forced into retirement without the means to actually do it. Not to mention, from strictly a human view, working someone to their death is just plain wr…

Older people can charge whatever price they want for their work. They can even undercut the young by exploiting their high rates of home ownership and receipt of pensions. Where I grew up there was a DIY supermarket famous for employing mostly retirees or older workers. And the elderly have the benefit of experience - there's a meme that employers don't want that, but it's not true. Employers love experience. What they don't want are bolshie activists who create trouble. Plenty of people out there who are willing to trade cooperation and experience for salary, and can thus easily outcompete youngsters who might be willing to do what's asked but don't have the experience to do it well.

> from strictly a human view, working someone to their death is just plain wrong

This is the sort of statement that clutters up all discussions of government benefits, but it's meaningless. There's no such thing as a "human view" or right/wrong in these contexts. Historically, people worked much harder than we do today. Was that "wrong"? Were people back then not fully human? If so, who was responsible for this "inhuman wrong"?

No. Poverty is the default state of humanity. People being poor isn't the result of someone screwing someone else over, it's the result of people not creating wealth.

> I hope the youth are kinder to you when you reach old age.

I'm expecting that the state won't provide anything by the time I reach old age, not even a stable currency. The youth won't have had much to do with it either way.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#942

Post by lovich »

karmakurtisaani wrote: post #764
lovich wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the alternative is fiscal armageddon Or possibly making a trade off on any number of other areas the government spends money on, or raising taxes. No wait I forgot, either pushing the burden onto labor or Armageddon, no alternatives

> Or possibly making a trade off on any number of other areas the government spends money on, or raising taxes. A lot of heavy lifting was done here.

Yea, no shit. It’s called sarcasm.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#943

Post by ordinary »

jltsiren wrote: post #660
mchanson wrote: post #638

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? Improved health so we can all work more is kinda stupid.

That's been happening, but not as quickly as earlier generations expected. In 1970, the average labor force participant (employed or unemployed) in Denmark worked 1845 hours. By 2022, the number had fallen to 1371 hours. The numbers are similar for most West European countries but not for East Europe or the US.

Over the past half century, a lot of women went from housewife to part-time worker, resulting in more hours worked per adult citizen and household, but fewer per labor participant. The same is true if labor participation in general went up, which between 2012 and 2022 it did, by about 5pp: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1166044/employment-rate-...

That's not the kind of progress described by the mchanson.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#944

Post by thrance »

rayiner wrote: post #697
mchanson wrote: post #638

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? Improved health so we can all work more is kinda stupid.

> 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.

No, the capital class wants you to work more and sell you more slop. I would certainly do with less work and less things, as would many.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#945

Post by thrance »

ryzvonusef wrote: post #890
TFYS wrote: post #765

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax wealth. I know that's a very hard thing to do due to the mobility and political power of capital, but we need international co-operation and just do it. That's where all the money is and where it's going at an accelerating rate.

> Tax wealth Are you saying that Denmark, a nordic socialist country, has not taxed wealth enough?

Americans still don't know what socialism is, huh?

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#946

Post by thrance »

guywithahat wrote: post #908
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…

[flagged]

Stupid unsubstantiated blatantly racist lie. Disgusting.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#947

Post by thrance »

account42 wrote: post #863
munksbeer wrote: post #822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The government isn't just responsible for finance but all of society. Incentivizing kids doesn't have to just mean dangling money in front of parents. Not having government-funded media encourage lifestyles that lead to less children would be a good start.

What "government-funded media" are you talking about?

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#948

Post by throw0101d »

Varqu wrote: post #669
m-schuetz wrote: post #659

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…

> […] allowing people to save more of their own income for their own private pension.

As someone who frequents personal finance sub-reddits, this does not work. The number of people who would save for their long-term needs is generally small.

And for some folks it is a 'personality problem' in that they are short-sited, in numerous cases it's a matter of not having any available funds. Forced savings are an absolute necessity.

Further it is also necessary for the funds to be away from people's hands so they don't fiddle with the money.

Canada went through this debate in the 1990s when it reformed its government pension system, and between fees and behaviour issues, the general consensus was that have a pool of money separate from private retirement accounts (RRSPs in Canada) was absolutely essential. A history of the reforms:

* https://utppublishing.com/doi/book/10.3138/9780802095831

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#949

Post by throw0101d »

moktonar wrote: post #812
soco wrote: post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Non-mandatory, private savings is a far better idea. Ah wait but now the govt doesn't have the money anymore... ops. Maybe _that's_ why they struggle, because they don't find a way of taking your money without telling you... we changed forms of government, but taxes (and hidden taxes) remain, did you notice?

> Non-mandatory, private savings is a far better idea.

As someone who reads personal finance sub-reddits I completely disagree. The vast majority of people (a) do not have the long-term thinking for long-term needs, and/or (b) have money go by them without noticing they haven't saved anything. There's a reason why "Pay yourself first." is a mantra that has to be hammered into people through education (e.g., The Wealth Barber); most folks don't get that education or don't take it to heart.

> Ah wait but now the govt doesn't have the money anymore... ops.

In Canada the government does not have access to the money of our public pension, the Canada Pension Plan (CPP ~ US Social Security).

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#950

Post by throw0101d »

tomp wrote: post #483
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…

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. 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.

Except if you take a portion of the contributions and investment in incoming-producing assets.

Kind of like what the Canada Pension Plan (CPP ~ US Social Security) does.

Not all pensions are the same or created equal.

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