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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

#981

Post by TFYS »

0xBDB wrote: post #974
TFYS wrote: post #898

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you limit to only billionaires, and why would you compare it to all spend? Try funding pensions and healthcare by taxing the wealth of the top 0.5% and it doesn't sound so impossible.

It still sounds impossible I'm afraid. A realistic wealth tax probably caps out and around 2%, remembering that the net worth of very rich people is generally not liquid and can be difficult to mark to market. Any higher rate risks forcing the rich to have an asset fire sale, which liquidates productive assets and isn't really good for anybody. At six to seven percent you would force them to be entirely liquid and wo…

You're probably right, though U.S healthcare costs per capita are much higher than they need to be, and would be much lower in a "proper" single payer system like in Europe. In any case, a wealth tax would still help a lot with being able to fund these programs. Yes, the working class does have to pay as well, but it'd be much less if there were a reasonable wealth tax.

But yes, global co-operation to enable a large enough tax on wealth is not going to happen any time soon. A more likely scenario is that as automation develops and as the share of income that capital gets grows, the working class will end up in a position bad enough that capitalism will collapse and be replaced with something else. Hopefully with something better, but could also be worse.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#982

Post by Enderthe3rd »

HappMacDonald wrote: post #492
tossandthrow wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is, that the society does not owe you 10 years to do whatever.

And why wouldn't a society owe its citizens anything after 40+ years of keeping their nose at the grindstone, and obeying all of its laws? Society is defined by what we owe one another in pursuit of civil interactions with one another. If the only contract society offers me is "work your hands to the bone and then be discarded once you can't work anymore" then I have no incentive to keep up my side of the contract an…

You support taking away social security for people who have committed crimes or had bouts of unemployment?

Based.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#983

Post by jonathanstrange »

mantas wrote: post #882
jonathanstrange wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you're reversing the burden of proof. People who make bold claims need to back them up somehow. If they fail to do so, their posts have no information value and should be downvoted.

Those who think migrants are positive should bring proof too. Or is it just trying to claim moral high ground by cherry picking?

The thread was about the work force and in Denmark the vast majority of migrants work. Go look it up on any statistics site, I certainly did but I'm not going to provide you with the link. It's very easy to look up. The Danish government publishes this information.

Industrialized countries unable to accommodate and become appealing to a sufficient yearly inflow of migrants to rejuvenate the work force are doomed. The population statistics are crystal clear about that. That's just how it is. Those countries could have changed their pension systems 30 years ago to avoid this problem but didn't.

Other than that, I don't care what you personally mean by "...are positive" about a whole group of people. Making such statements about hundreds of thousands to millions of people is an obviously gross generalization and not at a level worth discussing.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#984

Post by seec »

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…

You can't say they did nothing about it. They actually did: make sure to restrain access to well-paying jobs with long and costly studies; make sure to regulate any way the young could get ahead by creating rules for things they never had to suffer through and make sure to increase the age of retirement as well as increase the ratio of contributions from salary.

It's all very cynical, and it's based on fundamental egoistic human behavior. Most boomers I know are proud to be egoist and very often stingy. They all think that they can make the difference by helping their own children, but this is flawed "thinking" in a system that is profoundly collectivist.

And all this comes from the massive flaw of democracy: only numbers matter, if you are the dominant demographic, you can get whatever you want, regardless of the nefarious impacts down the line.

When people keep repeating the trope of democracy is the worst form of government expect of all the others, I laugh my ass off. It can only be so if you have a way to weigh the votes otherwise you are just ruled by the tyranny of the mob and that generally doesn't turn out nicely.

The problem has been artificially created, the ideology said that restricting personal freedom was better for everyone as a whole and we can very much observe that this was a lie of epic proportions...

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#985

Post by seec »

imtringued wrote: post #795
charcircuit wrote: post #730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working means that you are providing value to others. As we advance as a society a single person is able to contribute more and more value to others. Why maintain the same amount of total value being added to society when we can push further and accelerate providing value to one another?

Working just means that you get paid to do something. What you're rambling on about is some Ayn Randian technicality that has nothing to do with reality. The word "value" here means "non-measurable quantity in the neoclassical paradigm, approximated by indirect measure through unit of account", not anything meaningful. A childcare worker raising children is "value". A mother raising her child is not "value". In other…

Yep that's pretty much it.

If it was all about value, we wouldn't have people doing "work" who not only don't generate any material wealth but actually consume a lot of value for nothing very valuable in return.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#986

Post by seec »

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.

When half of your work output is taken away to give to your already well-off parents, you don't have much left over to have kids.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#987

Post by staticman2 »

pfdietz wrote: post #55
CubsFan1060 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the fourth way be via increasing either birth rate or immigration?

The total fertility rate (number of children per woman) seems stubborn against attempts to raise it. I suggest instead altering the male/female ratio, so a stable or growing population can be maintained at lower TFR. Technically, filter sperm to remove those with Y chromosomes before artificial insemination.

I love this as a science fiction thought experiment but altering the male/ female ratio will never happen.

If someone tried to implement it- aside from the obvious problem of authoritarianism- the resulting male minority would live life in romantic "easy mode" so people who want the best for their kids would want male children and rebel against a system more likely to give them female children who would find romantic prospects difficult.

I suppose if someone invented a way to alter sexuality to allow straight women to opt into becoming gay the romance problem could be mitigated, but I'm guessing that this is impossible given the human brain is only so neuroplastic in adult years.

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#988

Post by moktonar »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #968
moktonar wrote: post #790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't expenses be proportional to population size? If not so, then spend less? Birth rate below replacement doesn't mean population size is not enough to pay for expenses, it just means it will slowly decrease, which btw is good, we are definitely too many. In nature only bi-sexual reproduction is capable of reducing population size when needed, that is a very good indicator that when resources become scarce, onl…

Infrastructure can't be scaled down easily once it is built. You can't just shrink roads, water lines, electricity lines and otherwise once a population has shrunk. Nor can buildings like hospitals and fire stations. So no, expenses are not proportional. Those costs continue, and now you have fewer young people to pay for it - and more elderly that will need assistance. It is vicious. Some countries like the US have…

Good luck

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#989

Post by dctoedt »

archagon wrote: post #919
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…

You’ve mentioned before that you were from a third world country. (Bangladesh, was it? A 90% Muslim nation?) Yet I assume you believe yourself to be a net positive contributor to your country of immigration? That your children will help the native culture instead of hindering it? Seems pretty hypocritical to me.

According to his logic, his kids should thank their lucky stars that their mother is American by his definition, namely that she was raised here and her family has been here for many generations ....

Re: Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

#990

Post by mbs159 »

matsemann wrote: post #139
jampekka wrote: post #119

It's utterly insane that people need to work more and longer as technology increases productivity. A truly dystopian economic system. In 1930 Keynes projected that by 2000 their grandchildren could work 15 hours per week¹. Now the projection is that we will work more and longer in the future. And what is this labor supposed to even do? How much of even current work really increases wellbeing? Graeber's thesis of bull…

Yes, that's what strikes me as well. Where is the productivity gains going? Why are we still working 40 hour weeks, and possibly even for many more years? If I remember correctly, Denmark even removed a holiday recently. So work more days a year as well. That's the problem here. That a few people reap all the benefits of this, while the rest of us toil.

> Where is the productivity gains going?

To the top 1%. Technology advances rapidly, but work hours don't decrease.

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