Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/05/23/denmark-raise-retirement-age-70/

by wslh • 1 year ago

473 1195 1 year ago

telegraph.co.uk

*) 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 well at some jobs at 70 as well as a 30 year old, especially if they're mentally or physically challenging jobs.

I'm not talking about government paper pushing jobs, but private industry jobs with international competition where you need to be agile and up to speed to survive as a business. This system worked for the boomer generation in slow moving highly regulated industries like steel, rail and automotive, where you'd spend all your life at one company who'd promote you and invest in your training till retirement, but this isn't as common anymore. International companies now want things done faster and cheaper and can't be competitive keeping 70-year-olds on the payroll idling around waiting for retirement.

For example, here in Austria, if you're laid off at the age of 50, the chances of getting another job at that age for many professions are already next to zero due to rampant ageism, so workers in some professions end up on long term unemployment till retirement, yet the government agencies are not talking about this major issue and just tell the 50 year olds on long term unemployment to "make a more colorful resume to stand out"(I shit you not). You're also not allowed to take your contributions out of that pot early or all at once to fuck off out of the system and be on your own if you want, proving it is Ponzi scheme in disguise.

bluefirebrand• 1 year ago

I'm not sure this really changes the information?

Ok, so if you're near retirement now you're fine

But if you're younger, you can look forward to not retiring until 70, as if the younger generation hasn't been shit on enough

Amazing stuff. One last ladder for the older generation to pull up behind them before they die, I guess

tossandthrow24• 1 year ago

In all fairness.

the housing market in Denmark is approachable - you can get houses near major cities for usd 80k.

Social security, you can go unemployed for years and still pay your bills.

Government provided education with stipend - having masters degrees are common.

And the economy is strong.

Most Danes understand that this is inevitable - the big issue is that the politicians have given themselves more favorable terms.

Supermancho• 1 year ago

Won't be a long wait till it gets raised to 80. The demographics of many nations are pretty grim.

bossyTeacher5• 1 year ago

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.

Nathanba• 1 year ago

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 so long that nobody wants to hire them even if they could hire them for a very low amount. People at that age will have a lot of pride built up, they are not going to want to stand in a supermarket for 3h a day either. Is society really going to force them? So far they are barely even willing to force young people to get jobs.

Just because you can hire a 68 year old to do content moderation or be an assistant teacher... does not mean that anybody actually wants him around at that age and that he will be a net gain to the environment. His speed and ability at work is inherently going to limit other people's speed in some way or form,not even just that. Even his vibe, his impact on the team. These things are all things that people consider during hiring. It's the concept of "the chain is only as strong as its weakest link" I suppose.

FirmwareBurner14• 1 year ago

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?

deanc7• 1 year ago

I’m not sure how I feel about this. I’m based in the Nordics and my estimated retirement age at the moment (where I can get my state pension) is 67y 4m. Whilst I understand the burden the aging population is having on society (lifespan) it doesn’t seem like there’s much proactive government input into people’s healthspan.

Maybe instead we should try investing in this area (reducing the burden on services) instead of simply trying to reduce the quantity of folks claiming from the state pension pot.

ryan936• 1 year ago

Are you really claiming there is some big health issue in the nordic countries suppressing life span?

deanc7• 1 year ago

No. I am suggesting that governments invest more into ensuring their aging population is healthy instead of draining every bit of life from them by making them work later and later.

HDThoreaun5• 1 year ago

It’s not just about expanding lifespans. The cratering birth rates are a huge reason why societies are going to need people to work until they’re older.

WA• 1 year ago

It’s the other way around: a few decades ago people retired only a few years earlier, had 5-10 years of retirement and then died.

Now people live way longer, but the retirement age never got adjusted properly to the new reality. So 15-20 years of retirement is the new normal.

In addition, way fewer young payers for the now old.

deanc7• 1 year ago

Sure. But is that the society we want to live in. Do we not have ambitions to have people work less, enjoy what little life they have more? I'm not saying this is an economically easy problem to solve, but we focus so much on economics and so little on policies that make people happy.

IshKebab2• 1 year ago

Also the actual pension payments have gone up massively. Almost doubled in the last 30 years in the UK.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/pensioners-incomes-...

eloisant3• 1 year ago

People live longer but not necessarily healthier.

They'll go directly from factory line to care home.

zeroCalories5• 1 year ago

Economically, old people are a burden on society. If you want to have a long and easy retirement for your elderly, you need a growing population, forever. Like a ponzi scheme. The alternative is that you break young people's back by burdening them with providing for the elderly. No amount of redistribution will help a country with poor productivity. 60 was a reasonable retirement age years ago, because most people would be dead soon after retirement, but with people regularly reaching 80+, 70 for retirement seems very reasonable. It wouldn't surprise me if the average gen Z reaches 90+, so maybe they should be working until they're in their 80s.

vintermann• 1 year ago

Economically, old people are a burden on society

Only if they are poor. If they're rich, they can continue "producing wealth" from interest and investments even after they're dead.

It's a silly thing to say, of course, but it's built into most people's assumptions who are discussing it.

foobazgt• 1 year ago

If you had to pick an age for societal burden, it'd be the average "young" person who isn't making a net-positive contribution until around the age of 25. Most people don't receive a corresponding 25 years of retirement, and the retirement they do receive is a product of contributing to it for 40 years.

But it turns out young people become middle-age people, become old people, and we're all in this together. The real problem is not about how the pie is split across generations, but about the realities of lifespans, economic production, and expenses. If you're responsible for funding the entirety of your retirement, all of this is abundantly clear. When you nationalize retirement, all sorts of budgeting tricks start happening, like "borrowing" to fund other programs, papering shortfalls via population growth, etc. Then you start getting age warfare when the govt has to eventually cut back.

You could dissolve the national retirement plan, but that seems like a bad idea for similar reasons as entirely dissolving national welfare and insurance programs. It will always be the case that some people, need some help, some of the time. I guess in my ideal world, it's reduced to a much smaller safety net, because the government is managing the economy well enough that the populace has the wherewithal to save appropriately, and they are educated enough to do so.

triceratops6• 1 year ago

If you want to have a long and easy retirement for your elderly, you need a growing population

Or a population that can produce the same amount of stuff and services with fewer and fewer workers. Fortunately that's what capitalism excels at.

rxtexit2• 1 year ago

I am Gen X and fully expect to be working until 70, hopefully.

I knew a guy who worked full time at a bank at 85. He said all the time he didn't have to work but what else was he going to do all day? A big reason he was able bodied at 85 was from working and not sitting home all day.

I think we have confused retirement fund/planning marketing with reality.

The retired people I know are physical mess from retirement. Alcohol and restaurant food all the time, will be needing long term care much sooner than if they had worked longer.

mrcwinn• 1 year ago

As an American, I’m often that countries like Denmark are in fact constantly investing in health and entitlements, and so everyone is healthier and happier. Is that not the case?

SoftTalker5• 1 year ago

Denmark has a lot of social services, and commensurate taxes to support them. This is reaching a breaking point. You can't get more blood out of a body that has already been drained to near the point of death.

deanc7• 1 year ago

In my part of the Nordics (Finland) they are cutting investment and sending people to private institutions. In rural areas private providers have entirely replaced public sector healthcare centers. This is seen as quite controversial across the board.

ModernMech2• 1 year ago

Average lifespan is 81 in Denmark and 78 in USA. During the pandemic, average USA lifespan dropped to 76, while in Denmark it didn't drop below 81. So yes, it seems they are in fact healthier.

https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/denmark/usa?sc=...

bjoli• 1 year ago

We have the same problem as every other western country. Sweden has lowered the taxes by about 500 billion SEK (corrected for inflation and population growth) since I was born close to 40 years ago. That is about a third of the annual budget.

How these tax cuts are distributed over the population is... not very evenly. There was even an article yesterday in the NYT (iirc) that warned about wealth accumulation patterns in Sweden.

It is the same neoiberal experiment that the US has had since Reagan, just with some more social democracy.

tokai2• 1 year ago

Denmark is not constantly investing in health and entitlements at all. On the contrary unemployment benefits and such has been slashed. Over the last two decades there has been many broad cuts to public services. The health sector had to do percentage fixed cuts every year for several years in a row.

kryptoncalm• 1 year ago

Building on that, instead of viewing retirement (age) from a cost perspective (i.e. we have x budget and y lifespan, hence retirement age is z), it would be refreshing to see a high-quality and long retirement as starting point, and then figure out how to organize for that. One way would be to reduce burden on services indeed. A low retirement age (for those who want it) is a sign of a wealthy nation and something to strive for.

wyager6• 1 year ago

Maybe instead we should try investing in this area (reducing the burden on services)

This doesn't require any investment or technological development; it just requires making rational-but-politically-nuclear policy changes reducing the infinite tap of publicly-funded extremely-low-ROI medical expenditures on old people.

An absurd fraction of medical spending goes to protracting the suffering of old people just a bit longer. We can simply stop doing that, given the political will to do so.

Extending people's lifespans won't do much to alleviate these expenditures, except perhaps to slightly dilute the amortization schedule.

neuroelectron2• 1 year ago

Previous older generations were leas independent. They lived with their extended families, contributed to the household and spent nearly nothing.

dtgm92• 1 year ago

This is because of their low birth rate primarily right?

I think the system has failed at this point, when you are expected to work that long.

tossandthrow24• 1 year ago

It is.

And this is the case in all western countries.

It is just being realized in different ways.

Fundamentalle there are 3 ways to cope

1. reduce pensions

2. Raise taxes

3. Decrease amount of benefit receivers.

Denmark choose number 3

namdnay4• 1 year ago

The trap is the worse the imbalance gets, the harder (1) gets electorally

CubsFan1060• 1 year ago

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

littlestymaar5• 1 year ago

You are missing the most important one:

- increase productivity more than how much the workforce/receivers grow.

And if AI/robots eventually deliver, we're soon going to need a discussion about lowering the retirement age to 55 or even 50 if we don't want 30% unemployment anyway.

lostlogin7• 1 year ago

2 has some options. Increase the number of (young) immigrants. Increase the birthrate (has anywhere managed this?).

dyauspitr2• 1 year ago

4. Stop spending 90% of healthcare costs on 5% of chronic problem beneficiaries.

WinstonSmith845• 1 year ago

Typically EU countries implement the 3 options together - option 1. btw is meant to make the pension irrelevant. It can't happen from one day to the next, but there is a shift happening where people contribute more and more towards private pension funds. It's easy to see that at some point, there will be the equivalent of the US 401K in Europe.

jxjnskkzxxhx2• 1 year ago

What does "reduce pensions" mean? Pensions are people's property. You can take pensions like you can confiscate property, a la communism.

hmmokidk• 1 year ago

Can also just raise taxes on the super rich

robaato• 1 year ago

No 4 - do like Norway:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor...

mmooss12• 1 year ago

That omits the essential fact that economies tend to grow - quite a bit over your lifetime. 2% compounded annual growth over 50 years will result in the economy being 2.7x its starting size.

risyachka2• 1 year ago

4. They must attract skilled immigrants in significant numbers.

Most don't want to so they have to compensate via taxes and higher pension age.

FirmwareBurner14• 1 year ago

The social pension system always was a Ponzi scheme where the ones who got in first(boomers) get the biggest share of the pie(10-20 years of life left after retirement), while those coming into the system last(millennials+) and pay for the current retirees will get rug-pulled(5-10 years of life left after retirement).

Sustainable population and economic growth at that rate can't happen indefinitely.

Some people have been vocally saying this system in unsustainable long term, just that Europeans governments never wanted to publicly admit this due to fears of loosing elections, so they kept kicking the can down the road.

namdnay4• 1 year ago

The boomers definitely weren’t the first getting in, the original pensions were paid to their own parents

It’s not really a Ponzi scheme, it is completely possible for the system to be balanced, it’s just very very hard to get people to vote for you if you say they’ll have less tomorrow

rxtexit2• 1 year ago

My boomer parents are already pushing being retired for 20 years, neither did anything more than the bare minimum in life.

They could have easily worked 10 years longer instead of doing nothing but drinking wine all day and/or going out to restaurants in retirement. That is in between traveling to go out to restaurants and/or drink wine.

The boomers scammed us all and aren't done yet. They are going to make sure to bankrupt the entire system with healthcare cost before they go.

simianwords3• 1 year ago

why not because of increased life expectancy?

spacebanana75• 1 year ago

That actually makes the problem worse unless retirement ages tick up at the same rate.

constantcrying4• 1 year ago

No. It is about how the system is funded.

If pensions were funded by actual retirement accounts, where employees invested money into some state fund and have it paid out for retirement this would be entirely unproblematic.

But the pension system in many EU countries is set up in a way in which tax contributions now finance pensions now. This can only work with a steadily growing economy which continually generates more revenue when more people retire. In some sense it is a literal Pyramid scheme, in which the obligations are continually pushed to younger generations, which have to contribute based on how many pensioners there are.

Especially now as EU economies become weaker this issue becomes bigger and bigger.

JackYoustra2• 1 year ago

Chile had this and, while technocratically sound, was so unpopular it led to a new constitution.

tossandthrow24• 1 year ago

This is about public pensions.

Denmark has private pensions like the 401k system in the US.

People can start tapping into these up to 5 years before they are 70.

In reality most people will go down in time and partially tap into private pensions and saving long before they turn 70.

This is opposed to other European countries, like Germany, that does not have these private pensions, but only retirement insurance.

jordanb• 1 year ago

Fundamentally any retirement plan that doesn't involve canned food in a celler is pay-go because the retirees will be consuming resources from the economy they retired into rather than the one they were workers in.

Their retirement savings can be in public company stocks instead of government guarantees but that only works if there are people willing to buy those stocks (ex: younger people saving for retirement).

alexey-salmin12• 1 year ago

No, fundamentally it doesn't really matter. Retired people consume but don't produce. They are fed by the economy of today, not by economy of the past.

Whatever you accumulate for retirement (cash, stocks, gold, state pension points) it only represents coupons for your share of the economy of the future. Details may differ but fundamentals are the same: it a promise that the future generation will share some of their yield with you.

eloisant3• 1 year ago

If pensions were funded by actual retirement accounts, where employees invested money into some state fund and have it paid out for retirement this would be entirely unproblematic.

You're talking about a system of pension by capitalization, like in US, which comes with its own problems.

Namely that if you reach retirement age during a crash like in 2008, you're screwed. You have to work 5 more years hoping the market recovers in the meantime, or retire anyway and get way less than you put in.

dboreham2• 1 year ago

in many EU countries is set up in a way in which tax contributions now finance pensions now

Hopefully US people realize that this is also how US public pensions (social security) actually works.

lancekey7• 1 year ago

But people are living longer, in better health (I think but didn’t verify with data) and entering the workforce later (due to more secondary schooling).

Setting aside the issues of declining birth rate for a minute, this seems like a reasonable adjustment to the other factors?

philjohn• 1 year ago

It's rising, but much slower than before - and plateaud in the 2010's for a good few years, UK stats - https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/gbr/uni...

mahkeiro• 1 year ago

People are living longer (but not really in the US), but the health span is not seeing the same increase unfortunately.

aaomidi2• 1 year ago

So what do we do with all the productivity gains we’ve had?

harimau777• 1 year ago

Personally, I'm not sure that they are living in better health in the way that I care about. I.e. my goal is to retire when I'm still healthy enough to do things (i.e. travel). Although they are likely healthier than previous generations, most of the 70 years olds I see still aren't healthy enough to travel.

bgnn• 1 year ago

True but no matter how healthy one is in their 60s and 70s people's health degrade significantly in their 80s. So, you have then 10 year of healthy life after retirement.

There's the flip side if the coin though: old people are healthier in Denmark (vs US for example [1]) due to the social welfare system. Well, that system needs to be funded. With the aging population, the costs are rising but contributions are (relatively) declining. That's why there's a push for higher retirement age. It's either this, or defunding the social welfare programs, or immigration. That last one isn't a viable political option in Denmark at the moment.

[1] https://www.euronews.com/health/2025/02/05/older-people-are-...

rors• 1 year ago

The first pension was put in place by Bismark as a way to "steal the clothes of the socialists whilst they were bathing". It was seen as the cheapest social benefit because life expectancies were so low. A popular policy delivered at low cost to the state.

That people are living longer is why the system is failing. It's an interesting thought experiment to consider whether any country would introduce a state pension now knowing how much they cost.

pwarner• 1 year ago

I'm in the US, but I'd be happy if social security ages were pushed out to 75 or 80 but benefits preserved. I'm saving heavily for retirement, but the biggest challenge is figuring out how long you're going to live. If you have sort of a defined and horizon, it's much easier to calculate.

mihaaly• 1 year ago

Of course it failed when it was created in completely different circumstances.

Or some may say it got outdated.

It was started at times when the life expentancy was low. And it was given at age above the life expentancy. And in the beginning not to everyone. The retirement age got lower and given to broader set of population gradually. These moves made governments popular, so it was no brainer to introduce, on the expense of future generations.

Birth rates that can maintain the economics of relatively low retirement age could not be sustained without destroying the planet. Actually has to be reversed still as it went too far already and deteriorating as we speak, especialy with the ongoing large increase in the overall life quality - causing decreasing birth rate alone - and healt. The system was destined to fail. But how to take away rights? It is much harder than giving, especiallly when the adverse effects are for current voters, not future generations?

So the necessary steps are postponed, postponed, postponed yet again, for many decades, taking about necessity in many forms, meanwhile filling bigger and bigger holes in the budgets, through borrowing, making the problem worse, again for future generations. Very few countries do tiny adjustments, and even those are met with huge protests mostly.

I wonder what the future holds. Painful adjustments or more painful collapse later in some form.

agilob2• 1 year ago

Having a 68 year old paediatrician, PE teacher will surely help.

Barrin92• 1 year ago

No it isn't because of their birth rate, or at least, birth rates are an issue orthogonal to it.

In some rich countries people spend now more years of their life out of work than in work because of much longer education and much longer lifespans. If you want to keep the same social standards, all other things being equal, you need to raise the retirement age.

II2II• 1 year ago

It's not that you are expected to work that long. It is a case of not being expected to work longer than that. You are always welcome to retire earlier if you have the financial means to do so. You are also welcome to work longer than that should you have the desire to do so.

Of course, those last two sentences are tongue in cheek.

The real problem is that certain segments of society are not compensated for their labor at a rate that would allow them to retire early, and may even have to work beyond retirement age in order to supplement their stipend. Worse yet, these people often work in sectors that offer few affordances for them to maintain their health into old age and may even push them into living conditions that are detrimental to their health (assuming their job isn't detrimental to their health in the first place).

Ideally, people would be able to retire when they want (within reason). The reality is that some people can retire at a relatively young age while others don't really have that option.

nine_k3• 1 year ago

The system has effectively failed most everywhere on the West. The post-WWII generations are numerous and have a long life expectancy, apparently longer than the pension systems planned for. Generations that came after them are less numerous, and, in a way, somehow less prosperous. They cannot pay enough to keep the pension systems afloat.

The Japanese faced this earlier and harder than Europe, with about 30% of their population being past the retirement age. They increased their productivity very significantly, but it's still not enough, and a lot of older folks in Japan keep working well past the retirement age, sometimes even re-hired by the companies from which they had retired.

neom5• 1 year ago

Do you have a sense of how you see it playing out?

downrightmike2• 1 year ago

Generations after the boomers create more, with less energy, but the boomers rigged the system and captured the increases.

sgt1012• 1 year ago

Higher life expectancy more like, the state can't afford for people to spend 20 years unproductive. This is a much less acute issue in the USA and Russia where health is poor and life expectancy low.

AdrianB16• 1 year ago

It is simple mathematics. European pension systems are not a saving system, but a pay as you go system, where pensions are paid from the people who work now. What you get in taxes this month you pay as pensions this month, as a state. This is the Bismarck model and it was invented at a time when the average lifespan was lower than the pension age, so many people were contributing very little as a percentage for very few people to get pensions. Today the situation is the opposite, with less and less people paying (not too many people start working at 16 years like in 1860), retirement age was lowered in most countries, the percentage of salary you pay as pension tax can be 25%, growing that is not too easy as this is just part of the taxes workers pay.

This system was working back in 1860, but it is a Ponzi scheme in decline for the past 50 years. And there is no way out, most people rely on state pensions to live after retirement; it is the perfect trap.

EliRivers• 1 year ago

Maybe the system needs a rethink; an expectation that everyone able to will pretty much work their whole lives, but making work much less miserable and time-consuming so that's just fine.

Ha. Total pipedream. It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of our current economic system.

satvikpendem3• 1 year ago

What system would work?

croes2• 1 year ago

You don’t need higher birth rates if the productivity rises and the created wealth is fairly distributed.

satvikpendem3• 1 year ago

How would you fix it? Note that even Scandinavian nations with very generous healthcare and childcare policies can't raise their rates, it simply seems that as people get wealthier, they have fewer kids, regardless of the status of their country's systems.

jmpetroske3• 1 year ago

My take is that saying the problem is birth rates is misguided. Surely we have enough labor to provide for the elderly, why can’t our economy be structured to get this labor to the people who need it?

porridgeraisin• 1 year ago

Yeah, people keep trying to find a purely economic reason for why folks are having less kids. I think I'm satisfied with the very simple reason that raising kids is hard work. Most people feel like 1 kid already gets their hands full. That's really it IMO. Whenever it was that joint families split up into disparate nuclear families, obviously the load of raising say 5 kids that was being shared among 20 people, suddenly fell on just 2 people.

In the places with high fertility rate, you will almost surely observe joint families. I'm from India where we have such demographic variety that you can see adjacent areas with completely different fertility rates. In one, you will see old-style large houses with courtyards and 15+ people in them living as a joint family. Invariably these people have more kids. But in the next town with more nuclear families and modernish apartments, you will be lucky to see 2 kids per family. [1]

This is what births the secondary economic incentives which are mentioned a lot in popular discourse. For example, if you're already living in a house with 15 people your financial realities will require a similar number of people in the next generation to continue the same lifestyle.

[1] Wealth is not a confounding factor here. The specific two areas I have in mind are both more or less equally wealthy, one has folks running a coconut business primarily and the other is a small town with the usual assortment of office jobs.

frollogaston• 1 year ago

Some people really can't have kids or need extra help, but aside from that, social security sets up the wrong incentives.

ionwake• 1 year ago

The last great country in Europe, may their salvation come in their easy going friday afternoons and the general well being of the nation.

constantcrying4• 1 year ago

It is important to keep in mind how these pension schemes are funded. Already now over 40% of Danish government expenses go towards social security a large part of that is pensions.

With a growing population of pensioners and a declining population of taxpayers many EU countries are walking towards a future where it is abundantly clear that the state can not finance pensions. Especially when at the same time their companies loose their economic competitiveness.

I do not believe that raising the retirement age in 15 years will be of any major help here. And it seems especially outrageous for the younger generation.

lnsru3• 1 year ago

It's obvious, that there is no pension in Europe in 20 years anyway. Demographics are super ugly everywhere. Investing individually is the single way, that works if one does not want to retire in under the bridge. Sadly Germany does not help me caring about my retirement taking 18.6% away and heavily taxing the rest.

Retric11• 1 year ago

The math for pensions is fine as long as the maxes payout isn’t excessive and you don’t start too early. There’s a huge cost difference between a 30k/year pension at 70 and a 45k per year pension at 60.

People also focus on a fixed percentage being returned while ignoring the long term increase in productivity and people’s standards of living. In real terms people in 2025 get way more out of pension systems than people did in 1925, that’s as central to the problem as any changes in lifespan.

lnsru3• 1 year ago

I will pay more than €600000 for this “retirement insurance” over my entire career. So with 30k/year pension and living under the bridge at 70 I must have superior health to break even at 90 and benefit from the “insurance” afterwards. Ok, it’s not that bad, there is some disability insurance included. Better than nothing.

secondcoming• 1 year ago

UK-based here and despite it being one of the lowest state pensions in Europe, there are still complaints that it's too high. I fully expect to never receive a State Pension, and so contribute the maximum to my private pension. But even then it wouldn't surprise me if soon even those contributions got taxed too.

mikewarot• 1 year ago

I think that the long term consequences of cases of CFS/ME that are induced by Covid (and thus Long Covid) are going to take out a large amount of the top of the population pyramid well before their time, myself included.

The increased medical costs as we go, however, might actually make it worse, faster.

WinstonSmith845• 1 year ago

In many EU countries, retirement age increase while the value of the pension itself decreases. It's about demographic of course but it's also the signs of a failed system. People understands this and are contribution more and more towards private funds which are meant to offset the loss - slowly shifting to a US system.

The current system is just not broken but unfair. In many EU countries, people are not contributing for themselves, but for the previous generation being currently retired. In turn, it's supposed that babies born today will work for the pension of the currently active generation. This pension system is nothing else but a pyramide scheme and that scheme is now breaking due to a demographic issue - just like a traditional pyramide scheme would break because there are not enough participants to that scheme ...

solnyshok• 1 year ago

I'm 48 now, in Latvia, and expect that my retirement age will be 73+.

neonate• 1 year ago

https://archive.ph/xe4rC

dueltmp_yufsy• 1 year ago

Seems the US will have to do this soon. Just very very unpopular. Not sure which party will actually pull the trigger.

mattnewton3• 1 year ago

My guess - they'll just gut the benefits to anemic levels for everyone slowly rather than some big easy to point to maneuver like this.

energy1232• 1 year ago

What is the political incentive to do this ever?

onlyrealcuzzo• 1 year ago

Whoever does that will get voted out.

Voters over 62 make up >25% of the midterm vote.

By 2030 - that number could easily be >30%.

oldpersonintx22• 1 year ago

"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 years.

What's crazy is the number of grown adults who think their 401ks will magically grow to fill the gap.

IndubitableCoil2• 1 year ago

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 are plenty of helpful calculators to help you figure out what makes the most sense if you don't have a love affair with Excel [1].

You may argue that the the value of the house will appreciate well in a good market, but there is nothing stopping you from taking the money you saved by renting and putting it in an appreciating asset.

[1] https://www.nerdwallet.com/calculator/rent-vs-buy-calculator

dw_arthur• 1 year ago

You can still find plenty of reasonable housing in the US. As for young people on the coasts, yea I don't know how they will own a house within the next 10 years.

pengaru• 1 year ago

Housing in the US isn't anywhere near as cost prohibitive as a vocal minority of people like to make it sound like it is.

You just have to give up on the Santa Monicas, San Franciscos, and Manhattans of the nation. There's plenty of affordable housing outside the top tier cities, and modern tech has made it easier than ever to work from practically anywhere on the planet.

The only people in their 40s I know of who are still renting that I would consider "forever renters" are being extraordinarily undisciplined with their finances and spend what they could be saving towards a down payment on credit card debt they self-inflicted.

tehjoker• 1 year ago

There's absolutely no reason to other than to line the pockets of the wealthy.

pfisherman• 1 year ago

From my uninformed perspective this seem like a rather big and sensible lever toward rebalancing US national finances. The actuarial math must have changed significantly since the inception of the program, no?

Retric11• 1 year ago

Not significantly compared to other changes. SS taxes are at a much higher rate than when the program started. The workforce is also vastly more productive enabling a much higher standard of living.

What ended up happening is we rebalanced the program based on a lot of positive changes and used a huge ‘surplus’ to subsidize government borrowing, and nobody wants to adjust for any negatives ever.

tzs• 1 year ago

The US may have to raise the retirement age eventually but it could put off needing to do so for a long time by making the payroll tax flat instead of regressive. Currently here is the percent various workers pay:

  Income     Tax
    $10k     6.2%
    $50k     6.2%
    $100k    6.2%
    $150k    6.2%
    $200k    5.4%
    $300k    3.6%
    $700k    1.6%
   $1000k    1.1%
   $5000k    0.22%
  $10000k    0.11%

This comes about because it is structured as a two bracket tax rate:

         Bracket     Marginal Rate
       $0 - $176100    6.2%
  $176101 - ∞          0%

Just make it 6.2% across the board and it will push off the need for further major reforms far enough to largely get past the peak in Boomer retirements which are happening now. Maybe gradually raise the rate from 6.2% (which has not changed since 1990) to 7.2% to be safe.

Once Boomers pass through the system and start dying off in significant numbers over the next 10-30 years there won't be any size differences between successive generations nearly as large. Gen X is smaller than Millennials, then Gen Z is between Gen X and Millennials in size, and the current generation is projected to be around the same size is Gen Z. This should make it considerably easier to keep the system working.

Polls show [1][2] that this approach (flat rate + 1% gradual rate increase) is the solution voters prefer by a large majority regardless of party affiliation when presented with all the solutions that have been proposed by politicians and experts.

Generally whenever Democrats in Congress introduce bills to address the problem this is the approach they go for, although sometimes they talk about keeping a lower marginal rate for people making between $176100 and $400000, like this:

         Bracket     Marginal Rate
       $0 - $176100    6.2%
  $176101 - $400000     0%
  $400001 - ∞          6.2%

Republicans in Congress do not really have a coherent approach to this. There's a powerful group in the House called the Republican Study Committee, which is a large conservative caucus of around 190 members (~85% of House Republicans). They are the ones setting Republican policy in Congress on this issue.

According to them there are only three ways to fix Social Security: some combination of (1) raise the money it takes in, (2) reduce the amount it pays out, and (3) make up for any shortfall by paying some benefits out of the general budget.

They also say that #1 and #3 are off the table. Their proposals generally go for #2 via raising the retirement age. That does buy some time but not much, and runs into the problem that the Republican Party Platform says (caps in original) "FIGHT FOR AND PROTECT SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE WITH NO CUTS, INCLUDING NO CHANGES TO THE RETIREMENT AGE", and Trump also keeps saying that which doesn't leave them any options.

[1] https://www.aarp.org/social-security/survey-raising-taxes/

[2] https://www.nasi.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/NASI_SocialS...

programjames• 1 year ago

Why not just subsume it into the other income taxes?

Acrobatic_Road• 1 year ago

The numbers only work if you assume the program exists in a total vacuum. You can expect Congress will borrow any social security surplus as they start running short in other places, like Medicare.

dainiusse2• 1 year ago

The best phrase I read by someone. "Retirement is a financial goal - it has nothing to do with age". And this makes huge sense...

nialv7• 1 year ago

well in this context it generally means the age someone starts to receive state pension.

testing223213• 1 year ago

And in many countries it defines the age you can withdraw money from your own retirement savings without paying full income tax.

dainiusse2• 1 year ago

Yes. But the wider meaning is - you are in control

futureshock• 1 year ago

I’d encourage thinking not just about yourself or your immediate circle when it comes to policy like retirement age. State run pension systems affect nearly everyone, not just the extremely fortunate few who can become financially independent at a younger age. And that is also largely an American phenomenon anyway. Salaries are much lower on average than in Europe and there is far less differential between minimum wage and what senior employees get paid. There’s also not the same culture of investing because European companies don’t have the same performance as the US stock market. Lower yield real estate investment is much more common in many European countries. And with strong social safety nets Europeans are generally less pressured to save a huge nest egg.

So this raising of the retirement age will affect a huge portion of workers and 70 is OLD to be working full time for all but the most relaxed jobs. Most older folks I know have know being dealing with multiple chronic age related illnesses well before 70.

voilavilla• 1 year ago

How does this make huge sense?

It's a financial goal that is literally based on how long you plan to live, aka, your age.

Let's say I have €100.000 in the bank and that's two years of expenses based on my budget. Can I retire tomorrow? Well, what's my age? and what X do I plan to add to my age to determine if that amount of money is sufficient to retire?

jampekka7• 1 year ago

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 bullshit jobs becomes increasingly more convincing: work isn't about production, it's about social control².

[1] http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf

[2] https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

zemvpferreira2• 1 year ago

If you wanted to live to a 1930s standard of education, healthcare, food, entertainment, interior decorarion, transportation, savings etc etc you could most definitely do it on very few hours of work. Lots of people associated with homesteading, tiny houses etc do so.

That said I agree we should be further ahead in paving a way to paradise.

jampekka7• 1 year ago

It's not necessarily about the standard of living, but about production going into the zero or negative sum status consumption. Or as Keynes puts it:

Now it is true that the needs of human beings may seem to be insatiable. But they fall into two classes -- those needs which are absolute in the sense that we feel them whatever the situation of our fellow human beings may be, and those which are relative in the sense that we feel them only if their satisfaction lifts us above, makes us feel superior to, our fellows. Needs of the second class, those which satisfy the desire for superiority, may indeed be insatiable; for the higher the general level, the higher still are they. But this is not so true of the absolute needs -- a point may soon be reached, much sooner perhaps than we are all of us aware of, when these needs are satisfied in the sense that we prefer to devote our further energies to non-economic purposes.

insane_dreamer5• 1 year ago

That's not what Keynes meant.

luckylion• 1 year ago

In 1930 Keynes projected that by 2000 their grandchildren could work 15 hours per week.

Couldn't they, having the same standard of living as in 1930?

mc32• 1 year ago

It’s not insane. People are living longer than before, unfortunately when initially set up, people didn’t take increasing longevity into account as well as lower fertility rates. Quite a few people never got to retirement when initially instituted. Where is money supposed to come from? Historically, in multigenerational households of yore elders were productive till they could no more.

nicce• 1 year ago

People live longer but the threshold is still the same when the age reduces your physical and mental capability to the same level.

nikanj• 1 year ago

Retirement started as ”you’re too old and frail to work”, but morphed into ”now that you’ve worked for a number of decades, you can relax and enjoy life for 20+ years before your health starts to deteriorate”

Personally I think we should revert to the earlier system, where you are free to retire as soon as you want on your own money, but if you want the state (=other regular people) to fund your lifestyle, you need to be no longer fit for work

matsemann• 1 year ago

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.

sorokod• 1 year ago

Where is the productivity gains going?

Reinvested to increase future productivity

JanisErdmanis3• 1 year ago

Where is the productivity gains going?

I wonder what a good answer would be here. Intuitively we are increasing productivity in activities that does not increase social welfare. Take corporate lawyering, marketing as an example.

tmnvix3• 1 year ago

Where is the productivity gains going?

Debt servicing.

I have no specific figures to back this up, but my assumption is that as we become more productive, more credit is made available, which leads to bigger debts and asset price inflation. Because of the asset price inflation, the debt is not necessarily used for productive purchases but, for example, to pay more for existing things - the obvious one being a home. The productivity gains are therefore claimed by creditors.

It would be interesting to see how well productivity increases and debt growth (esp. private) correlate.

monkaiju2• 1 year ago

Capitalism isnt about amassing 'enough'

Its an intrinsically anti-human system thats starting to need less and less people. How these surplus people are dealt with isn't going to be pretty... Hopefully it results in the actors, being human and all, having a social revolution and pivoting away from it.

insane_dreamer5• 1 year ago

Where is the productivity gains going?

Those who own the capital. The top 10%-1%. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Ce...

slater2• 1 year ago

Never a bad time to link this:

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

mbs159• 1 year ago

Where is the productivity gains going?

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

soerxpso2• 1 year ago

In 1930 Keynes projected that by 2000 their grandchildren could work 15 hours per week

This projection came true. You can live with a 1930s living standard while working 15 hours per week at a median wage. However, nobody wants to live at a 1930s living standard. It turns out that in aggregate people prefer to spend productivity gains on conveniences and higher standards of living than on working fewer hours.

tmnvix3• 1 year ago

This projection came true. You can live with a 1930s living standard while working 15 hours per week at a median wage.

Maybe not if you want to own a home. Asset price inflation is real. If you already own a home, sure.

monkaiju2• 1 year ago

Lol no you cannot Having 1 wage result in an owned home and enough to feed a family! What a joke...

alexey-salmin12• 1 year ago

It's not insane if you consider that people neglect to raise the next generation to fund their retirement. Fund in the real sense: by doing work and ceding part of the yield to people who retired from work but keep consuming.

Whatever people save for retirement, cash or stocks or points, it only facilitates the said exchange, it doesn't somehow replace or alleviate it. It only works if the next generation exists and is prosperous enough to share their income.

joelthelion6• 1 year ago

How much of even current work really increases wellbeing?

If you think about it, there are fewer and fewer jobs that are genuinely useful.

I know it's a difficult topic, but I can't shake the feeling that we need some sort of government intervention in order to reorient the economy towards activities that actually benefit us.

bossyTeacher5• 1 year ago

It's utterly insane that people need to work more and longer as technology increases productivity.

Productivity gains are kept by the owners of the institutions as profits that made that productivity possible. Do you think YOU will work less once LLM tech is deployed at scale? Of course not, your company will pay you the same and expect the same work. Every company out there will do the same. They will reap the productivity gains.

markvdb3• 1 year ago

It's utterly insane that people need to work more and longer as technology increases productivity. A truly dystopian economic system.

Keynes was almost right. He underestimated the ability of future generations to consume conspicuously. Also, the need for many to fit in by working, but I digress.

Many don't _have_ to work more and longer. I'm speaking of a large class, very much overrepresented on HN, of smart, healthy westerners with no dependents to care for. We have only one major problem. We live in this bubble nudging us towards conspicuous consumption - gently or less so.

My job closely resembles Keynes' 1930's prediction. Sometimes I work (much) more. Not because I need money, but because the job is interesting. Interesting as in, me learning, contributing something positive to other people's lives, growing my family's financial resilience and robustness, or just enjoying the flow.

masijo• 1 year ago

We need a revolution already, it's overdue. Fuck this shit.

wtcactus• 1 year ago

We don’t live with 1930s standards of housing, education, welfare, material wealth, services, etc, etc, etc. Compare the taxes you pay now with the taxes people paid in the 1930s.

instagib2• 1 year ago

I would like to point to a topic about extending pilots’ mandatory retirement ages. Most pilots plus or minus retirement age are unable to pass the physical or mental demands of the job, so only 25-30% are able to work and not on short- or long-term disability. Some choose to work privately past retirement age. I don’t have any numbers for pilots who decided to leave, were forced out, or could not pass the training.

Extending the retirement age doesn’t really help the situation much, as you need younger and cheaper pilots to fulfill the roles of pilots who are retiring.

The problem is, becoming a pilot takes a fair amount of time, over $100k in training fees, low pay for a while until fully certified with hours in, a very mobile lifestyle, and now you are subjected to physical as well as mental demands of the job certification standards.

bombcar6• 1 year ago

There are quite a few highly paid professions where the main purpose of that profession’s union seems to be to prevent there being an adequate supply of the professionals.

aaomidi2• 1 year ago

Is that what’s happening here?

reliabilityguy3• 1 year ago

Like med schools in the US

mrtksn• 1 year ago

Its just like nationality based employment rights(need to be citizens or have a visa/permit to work) but more granular.

It can have its place, i.e. a way to balance bargaining power with the employer. It’s inherently anti meritocratic though.

In some cases it’s not about merit or about limiting supply however. In some cases it’s impractical to test someones work continuously, so instead it becomes honor based. That is, you are expected to go through an elite track and succeed in an exam once and then you are good for life unless you commit fraud or show gross incompetency.

dehrmann2• 1 year ago

This is a good listen on the topic:

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-professional-licensing-a...

AdrianB16• 1 year ago

The cost of training is real. 15 ago a colleague did the training slowly while working for some training companies and it costed him just $42,000 to get ATPL, but you need to take trainings and flight hours and that is most of the cost. There are enough people willing to become airline pilots, but most don't have the money and the cost is not an artificial barrier.

Even the cost of PPL, the lowest license on the path, is around $10,000 while the ultralight (European)/sport pilot (US) is over $6,000. From that you need CPL (commercial), multi-engine, complex aircrafts, instrument rating (bad weather or night) etc., that takes time and money most people cannot afford.

Aurornis• 1 year ago

What I find interesting is how often casual discussions about unionization on the internet will organically reinvent this concept. Especially on HN, Reddit, and Twitter the banter about unionization always seems to pivot toward using the union to force companies not to hire certain developers.

The obvious one that comes up in every discussion is thinking that unions will protect their jobs from being outsourced to other countries. People like to layer various more palatable explanations on top of this to make it sound better, but when you ask them if the employees who receive the outsourced jobs should get the same union protections you usually get their real motivation: They want to keep the jobs local to their own market and exclude foreign labor supply in order to improve demand for their services (and therefore their leverage, and therefore their own wages)

It gets interesting when different demographics start imagining that their ideal union would protect them from other demographics: Commonly, older people like to think of unions that will protect them from losing their jobs to young people.

Then when I’m working with college students and they start discussing hypothetical unionization, they come up with ways to think the union will give them more jobs by protecting them from the old people “hoarding” the jobs. (Sorry, that’s the least likely outcome for a union)

What’s most interesting is that the people I know who are in unions (non-tech industries) don’t hide the fact that decreasing labor supply to increase their own demand is exactly what they expect from a union. The first time you hear someone complain that a non-union worker is “taking food off their table” by simply doing their job you realize that it’s not as simple as Unions versus Corporations like we’ve been led to believe. The Unions are advocating for the people in the union, not workers everywhere.

nradov15• 1 year ago

The broken pilot training pipeline is mainly a US problem. Airlines got spoiled because the military trained thousands of pilots every year for "free", then some would go on to get civilian flying jobs. Now the military is smaller and there aren't enough experienced pilots coming out. But there's nothing preventing airlines from hiring pilot candidates with zero experience and paying them to go through flight training. Some other countries do this and it works fine.

brigade• 1 year ago

For pipeline capacity, it's not even really broken in the US. The airline problem is that they have to whipsaw between "growth is stalling, time to furlough our junior pilots" and "growth is now, time to hire all junior pilots with ATP minimums". But there's enough pilots being trained to handle the average.

YVoyiatzis• 1 year ago

Seventy might feel like fifty in Scandinavian cities where cycling is part of daily life—but try that in the U.S., and the idea of retirement quickly becomes a parody.

bombcar6• 1 year ago

70 is already the “optimal” age to take social security (depending on various factors).

ghaff2• 1 year ago

The US already has a retirement age of 70 depending upon how you figure it. As noted in sibling comment, depending upon various factors, that's the age it's generally recommended to start receiving social security benefits unless you want/need smaller payouts sooner. Medicare starts at 65 however. IRAs don't require you to take distributions until you're 73.

Vosporos• 1 year ago

Burn everything down

testing223213• 1 year ago

This comes about due to incompetent politicians running things. Australia is spending billions on nuclear subs it doesn’t need, and even paying France $300 million for not buying their subs.

Australia doesn’t have enough money for that? No problem, just make everyone work longer.

As an individual if I don’t earn enough to cover my spending I have two choices.

1. work more

2. Spend less

In all these discussions we never see politicians do anything about spending less, they just throw us under the bus to work more, while of course exempting themselves.

notfed• 1 year ago

How did you get from Denmark to Australia?

testing223213• 1 year ago

It’s happening all over the world

JanisErdmanis3• 1 year ago

The birth rates have been low for a decade. I wonder if the change is triggered by US stock market downturn where majority of EU pensions are invested and expectation of a doom.

JadoJodo• 1 year ago

Without discarding the issue of the moving goalpost, I do wonder what the quality of life contrast looks like between a 70-year old in 2025 and a 70-year old in 1925. Note: I arbitrarily picked the latter date, as I wasn't able to (with a quick search) locate the year in which the original retirement age was established in Denmark.

I also wonder what it would look like for the government to encourage (or even facilitate) "jobs for seniors" that only become available to you after you turn 60. They could be jobs that are, by design, low-risk, low-physicality, but medium-high mental stimulation.

mistrial93• 1 year ago

around 1900 more than a quarter of the population of Denmark emigrated to the USA IIR

strange_aeons2• 1 year ago

Around 140k emigrated to USA in 1900-1930 (https://danishvoices.ku.dk/danish-in-north-america/)

Denmark’s population was 2.4m-3.5m in that period (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Denmark)

kypro• 1 year ago

Why do people owe me a nice retirement? I never really got the idea of state-funded retirement. Perhaps I should feel I'm owed something if I'm too fragile/disabled to work, but I don't know why age alone should grant me anything?

Appreciate this is a controversial view so interested in hearing why I'm wrong so I can stop holding it. I think retirement should just be replaced by disability welfare to be honest.

jillesvangurp• 1 year ago

The state pension in most countries is simply a collective pension fund that you pay for during your working life (or your employer does on your behalf). The state owes you retirement because you paid for it. It's not a handout that others are paying for you; you actually paid for it your entire working life.

So, Denmark raising the retirement age is kind of a big deal. I imagine the Danish might be less than thrilled about that.

izacus• 1 year ago

Open a history book. Read upon why state pensions were introduced - by people who thought like you actually. (Spoiler: because alternative doesn't end well even for the wealthy.)

Isn't 19th century covered by history classes anymore? :/

adamors• 1 year ago

At least in Europe, you pay a percentage of your wage into the state’s pension fund. Details vary by country, but it’s not uncommon that you contribute automatically 10% of your gross salary. For your entire working life.

The state then being kind enough to give you something back after 35-40 years of contributions is expected.

bachmeier4• 1 year ago

Just to throw out one reason - it's valuable to working people because they don't have to take care of their parents in old age. Can't speak to Europe, but Social Security in the US is definitely not enough for a "nice retirement". It may help a frugal person in a low cost of living area cover their basic expenses.

0xBDB5• 1 year ago

Social Security in the US is definitely not enough for a "nice retirement".

A two-retiree couple who contributed at the tax limit for long enough would get $122,592 in Social Security benefits in 2025. Not beachfront living in the Hamptons, perhaps, but not cat food eating money either.

insane_dreamer5• 1 year ago

The state isn't paying for it, you're paying for it, through your taxes. (Technically you're paying for the next generation's retirement, but it's the same principle.)

dsign2• 1 year ago

There is an obvious solution to the problem of ageing population and declining birth rates. Furthermore, it's a solution everybody's secret soul wants very much: keep people younger for longer. Invent rejuvenation. But politicians would never dare go in front of cameras and say that they will put a dollar into R&D for such an outcome, because the wall of insults and disdain we would hurl, for no rational reason, at them, would be higher than a tsunami. There is something seriously broken in our collective psyche.

capitalsigma• 1 year ago

I'm pretty sure that "lack of market opportunity" isn't the reason that nobody has yet managed to invent eternal youth

jl6• 1 year ago

Get disdainin’!:

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/adding-years-to-life-...

dsign2• 1 year ago

Ha! Sweet! That's very much a (lot of) step(s) in the right direction.

jopsen6• 1 year ago

keep people younger for longer.

Is a lot easier than "rejuvenation", and a lot more attainable. And also something we do throw R&D money at.

waldrews• 1 year ago

And while we're at it, can we do teleportation too? Think of all the parking hassles, the car accidents, the carbon emissions we could save! And yet, just try to convince those funding agencies...

portpecos• 1 year ago

You're equating teleportation...something that violates our current understanding of physics..with rejuvenation, which does have some promising peripheral research, such as studies on telomeres.

martin-t3• 1 year ago

It might be the obvious solution but is it the right one?

People are significantly more productive than say 50 years ago due to technological advancement. So where is all the money going?

I am no economist but it is my understanding that all this extra money goes to the rich because they've entrenched themselves in positions where they can extract a portion of a person's income with no recourse.

It's not normal that a single person can legally own tens of apartments and get a third or each tenant's salary without providing any value to society. It's not normal that companies can own residential properties, they have no use for them other than extracting money from people.

I recall danluu blogging about how multiple times he made code fixes that saved the company more than his salary just in electricity. What I see is an incredible technical achievement but also I see how he's being exploited - the money saved is value he directly provided to society, yet he sees none of it. Where does it go? To people who are already rich.

crop_rotation• 1 year ago

People are significantly more productive than say 50 years ago due to technological advancement. So where is all the money going?

People have far better lives considering all the things available to them compared to 50 years ago. Most people would not want to live life like how people lived it 50 years ago.

It's not normal that a single person can legally own tens of apartments and get a third or each tenant's salary without providing any value to society. It's not normal that companies can own residential properties, they have no use for them other than extracting money from people.

This is definitely a problem but I don't think the only one.

charlieyu1• 1 year ago

You only get paid because someone pays you. More outputs do not mean you will get paid more if everyone does so

croes2• 1 year ago

The obvious solution that also worked in the past is rising productivity and participation on the created wealth.

2thumbsup2• 1 year ago

There are tons of companies researching methods to increase life expectancy and rejuvenation. There is not much controversial about it yet.

It is not that it is hard because it is a controversial subject. It is hard because it is not one problem. To develop rejuvenation you would need to tackle hundreds of very difficult problems, both physiological and neurological, which individually, would represent solutions to critical conditions today (diabetes, dementia, ataxia, arthritis, many types of cancers etc etc).

fasthands9• 1 year ago

Invent rejuvenation

I definitely don't think we have succeeded in "invented" this, but it surely has happened slowly over time. People in theirs 60s today are surely sharper than they used to be, with less chronic physical ailments.

But the end results is people living longer, and the solution still ends up being pushing back the retirement age.

arp242• 1 year ago

That's because it has no guaranteed outcomes and it's just a big bet. It's not a "solution" until it's proven to work. If you bet on some unproven tech to save you in the future and that never materialises then as a country you're fucked. So the disdain and contempt would be 100% earned towards towards anyone who would seriously suggest betting the future of society on some unproven technology. Only techbros would ever suggest something so profoundly out of touch with reality.

jt2190• 1 year ago

So this means that eventually Danes will not be able to draw from their government pensions until the age of seventy? Is there a mechanism where people can stop working before age seventy if they save privately?

jopsen6• 1 year ago

Denmark has both private and public pension schemes.

Well, I guess you're not required to have a private pension scheme. But most jobs come with one, most unions enforce it.

I had one when I was sweeping the factory floor once a week at age 15 -- that was ridiculously because it all disappeared into administration fees.

But the answer is yes, of course you can. It's a free country -- assuming we're not annexed by the orange monkey.

bossyTeacher5• 1 year ago

Why is this generating so much discussion? Implicitly, retirement age is not a constant but a function of several factors. This was inevitable and of course, it will increase several times over our lifespan.

seydor4• 1 year ago

because it seems like at 70 people won't be productive, hence the assumptions that humans are made of steel and retirement can stretch like rubber fail.

gandalfian• 1 year ago

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?

anal_reactor• 1 year ago

Sensible immigration policies

warunsl• 1 year ago

Also, one of the highest taxes.

spicyusername• 1 year ago

What are some examples of sensible immigration policies?

How does the US compare / contrast?

2thumbsup2• 1 year ago

Denmark’s immigration policies are not nearly as tough as their reputation nor to credit them as the source of economic prosperity.

Denmark’s economic prosperity comes from investment in free higher education for all, generally healthy lifestyles and the flexicurity-model, which provides a flexible labour market and promotes risk-taking.

enra• 1 year ago

Ozempic & Novo Nordisk contributes something like 2% of the economic growth.

seydor4• 1 year ago

they were rich before ozempic

joelthelion6• 1 year ago

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.

droopyEyelids• 1 year ago

They’re not working like idiots, they have universal unionization and lots of time off.

MattPalmer1086• 1 year ago

People are living longer. Demographically there are fewer younger people to support them. Something has to give.

stevesimmons• 1 year ago

They don't all have to work to age 70. Anyone can stop working earlier, and fund their own retirement.

hoseja2• 1 year ago

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.

glorygut123• 1 year ago

If they're raising the retirement age, then it obviously didn't all go so right,

jopsen6• 1 year ago

I feel we've known this was coming years.. and it won't effect until 2040 -- this gives me confidence in the system.

It's not an unfunded mandate running on deficit spending.

So probably it won't be wiped away by a global monetary crisis that forces us to cut deficit spending and reduce pensions.

wat100003• 1 year ago

That depends on what driving it. If it’s because the budget was unsustainable and needs to be cut, that’s bad. If it’s because people are living longer, then it’s just an unfortunate consequence of good things. I suspect it’s the latter.

timbit42• 1 year ago

It's because people are living longer and their government retirement plan savings aren't enough to support living that long. Increasing the retirement age means you spend another five years paying into your retirement fund and have five fewer years to spend it. If you have additional retirement savings of your own, you can still retire earlier.

AngryData7• 1 year ago

I don't know if I would so easily conflate necessity to political legislation. Both politics and politicians are very commonly out of touch with average citizens and what they need, and often ignore the policies that would benefit the state the most in favor of pursuing personal ideals and maintaining political positions and power. If a policy is good for a state 20 years down the line, but will cost them political positioning in the meanwhile or challenges their notions on what they are "suppose" to do either ideologically or socially, or results in their often substantial personal investments having lower returns, I wouldn't often bet on them choosing the state over themselves.

jampekka7• 1 year ago

How did it all go so right?

The highest total tax rate in the world perhaps?

pembrook3• 1 year ago

The USSR and Yugoslavia and Albania and Cuba and North Korea and Vietnam and China pre-2000s have all had far higher tax rates than Denmark during their worst times, so probably not a great correlation.

Denmark is like all the other Nordic countries culturally, except they have much easier direct geographic lines to Central Europe. So it’s basically what you get when you combine the Nordic model (tiny homogenous Lutheran population) with more advantageous geography. Finland is Denmark with extremely unfortunate geography.

bertili• 1 year ago

Dane here. It's not a coincidence that Scandinavian countries fare well in most stats. Most Danes point to a cultural bias towards very flat hierarchies in society and work life as the source of wealth, happiness and trust in each other.

4gotunameagain4• 1 year ago

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 no diverse society has so far demonstrated the capacity to have a shared purpose, coherence and high degrees of trust.

And yes, I do find monoculture societies (including denmark) very boring, and I believe diversity has other great benefits. But societal stability and long term prosperity in that sense? Doesn't look like it.

Before someone mentions the US as a counterexample, do not forget that all the prosperity of the US came from basically seizing an underutilised (in the industrial sense) resource rich continent, and now it is falling apart by internal divide.

halfmatthalfcat2• 1 year ago

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.”

LunaSea4• 1 year ago

and an attitude of working together for all

I don't know much about Denmark but somehow I doubt that this attitude extends to taxing rich pensioners more (since they didn't contribute enough).

username223• 1 year ago

Screw that. No matter how healthy you are, you're significantly limited both physically and mentally at 70. "Enjoy your last 11.7 doddering years!"

It's not so hard to save some money, do whatever you want in your 30s, then work until you're dead.

firesteelrain• 1 year ago

This is a global trend in order to keep pension and retirement systems fiscally stable. Same reason you will probably see the Social Security System raise their age too.

manmal2• 1 year ago

Where I live, people have issues getting hired past age 50, and it’s near impossible past age 60. It’s a stroke of luck if you score a job then. So yes they can raise retirement age, but that will just create misery for all those who can’t cling to a job long enough. There‘s got to be a better way.

Robotbeat2• 1 year ago

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 a problem the world over, as by 2050–before I retire—the global average total fertility rate will have dropped below replacement.).

manmal2• 1 year ago

We already have 15y to go here, at age 50. That’s WAY longer than the median occupancy.

tikhonj2• 1 year ago

Companies that have an average churn of more than 7%—which is most of them—have no place worrying about some 50-year-old retiring.

Not that that stops managers, of course...

hn_throwaway_992• 1 year ago

I don't buy this at all. I've hired many people in my career, and:

1. I've never had more than a max 2 year time horizon when thinking about a hire.

2. If anything, I've found younger people more likely to job hop than those 40+.

itsoktocry• 1 year ago

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

arexxbifs5• 1 year ago

(...) the global average total fertility rate will have dropped below replacement.

My pet theory is that when the system becomes untenable, procreation slows down, which will in time trigger a kind of reset - not that it's going to be fun to live through or anything. Self-regulation.

therealdrag02• 1 year ago

That’s not a plausible theory to me. IME older people are just less likely to work hard. They bring a “rest n vest” mindset. If an older person rounds a 40hr week down to 35 hrs, and a younger person rounds up to 45 hours because they are passionate and ambitious, all else equal the younger get person is better ROI for the team. Obviously this is stereotyping and may not be accurate but that sentiment can explain many decisions.

gorharcarme2• 1 year ago

they worry they’ll retire soon

Sorry but how is this different from hiring someone in their 20s and they are very likely to job hop to another company 1 / 2 years later ? I don't think anyone will believe this.

8fingerlouie5• 1 year ago

In Denmark, you also have to have a medical exam to maintain your drivers license after you turn 70, but they have no problem with carpenters running around on roofs until they're 74.

JelteF• 1 year ago

There's a huge difference between endangering other people vs endangering only yourself.

esseph• 1 year ago

Well you normally don't kill someone else if you fall off a roof.

Running a car at highway speeds into something or someone else has a much higher chance of injuring or killing multiple people besides the driver.

LightHugger• 1 year ago

That makes perfect sense though?

scandinavian• 1 year ago

That requirement was removed in 2017 by the right wing government at the time. It was a populist move to secure the elderly vote.

cmurf• 1 year ago

Shorten lifespan.

Cut all things that promote or enable public health.

In neo-feudalism, only lords and perhaps some of their most favored serfs, deserve private for profit health care, and the barrier to entry is cost. Why be wealthy if you can’t buy things other people can’t?

There’s always a surplus of peasants in this model.

gopher_space• 1 year ago

When people talk about raising the retirement age the assumption is that the people affected will all be unemployed, not that they'd still work in some capacity.

missedthecue8• 1 year ago

You won't work in your career field at that age unless you have profound skill and expertise. You will put cans on grocery store shelves.

charcircuit2• 1 year ago

What's stopping people from just saving up money and stop working before 70?

glxxyz• 1 year ago

Nothing, 'retirement age' is typically when people qualify for a state pension. Sometimes it's used for mandatory retirement when that exists.

bachmeier4• 1 year ago

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 70.

Contrast that with the US, where Social Security is designed to replace an average of only 30% of a worker's income (much more at the lowest income levels), and you can take it as early as age 62. The most common retirement plans are 401k, 403b, 457b, and IRA. You can pull from any of them without penalty at age 59.5, and from the retirement plan of the company you're working for if you retire at 55 or later.

As I understand it, those ages would all be 70 in Denmark, and yeah it would be terrible. Not many people in the US are still working at age 70. Almost nobody doing serious physical work is still working at age 70.

* My information about Denmark's system may be wrong.

simongray3• 1 year ago

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

prinny_• 1 year ago

2 reasons. First, the ratio of salary to expenses is so high that they don't have a meaningful amount to save towards retirement. Savings go towards rainy days and when those come they drain what little you have amassed. Second, if you haven't hit a minimum number of working years you just don't get a pension.

zkmon• 1 year ago

While the increase is not too bad, they should invest in having babies instead of making the old people work.

patall2• 1 year ago

Just saying, that will not have any positive effect until 2050. We are far to far in the incoming crash. And that is not even talking about the strain that will hit the health care sector, no matter what we raise the retirement age too.

admissionsguy• 1 year ago

Don't they know AGI soon?

dr_dshiv• 1 year ago

If it’s like The Netherlands, it’s the age when you HAVE to stop working. Like, you can’t be a professor after the retirement age.

seydor4• 1 year ago

the boomers were so exceptional that their exceptionality should not be ignored in public discourse. We will never have such a big generation ever again, so all their dreams about endless welfare will go away with them. I dont know if anyone is planning the post-boomer world, it all seems to happen-as-you-go.

The most hilarious policies are the ones aiming to force people to have more kids, by paying them or by attacking feminism and lgbt. Making the society unfree will make people less willing to put more kids in it.

amag5• 1 year ago

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 eight years and if we follow Denmark, five years.

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.

wyager6• 1 year ago

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.

Who do you think would "allow" this? God? This is a resource constraint imposed by reality itself catching up to an excessively idealistic set of policies; this policy decision is downstream of that, not arbitrary.

StopDisinfo9104• 1 year ago

It is entirely arbitrary. Society heavily favours capital above labour. That’s why we have very rich inheritors never working and people toiling until they are 70. It’s entirely a choice. This issue has solutions we collectively decide not to put in place.

amag5• 1 year ago

Of course there is no guarantee that your 65-75 years will be good, but it's a lot more likely that your 65-75 years will be good than your 75-85 years.

godelski5• 1 year ago

  > This is a resource constraint imposed by reality itself

No, it is a resource allocation problem.

I don't think we should have ceilings, but we certainly should have floors. Minimum standards. Despite that belief, I think there is something wrong when there's about 20 people who make more money while they take a shit, than most American families make in a year[0] and a buttload who make that same amount while they're asleep[1]. These levels of wealth are so large that they are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to spend within several generations, not just one lifetime.

This is only a problem, because the floor is lowering while the number of people in these groups are growing, especially the shit group.

If we have to make trades between ceiling and floor, I'd rather sacrifice ceiling for floor than floor for ceiling. Because the latter is simply greed.

Importantly, we can have both. This isn't a zero sum game, we produce more wealth and resources as time goes on. It is only zero sum at a single point in time. We can simultaneously raise the ceiling and the floor. But currently, we are shifting what percent of these gains go to which groups.

It would be insane to build extravagant and ornate Cathedral ceilings to only have a dirt floor. It would be dangerous to build those ceilings without ensuring there is a strong foundation and forgetting to build the pillars to support them. Without that, the ceilings fall and it all becomes dirt and rubble.

It is an allocation problem, not an amount problem.

[0] If you have $100bn, are able to make a conservative 0.05 yearly interest and take 5min to shit, you've made ~$50k during that time.

[1] You only need $1bn given the same statistics, but closer to $45k. There's over 3k billionaires.

gessha• 1 year ago

Back when it was first introduced, it was based on life expectancy and few were expected to live beyond retirement age. [1]

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/how-ret...

toomuchtodo3• 1 year ago

Turns out retirement is just an illusion to convince you to give your best years for the system.

refurb3• 1 year ago

Paywall.

But life expectancy at birth is not the same as life expectancy after hitting working age.

In 1900, if you made it to 10, on average you’d die at 63, meaning plenty lived well into their 70’s.

http://www.jbending.org.uk/stats3.htm

Affric• 1 year ago

Sure but the real problem is that we don’t know how to deal with bad quality of life for those suffering the effects of senescence and we have a society that is only just starting to come to grips with the perils of the sedentary lifestyle while allocating a lot of resources to people who haven’t done the work to live a good life past 60.

And we make it hard for younger adults to make time for this. Don’t work yourself half dead by the age of 30 and you will never have secure housing in any major city (where incomes are highest).

A huge part of it is cars. Most people over 70 shouldn’t be driving but we have had these people who have been driving everywhere for 55 years. They lose all ability to function independently in their community.

Give me sitting in a cafe living in an apartment with stairs and no car in Lisbon or Athens or similar any day of the week once I am old. Better than the old folks home.

intothemild• 1 year ago

There's only one issue I can think of with your idea that someone who is 75 now leads a life as you're describing.

The generation they belong to are predicted to live to what 80-85 years? Whilst we (assuming you're in your 40's now) are predicted to get to what 90-95 on average?

Average lifespans are increasing, and on top of that the mobility of someone who's 75 now, won't be the same of someone who's 75 in another 35+ years.

amag5• 1 year ago

are predicted to get to what 90-95 on average?

That may be true, but will we (who are in our 40's now) have the same quality of life at 90-95 as a now 75-year old will have at 80-85?

duttish• 1 year ago

Does anyone know if there's any kind of metrics for healthspans? Meaning the "good" part of life before it's just doctors, medicine and retirement homes.

My impression so far is that we've done a lot of work at the lifespan, less at the healthspan. What's the point of living until 90 if the last 15 years isn't that fun at all.

arexxbifs5• 1 year ago

With an aging population and increasingly long work lives, individual stressors will increase and societal capacity for healthcare (and overall prosperity) will dwindle. Baby boomers, having lived through some of the most incredible growth in human history, will perhaps turn out to be an anomalous blip in the life expectancy stats.

Also, people age differently. There's a difference between living and being alive.

Not that it's an easy problem to solve, what with the demographics being what they are. I think we'll have to get used to the thought - and reality - of sinking living standards in the west.

jongjong2• 1 year ago

Poorer individuals, who need retirement most, don't tend to live as long. Millennials and Gen Z are already victims of old, no-longer-applicable narratives (e.g. save cash, avoid debt, go to college...) and these ones about life expectancy will likely be added to the pile and used to disenfranchise us more while having no connection to reality.

Amezarak• 1 year ago

At least in the US, the SSA projects current 30 year old men to live another 48 years, putting them dead around 78. 30 year old women are expected to die around 82. [1] A quick Google shows life expectancy is about three years higher in Denmark, not an extraordinary difference, and some of that number is probably lower infant mortality.

Barring some revolutionary technological breakthrough, we aren't going to be living, on average, into our 90s.

[1] https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/NOTES/as120/LifeTables_Tbl_10.html

Jyaif• 1 year ago

The earlier they increase retirement age, the less painful it's going to be.

Retric11• 1 year ago

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.

maratc5• 1 year ago

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

account429• 1 year ago

Most people won't get to 85.

tomp5• 1 year ago

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 a problem that has easy and/or fast solutions. Yet, actions have consequences...

timschmidt16• 1 year ago

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.

You've created an impossible situation which will never exist and then offered it as an example of why taking care of the elderly, something humans have done since before recorded history, is flawed.

As Bill and Ted would say: Bogus!

wkat424210• 1 year ago

It depends on the system. In Holland they just abandoned this for a US-style "every man for himself" 401(k) thing. Luckily there are still parties fighting the implementation.

I don't think ponzi scheme is justified, it is too negative, it just makes no sense to actually accumulate all that wealth for so long.

skissane2• 1 year ago

I live in Australia where individuals are expected to fund their own retirement, and the government pension is intended just as a back-up for those who are too poor to do so. Everyone has an investment account ("superannuation", or "super" for short) which is taxed at at a reduced tax rate, and your employer is required to pay 12% of your salary into it. There are many providers of such accounts ("superannuation funds") to choose from (normally your employer has a recommended fund, but you aren't obliged to use the one they recommend) – and if you really want to you can set up your own superannuation fund (a Self-Managed Super Fund or SMSF) in which case you can make all the investment decisions yourself (subject to certain legal restrictions–you risk legal trouble if you make non-arms-length investments, like invest your superannuation into your own business, but other than that you can put the money in whatever you like.)

So, lack of young workers is not an inherent problem – you can invest your superannuation overseas (most funds invest a certain percentage of the money overseas, but if you want to take the risk of putting 100% of your superannuation into international investments, that's allowed), so even if the Australian economy were struggling with lack of young workers, you could still live off the investment returns from other global economies which lack that problem. And the reality is that Australia is unlikely to run out of young workers, because even though we have similar problems with low fertility as many other Western countries (although significantly higher than most of Western Europe), we've also always had a relatively high immigration rate, so younger workers immigrating makes up for the insufficient births.

timewizard5• 1 year ago

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.

oezi3• 1 year ago

Pensions aren't a Ponzi scheme.

They just need to be calibrated that the years of pay-in and years of pay-out are balanced as to the ratio of the people in the age cohorts. If you have 10 people paying in for 40 years and only 2 people receiving pay out for 10 years then the system is cheap.

throw0101d5• 1 year ago

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.

jmyeet• 1 year ago

Part of me wonders if capitalism is the solution to the Fermi Paradox because the endless chase of profits is driving us to extinction.

In many Western countries, younger people are facing the prospect of never being able to own a house and never being able to retire. Beyond this basic lack of security, people are realizing the cost of having children is absolutely astronomical. In many parts of the US childcare may be costing $3000/month or more per child.

For many people, pets are proxy children, and yet capitalism (private equity in particular) is ruining that too as all the vet clinics are being bought up so people can be gouged on that front too.

I'm someone who views the Labor Theory of Value [1] to be trivially true. After decades of Red Scare propaganda, Americans in particular dismiss Marx but they don't realize that Marx's most famous work (Das Kapital [2]) is primarily a framework for economic analysis, regardless of your political beliefs. I guess the problem is that as soon as you accept the axiom "there is no value without labor", there is no other conclusion than to see capitalism as the exploitation of surplus labor value.

The US corporate sector produces something like $4 trillion per year in corporate profits [3]. There are over ~210M working age people in the US [4] (about ~262M adults total). So that's ~$20k per worker in surplus labor value at a time when we spend ~2x per-capita on healthcare for worse outcomes and less coverage [5], housing is artifically expensive because we allow people to hoard it and education is unjustifiably expensive.

None of this has to be this way. We've simply chosen to prioritize the interests of fewer than 10,000 people at the expense of everyone else. People need hope. They need their basic necessities taken care of. They need something to live for. We're rapidly heading towards a future where only the rich survive but there's no one left to work in their sprawling estates.

It's also wild that we're seeing the rise of fascism in the West while there are still survivors of the Holocaust still alive. This is absolutely true in Europe too (eg AfD, Reform, National Front, whatever Hungary is). I also think we've passed the point of being able to resolve this with electroal politics. Now it only ends in tyranny or revolution.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Kapital

[3] https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2025/apr/whats-dri...

[4] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTUSM647S

[5] https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/2023/11/health-at-a-gla...

downrightmike2• 1 year ago

Capitalism would be a great filter, like nukes and never evolving past single celled life

CooCooCaCha4• 1 year ago

This is one of the more rational comments. I’m really surprised there aren’t more comments expressing how insane this topic is.

It’s absolutely insane that technology and productivity are increasing so rapidly, yet we’re talking about raising the retirement age and people being increasingly unable to afford children.

Something is incredibly wrong here.

YZF• 1 year ago

Isn't this more about letting people who want to keep working do that? What's stopping people in Sweden and Denmark from retiring earlier? I would imagine there are some pensions plan withdrawal requirements or criteria for government assistance but can't you just save money to bridge that gap?

Maybe we need to start thinking about these things differently. I would love to have more time off but still have a job and not need to make this so binary.

prawn2• 1 year ago

Can't speak for those countries in particular, but generally you can work past retirement age, or retire earlier if you have funded/planned for that. A retirement age is usually just the point at which you can receive government assistance as part of a safety net. I assume if it's not pegged to life expectancy, the cost to the public grows.

Here in Australia, and I imagine elsewhere, there are strong systems (e.g., superannuation) to encourage personal savings towards retirement.

SoftTalker5• 1 year ago

It’s not as easy to save individually when you’re also taxed heavily.

newswangerd• 1 year ago

It feels like the problem is that we've drastically improved people's lifespans, but not their healthspans. Back when these systems started getting implemented, you could reasonably work up to the retirement age without too many issues. Nowadays, people may be living to 80 instead of 60, but our ability to work and willingness to hire people past 60 hasn't gone up with the increase in lifespan.

csomar5• 1 year ago

We did not improve people's lifespans. At least not that much. What happened is that young people die less due to less hazardous conditions which improved the average age. Also the average age is not the problem. The problem is that social security was setup as a ponzi scheme (younger pays for older) instead of a saving scheme (each one build a nest for himself). A ponzi scheme will eventually implode but if you manipulate the parameters you can make it go further.

deadbabe• 1 year ago

This is why it’s better to have a higher salary vs relying on government to provide a better standard of living at the trade off of a lower salary.

With the high salary, even if the cost of living around you is high, you can still make choices to save and invest money to eventually become financially independent and retire when you want, where as if you have a low salary, you don’t have that flexibility, you are at the mercy of the systems around you.

RestlessMind5• 1 year ago

"Investing money" is insufficient. You still need kids and the newer generations at the end of the day.

Think where you are going to invest and how that investment is going to provide returns. Stocks? Those companies actually need to produce and hence need workers. There also needs to be a broad consumer class to purchase those products. Without younger generations, you have no workers and no consumers which means your stocks have no value. Same with bonds. Same with real estate.

smeeger4• 1 year ago

consider what humans did before society. they followed herds of ruminant animals and hunted them. they were working 90% of their waking hours. their work was their lives. but at night they would spend a few hours looking at the stars. what we have now is pretty similar. except instead of stars we have screens. i would say life is ok if you can read something interesting every day and have a job that you enjoy. i would say you should prioritize having impact or having a job you love. everyone accumulates as much money as possible at the expense of everything else… there are people with millions saved up at the age of 60… who then die shortly after and did a bunch of work for nothing. keep enough saved to cover modest expenses for a year. beyond that, priotize other things

AngryData7• 1 year ago

I take issue with the idea that pre-modern humans were working 90% of the time. We know medieval peasants didn't, we know bronze age societies didn't, and we have no real evidence to support hunting based societies doing it either, especially when we consider the lower nutritional health of past humans that made physical labor far more difficult to maintain consistently without just dieing from pushing the body beyond its limits. It is far more TV trope than reality going by historical sources. Medieval peasants spent most winters doing mostly random home tasks and small crafts while they sat around a fire. And farming based societies generally put in the vast majority over their work in a two months in spring and in the fall. You don't plant fields in July, you just complain about the weather not being ideal for plant growth and did basic living chores that you always do like washing and mending your single pair of clothes or patching up your roof or milking your cow. But there is only so much mending and washing and milking to do.

Or look at ancient egyptions, they very clearly didn't need to work 90% of the time if they got time to build massive pyramids, and there is considerable evidence that pyramid workers were not forced to work, but simply offered extra booze and food for doing so. If you didn't work on those projects you weren't starved to death, you just didn't get to drink as much alcohol with your buddies or brag about how you helped build a wonder that will stand for hundreds or thousands of years.

jinjin2• 1 year ago

they were working 90% of their waking hours. their work was their lives.

This is not true at all. A quick google for “hunter gatherer work hours” would tell you that they worked far less than we do today. 2-5 hours of what we would define as work a day, with the rest being mainly leisure.

jodrellblank9• 1 year ago

"they followed herds of ruminant animals and hunted them. they were working 90% of their waking hours"

Idk if you've ever seen sheep in person, but "standing near some sheep while they eat grass" is not work in the sense of effort, concentration, labour. There's a reason the Boy Who Cried Wolf was bored out of his skull, and why shepherding was a task given to a boy while the village adults were doing other things.

jltsiren4• 1 year ago

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 countries that take the situation seriously have implemented several pension reforms since then.

You are not going to be as wealthy in retirement as you are now, at least not on the mandatory pension alone. Your health is probably not going to be as good. If you live in Sweden, you should have plenty of vacation. If you think you would enjoy travel, golf, or climbing a mountain, you should do it now. It will probably be easier and more affordable now than in retirement, which may never come.

interstice• 1 year ago

I guess this comes down to whether you view what you get back for devoting most of a life to work as a negotiated agreement with government or as a one way street.

timewizard5• 1 year ago

Mandatory pensions are not a vacation sponsored by the government but a way to provide for those who can't provide for themselves.

Then why is it based on earnings? And why can't I opt out of this death pledge?

Your health is probably not going to be as good

Ah, the old, "your life will suck anyways" play.

you should have known for most of your adult life

That you are a slave to the state, until you cannot work anymore, and then you will be discarded brutally.

Hard to figure out why the younger generation doesn't want to buy into this.

DanHulton• 1 year ago

Taxes pay these pensions. Taxes that citizens have paid for their whole working lives, with the understanding that they would benefit from that pension fund in their later years.

It's actually far closer to a "vacation", but not "sponsored by the government" -- closer to "that you've been saving for already for years."

mchanson2• 1 year ago

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.

wsatb2• 1 year ago

You said there’s nothing sad about it and then followed it up with some pretty sad realities. It’s incredibly sad. People should be working less as we advance as a society, not more.

monkeycantype• 1 year ago

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.

moktonar6• 1 year ago

If pensions where not mandatory you would be almost right. But pensions are mandatory, the state will invest the money upfront and earn from those investments. It's just a way of making you pay more, and then give you back less. Another hidden tax to pay whatever operation their incommensurate ego want to pursue.

js82• 1 year ago

"Mandatory pensions are not a vacation sponsored by the government"

Who are you talking for? I think plenty of people would prefer it to be that. We should respect our elderly, as a society.

zilian• 1 year ago

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 the past without a contribution from our current retirees' wealth. There is anyway no foreseeable future with work for everyone until 70 with our current technological progress unless you want to slave everyone in bullshit jobs. All of this is madness.

mcv9• 1 year ago

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.

lm28469• 1 year ago

pensions are not a vacation sponsored by the government but a way to provide for those who can't provide for themselves.

If you had the chance to find a nice job that paid well and played your cards right it definitely is, why do we need to pay high pensions to people who own multiple properties, have millions on the side and could EASILY thrive just from their passive income ?

hoppp2• 1 year ago

"which may never come"

But you pay for it all your life, so it's unfair.

It would be better to manage your own retirement funds, invest it and retire when you want, free from the government.

slyall2• 1 year ago

Well if you have enough money to do all that then you probably have enough to retire a little early. Why not stop working at 60 and fund the first few years of your retirement out of your savings?

ggregoire• 1 year ago

From what I understand if you retire early you must fund your retirement until the end. So you either work until the requested age and get something, or you don't and don't get anything. You can't just stop at 60, fund your retirement from 60 to 70, and then expect the gov to pay for your retirement from 70 to the end. Maybe I'm wrong tho.

KPGv25• 1 year ago

we used to have some 10 good years of doing whatever we wanted

Don't you get a whole month of vacation every year while you are in your working years?

throwaway20379• 1 year ago

Why do you think Sweden decided to raise the retirement age instead of raising taxes to keep the current retirement age?

Another idea: Allow people to retire early, but they receive lower monthly payments from national pension. Most national pensions have the reverse: You can retire later and receive higher monthly payments.

    > 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.

The problem is that huge number of people live way longer than 75, like to 85 or 95 and such, which imposes a huge financial burden on the state (pension and healthcare costs).

alexey-salmin12• 1 year ago

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 the plus side, if you did raise kids, you may negotiate your retirement with them even if the averaged government system stops working.

FranzFerdiNaN3• 1 year ago

Just let two immigrants in to replace me. Much cheaper and easier than raising kids.

arghwhat• 1 year ago

1. Denmark has a special retirement system for people who started work life earlier than normal, allowing them to indeed retire after some 45-48 years of work. All these rules are broken though.

2. These ages only affect a minimal government pension, and a massive tax saving on cashing out a specific, government approved retirement investment. If you wait to start receiving payments on that till retirement age, you avoid paying income tax of it. You can start earlier with worse taxation, or use regular investment types altogether. The overcomplicated tax system and its incentives are quite broken though.

3. Danish politicians still have a retirement age of 60 and a massive retirement package, so they can't deem retirement age and available funds to be that important...

mcv9• 1 year ago

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

jdkee2• 1 year ago

They have to pay for the immigrant who leaches off the system.

SarahC_3• 1 year ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20250525195310/https://www.teleg...

cgeier• 1 year ago

IMO retirement isn't a long holiday but it's for people who cannot contribute to society anymore.

That point might be reached earlier for some people, e.g. those who have a hard physical job, than others and a general retirement age is an approximation for when that point is reached for the general population.

xedrac• 1 year ago

Retirement doesn't mean I won't contribute to society anymore. It'll mean that I can contribute in ways that I am most interested in, without having to make money doing it.

formerly_proven2• 1 year ago

What's sad about it? Even with raising retirement age, the average duration people receive pensions has increased A LOT over the last few decades simply because life expectancies have increased so much. Someone who retired in the 1970s would receive a pension for less than 10 years on average - someone retiring now will receive a 20+ year pension.

joshstrange• 1 year ago

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.

nobodyandproud• 1 year ago

I’m so sorry to see this American mindset infect Europe.

As an American, I can’t realistically retire until 65.

65 is when Medicare is available.

I’d prefer Medicare started from 21 paying out-of-pocket as an option; then the payment starts slowly phasing out at 65. Not this abrupt, all-or-nothing.

LtWorf• 1 year ago

This presumes that people over 60 are effective at working. Which they are not. Mostly they waste everyone's time.

hoppp2• 1 year ago

I am in Denmark right now, I feel similar.

But my solution is to be an entrepreneur and also avoid working whenever possible.

So If I stay here and I need to work in my 70's, at least I will be happy I didn't work in my 30's like a slave.

moominpapa• 1 year ago

Yes,people were living longer, but let's see how that looks in 10 years time. Who wants to be working in their late 60s anyway? And by working I mean having to work. If you are not working to feed and house yourself and dependents then you are not working you are choosing to work which is not work as far as I am concerned.

kenver• 1 year ago

I think it’s important to remember that you don’t have to wait until you retire to live your life. Finding a balance between your work and personal life is the most important thing to get sorted as early as you can. This looks different for everyone.

Sure you can climb a mountain, or cram in life experiences at 60+ if you’re in good health, but I think it’s better to do it as you go and enjoy your entire life.

nubinetwork• 1 year ago

In Canada, the standard age for retirement is currently 65...

I've been paying into pension since I was 20, and I have health conditions where I might not even live to 50, let alone 60 or 65...

The arbitrary rules that prevent me from cashing in on the money I worked hard for is truly disgusting.

mensetmanusman• 1 year ago

Turns out not having kids has consequences.

crims0n2• 1 year ago

As someone who is having kids, I am both curious and anxious about the world they will become adults into. I am not sure if it will be a world of economic opportunities due to the inevitable labor shortage, or a world of suffering due to widespread economic collapse.

Kuraj• 1 year ago

What is the real point you're trying to make here?

TrackerFF• 1 year ago

I mean, makes sense? I live in Norway, so quite similar socioeconomics. People become older, so makes sense they have to work longer.

Imagine 50 years down the road, and the life expectancy is 90+ years. If people retired at age 65, that would mean you'd spend almost one third of your life as a retiree, living off a system which you paid into for 40-45 years.

But with that said, you can't expect a plumber, roofer, kindergarten teacher, etc. to work until they're 70. Your body will likely be shot years before that.

Chill office work, though? A senior colleague of mine just recently retired. He's 68, and wanted to work even longer - but had promised his wife that he'd retire for the past 5 years.

achempion• 1 year ago

What is the point of having so huge government investment fund if it can't subsidise the retirement age?

focusgroup0• 1 year ago

Do you want infinity biomass or a sovereign country?

seiferteric• 1 year ago

Do people save their own money in Europe for retirement or do most people expect to rely entirely on pension? I honestly don't know, just curious.

crims0n2• 1 year ago

Also curious… in the US I don’t know any working professionals in my generation (millennial) that are counting on social security as part of their retirement planning. If it’s there, great - but if it’s not, not going to let it keep me from clocking out at 65.

crvdgc• 1 year ago

In the UK, there is the basic state pension. The pension age depends on when you're born. For young people now, it's 68.

However, the state pension pay is so low that almost everyone gets a commercial pension. Usually, it's a salary deduction and employer match contribution scheme, so you can choose how much to save. At the moment, you can start drawing your commercial pension at age 57 (increased from 55).

See https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/increasing-normal...

simongray3• 1 year ago

It's different in every country. In Denmark it is a mix: everyone receives a state pension (the Nordic model of universal welfare), but almost everyone also has a private pension account that they out money into.

teleforce• 1 year ago

Fun facts in some parts of the world professors have flexible retirement age and they can work until they choose not too work anymore for examples in US and Canada.

Saul1998zx• 1 year ago

6451937099

hackernoops• 1 year ago

This is why it's important to contribute as little as possible to others, especially the state. They will gladly take everything from you and then tell you you should be happy about it.

cgio2• 1 year ago

On the one hand, we will all be replaced by AI, so jobs are lost. On the other hand, we have to work till we die or the system will crumble. Thus, the system will crumble, it’s just about who will end up with the hot potato.

bufferoverflow2• 1 year ago

If AI takes most jobs, the system won't crumble. If anything, the system will probably work much better.

It's the transition period that I am worried about, when large percentages of the population are jobless, but safety nets aren't yet in place.

cgio2• 1 year ago

So the system will not crumble after it crumbles in transition.

StillBored• 1 year ago

This is what happens when your population isn't mathematically educated enough to be able to figure out how to plan a defined benefit pension, and there are politicians who are actively trying to destroy a social safety net.

A bit of playing with chatgpt will dump the formulas required and even solve them for a given set of constraints. Basically one takes the average inflation adjusted of an investment vehicle, then solves for what percentage of income for a given timeframe, in order to return a portion of a persons income for another timeframe. Ex: given say the US stock market average return for the past 100 years, one wants to work for 30 years and retire for 30 years with a 70% of the final income, it works out to 8-9% of a persons income. Then shift the numbers to 40/20 years, cap the maximum payout at say the median income, and wow a pension system that grows faster than the rate of inflation, provides for a retirement age of ~60 and the percentage drops to ~5% or less.

People complaining about demographic trends are buying into the idea that the input dollars have to equal the output dollars, and its dumb, and isn't even the way the social security trust fund in the USA works. Which shows that its possible to ride out population bubbles, much less actually providing a long term savings vehicle that if it were run correctly would eventually be indefinitely solvent. But at least in the USA one party has consistently stood in the way for the past 40 years of solving some of these financial problems, and in fact seems to make them worse by flattening the progressive nature of the federal taxes through tax cuts which overwhelmingly target the groups most able to absorb higher tax rates. And the result are cases where single individuals single handily hold 2% of the wealth of their entire generation and the country looks like its falling apart and there is artificial scarcity everywhere.

PS: Now there are a number of ways this breaks, mostly around cases where inflation is eating up most of the compounding growth, but most sovereign governments are fully capable of solving these problems if they choose to.

insane_dreamer5• 1 year ago

Technology is supposed to have made us more productive than ever.

And yet, most people are having to work longer than ever. Why? Because all the productivity gains are being captured by the top ~10%.

And now we're continuing to pour billions into AI that is going to boost our productivity even more! Hurrah! Progress!!

Who do you think is going to capture those gains?

We can argues over some of the details, but there's no question that Piketty is being proven right.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Ce...

MaxPock2• 1 year ago

The solution is pretty simple for the society. Either have three kids or you work till you are 70.

burnt-resistor2• 1 year ago

The society first has to provide for its citizens instead of giving socialism to billionaires instead of a proper social safety net, or they won't want to or can't have kids.

missedthecue8• 1 year ago

Most people would say Denmark has a proper social safety net. People aren't having kids because they don't want kids. And no amount of parental leave or childcare subsidies flips the switch when flights to *popular tourist destination* are a couple hundred euro.

ryan936• 1 year ago

you are being disengenous. you know that nordic taxes are quite high.

discodonkey• 1 year ago

This is perfectly reasonable.

People are living and staying healthy for longer than they used to, while the overall population is aging disproportionally due to low birth rates. If they hadn't raised the retirement age, they would have to raise taxes very significantly.

People should remember that retirement is about making sure the people who are too old to work can still live respectably. It's not an end-of-life vacation.

Of course, it's still going to be massively unpopular. But the alternative is fiscal armageddon.

lovich2• 1 year ago

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

karmakurtisaani2• 1 year ago

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.

ygouzerh• 1 year ago

Peope are living and staying healthy for longer than they used to --> mostly impactful for middle/upper class and above. There is a correlation between life expectancy and job level/wealth: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7792745/ .

With retirement at 70, manual labours can already stop dreaming of taking a rest before dying.

the_black_hand2• 1 year ago

I'm going to get downvoted for this, but it makes sense. People live much longer than in the past. Advancements in fitness and the decline in birthrates only make it fair for us to work a little longer. Ultimately, what I hope for is AI to take care of most of the heavy work and allow us more leasiurely time, but we are still decades away from getting their.

PeterStuer• 1 year ago

The idea since the early 80's was to prepare for the big boomer retirement wave by saving up in special retirement funds, aa demographic prohections were clear. In Belgium e.g. this was called the 'Zilverfonds'.

But no politician throughout the decades could keep their hands out of the coockie jar, so now al those accounts are empty.

Funny how when 'defence' creates fake emergencies there is no limit to how money can be found. But money for retirement? Oh no, we can't have that!

Night_Thastus3• 1 year ago

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 infrastructure and healthcare? Lessen child labor laws? There's no a lot of winning answers here.

And overall, the problem is just going to get worse in every country for the forseeable future. Expect to see more of this as time goes on. It's a bandaid solution though.

close042• 1 year ago

Realistically productivity increased by leaps and bounds over the past few decades. If leaders can’t figure out how to take advantage of that instead of taking advantage of the people then they have no business leading a country.

The solution they are applying now is a dead end, literally. It doesn’t scale, the only place it leads to is people guaranteed to die “at work”.

And elephant in the room, people in their late 60s aren’t even close to productive compared to the younger employees and if you lose your job in your 50s or early 60s you’re condemned to a decade or 2 of being supported by the family if you’re lucky.

So a person in this position is a hidden “tax” on the tax payers in the family, or on the companies who still employ them, if any still have them at that age. Countries are better off just directly taxing the companies regardless of whether they hire 70 year olds. But that won’t happen.

alexey-salmin12• 1 year ago

1) Work less hours

2) Consume more

3) Have less kids

4) Live longer after the retirement age

Productivity increased a lot but expecting it cover all four is way too optimistic.

bronkic• 1 year ago

Would you prefer taxes go up instead

Yes.

ZeroTalent3• 1 year ago

100% yes. My father is 67, and to be honest, he really shouldn't be working anymore. Both physically and mentally. And he is not very sick or disabled in any way. He just doesn't have the same capacity as he had in his 50s so after a 9-5 he was just recovering and going to sleep for the last few years. Terrible.

He retired last year. He didn't have an easy life. Very few jobs would benefit from his work and continuing working would have a great toll on him.

TFYS4• 1 year ago

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.

formerly_proven2• 1 year ago

The way this tends to turn out is that the type of assets accessible to younger/working people is taxed and the type of assets held by older/non-working people is not.

E.g. look at Ireland. Ireland has a de-facto wealth tax ("deemed disposal" - taxing the unrealized gains) on ETFs starting at the first euro, which makes investing basically pointless. Meanwhile it also has one of the lower tax levels on property in the EU.

Night_Thastus3• 1 year ago

Wealth = power

With power, comes the ability to change systems so those with wealth/power do not lose it.

There are exceptions, but that is the rule.

ryzvonusef• 1 year ago

    > Tax wealth

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

anonporridge5• 1 year ago

Taxing 100% of the wealth of all the billionaires in the US would fund federal spend for about 8 months.

And you only get to do that once.

majani• 1 year ago

Any solution that starts with "if we can all..." is no solution at all

ValentinPearce• 1 year ago

Would you prefer taxes go up instead?

Yes. Looking at my country, we've applied economic liberalism without any positive results at scale. I would prefer we go back to taxing companies more, go back to taxing the rich on their assets and crack down on fiscal fraud (20B€ estimate, about 6% of the national retirement cost).

Instead the government privatizes services that used to bring a steady income and defunds hospitals, education and public research.

zurfer• 1 year ago

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?

munksbeer• 1 year ago

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.

tsoukase• 1 year ago

Hopeless measures. Nothing can persuade a couple to f... for kids, except if you force a medieval-like state based on religion and women oppression. Only such states historically guarantee >2 kids per couple, unfortunately.

moktonar6• 1 year ago

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, only those who can reduce their population size can survive, otherwise we would reproduce by binary fission.

Night_Thastus3• 1 year ago

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 skirted past this problem due to immigration. Others like Japan have not have much immigration and are beginning to suffer the effects.

But every country will face it in the long run.

The cold hard fact is that when people are educated and have access to healthcare, they simply stop having enough kids to meet replacement rate - even when wealthy and when having great support systems.

Humans do not act like most species. We do not form neat equilibrium with our environment based on available resources. That kind of logic didn't apply the moment agriculture was developed.

thordenmark• 1 year ago

This is the problem with retirement systems built on Ponzi schemes. The low birth rate has accelerated the inevitable crash.

If my understanding is correct, Norway has a system based on investment in the country's economy, in particular oil production in the North Sea. And they are not needing the same austerity measures to retirement benefits.

hijodelsol• 1 year ago

I assume you are unfamiliar with how pensions in Denmark work. While there is an unfunded social security part that is paid for through taxes, >90% of Danish workers have "occupational pension plans" that they contribute about 15% of their salary to. By the time they retire, they have saved on average 2 million DKK [https://www.dst.dk/en/Statistik/emner/arbejde-og-indkomst/fo...], so about 300,000 USD. At that time, life expectancy is about 20 years, so that is about 15,000 USD per year from individual capital-backed schemes alone. For the 60% of Danes that are home owners, this alone could probably cover all basic living expenses outside of very HCOL areas. In that way, Denmark already strikes a good balance between purely tax-based schemes (that you are probably referring to as "Ponzi") and socially detrimental schemes like a pure Austrian backpack approach (which would leave people that cannot work in deep poverty).

pjmlp• 1 year ago

All this kind of decisions never come up with the answers on how to get a job, when everything is getting replaced by robots (see supermarkerts and gas stations for example for decreasing low wage jobs), and the health issues related to old age.

Thus one is not able to collect retirement, because they are "young", while they keep trying to find a job, because "they are too old".

Meanwhile the politicians that decide these laws are enjoying their comfy life.

ph1lw• 1 year ago

I'm 29 and honestly skeptical that life expectancy will keep on rising as it's assumed. With all the toxins, stress, rising heat deaths and crap in our environment, will most of us even be healthy enough to work till 70? Could it be 75 when I approach retirement? I think it's important to keep up some positive prospects for our generation - otherwise I can think e.g. of a higher suicide rate which then also shrinks the workforce

metaPushkin• 1 year ago

The real truth is that politicians promised that refugees would help fill jobs. Raising the retirement age makes no sense if that was really the goal. Now their lies are obvious.

guywithahat2• 1 year ago

It's worse than that; most middle eastern immigrants qualify for early retirement. Not only do they not contribute as much in taxes, but they then access retirement funds earlier than everyone else.

Jean-Papoulos• 1 year ago

The only real solution to this is world-wide wealth taxing. We have enough productivity to support old age, even as said old age cohorts grow ever larger.

MagicMoonlight• 1 year ago

The majority of retirees I know, retired around 50. They’ve been retired longer than they ever worked, on pensions which are similar to their original wages.

It’s hard not to feel like we’re all being shafted in comparison.

thefringthing• 1 year ago

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.

jeanlucas• 1 year ago

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"?

account429• 1 year ago

Absolute shameful to see western societies regress like this.

hoseja2• 1 year ago

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.

stackedinserter3• 1 year ago

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.

gilbetron• 1 year ago

AI & robotics is a primary hope here, honestly, but it will be a bumpy road.

rrgok• 1 year ago

What if we changed how retirement works with just two clear options:

Option A: Take your well-earned pension and enjoy traditional retirement.

Option B: Choose a dignified exit when life no longer feels fulfilling.

I've been thinking about this because retirement scares me. What's the point of reaching old age if your body and mind won't let you enjoy the freedom you've worked decades for? Between health problems, limited mobility, and sometimes poverty, many seniors seem to just... exist.

Not saying everyone feels this way! Plenty of people have amazing retirements. But shouldn't we have more control over our final chapter? Other countries already have compassionate end-of-life options.

What do you all think? Is having this choice reasonable, or am I missing something important about the value of those later years?

guywithahat2• 1 year ago

I'm not entirely opposed to raising the retirement age, however what's unfortunate here is the money is needed primarily to cover for spending on immigration. 2/3rd of muslim immigrants have qualified for early immigration (starting at 50), and this has put strain on the system, forcing the retirement age up. There are problems in Denmark but the retirement age isn't the issue in this case

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK2• 1 year ago

Don't worry, the concept of people working is slipping into oblivion. Retirement age will be 18 for everyone.

hcfman• 1 year ago

Someone’s got to pay for the billionaires.

Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

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