Denmark to raise retirement age to highest in Europe
Denmark to raise retirement age to highest in Europe
Denmark is set to have the highest retirement age in Europe after its parliament adopted a law raising it to 70 by 2040.
The retirement age at 70 will apply to all people born after 31 December 1970.
Since 2006, Denmark has tied the official retirement age to life expectancy and has revised it every five years.
What a depressing law. Progress should mean less mandatory work, not more.
It is also stupid because life expectancy is not equivalent to life quality.
Just because people live to 90 now instead of 80 doesn't mean they can actually do anything significant for those 10 years, they could be bed ridden or house bound and kept alive only because they are taking 30 pills a day. It isn't living, it's staying alive. Retirement shouldn't be tied to that.
Even if they want to die they're not allowed, like at 85 their tired of shittinf on their diaper 4 times a day and they say imw tired of this shit and want out amd they're not allowed.
What's your name, Keynes ?
https://truthout.org/articles/what-happened-to-the-keynesian-dream-of-a-15-hour-work-week/
Economist John Maynard Keynes in 1930 predicted that the workweek would be reduced to 15 hours within a couple of generations due to advancements in technology.
At the moment progress is desperately trying to keep up with rapidly increasing life expectancy among the world's poorest, that's not a bad thing but that's also why we're seeing so much progress but we're not seeing the benefits much, in the developed world our life expectancy increased long ago and the result of all that progress has mostly normalized in our society and expectations, but we make up a very small percentage of the world's actual population. Now that it's their turn, there's a lot of people who aren't dying like they used to and as a result they don't just want food, they want lights and electricity and running water and roads and cars and phones and houses and opportunities, and on the whole we want to give them access to those things and bring them out of poverty but it's just a lot to do in only a few generations. Demographics get really wild when you start to understand their relationships to larger scale things like economics and world population, and these kind of demographic changes have serious consequences when applied across literally billions of people. It gets less depressing if you make a point of appreciating the very real progress that has been made to billions of peoples lives around the world. Yeah there's a lot of bad stuff going on, but we seem to prefer to talk about that and the actual, measurable good stuff doesn't get much acknowledgement.
Based on projections from demographics, most of the countries in the world should be in really good shape in about 50 years, population growth should level off, and we should be able to share the benefits of progress worldwide. At least if civilization hasn't collapsed into a new dark age, and we haven't turned the planet into an oven, nuked each other out of existence, written the Earth off and fucked off to Mars, or found some other creative way to destroy ourselves by then. So at least there's like a 0.1% things will work out alright.
Agreed. Also wondering what companies are employing people that long? In other European countries, companies wont hire people 50+ cause they are deemed too old, inflexible and expensive. I really wonder, if companies in Denmark are different in that regard.
Having relatives that died when they were 70 and seeing stuff like this is quite depressing.
My ex's grandma slept 5 hours a night, worked a full time seamstress job and cooked and cleaned and raised her kids and grandkids. She enjoyed just 1 year of retirement before Covid hit.
Yeah, we need to make sure to live our life now and do what we want. Work less, live below our means to save up, take a chance and travel or whatever it is one wants to do, if we are able to. Don't postpone it. I'll live my life as if I won't get a retirement at all.
Thatās sort of the goal of retirement, you arenāt supposed to live that long afterwards
Itās not a vacation, itās a āwe will take care of you once you can no longer put money into the machine as long as you spent your life taking care of other people who could no longer put money into the machineā
Right bcz 70 year olds are known for being spry young chickens in great physical health.
At the same time, politicians here in Denmark can retire at 60! Those fuckers get free housing, free transport, free food, AND after-pay. "Rules for thee, not for me!"
If only they'd also be forced to retire at 60. Instead they stay in politics and continue to make decisions based on outdated knowledge and ideals.
Yes, they're going to die sooner anyway. Forced retirement at 60 for politicians would be perfect.
If they didnāt get all those benefits everyone might be able to retire earlier.
They should be bound by the same rules as the rest of us.
Let's see them force a bunch of 69 year olds to work cause I know I would just fart in their direction if they tried.
This is what the anti-immigration right wanrs to do to you, folks!
The bigger problem here is that people above 50 are having very low, nearly impossible chances of finding a job if they lose one, especially with rise of AI. These people can't have a job, and now can't have a pension.
Well done, governments around the world.
EDIT: If I'm getting this right, people of Denmark can start taking out pension prior to retirement, so might not be too catastrophical.
"I've paid my taxes all my life. There should also be time to be with children and grandchildren," Mr Jensen told outlet DK.
I can't speak to the history of government supplied pension in the EU, but in the USA, our version (Social Security) was never meant to provide "a time to be with children and grandchildren". The expectation was that most people would die before being unable to work, and Social Security provided a means for the elderly that lived to be housed and fed until they died. Social Security was designed to prevent living elderly from being in absolute poverty never to provide a time of respite before eventually dying.
The quote says it should, not this was meant to
There absolutely can be with savings outside of government pension to make that "the children/grandchildren" time, but current government based systems aren't generally designed and built for that today.
If he, and the rest of that society want that, it will likely mean substantial tax increases. If that populous is fine with that, then it should be pretty simple for lawmakers to make those changes into law. Given that "the children/grandchildren" time not only isn't in law currently, and that lawmakers are increasing the retirement age to 70, it doesn't sound like there is support from the voters for that change.
And then they have the audacity to ask, āWhy is no one having kids?ā - This is why!! Why would we ever bring a child into this world to work from 21-70 years old!?(I know that some start working at a younger age.) Thatās human slavery! And donāt get me started with the slave wage pay. This is absolutely appalling and euthanasia is gonna be a hit. People will off themselves or have someone end their lives and it wouldnāt surprise me a bit.
The main economically meaningful aspects of "retirement age" in Denmark AFAIK is that:
By far the most relevant of the two is the latter, as practically everyone is covered by pension schemes included in employment contracts.
As such you can still retire any time you want, but it will be more burdensome for you to it earlier than at the age sanctioned by law.
No, it means only people with good pensions can retire early. Incidentally, this is by design those with high wages since these are the basis of earning pension. However, the ones that may actually need to retire early due to the stress of hard menial labor are not in this group of high earners.
In effect we will see people at offices doing easy work close their pcs and have an office retirement party at an age of 65 that poor Olga of 70 years (or more) will have to clean up.
In the US medicaid starts at 65, but you can get lucky and have workplace pension that start early. You only get "full retirement" with Social Security/state pension if you wait until 67 and many wait until then. Which seems similar to Denmark.
we need more robots!!!
For Greenland too?
The essential problem is that the people working now are paying for the people that are retired. It would make more sense for the gov't to have taxed the people prior to their retirement, and have invested those taxes, so that in their retirement they would be getting out what they had previously paid in. And switching over to a system like that would require double taxation on the population now, which will make such a proposal very unopopular.
But if your retired population is growing, and you have fewer people working, then you either need to increase the retirement age--so that more people are paying into the system--or increase the taxation overall. If I recall correctly, Denmark has been seeing a negative population growth; that's a real problem for retirement schemes that rely on current taxes paying for retirees.
Is this fair to people that have been working in trades and have beaten up their body for 40 years? No. Likewise, it's not really fair to people that have working in white-collar jobs that may still be more than capable of excelling at their job, and still want to work. (My dad had mandatory retirement at 72 due to company policy; he immediately got re-hired as an on-site consultant, and has been doing that for over a decade.)
EDIT - this is a huge problem in the US. The social security taxes now on working people are immediately paid out to retirees. SS benefits go up to account for inflation, but the amount coming in is decreasing because population growth has slowed. Without major reforms, social security in the US won't be solvent by the time I retire, IF I ever retire.
The government should have been taxing the Corporations that made enormous profits from the surplus value their employees generate and then requiring said Corporations to invest annually in pensions matched to Cost-of-Living indexes.
In the US, instead we got 401ks so the poors are required to cheer the stock market and pretend they're temporarily embarrassed Capitalists, rather than the scornful reality of being wage-slaves.