[HN Gopher] Denmark to raise retirement age to 70
___________________________________________________________________
Denmark to raise retirement age to 70
Author : wslh
Score : 234 points
Date : 2025-05-25 16:34 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.telegraph.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.telegraph.co.uk)
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| *) 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 wrote:
| 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
| tossandthrow wrote:
| 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.
| polipus wrote:
| Living in Copenhagen for the last 7 years.
|
| - housing for 80k USD is 525k DKK: no way you can find
| anything at that price anywhere close to cph. Not sure for
| other "major" cities, but in cph you can expect to pay 4mil
| DKK (600K USD) for a ~60 sqmt apartment, prices will fall
| outside the cities, but nowhere close to 80k USD. Where did
| you get that number?
|
| - you pay for your unemployment benefit, thought an
| a-kasse. Its not forever and it might barely cover your
| bills depending on where you live/your mortgage. If you
| have family its probably not enough and you need to add an
| insurance on your salary on top of that.
|
| Just wanted to give my 2 cents.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| That is why I explicitly said major cities and not
| Copenhagen.
|
| Look 20 minutes out of Odense, Aalborg, Randers, etc.
|
| Don't let yourself believe that a country is nothing but
| its capital - it is correct, that if you _decide_ to live
| in a 4mil DKK apartment in the Copenhagen area, then you
| have also opted out of public help, and you are on your
| own.
| sib wrote:
| I think it's worth remembering that Hacker News is a
| global platform and if someone refers to "major cities"
| in Denmark, for many (most?) readers, the only name that
| would come to mind is Copenhagen.
|
| Copenhagen: ~1.4M people
|
| Odense: ~190K people
|
| Aalborg: ~120K people
|
| Randers: ~64K people
| ghaff wrote:
| I've actually spent a week in Copenhagen relatively
| recently and I literally couldn't have named another city
| in the country. My bad, I know, but I'm pretty well-
| traveled and that's the truth.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| Again: That is why I wrote major cities - I wouldn't
| expect anybody to know.
|
| Again - why this extreme focus on the specifics? I merely
| argued that the housing market in the broader Denmark is
| reasonable, and you can usually easily commute to jobs in
| a city while living cheaply - something that is strictly
| more difficult in the US.
| polipus wrote:
| Cph is one of the major cities, and the biggest one. It's
| also the area with most population density and
| opportunities. I won't say that you are wrong because I'm
| not familiar with what you can find 20 min of Aalborg,
| etc, but I find disingeneus portraing a picture where in
| dk you can buy a house for 80k USD and leaving out the
| information that you are probably in the middle of
| nowhere - no jobs, no public transport, no services. It's
| not that people "decide" to live in cph or in a major
| city, they are basically forced to if they need to have a
| job and do stuff. Sure, if you work remote and like being
| in the countryside alone you have a lot of options, most
| people don't have that luxury.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| If I say that you can get a house for 80K in the US, do
| you then automatically assume I mean San Fransisco or New
| York?
|
| > but I find disingeneus portraing a picture where in dk
| you can buy a house for 80k USD and leaving out the
| information that you are probably in the middle of
| nowhere - no jobs, no public transport, no services
|
| The point is _exactly_ the opposite. You can get a house
| at a reasonable cost, 20 minutes away from a city you can
| likely get a job in - Even well paid tech jobs (They
| exists in both Odense and Aalborg).
|
| I fint it disingenuous to pick pick out a very specific
| situation like this instead of looking at the broader
| argument.
| holsta wrote:
| > you can get houses near major cities for usd 80k.
|
| There are 53706 homes for sale today. 2784 of those are
| actual homes, not empty lots, costing less than 600K DKK.
|
| I would not expect to live a healthy, comfortable life in
| most homes at that price range. Draft, mold, poor
| insulation and high energy bills.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| I don't hope I expressed that you can check in on 6 stars
| with a concierge for 80k?
| Supermancho wrote:
| Won't be a long wait till it gets raised to 80. The
| demographics of many nations are pretty grim.
| pipo234 wrote:
| For most of history, care for the elders was a family
| responsibility first and a local community one second.
|
| Only for a short period were western population growing so
| fast relative to small number of retirees that transferring
| that responsibility to government was a no brainer.
|
| With diminishing demographics anywhere except maybe Africa,
| we'll need to be more creative once again. Raising
| retirement age is just one of many hard but inevitable
| policies.
| _elf wrote:
| People will work until they're 80 rather than liberalize
| immigration.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Countries with "liberalized immigration" like Germany
| still have this problem, and then have other societal
| problems on top caused by the liberalized immigration.
| Have you noticed how despite having open borders since
| 2015, German companies still complain of labor shortage?
| And their economy hasn't grown much either.
|
| Because, contrary to the leftwing liberal propaganda,
| people aren't interchangeable cogs of equal value, where
| one 20 year old German or Dane equals one 20 year old
| from Somalia or Eritrea, but culture, IQ, upbringing and
| education make a huge difference, especially in developed
| knowledge based economies where labor is highly
| specialized. The infinite uncontrolled immigration only
| benefits landlords and corporations, while outsourcing
| the negative second order effects to the welfare state
| and local citizens. Basically it's another form of
| privatizing the profits and socializing the losses.
|
| So you need high value immigration, not liberal
| immigration. Some people are intelligent, honest,
| educated and hard working and will contribute a lot to
| the system, some are not and will be a net drain on your
| system, so you need to screen them to make sure you're
| only importing the high value ones if you want to improve
| your welfare system.
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| > 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.
| deanc wrote:
| 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.
| ryan93 wrote:
| Are you really claiming there is some big health issue in the
| nordic countries suppressing life span?
| deanc wrote:
| 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.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| deanc wrote:
| 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.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| I would love to see a model That supports this.
|
| I think it is possible, but we need to raise (corporate)
| taxes a lot, and this needs to happen globally, as
| companies move.
|
| As a star I would love to see global minimum corporate
| taxes, and then take it from there.
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| No one is preventing you from saving more now and retiring
| earlier. Why must it be the government's job?
| layer8 wrote:
| Most people prefer it to be the government's job, and
| that's how they vote.
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| > Do we not have ambitions to have people work less, enjoy
| what little life they have more
|
| Spend less, save more. Vote for governments that do
| likewise.
| markvdb wrote:
| > Do we not have ambitions to have people work less, enjoy
| what little life they have more?
|
| Isn't that something for the individual to decide, not the
| collective? Many derive from work a lot of meaning in life.
| If working is what makes some people happy, it would be
| nice to not punish people for working until they die.
|
| > 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.
|
| Absolutely!
| seydor wrote:
| Drugs make people happy. It's not the state's job to define
| happiness for its people, it s there to manage the economy
| so they can find the happiness they like.
| IshKebab wrote:
| 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-...
| eloisant wrote:
| People live longer but not necessarily healthier.
|
| They'll go directly from factory line to care home.
| zeroCalories wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| zeroCalories wrote:
| A rich person doing nothing is not productive. They produce
| by giving their money to someone that is productive and
| getting rent on it. If billionaires and aristocrats were
| actually a sizable amount of a country's wealth it might
| make sense to redistribute their wealth to the actually
| productive people. But they're not.
| foobazgt wrote:
| 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.
| triceratops wrote:
| > 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.
| mrcwinn wrote:
| 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?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| 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.
| deanc wrote:
| 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.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| Self paid?
| deanc wrote:
| No, the taxes we pay are going to private institutions
| driven by profit instead of into funding public
| institutions that don't have this self-interest. This is
| not a model I support.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| I see.
|
| I think it is a balance.
|
| Auctioning this work to private companies should
| theoretically make it more cost efficient - and I think
| it is.
|
| At least I hear that workers a much more stressed than
| they were historically, so I don't hope this comes with
| no benefit...
| deanc wrote:
| I can only speak for the two countries I've lived in
| (Finland & UK) and society is not amenable to
| privatisation in either. In the UK pretty much everything
| that has been privatised has been ruined (water, energy,
| transport) with high prices and poor service.
| seafoam wrote:
| Whereas in the US, where I live, everything that has been
| mostly socialized (housing, health & education) has
| become wildly unaffordable.
| hiq wrote:
| I honestly didn't think anyone in the US considered
| healthcare socialized (same for housing and a big chunk
| of university-level education), so I've learned something
| today.
|
| I personally find it hard to reconcile the concept of
| socialized healthcare with UnitedHealth Group being
| apparently the 7th company by revenue in the world, at
| least I don't think that's what Europeans would mean by
| "socialized".
| ModernMech wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| kryptoncalm wrote:
| 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.
| wyager wrote:
| > 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.
| dtgm92 wrote:
| 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.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| 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
| namdnay wrote:
| The trap is the worse the imbalance gets, the harder (1) gets
| electorally
| tossandthrow wrote:
| Number 1 is likely the outcome of passivity - inflation
| will eat away the value of the pension.
| namdnay wrote:
| In many countries pensions are indexed on inflation... so
| there is no natural erosion unfortunately
| CubsFan1060 wrote:
| Wouldn't the fourth way be via increasing either birth rate
| or immigration?
| lostlogin wrote:
| That's collecting more taxes, 2, isn't it?
| JackYoustra wrote:
| technically true but people usually associate that with
| rate increases
| lostlogin wrote:
| I'm not sure that's always true.
|
| The centre right often argue for less taxation 'to grow
| businesses'. The argument being that the economy grows
| and that's how the money is recouped. At least that's
| what's happened here in New Zealand.
|
| Looking past ones next pay day does seem universally
| difficult.
| mr_toad wrote:
| The people who would actually benefit from that the most
| are the people who are too old to have children and are
| strongly opposed to immigration.
| constantcrying wrote:
| You have to grow your economy at a rate that allows you to
| pay for the additional pensioners.
|
| Birthrates seem very hard to change and even if change
| would happen it is much too slow.
|
| Germany did the experiment on immigration and has not seen
| GDP growth for half a decade. There the system is failing
| far worse in some ways, but in Germany employees are paying
| directly for the pension plans, so the state just raises
| the employee contributions.
| trueismywork wrote:
| Because Germany does nothing to attract and keep
| employable immigrants. They only want to keep immigrants
| which completely tow the line of only speaking German,
| which inevitably attracts mostly bottom of the barrel.
| Significant portion of highly qualified workforce in
| Germany is umemployable because of refusal to conduct
| business in anything other than German.
|
| Also, the beaurcracy is the real culprit for growth.
| cbeach wrote:
| Raising immigration rates to solve an aging population is a
| Ponzi solution.
| jaoane wrote:
| The pension system has always been a ponzi. Only now we
| are faced to realise it because the pyramid was flipped
| violently.
| risyachka wrote:
| In the modern economy system there is no way around it.
|
| The more old people there is the more taxes you need.
|
| More taxes - economy must grow. And it can't grow if
| working population is shrinking
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Immigration only works if the immigrants adopt and support
| the social norms and outcomes that you desire. If the
| immigrants have no desire to work, pay taxes, and support
| the elderly then you won't want them.
| grunder_advice wrote:
| Getting immigrants who work is a non-issue. I never heard
| of immigrants from India, China, Africa or Latin America
| who don't work so long as they entered the country
| legally. The issue you are alluding to has to do with
| genuine refugees and illegal economic migrants, who are
| not filtered at the border depending on their
| employability within the local market. But the cultural
| shift is still inevitable. A foreigner is not a local,
| and it is neither fair nor ethical to expect a foreigner
| to transform themselves into a local.
|
| I think, if you are concerned with the cultural shift,
| you can give immigrants temporary term VISAs and make it
| clear their stay is going to be strictly temporary. That
| was supposed to be how the Gastarbeiter system works.
| Thing is, when you have already on boarded a foreign
| worker and have had them working for you for 2 years
| already, you don't want to let them go and replace them
| with a fresh foreign worker who you have to retrain.
| bananalychee wrote:
| Assimilation as most people understand it does not
| necessitate an immigrant become completely
| indistinguishable from a native citizen. There are some
| baseline expectations that are not always met right now,
| such as learning the official language of one's host
| country, and sometimes its social standards. Most
| countries simply lack the necessary coercive incentives
| to make that happen systematically. I would argue that
| most Western cultures have become too individualistic at
| the expense of societal health, fueling the notion that
| assimilation is inherently unethical.
| yborg wrote:
| Without establishing a hermetic environment a la the
| Amish, assimilation happens automatically in the next
| generation if a nation has basic structures in place like
| public education to some minimum standard and basic anti-
| discrimination laws to allow economic advancement.
| Children absorb the culture that surrounds them, often to
| their parents' dismay.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Mhm, the current generation of kids of Turkish immigrants
| in Germany all seem to believe they are actually
| displaced Turks. I suppose thats what you encourage with
| double passport and voting for authoritarians at "home".
| (of course they are totally out of place in Turkey, that
| part of assimilation is unavoidable)
| GLdRH wrote:
| If only that were true.
|
| You can look at any country in western europe to see how
| it's not.
| theodric wrote:
| This is not borne out by the anecdata I have collected
| over the last 22 years as a foreign invader living in and
| observing Europe. Moroccans in the Netherlands, Albanians
| in Switzerland, even Irish Travellers in Ireland--
| despite being integrated from primary school onward, all
| seem to be somewhat apart from the host culture even
| after several generations.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Travellers aren't foreign.
| mmooss wrote:
| The data I saw is that by the third generation, only a
| few percent speak the language of their grandparents'
| country, and most marry outside their nationality.
|
| In the US, Italians, Irish, and Germans, as just a few
| examples, all were treated as unassmilated aliens. People
| say the same things, generation after generation about
| newcomers. If you moved to a country with a different
| language and culture, you might make an effort to learn
| the language but you would still think, read, etc. in
| your native language. Your kids would know both
| languages; their kids would of course speak the language
| of their surroundings.
|
| What solves these problems is a fundamental belief in
| freedom for all. People don't need to speak your language
| to be your equal and be just as human, with the same
| rights as you.
| brewdad wrote:
| This was certainly true of my Polish ancestors. My great
| grandfather arrived at age 19. He never really became
| fluent in English but could get by when he needed to. My
| grandfather spoke both Polish and English but only spoke
| English at home once he had school aged children. My
| father really only knew the Polish swear words and I know
| a handful of Polish phrases that only get used amongst
| family at Thanksgiving or Christmas. Don't ask me to
| write them down. I've only ever heard them verbally.
| Detrytus wrote:
| Italians, Irish, Germans in US are bad examples, because
| Americans and Western Europeans are basically one and the
| same culture, the only significant difference being the
| language spoken. I suppose integrating Chinese or Indian
| people might take much longer.
| decimalenough wrote:
| It often takes three generations. The first generation
| came willingly and thus have an incentive to put up with
| shit; the second generation did not, find people hating
| on them anyway, and understandably react by pulling back
| and doubling down on their heritage.
| Loic wrote:
| I fundamentally agree with your comment. But for Denmark,
| it is very difficult to learn Danish. I lived there 3
| years, took courses and was at end able to do my daily
| stuff in English, but a part of the society simply does
| not want a foreigner to speak Danish. You are forced to
| use English.
|
| My girlfriend asked me once in a Restaurant (Cafe Norden
| in Kopenhagen) why I was ordering in English. Then, I
| spent the complete evening ordering everything in Danish,
| to always receive answers in English. And this nearly
| everywhere (not my bakery, the girls there could not
| speak a word of English, this was an exception). This was
| in the early 2000's. This never happened to me in all the
| other countries I have been living in. A Danish colleague
| simply told me that he does not like to listen to broken
| Danish, better switch to English.
|
| Still have a lot of friends in Denmark, integration there
| is not easy, even for highly qualified people from the
| EU.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Danes are by and large all English speakers, probably the
| last generation who would have much difficulty with
| conversational English are all 70+ years old now. And
| while Danes are generally very polite and friendly with
| foreigners, there is a level of personal closeness (part
| of the "hygge" concept) that you will rarely penetrate if
| you are not a lifelong close friend or family member.
| This is another part of why real integration into Danish
| culture is nearly impossible for a foreigner.
| theodric wrote:
| I observed over my 11 years in the Netherlands that the
| friendliness and quality of service I received was
| greater when I spoke English and much diminished when I
| spoke Dutch. The Netherlands is, similar to Denmark, a
| place where people would seemingly prefer to speak
| English than listen to an accent on their native
| language.
| Lyngbakr wrote:
| I had a similar experience in the Netherlands. We could
| have a 30 second exchange in their perfect English or a
| laboured 2 minute conversation in my abysmal Dutch. I
| struggled to improve because everyone would immediately
| switch to English.
| soerxpso wrote:
| > you can give immigrants temporary term VISAs and make
| it clear their stay is going to be strictly temporary
|
| In practice that rarely goes as intended. The first
| political party to say, "We changed our minds, you can
| all have citizenship," gets to secure power with an
| influx of loyal voters.
| Pamar wrote:
| Maybe I misunderstand your point but... if these people
| are not citizens (i.e. they need a VISA) how could they
| actually _vote_ for whatever party proposing this?
| tristramb wrote:
| Have you any figures that indicate that is an issue?
| mmooss wrote:
| Immigration works and has worked for generations, and for
| generations people have slandered immigrants. Let's try
| to be more intelligent that broad stereotypes.
|
| > If the immigrants have no desire to work, pay taxes,
| and support the elderly then you won't want them.
|
| What does it have to do with immigration? You could say
| the same about anyone, regardless of where they are born.
|
| One thing you can say about immigrants, especially
| undocumented ones, is that they have the drive to drop
| everything in their old lives, go a long way to a strange
| place - where people often express hate and abuse - where
| the language is different, the culture confusing, and the
| future uncertain.
|
| Those people have more drive than the great majority of
| the people born in the country, many of whom can't get
| off their sofas or away from their computers.
| arandomusername wrote:
| Immigration only works if the cultures are very similar
| so that they can assimilate, or the immigration levels
| are very low.
|
| In Denmark, immigration from culturally similar countries
| are usually net-positive, while others are net negative
| (financially).
|
| There's a reason people are choosing to vote for parties
| that are (publicly) anti-immigration
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Improve the birth rate, yes, but you probably can't do that
| unless you deal with the resource situation as well.
|
| So you can reduce pensions, improve the situation for the
| youth, take efforts to get an improved birth rate, making
| use of the resources lost to pensioners, and then maybe you
| can raise the pension later on once you realize things are
| stable.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The total fertility rate (number of children per woman)
| seems stubborn against attempts to raise it.
|
| I suggest instead altering the male/female ratio, so a
| stable or growing population can be maintained at lower
| TFR. Technically, filter sperm to remove those with Y
| chromosomes before artificial insemination.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| As Jan and Dean put it in Surf City: "two girls for every
| boy".
| pfdietz wrote:
| Or more. The prevalence of males seems to be an
| unfortunate consequence of evolution. There's an
| evolutionary equilibrium of nearly an equal chance of a
| male or female offspring, even though the ability of the
| species to reproduce would be higher with mostly female
| offspring.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Without a major and unrealistic cultural change, 2 girls
| to share one boy (polygamy) is not going to happen.
| const_cast wrote:
| No no, not like that. Well, maybe, but no. Most men are
| useless from a reproductive standpoint because they're
| not the bottleneck. Women are the bottleneck. More women
| means no more bottleneck, means more children per person.
|
| Also sexual selection is a thing and I think we were
| really never meant to have this many men. Men seem good
| for being really successful or otherwise dying, not much
| in the middle.
|
| But also, all this talk is purely from a reproductive
| standpoint. Human societies also need to consider
| fairness and rights.
| nicolashahn wrote:
| I feel like there really hasn't been sincere data-backed
| methods with proper resources behind them, for example
| governments giving out minor cash benefits to parents of
| a few thousand dollars when that's a drop in the bucket
| compared to the total cost of raising a kid and is not
| going to convince anyone who wasn't already going to have
| kids.
|
| Also, that's a wild solution. You'd have to do away with
| monogamy which would cause some pretty insane societal
| shifts. However, as a straight guy I can see the appeal
| lol.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The issue with low TFR seems to be difficulty of forming
| relationships, not failure to have children once
| relationships are formed.
|
| I'm imagining it becoming a social norm for single women
| to have (at least) a single child. Perhaps they'd team up
| to make raising them easier, forming loose family-like
| units. Romantic attachments would be optional.
|
| One consequence of such a situation would be an incentive
| toward private positive eugenics. Women would prefer
| semen from top quality donors.
| mattlondon wrote:
| At least in the UK the cost of childcare is a major
| factor putting people off.
|
| People simply can't afford to send a kid to pre-school
| childcare because it's 2 or 3 thousand GBP per month. So
| you have to stay at home to look after them, but then you
| can't afford the rent/mortgage and/or food because you're
| not working. Woe betide you if you earn over 1 penny over
| 100K GBP because then you get _zero_ help with costs.
|
| They need to provide more government funded (i.e.
| universally free non-means-tested) pre-schooling like
| they do for 5-18 year olds.
| nicolashahn wrote:
| Raising the birth rate is extremely difficult and
| immigration will destroy a country's culture if not managed
| properly.
|
| For an interesting case study, compare Japan (who refuses
| to allow mass immigration and is at risk of going extinct)
| and the UK (who has embraced it and is on the way to
| becoming Muslim-majority). It'll be interesting to see in
| 50 years which one has had better outcomes.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| In 50 years, Japan will have a Chinese majority, so...
| heyheyhouhou wrote:
| it is 6% muslim majority?
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| It's not. But a xenophobic far right is approaching a
| majority.
| mariusor wrote:
| According to Wikipedia[1] you are quite off base as
| Muslims form only 6.5% of the population as opposed to
| Christians (46.2%) and a-religious (37.2%).
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_
| Kingdom
| nicolashahn wrote:
| I said "on the way to".
|
| > Between 2001 and 2009, the Muslim population increased
| almost 10 times faster than the non-Muslim population.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_the_United_Kingdom
| ?wp...
|
| Granted 2009 was a while ago but they're still the
| fastest growing population in the UK by a lot.
| ak_111 wrote:
| You are not making your point any favour. It is right
| that everyone is calling you out for your xenophonbic BS.
|
| If it grew 10x between 2001 and 2009 (starting from a
| very small base), then between 2009 and 2023 it grew by
| only 0.3x (see graph below).
|
| So rate of growth went from 10x to 0.3x in around a
| decade, this is a hugely significant deceleration. It
| actually implies muslim community as portion of
| population is heading lower.
|
| https://new.islamchannel.tv/wp-
| content/uploads/2024/04/63860...
| nicolashahn wrote:
| You're not comparing the same stats. The original stat
| was growth rate _compared to the rest of the country_.
| Islam 's overall growth rate has been fairly steady for
| decades, although admittedly it has slowed, but at a rate
| that could conceivably stop above Christianity, which
| your chart shows is decreasing about as rapidly as Islam
| is rising. I think it's reasonable to project that it may
| settle below Islam eventually. Realistically, there will
| be continued backlash by native English and that may
| temper immigration, though even if immigration stops, the
| birth rate of Muslims in the UK is still much higher than
| native population.
|
| However - if we're including atheist then clearly that'll
| be the majority position.
| dtech wrote:
| This is using the same flawed logic that has had people
| shouting about overpopulation since the 70's: assuming
| current* population growth rate will continue
| indefinitely
|
| * well, not even current. 15+ year old
| nicolashahn wrote:
| The difference is that this is a change in the
| demographics of a population, not the overall growth,
| which is limited by resources available. The growth of
| Islam isn't constrained by anything other than the
| cultural practices that lead to them having more children
| than the rest of the population and the tolerance of the
| country for immigration. These things could definitely
| shift to balance the scales but there's no guarantee that
| happens and there have absolutely been many times in
| history where a native population has been displaced by
| the growth of an immigrant group.
|
| Stepping back a bit, Pew expects Islam to overtake
| Christianity as the dominant world religion in a few
| decades: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-
| reads/2017/04/06/why-musli...
| mariusor wrote:
| Nicholas, is it clear that at any point in the near
| future, let's say two generations (30-40 years) the
| Muslim population will not be a majority in the UK? I
| don't understand why you continue arguing.
| gambiting wrote:
| Ah, it's the same argument that my mum uses to say that
| if we don't do something about "the gays" then straight
| people will disappear, after all "there are a lot more of
| them than there used to be".
| logicchains wrote:
| He said "on its way" so you'd want to be looking at the
| rate of change in the ratio, not the current ratio.
| fakedang wrote:
| Any data on the birthrates of the younger generations
| being born today?
| mariusor wrote:
| Yes, I'm sure those 6.5% can out breed the rest of the UK
| tens of times over. Please stop trying to justify
| misinformation.
| nicolashahn wrote:
| I found this article from 2017:
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/11/29/europes-
| grow...
|
| The most recent birth rate stats I can find is 2005-2010
| where Muslims have a birth rate of 3.0 while the rest of
| the country is at 1.8. Estimates say it's more like 2.5
| now, but the current overall UK birth rate is only 1.57
| from a quick Google.
|
| https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-
| content/uploads/sites/11/2...
|
| The same article also states that the average age for
| Muslims is much lower than non-Muslims as of 2016, 28 vs
| 41 for the UK.
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-
| content/uploads/sites/7/2017/...
| vbezhenar wrote:
| How many children were born in Muslim families in 2024
| and how many children were born in Christian families in
| UK?
| teamonkey wrote:
| UK is in no conceivable way "on the way to becoming
| Muslim-majority".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_King
| dom
| danw1979 wrote:
| Way to undermine your point by using a completely made up
| statistic.
| erklik wrote:
| > Raising the birth rate is extremely difficult
|
| > the UK (who has embraced it and is on the way to
| becoming Muslim-majority)
|
| .. Seems like we've found a fix for ;) I wonder what's
| the difference between Muslims in the UK vs Japanese
| folks.
| telotortium wrote:
| There's not enough immigrants that actually are of
| financial benefit to Denmark. Only European immigrants are
| a large financial benefit throughout their lifespan, and
| Middle Eastern immigrants are a financial detriment even in
| their prime working years[0]. That is apart from the
| cultural effects of having a large portion of your
| population consist of non-Danish, and especially non-
| European immigrants, which might have its own detrimental
| effect on the birth rate.
|
| [0] Figure 2.7 of the Danish Government report "Okonomisk
| Analyse: Indvandreres nettobidrag til de offentlige
| finanser i 2018" -
| https://fm.dk/udgivelser/2021/oktober/oekonomisk-analyse-
| ind...
| mmooss wrote:
| It turns out that economic productivity is not tied to
| ethnicity or where you are from - fundamentally racist
| notions - but to how productive you are.
| nine_k wrote:
| It's not about race, it's about culture and education.
| For instance, Chinese immigrants are usually an economic
| boost anywhere they go, due to the can-do attitude and
| respect for education and business activity in the
| Chinese culture in general.
|
| Also the Chinese immigrants in question, like many
| others, usually immigrate seeking a better life, it's a
| strong self-selection filter. Middle Eastern immigrants
| of last 10-15 years in Europe are refugees, displaced by
| wars; they did not choose Denmark (or other Western
| European countries) because they planned to integrate and
| to prosper there, they ran there to merely stay alive.
| They need a lot of help adapting. Even if they are very
| willing to work, they may lack the knowledge required for
| gainful employment, and there are only so many dish-
| washing and trash-disposal jobs.
|
| Those who adapt can make it big; consider people like
| Freddie Mercury or Nassim Taleb.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Freddie Mercury wasn't of Middle Eastern background.
| decimalenough wrote:
| Middle Eastern immigrants are not (usually, relatively,
| on average) unproductive because of their skin color.
| They're unproductive because they suffer from a large
| language barrier, tend to have large families that use
| more government subsidies, are often traumatized by the
| conditions they escaped, have qualifications that are not
| recognized in Denmark and have to work menial jobs
| instead, face racism when they apply for jobs they are
| qualified for, etc.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| You mean, like any/many immigrant waves?
|
| And then their children turn out to be some of the most
| productive and contributory to a nation (in my
| experience), even despite some of the headwinds.
| Bassilisk wrote:
| Perhaps in the US due to pre-selection, but in Europe the
| 2nd generation of those MENA migrants frequently becomes
| an even bigger burden to the host countries due to the
| former turning to criminal activities or radicalization.
| arandomusername wrote:
| This is false. The study includes descendants and the
| trend is the same. Those descendants wouldn't suffer a
| language barrier, aren't traumatized by the "conditions"
| (neither are majority of immigrants from those regions,
| as they often go back for holidays etc), will have
| qualifcations from Denmark.
|
| It's culture and race does also play a part in it. It's
| not right to treat anyone differently because of their
| race, but let's not ignore the reality that skin isn't
| the only difference between races.
| frotaur wrote:
| Why would you associate this difference with race rather
| than culture? Seems like culture differences would be a
| much better answer to your premise.
| Scarblac wrote:
| It's because the ME immigrants that make it to Denmark
| are traumatized refugees from war zones, with education
| that isn't recognized so they can often only do minimum
| wage work if they work at all. That's not racist, that's
| a result of laws and treaties.
| niemandhier wrote:
| I can only give you the rundown for Germany, but I guess
| it's similar in Denmark:
|
| Basically the state spends to much money on humans in
| general. A young qualified immigrant might have a less
| negative impact than a slightly older German person, but
| both of them will be money sinks in the long run.
|
| Statistically immigrants in Germany are less qualified than
| the general population, so they'll have an even more
| negative impact.
|
| The only valid solution is to reduce the spending per
| person, both birthrate and immigration will only delay the
| problem.
|
| Denmark should be in a slightly better position than
| Germany since their health system is cheaper.
| n_ary wrote:
| > Statistically immigrants in Germany are less qualified
| than the general population, so they'll have an even more
| negative impact.
|
| I need to see some data backing this. Also regardless of
| stats, many war refugees(the net negatives as told by
| media) are actually highly qualified but the asylum
| process and qualification recognition process is eternal.
| On top of the trauma and uncertainty, they also need to
| learn a new language, find a new community, patiently go
| through all the dystopian meetings, cope with their loss
| of loved ones.
|
| In reality, it is possible for them to be net positive
| because if things were faster, they would often out
| qualify the average locals and this also has some effects
| on wage and market(over supply, constant demand and all
| the economics).
| arandomusername wrote:
| Most immigrants are not war refugees but economical
| refugees.
|
| > they would often out qualify the average locals
|
| That's definitely not true, which is why they want to
| immigrate to those countries in the first place.
| niemandhier wrote:
| You are right regarding the insufficient opportunities
| for highly qualified people.
|
| Regarding your other point: https://home-
| affairs.ec.europa.eu/whats-new/publications/oec...
|
| The liked pdf there gives a good overview.
| Ray20 wrote:
| No one knows how to increase the birth rate. And all the
| studies show that immigration increases the budget deficit,
| not reduces it (at least in that way in which it is being
| implemented now).
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Actually the factors inhibiting birth rate are well
| known, but the actions to take are not something states
| wants to take. In Europe you cannot even talk about it,
| usually, unless you talk to younger family members and
| ask them why they don't want kids at or or just 1 or 2
| max. There are economic, education and legal aspects that
| are clear for anyone that looked not farther than 50
| years ago when having 3-4 kids was not exceptional.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Everyone knows. Stop contraception, stop woman education,
| stop abortions, reduce woman rights to 1800. Remove
| children rights, make environment where children are
| productive and bring profits to their parents, so they
| have financial incentive to create children.
|
| No one wants to implement it.
| const_cast wrote:
| Right, if anyone here has taken a human geography course
| this is the obvious answer. This is why birthrate was so
| high for so long. As nations developed and gained rights
| for women, it went lower and lower and lower.
|
| And it makes complete sense. The reality is having a
| child kind of sucks for a woman, and I, nor anyone else,
| can blame a large portion of women for just saying "eh...
| no". I would probably say no, too, although it's hard to
| tell, because I'm not a woman.
|
| Having children was once a boon, because conditions were
| shit. Now it's a burden. So, people will treat it as a
| burden.
|
| Either make it less burdensome or revert women. Nobody
| wants to do the latter, so we must do the former. We have
| to invest in children, because children are a Nation's
| investment.
| geodel wrote:
| You are right. Since that is not happening the next best
| thing is to juice the oldies. At least more countries
| have started doing that.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| 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.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| That would be raising taxes.
|
| - indifferent to how much automation you have, people still
| need to pay for it, for money they don't earn.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| When people refer to "raise taxes" they usually talk
| about raising the rates, but you don't need to raise
| rates, if the GDP increase then the amount collected
| through taxes increases even if you don't change the
| rate.
|
| And as such, it feels like labelling that "raise taxes"
| is disingenuous.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| Exactly, another way to increase taxes is also by
| increasing gdp.
|
| Indeed the normal Understanding is not only about
| increasing rates - look at Switzerland eg.
| StackRanker3000 wrote:
| Automation and increased productivity can also lower the
| cost of necessities such as food and health care, meaning
| retired people could theoretically get by with less.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| No.
|
| A part of necessities are access to assets.
|
| In the model you propose, inequality in itself will make
| those more expensive.
| lostlogin wrote:
| The money made and saved isn't going to go to governments
| and the population though. As it stands, a couple of
| billionaires will become richer.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| That's a political decision though, and they try to hide
| it behind this kind of false trilemma.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Productivity has already increased several times over while
| the working age population has decreased. Working the young
| population into extermination is the current paradigm and
| is giving the current results, which is all according to
| plan.
| lostlogin wrote:
| 2 has some options. Increase the number of (young)
| immigrants. Increase the birthrate (has anywhere managed
| this?).
| tossandthrow wrote:
| Birthrates are problematic as it usually take 20 to 25
| years before they pay taxes. And in that time they require
| a lot of expenses.
|
| They talk abiut the squeeze, if Birthrates increase too
| suddenly - workers would both have to pay for the elderly
| and the kids.
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| This is the real demographic death trap, and why Taiwan
| and South Korea are probably past the point of no return.
|
| If one generation has a fertility rate of 1 child per
| woman, the next must have 4 children per woman to undo
| the demographic change.
|
| The people in the "corrective" generation must support
| their own two elderly parents plus four of their own
| children. It becomes practically impossible.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > The people in the "corrective" generation must support
| their own two elderly parents plus four of their own
| children. It becomes practically impossible.
|
| The country and the individual has the same problem. But
| it also goes a generation further.
|
| There was a link on HN recently which I can't find. It
| discussed how we are in an unusual time, where kids can
| often meet their great grandparents. Previously people
| died younger, so couldn't. Now people are having kids at
| an age where it will be unlikely for them to meet their
| great grandchildren.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>Previously people died younger, so couldn't
|
| I'm not sure that's true - people died younger, sure, but
| they also had kids much earlier. Even assuming 18 for
| first child(and it often was earlier than 18), you'd be a
| great grandparent at the age of 54 - and people have
| commonly lived that long even in antiquity.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Have a look at the graph here - 'Life expectancy by world
| region, from 1770 to 2018'
|
| The average lifespans was only 40-something until the
| 1850-1950 range.
|
| I'm sure plenty lived longer, but the average was
| terrible.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
| messe wrote:
| Those figures are heavily skewed by high infant mortality
| rates.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Read the "other measures" part of the article.
|
| "While the most common age of death in adulthood among
| modern hunter-gatherers (often taken as a guide to the
| likely most favourable Paleolithic demographic
| experience) is estimated to average 72 years,[169] the
| number dying at that age is dwarfed by those (over a
| fifth of all infants) dying in the first year of life,
| and only around a quarter usually survive to the higher
| age."
|
| Etc.
| dtech wrote:
| Getting to a fertility rate of 2.1 will at least mean the
| problem will end at some point and the population will be
| stable, altough it will take the better half of a
| century.
| gambiting wrote:
| This is a nice explanation from Kurzgesagt showing
| precisely why South Korea is completely screwed long
| term, and why it's impossible to course correct through
| birth rate alone:
|
| https://youtu.be/Ufmu1WD2TSk?si=3mMFke_Rj6b3jWld
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| Israel is the only developed country which has a sustained
| positive fertility rate.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| But that's not an example of a solution - the birth rate
| is driven by orthodox citizens who don't participate in
| mainstream society, so they aren't going to pay taxes or
| care for the elderly (outside their own family).
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| Yeah it's a pessimistic data point because it's
| challenging to replicate Israel's unique circumstances
| and also it's not clear this solution is even good for
| Israel.
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| Seems like the US taxpayer should subsidize all countries
| as much as they subsidize Israel. That would fix it.
| ido wrote:
| US economic aid to Israel ended in 2007 (18 years ago).
|
| The US since then only provides Israel with military aid
| (most of which is only allowed to be spent buying US-made
| goods). It's more of a subsidy for the US military-
| industrial complex.
|
| Also despite the military aid Israel still spends a much
| greater share of GDP on its military than most or all
| other developed countries (so the US isn't subsidising
| Israel's unusually high birth rate).
| arandomusername wrote:
| > It's more of a subsidy for the US military-industrial
| complex.
|
| That's a funny way to twist it. US is providing aid to
| Israel. Billions a year.
|
| US also provides indirect aid, through protection or aid
| to neighbouring countries (e.g Jordan and Egypt) as
| bribes so they play nice with Israel.
|
| And who knows, with the way the Iran thing is panning
| out, you might be paying a lot more if US decides to bomb
| Iran on Israel's request
| ido wrote:
| And how does this explain Israel's abnormal birth rate
| (what ImHereToVote suggested in the parent comment)? I
| claim it's unrelated and is mostly to do with cultural
| and religious norms.
|
| If the US starts sending proportional military aid to
| South Korea (fertility rate of 0.75 vs Israel's 2.83) it
| will not "fix it".
| grunder_advice wrote:
| Mormons and Amish have above replacement fertility rates.
| Millionaires in western countries also have above
| replacement fertility rates.
|
| To me it seems rather obvious: you need both the will and
| the means to raise 3+ children.
| logicchains wrote:
| Shouldn't it be the will or the means, not the will and
| the means, giving how relatively poor the Amish are in
| financial terms?
| bombcar wrote:
| The Amish have the means because their means are not
| measured in normal dollar amounts. Most of what they have
| is traded and transacted outside of the dollar economy.
|
| In fact, they may majority be of subsistence in which
| case the entire dollar value of all of their stuff is
| simply the land.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| I'm not sure it's about having the "means", since birth
| rates were far higher in the past when everybody was much
| poorer.
| Spivak wrote:
| You can solve the means problem by making everyone
| wealthier or by lowering everyone's expectations. The
| problem is that "how much it costs to raise children" is
| dependent on your environment. One group's normal is
| another's neglectful parenting.
|
| The catch-22 is that the people you presumably want to be
| having more children-- educated working professionals--
| have some of the highest social standards for child
| rearing.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| > Increase the number of (young) immigrants
|
| Increase the number of (young female) immigrants
| dyauspitr wrote:
| 4. Stop spending 90% of healthcare costs on 5% of chronic
| problem beneficiaries.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| That is increasing tax.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| How? Less tax but 5% of people get worse healthcare.
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| 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.
| distances wrote:
| > It's easy to see that at some point, there will be the
| equivalent of the US 401K in Europe.
|
| * In some European countries. Many countries, however, have
| no meaningful avenues whatsoever for tax efficient pension
| saving. My own "pension fund" is just a regular broker
| account where I invest after income taxes, and where I have
| to pay capital gains as usual.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| Denmark does have ratepension, which is exactly that.
|
| People with good private pensions can decide to retire 5
| years before they officially retire.
| jxjnskkzxxhx wrote:
| What does "reduce pensions" mean? Pensions are people's
| property. You can take pensions like you can confiscate
| property, a la communism.
| nicolashahn wrote:
| So close! Pensions are actually property taken from the
| younger generation and given to retirees.
| pmg101 wrote:
| I think this is just the word "pension" being overloaded,
| meaning both
|
| 1. A state provided welfare benefit Or 2. A privately
| held long term savings/investment account
| m4rtink wrote:
| Isn't it essentially a thanks/appreciation for what the
| people built once they retire ? Without theire work,
| there would be nothing for the younger people to use and
| benefit from.
|
| Would not be very motivational if you work hard your
| whole life and then you are considered a useless burden
| once you retire.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I'll take the thanks/appreciation in the form of wages
| instead, thanks!
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| Those retirees have been paying into the pension system
| their whole life.
| mattlondon wrote:
| So have younger people too, just their life has not been
| as long (yet).
|
| The way it usually works is taxation from the current
| working generation pays for the current retirees. You are
| not paying into your own account for later (that is a
| private pension)
|
| FWIW in the UK there are more children in poverty (so
| their parents too) than retirees who are in poverty. Kids
| don't vote though...
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| IMHO it's a matter of basic justice. If you're forced to
| pay an amount for pension funds that you cannot even
| chose and have no control over for your whole work life,
| then you better should get a an adequate pension when
| it's time. As for the example from the UK (not comparable
| to Denmark), I don't see why someone who worked their ass
| off their whole life should be poor because some parents
| are too poor to have children. That seems to be a
| different problem.
|
| What's annoying about these debates is that the people
| who'd e.g. like to see pension cuts are either young and
| _will_ change their mind later, or they are so rich that
| none of this matters to them anyway and the latter
| shouldn 't even have a voice in this debate.
| budding2141 wrote:
| Yeah, but they paid a vastly lower percentage of their
| paycheck than people nowadays do (at least here in
| western EU)
| Ray20 wrote:
| Another reason not to repeat their mistake.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| It's much worse than that, it is indebted servitude being
| done to the younger generation.
| jxjnskkzxxhx wrote:
| Its not "so close" - the pensions that I'm familiar with
| are _exactly_ what I described. They 're basically a
| special tax treatment for _my_ assets.
| jltsiren wrote:
| And capital gains are actually property taken from the
| workers and given to capitalists. In both cases, the
| recipients have magic tokens that legally entitle them to
| some of the value created by other people.
|
| I don't know how this works in other countries. In
| Finland, it was established decades ago that pensions
| based on past contributions are constitutionally
| protected private property. Because people made explicit
| pension contributions and because the government promised
| that the future pension would be based on the individual
| contributions, the government can't alter the deal
| substantially without a constitutional amendment. If the
| contributions had been general taxes, or if the promised
| pension had been independent of the actual contributions,
| ordinary legislative process would have been enough.
| rsynnott wrote:
| In this case you're talking about state pensions, which are
| a form of social welfare.
| hmmokidk wrote:
| Can also just raise taxes on the super rich
| bombcar wrote:
| A 99.9% wealth tax on US billionaires would cover the
| annual deficit for about 1.5 years.
|
| The scale of the problem is absolutely mind-blowing.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| US annual deficit/debt is a meaningless number since it
| just prints as much money as it needs being the world
| reserve currency. It's a looney toons number.
| IndubitableCoil wrote:
| This really isn't true. I am not deficit doomer, but you
| can't say its meaningless. The US paid $881 billion on
| interest on its debt last year. This is on par with the
| DoD. Yes, it's still only around a tenth of the US's
| total budget, but it is not hard to imagine the debt
| going up by 10 times. With the same interest rates, we
| then the US will pay as much in interest as the rest of
| the budget combined. If the US just needs to "print as
| much money as it needs", there is a certain point at
| which it will become hyperinflationary.
| gambiting wrote:
| It's worth noting that it pays that interest back to
| itself. The risk of becoming hyperinflationary is real,
| but US can continue ignoring the problem pretty much
| indefinitely as long as other countries do their trading
| in US dollar.
| layer8 wrote:
| I'd say that "super rich" starts well below billionaires.
|
| Not saying that the math would work out without problems
| then.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| My grandpa went to prison (in Romania) in the 1950-es for
| being part of bourgeoise class because he fixed and ran a
| broken mill. He was a war refugee (from Romania to
| Romania) without any money, land or any other resources,
| but in Communist Romania running a mill would tag you as
| "super rich". I guess this is what you wanted to say
| there, correct?
| layer8 wrote:
| I consider myself reasonably well-off but am unlikely to
| become even a millionaire in my life (inflation-
| adjusted). I'd say millionaire = rich, 10-20 million or
| more = super rich. See also
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-net-worth_individual.
| robaato wrote:
| No 4 - do like Norway:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor.
| ..
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Not everyone sits on a bazillion tons of natural gas and
| oil. Also, there are 5.5 million people in Norway. Though,
| Denmark is almost the same population, they have no
| bazillion tons of oil and natural gas. See the problem?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| You forgot step -1: Use time machine constructed in step
| 3.5 to seed nearby oceans with phytoplankton and other
| organic carbon reservoirs
| Ray20 wrote:
| It turns out you won't have a problem funding your pension
| system if you literally pump out millions of dollars' worth
| of oil per person.
| keybored wrote:
| Norway is also going to raise the retirement age.
| mmooss wrote:
| 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.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Economic growth in the abstract doesn't help much, because
| a retiree is only on the consumer side of the equation. 2%
| compounded annual growth over 50 years will result in the
| average worker consuming a lot more stuff, and they're not
| going to be happy if they have to throw that all out and
| embrace a 1970s-era standard of living when they retire.
| mmooss wrote:
| > Economic growth in the abstract doesn't help much
|
| True, but economic growth is very real.
| risyachka wrote:
| 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.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| 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.
| namdnay wrote:
| 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
| tossandthrow wrote:
| > 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
|
| This is exactly what happens in Denmark - a balancing of
| the pension system.
|
| Also,rgis has been planned since 2006 - so it is nothing
| new.
| namdnay wrote:
| A real balancing would entail cutting pensions for
| existing pensioners. Which is electoral suicide. So what
| you always end up doing is shafting future pensioners,
| either by pushing back the retirement age, or by doing
| nothing and waiting for it to explode
| tossandthrow wrote:
| I reckon the presumption is that current pensioners don't
| live as long as future pensioners.
|
| Hence only doing this for future pensioners will give
| equal time as reitred.
|
| (at least, this is the core reasoning)
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Also, that people who have twenty years to plan for their
| retirement to happen under these conditions will not be
| as screwed as someone told that their plans for next week
| are off.
| StackRanker3000 wrote:
| Why is that way of balancing this more real than the
| others?
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| maybe you don't like it to be called a Ponzi scheme, but
| the reality is that it is one.
|
| Definition of a Ponzi scheme: A Ponzi scheme is an
| investment fraud that pays existing investors with funds
| collected from new investor. Ponzi scheme organizers often
| promise to invest your money and generate high returns with
| little or no risk. But in many Ponzi schemes, the
| fraudsters do not invest the money. Instead, they use it to
| pay those who invested earlier and may keep some for
| themselves.
|
| https://www.investor.gov/protect-your-
| investments/fraud/type...
|
| That's exactly how pensions work in Europe. Replace "Ponzi
| scheme organizers" by "legally elected governments" and
| here you have it - you have a whole continent of people
| believing that their pension is a given. Not everybody may
| like it, but that's the hard truth.
|
| In the US, people contribute towards a 401K, and choose how
| to invest, but typically pick up just the S&P 500 - anyway
| and at least that money is somehow what they have saved for
| themselves.
|
| But I agree with your statement "it is completely possible
| for the system to be balanced" - yes a Ponzi scheme can be
| absolutely balanced, you just need enough participants ...
| simianwords wrote:
| i disagree. this is not at all a ponzi scheme. as you
| have pointed out the ponzi scheme has no value outside of
| the system and relies on deception to convince people to
| buy in to it. crucially the investment scheme provides no
| "value".
|
| pensions on the other hand don't have the quality of
| deception and the value is straightforward - it
| redistributes wealth from the younger population to the
| older ones. this reduces the need for individuals to plan
| their retirements as the state takes care of it. as
| pointed by another post, you don't need a pyramid here,
| just somewhat equal proportions of population on each
| side.
|
| wouldn't you characterise any tax scheme as a ponzi
| scheme? unemployment benefits, healthcare etc? what makes
| them different from pensions?
|
| but i do agree that one should not think of pensions as a
| given. its worth pointing out that there are two types of
| pensions - defined benefits and defined contributions.
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| > wouldn't you characterise any tax scheme as a ponzi
| scheme?
|
| No, not exactly, that's different.
|
| > unemployment benefits, healthcare etc? what makes them
| different from pensions?
|
| That's certainly contributions I don't like either,
| because of how this system is abused. But to be fair,
| unemployment benefits or healthcare aren't a pyramid
| scheme, because you aren't paying for the previous
| "investors" - you might get back what you contributed
| (with a lots of caveats). In the case of the pension
| system, you clearly pay the previous "investors".
| tgv wrote:
| It's not a fraud. How can you say so? Also, the first
| pensioners didn't invest in the system. There isn't even
| a concept of investment in old-age social welfare, unlike
| other pensions. It's also not a pyramid scheme, since the
| structure is upside down, and there is no recruitment.
|
| Calling it something else than it is, only to taint the
| system and its receivers by associating it with a
| criminal undertaking is bad faith, if not worse.
| simianwords wrote:
| why not because of increased life expectancy?
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| That actually makes the problem worse unless retirement ages
| tick up at the same rate.
| lancekey wrote:
| I think that's what parent comment is saying: if life
| expectancy goes up, shouldn't retirement age?
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| Thanks, I misunderstood.
|
| I suppose increased life expectancy and fewer young
| people both contribute to worse dependency ratios.
| simianwords wrote:
| yes. life expectancy going up is a good thing - it means
| people can keep working even when they are older. but
| fewer young people is not a desirable outcome, some of
| the pension funds could be redirected to more benefits
| for child care etc.
| brewdad wrote:
| While some can continue to work longer, most adults I've
| known simply can't work, at least in their chosen field,
| much past 67. Physical pain and loss of mental acuity
| take their toll. Pushing the retirement age out to 70
| might prevent the whole system from collapsing but we
| need to make sure younger people save with the
| understanding that working until age 70 might simply not
| be possible.
|
| Living longer doesn't necessarily mean having more
| productive years than in the past. We simply have the
| medical tools to keep people alive even if they can't
| much get out of bed.
| constantcrying wrote:
| 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.
| JackYoustra wrote:
| Chile had this and, while technocratically sound, was so
| unpopular it led to a new constitution.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| 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.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Germany has private pensions.
|
| Just as in Germany Denmark funds it's pensions through
| taxes, Germany additionally funds them through employee
| contributions.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| But these are organized as insurances, right?
|
| In Denmark you have ratepension, which truly is an
| investment account and not an insurance product.
| jordanb wrote:
| 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-salmin wrote:
| 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.
| io4throwaway wrote:
| Retirement migration will be common in the future, either
| to lower-cost parts of the country or to different
| countries altogether. It's happening right now with Spain
| or Florida, but it will get even more common.
| lobotomizer wrote:
| Let the hurricanes wipe out the current batch and then
| move your hovel in to be the next, o happy retirement!
| eloisant wrote:
| > 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.
| lancekey wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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...
| lancekey wrote:
| So since 1950, lifespan has gone up ~14 years in UK.
|
| Retirement age has not gone up since it was created in
| 1940s. Not crazy to raise it a little.
|
| Quickly looking at Denmark articles, it seems they're
| raising the age to adjust to life expectancy increases as
| well.
|
| I don't see this a sign of the system failing.
| holsta wrote:
| We are not living longer, fewer infants / kids are dying.
| ant6n wrote:
| True. The interesting stat would be expected lifetime at
| retirement age.
| sgt101 wrote:
| You can find the info here: https://www.ons.gov.uk/people
| populationandcommunity/birthsde...
|
| There was a steady rise in life expectancy at retirement
| age in the UK until 2020, then something happened and
| it's fallen significantly. My guess is that it will rise
| rapidly over the next 15 years and this will be regarded
| as some sort of triumph for the public health system
| (unless there is another pandemic of course).
| edent wrote:
| That's simply untrue.
|
| Since 2010, the retirement age for women has raised from
| 60 to 65. Bringing it in line with the male retirement
| age.
|
| See https://www.thetimes.com/money-mentor/pensions-
| retirement/st...
|
| The age (for both) is gradually rising to 68.
|
| Source https://www.gov.uk/government/news/state-pension-
| age-review-...
| mahkeiro wrote:
| People are living longer (but not really in the US), but the
| health span is not seeing the same increase unfortunately.
| hbarka wrote:
| The metric of "living longer" isn't the same as "life
| expectancy once you reach the age of 65", for example. In
| the US, when someone cites a statistic that our average
| life span decreased, it's due to the effects of early-life
| mortality on the mean. If you make it past 65, it's a
| different statistic.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| there is not one USA with respect to these things.. "all
| people" did not stop living more than 65 years recently
| aaomidi wrote:
| So what do we do with all the productivity gains we've had?
| Arubis wrote:
| Give them to the wealthy.
| rixed wrote:
| If it's not enough, we can also bomb them.
| tmnvix wrote:
| Take on and service more debt (e.g. larger mortgages). The
| productivity gains are claimed by creditors (i.e. those
| with existing capital). At least, that's a possible
| explanation.
| harimau777 wrote:
| 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.
| vladms wrote:
| Average healthy life years was 71 years in Denmark (source:
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/healthy-life-
| expectancy-a... ). By looking at the map it varies a lot
| between countries, and I assume between regions and
| occupations.
|
| The policy for retirement age is related to when society
| sees fit to sustain someone that does not work. I think it
| has more to do with how the society sees the elders and
| what it can afford than to the goals of specific
| individuals.
| brewdad wrote:
| I had a great grandparent live to 102. 3 of my 4
| grandparents lived into their late 80s with the oldest
| passing a month shy of 90. Even my grandparent who smoked 2
| packs of cigarettes a day lived to 78. For all of them,
| their last good year was about year 80.
|
| My dad just turned 78 and has really slowed the last 5
| years. Longer life says little about quality of life.
| plusmax1 wrote:
| why wait for travel until you are retired? Retirement
| should not be "the" goal in life.
|
| I've been traveling for holidays every year since I was 25
| for at least 3 weeks every year, loving it so much. First
| it was backpacking, now it transitioned into a bit more
| luxury as I got older.
|
| You don't know if you'll be hit by a bus next year,
| retirement is a silly milestone to focus on.
| bgnn wrote:
| 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-...
| dottjt wrote:
| I think what's happening though is that current generations
| are taking it easier in a lot of ways as a result of having
| to work more. For example, avoiding senior promotions into
| management etc.
| rors wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| Yeah, probably 90 here in the EU is a good cut off. People
| I know seem to make 80 quite easily, but at 85 it goes down
| quite a bit and after that even the best seem to be done.
| For me that's 35 years ago at least but I am planning to
| not get to 90 and if I do, I won't be interested (or know
| it) anyway.
| mihaaly wrote:
| 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.
| agilob wrote:
| Having a 68 year old paediatrician, PE teacher will surely
| help.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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_k wrote:
| 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.
| neom wrote:
| Do you have a sense of how you see it playing out?
| cyberax wrote:
| It'll keep getting worse, as more and more people
| concentrate into large cities. And large cities are family-
| hostile. The birth rate in cities is strongly anti-
| correlated with the city size. People just don't feel
| content and happy to have children in dense cities.
|
| Japan is very illustrative in this regard. Young people are
| forced into unaffordable cities, where they often live in
| cramped shoebox-sized apartments. While beautiful spacious
| traditional homes are decaying just 2 hours away by car.
|
| What can help? Promote smaller cities, by focusing on
| making smaller cities more attractive for employers. This
| is already happening with the remote work, and it helps:
| https://eig.org/families-exodus/
|
| How to make smaller cities more attractive? Put a stop to
| densification of larger cities, and tax (or cap-and-trade)
| the office space in dense areas.
| johnny22 wrote:
| > The birth rate in cities is strongly anti-correlated
| with the city size.
|
| This might be true, but could be for many reasons.
| There's not enough info in that to promote a specific
| response.
| cyberax wrote:
| Everything in social sciences has plenty of reasons and
| exceptions.
|
| The thing is, there is not much you can change in
| peoples' behavior. So your only option is to stimulate
| the behaviors that you want.
| neom wrote:
| Do you envision we will see any forced egalitarian
| land/wealth distribution?
| cyberax wrote:
| Why? The land for habitation is not scarce. The entire US
| urban footprint is around 2% of the land area.
|
| The unaffordable housing cost is entirely an artifact of
| urbanism gone wrong.
| neom wrote:
| Well in my country all the land is owned, either by the
| crown or by land owners, so at least in my country, the
| government would have to just...give away land? (Canada,
| The West)
| dkga wrote:
| This is a very sensible comment. One thing that could
| explain why I see (subjectively) a lot more bigger
| families in Switzerland where I live compared to other
| places in Europe is that cities' size is ,,just right",
| so having a family to start with is much easier than in
| large, urban areas.
| bibabaloo wrote:
| I feel, generally, with an aging population + rising
| unemployment due to AI, we'll reach a crunch point that
| puts governments under immense pressure to increase taxes
| (probably on megacorps & the wealthy) more in order to fund
| welfare. The most optimistic, utopian, solution would be
| UBI and an artisan economy, but I think we all know that
| capitalism isn't kind enough for that to play out so we'll
| probably end up with something much more dystopian.
| sgt101 wrote:
| 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.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| What system would work?
| croes wrote:
| You don't need higher birth rates if the productivity rises and
| the created wealth is fairly distributed.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| 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.
| jmpetroske wrote:
| 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?
| satvikpendem wrote:
| _Do_ we have enough labor? At least in the US there has
| been a shortage of elderly care workers. And even if we
| didn 't, what does it mean, concretely, to structure the
| economy to get the labor to those who mean it?
| Spivak wrote:
| > least in the US there has been a shortage of elderly
| care workers
|
| Well yeah, because it's difficult, taxing, often
| traumatic work that pays the same as any other nursing
| job with a higher QoL and social status. And even then
| they're pushing out all the actual nursing staff that
| pays well in favor of MAs/CNAs who get paid like shit.
| jmpetroske wrote:
| Correction to myself, I believe we have more than enough
| people to provide the labor.
|
| I really don't mean to get into the nitty gritty details
| - I'm not an economist and I'm not providing solutions,
| just stating what I see as the problem. I believe that we
| have enough resources, and there are issues getting those
| resources to where they need to go.
|
| Example: Assume we do have a shortage of elderly care
| workers. Why is this the case? Could this be fixed by
| increasing their wages? Then that implores the question
| of who is paying for these increased wages, which is the
| question I'm not answering and I don't know enough to
| answer.
|
| I just don't really believe that keeping the birth rates
| high is the answer to this economic problem. It might be
| a solution, but it's more of a band-aid than truly facing
| the issue. If you have a inefficient engine you can
| either figure out how to produce more gasoline (babies),
| or you can figure out how to produce a more efficient
| engine.
| ionwake wrote:
| The last great country in Europe, may their salvation come in
| their easy going friday afternoons and the general well being of
| the nation.
| constantcrying wrote:
| 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.
| lnsru wrote:
| 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.
| Retric wrote:
| 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.
| lnsru wrote:
| I will pay more than EUR600000 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.
| Retric wrote:
| The value you get is as an inflation and lifespan hedge.
| There's no investment built into the system but the money
| being paid in by younger workers for people who are 100 is
| adjusted for inflation that year not whatever the currency
| was worth 75 years ago when they started. Similarly if you
| die at 55 you don't benefit from retirement savings either.
|
| Historically payouts also benefited from rising
| productivity and populations but those assumptions are
| breaking down.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > I will pay more than EUR600000 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
|
| Let's see. If you pay 15000 euros per year for 40 years,
| and get 5% interest, that's 1,800,000 euros at retirement.
| Even if you held that in cash, a 30,000 euro/year
| withdrawal would last you to 130.
| Retric wrote:
| 5% interest _above inflation_ is an unusually good
| return, especially if you're assuming it's a safe
| investment.
|
| Running the numbers assuming zero taxes is a separate
| issue.
| secondcoming wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I'm 48 now, in Latvia, and expect that my retirement age will be
| 73+.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/xe4rC
| dueltmp_yufsy wrote:
| Seems the US will have to do this soon. Just very very unpopular.
| Not sure which party will actually pull the trigger.
| mattnewton wrote:
| 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.
| energy123 wrote:
| What is the political incentive to do this ever?
| mattnewton wrote:
| My thinking was, cutting taxes via budget reconciliation
| (which is the only process the currently paralyzed
| legislature can do) requires some hand waving deference to
| the notion of being revenue neutral by the Byrd rule, so
| cuts to social programs or rollbacks of government spending
| have been increasingly included as a way to get tax cuts.
| Tax cuts fund your donors who fund your reelection
| campaign.
|
| But, I just looked it up again for this comment and that
| same rule says "No changes to social security" in
| reconciliation. It is specifically called out as forbidden
| to touch via reconciliation unlike almost every other
| program. So, maybe you are right, it will just be ignored
| because it doesn't seem possible to quietly change.
| yborg wrote:
| The income part of SS is more or less subsistence level,
| which arguably was its intention to keep the elderly from
| begging in the streets. But in the dystopian US
| healthcare system, Medicare is arguably the more
| important part of the social net. Without it, you are not
| going to afford any healthcare in old age.
|
| If this budget hits the PAYGO limits, which is basically
| guaranteed, that will trigger automatic cuts to Medicare,
| so they can backdoor cut the program without anybody
| voting for that.
| ModernMech wrote:
| Where is the political incentive _not_ to do this ever? If
| you reduce spending on social safety nets, you can reduce
| taxes on the wealthy, and as a bonus the poor die. win
| /win.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| 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%.
| patall wrote:
| Not sure about the US, but from what I have seen in Europe
| the questionnaires show that older people are actually for
| these policies more so than young people, especially when
| they are already retired and thus not affected. In Germany,
| two thirds of retirees answered for abandoning a public
| holiday while everyone else was by majority obviously
| against it.
| oldpersonintx2 wrote:
| "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.
| IndubitableCoil wrote:
| 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
| dehrmann wrote:
| The only real financial benefit to home ownership is it
| enforces savings.
| dw_arthur wrote:
| 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.
| tehjoker wrote:
| There's absolutely no reason to other than to line the pockets
| of the wealthy.
| pfisherman wrote:
| 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?
| Retric wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Why not just subsume it into the other income taxes?
| dainiusse wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| well in this context it generally means the age someone starts
| to receive state pension.
| testing22321 wrote:
| And in many countries it defines the age you can withdraw
| money from your own retirement savings without paying full
| income tax.
| dainiusse wrote:
| Yes. But the wider meaning is - you are in control
| futureshock wrote:
| 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.
| jampekka wrote:
| 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/
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| 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.
| jampekka wrote:
| 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.
| luckylion wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| People live longer but the threshold is still the same when
| the age reduces your physical and mental capability to the
| same level.
| nikanj wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > Where is the productivity gains going?
|
| Reinvested to increase future productivity
| lobotomizer wrote:
| lmao
| JanisErdmanis wrote:
| > 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.
| conception wrote:
| https://preview.redd.it/wealth-distribution-in-the-us-by-
| wea...
|
| https://inequality.org/facts/wealth-inequality/
|
| Etc etc
| JanisErdmanis wrote:
| The rising wealth inequality is a blunt answer. Similarly
| saying that we are increasing productivity in activities
| that protect interest of the rich.
|
| It seems that significant amount of productivity gains
| are lost because of activities that profit from deception
| and counter activities that accounts for them.
| tmnvix wrote:
| > 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.
| monkaiju wrote:
| 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.
| soerxpso wrote:
| > 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.
| tmnvix wrote:
| > 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.
| markvdb wrote:
| - Asset inflation can be tackled with flexibility. The
| level of flexibility my acquaintance showed is not
| required. He bought a fixer-upper two apartment building
| with a garden in a livable small walkable eurozone city for
| 5kEUR.
|
| - The productivity growth really has had incredibly strong
| deflationary effects. So much more, more diverse, tastier
| and healthier food for example, for so much less money.
|
| - The growing affluence has really created incredible
| opportunities for scavenging from the waste stream. A
| practical example. About half of the food I eat is
| leftovers from a nearby school. I'm proud to be saving good
| food from going to waste _and_ it lowers our expenses quite
| significantly.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| 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.
| joelthelion wrote:
| > 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.
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| > 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.
| markvdb wrote:
| > 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.
| instagib wrote:
| 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| 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.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Is that what's happening here?
| agilob wrote:
| It's happening everywhere, and it's completely intentional.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| happening everywhere, except Cuba.
| autobodie wrote:
| Yes, against all odds, Cuba has a great surpous of
| doctors. How do they do it, I wonder!?!?!?!?!?!
|
| (it has something to do with _profit_ )
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| I'd call this _soft power projection_ by medical means.
| Which is absolutely OK IMO, compared to lets say
| producing AK-47, or meddling in other countries internal
| affairs, invading and destroying them, and whatnot else.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_American_School_of_Me
| dic...
|
| A recent form of _profit_ seems to be offering cheap
| treatment /medical tourism
|
| https://www.cubamundomedico.com/en/university-of-medical-
| sci...
|
| Seems impractical for USians, though.
| autobodie wrote:
| I think you're overcomplicating things. Castro was very
| vocal about medical care being a top proority during and
| after the revolution. There's no coincidence or
| conspiracy.
|
| When you try to build a society around human needs
| instead of capital needs, you end up with different
| priorities. It's that simple.
|
| If anyone thinks they're making the big bucks and
| accumulating "soft power" by training a bunch of doctors
| then selling treatments to Americans for cheap, I'm not
| sure they can be helped.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Yah. Maybe I can't be helped. Shrug. I got aware of this,
| I don't know exactly when anymore, has to be about 15
| years ago now, or even longer.
|
| I wondered about why there were almost always cuban
| medics, doctors, nurses etc. in action, when there has
| been some larger catastropic event in the world, and you
| could see them in the media.
|
| Why is that, I thought? That doesn't fit being sanctioned
| by the US(and vassals), being poor in general, and so on.
|
| That's how I became aware of ELAM.
|
| And made up my mind the way I described. Can't help it
| :-)
| autobodie wrote:
| > _Why is that, I thought? That doesn 't fit being
| sanctioned by the US(and vassals), being poor in general,
| and so on._
|
| This is _capitalist realism_. You cannot imagine a motive
| beyond calitalist logic, but that doesn 't mean nobody
| else can.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_Realism
| jdietrich wrote:
| _> How do they do it, I wonder!_
|
| It's easy to have really good health outcomes at really
| low cost if you just fabricate the data. It's easy to
| export lots of doctors if you force them to work abroad,
| force them to pay most of their salary to the government
| and hold their families hostage to ensure compliance.
|
| https://academic.oup.com/heapol/article/33/6/755/5035051
|
| https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/07/23/cuba-repressive-
| rules-do...
| lyu07282 wrote:
| Of course, we just aren't doing neoliberalism hard enough
| yet! Lets get rid of all the unions, that must be the
| reason everything is falling apart.
| coldtea wrote:
| no, but why not waste an opportunity for Reagan-era style
| anti-union drivel?
| reliabilityguy wrote:
| Like med schools in the US
| PieTime wrote:
| Yup, limit residents and percentage grading ensure that
| doctors are in short supply. Compare to the extremely
| streamline jr Doctor programs in the UK.
| Calavar wrote:
| The US docotor shortage is a myth. Wait times are the
| result of beauracratic nonsense has reduced the efficiency
| of the existing physician workforce [1, 2].
|
| [1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-
| abstract/26132...
|
| [2] https://hbr.org/2020/03/the-problem-with-u-s-health-
| care-isn...
| ndileas wrote:
| Do you have evidence for this? Seems plausible, although
| I would have thought mis allocation also happens across
| specialties
| 0_____0 wrote:
| :. urban areas do not have a physician shortage?
| leereeves wrote:
| I think it would be more accurate to say that there is no
| shortage of healthcare providers, because there are many
| NPs and PAs.
|
| Without NPs and PAs, I'm sure there would be a shortage
| of healthcare providers.
| cameldrv wrote:
| In my experience a big part of the problem is
| specialists. I remember many years ago people were saying
| that we shouldn't go to a Canadian style single-payer
| system because Canadians had rationed care and they had
| to wait six months for a hip replacement.
|
| Well, guess what? I now also have rationed care. I have
| to wait six months just for a colonoscopy, plus I pay
| twice as much for the privilege!
| eqmvii wrote:
| and law
| mrtksn wrote:
| 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.
| dehrmann wrote:
| This is a good listen on the topic:
|
| https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-professional-
| licensing-a...
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| nradov wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| 70 is already the "optimal" age to take social security
| (depending on various factors).
| ghaff wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Burn everything down
| testing22321 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| How did you get from Denmark to Australia?
| JanisErdmanis wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| around 1900 more than a quarter of the population of Denmark
| emigrated to the USA IIR
| strange_aeons wrote:
| 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)
| mistrial9 wrote:
| my sources : "a History of the Lutheran Church in America",
| and a personal history written at that time. If your
| records are accurate and unbiased, I would accept that
| answer completely and admit it.. but I am not convinced
| both of those are true. It is interesting and more clarity
| is welcome. Also your estimate of the population varies by
| 40% so the accuracy is in question.
| strange_aeons wrote:
| ku.dk is Copenhagen University, which I would regard as
| accurate and unbiased.
|
| Wikipedia cites Danmarks Statistik for the population
| numbers, the official government statistics.
|
| The 2.4m is in 1900, 3.5m in 1930.
| kypro wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| bachmeier wrote:
| 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.
| dsign wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that "lack of market opportunity" isn't the
| reason that nobody has yet managed to invent eternal youth
| jl6 wrote:
| Get disdainin'!:
|
| https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/adding-years-to-life-...
| jopsen wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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-t wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Plenty of people would want to live life how people lived
| before 2008 though, or even 2015.
|
| Over the past decade life expectancy in developed countries
| first plateaued, then declined.
|
| Yes, largely due to the pandemic, but that plateau was also
| the beginning of decline in some places.
| martin-t wrote:
| > This is definitely a problem but I don't think the only
| one.
|
| Certainly. Planned obsolescence and devices being
| impossible (or illegal) to repair is another. If a device
| costs 20% less but lasts only half a long, buyers are
| losing money because the profits go to the rich more often.
|
| Food has ingredients and an expiration date on the
| packaging as required by law. Expected lifespan should be
| required for petty much everything.
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| You only get paid because someone pays you. More outputs do
| not mean you will get paid more if everyone does so
| codethief wrote:
| Exactly. The amount of cost savings produced does not
| determine their value if everyone can perform them.
| croes wrote:
| The obvious solution that also worked in the past is rising
| productivity and participation on the created wealth.
| 2thumbsup wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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?
| jopsen wrote:
| 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.
| tcshit wrote:
| That's what happens when nations like Denmark and Sweden with
| extensive social wellfare system, does not grow organically and
| instead allow people to invade their countries and let them use
| the system without giving anything back.
| leidenfrost wrote:
| Immigration is a form of organic growth.
|
| How do you think the US got its population?
| hackyhacky wrote:
| > That's what happens when nations like Denmark and Sweden with
| extensive social wellfare system, does not grow organically and
| instead allow people to invade their countries and let them use
| the system without giving anything back.
|
| I am pretty sure that immigrants pay taxes.
| tcshit wrote:
| Some immigrants do a great job but way too many have no
| interest in integrating nor working, they are perfectly happy
| with getting money and social healthcare without giving
| anything back. They even get enough money to send to
| relatives not able to leave their shitty countries.
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| 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.
| seydor wrote:
| 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.
| gyudin wrote:
| The Europeans, as usual, are super humane and building Euro-
| communism. Work 50% of the time for free (what they take from you
| in taxes), and then all the money you saved for retirement--
| you'll only be able to use it when you can no longer live an
| active life and enjoy it, if you even live that long, of course.
|
| Apparently, the German slogan from the concentration camp era,
| 'Work sets you free,' has now been decided to be applied to
| everyone.
| gandalfian wrote:
| 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?
| enra wrote:
| Ozempic & Novo Nordisk contributes something like 2% of the
| economic growth.
| seydor wrote:
| they were rich before ozempic
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| skinny too
| nextos wrote:
| Actually, the Danish economy was a lot more interesting
| (read more complex and diverse) a decade or two decades
| ago. Lots of mid-sized engineering companies, for instance.
| The government is rightly worried about things becoming a
| Novo Nordisk monoculture, becoming fragile, and ending up
| like Finland. Novo Nordisk is facing tough competition from
| Eli Lilly and many other pharmas, who have better GLP-1
| drugs but were slower in their development.
| joelthelion wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| They're not working like idiots, they have universal
| unionization and lots of time off.
| joelthelion wrote:
| You can have the best working conditions in the world, it
| still sucks to have to work if you don't want to.
| jhickok wrote:
| Well yeah but then your problem is the fact you have to
| work at all. I doubt any modern societies have solved the
| issue of needing people to work.
| joelthelion wrote:
| I get it but then we should be moving towards less
| mandatory work, not a 70 years old retirement age.
| codethief wrote:
| Should we? As life expectancy increases, wouldn't it make
| more sense for people to work a bit longer, so as to keep
| the costs of retirement the same?
| LunaSea wrote:
| Life expectancy increases 5 years and pension age is
| increased by 10.
| codethief wrote:
| What? Already 100 years ago the retirement age in many
| countries was at around 65 years.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retirement_age
| nradov wrote:
| Work isn't mandatory. You're free to stop any time, and
| accept the consequences of that choice.
|
| What we should be doing is aggressively cutting the cost
| of living so that people who want to can afford to retire
| while still maintaining some reasonable quality of life.
| The number one thing that would help is to set policies
| that make it easier to build more housing because that's
| the largest expense for most people.
| tikhonj wrote:
| Sure, but modern societies _have_ solved the problem of
| needing to work until you 're 70. Working until 65 or
| whatever still sucks, but 5 years is 5 years is not
| nothing.
| jspdown wrote:
| It's the 5 best years that you have left to live. It's
| not nothing indeed.
| nradov wrote:
| Some of us are fortunate to have jobs that we enjoy but
| the majority of people don't really _want_ to work. They
| work to survive. That 's just life.
| codethief wrote:
| Well, yeah, life is largely about work. Retirement and
| living very comfortably off of one's savings/pension is a
| rather new phenomenon, and I'm not even sure it's a good
| one (in terms of health impact).
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| People are living longer. Demographically there are fewer
| younger people to support them. Something has to give.
| joelthelion wrote:
| On the other hand, productivity has improved tremendously.
| It's not clear that we actually need everyone working.
| nradov wrote:
| Productivity improvements have been partially eaten up by
| cost of living increases. We don't need everyone working,
| but how do we decide who has to work and who gets stuff
| for free? Should workers pay higher taxes to support more
| retirees?
| Spivak wrote:
| Yes? Old age, and to an extent disability, are great
| systems for deciding this because unless you die young
| everyone becomes both.
| nradov wrote:
| So how much lower should the retirement age be, and how
| much should taxes increase to enable that? Have you done
| the math on that?
| slater wrote:
| > Should workers pay higher taxes to support more
| retirees?
|
| With what money? The poor folk don't have any by
| definition, the middle class is being squeezed out of
| existence, which leaves... who...?
| StopDisinfo910 wrote:
| Cost of living doesn't wipe out productivity increase.
| Cost of living is a money transfer. People buy things
| from other people. The question is therefore where is
| this money actually going. A casual look at how richness
| is shared in the USA will give you the answer to that.
| jopsen wrote:
| You absolutely don't need to work 37 hours per week if
| you are willing to live 200km from the big cities in an
| old house.
|
| You buy something dirt cheap for less than 80k USD. It's
| not great, it's old run down. But if you do minimal
| repairs and don't live the high life, you can get by with
| very little.
|
| But if you want a new car and nice comfy house in a
| decent location, with all the modern amenities, well,
| that's expensive.
| Avicebron wrote:
| >something dirt cheap for less than 80k USD
|
| brother rusted out farm houses 2 hours from any office
| building, let alone one that hires programmers are like
| 350k in rural states. Idk where you live, but it ain't
| Earth.
| wat10000 wrote:
| If you're willing to put up with 1925 living standards,
| you can get away with working way less than people worked
| in 1925, and way less than most people work in 2025.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| What is 1925 standards? All organic food? Mostly tailored
| clothing? Custom fitted shoes? Only one spouse working?
| Brand new, incredibly high tech cars being made
| affordable to the average factory worker? Incredibly high
| tech entertainment centers? They even had washing
| machines. So are we talking giving up a dishwasher, a
| clothes dryer, and only having 1.5 baths in houses? Or
| are we talking the affordable city workers' hotels where
| man/women mingled, that enable people to live affordably
| with dignity in the city center, and actually have a
| life?
|
| What does '1925' mean? No more shein plastic semi-
| disposable clothes that fall within what 1920's would
| consider sci-fi dystopian, universal basic income
| disposable clothes? Or hormone/chemical saturated 'food'
| that they wouldn't recognize as such? Or huge McMansions
| made of literal urea board and plastic extruded chemical
| 'luxury vinyl' floors? Brand new technology such mass
| produced cars, affordably available to the average
| person?
| sofixa wrote:
| Jevons paradox. Productivity has increased, but so has
| consumption because those productivity increases have
| decreased cost and made many things more affordable and
| normal.
| skywhopper wrote:
| Immigration is the answer.
| stefs wrote:
| immigration can't be the answer forever. at some point
| we're going to need alternative solutions.
| arandomusername wrote:
| Ethnically replacing the population is not an answer.
| carlob wrote:
| fuck your thinly veiled racism
| arandomusername wrote:
| I'm racist because I want my culture, my people, my
| nation to live on?
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Why not? Serious question. I'm curious if you have more
| to say than the above, which seems almost comically
| racist.
|
| We need workers for society to keep working. Immigrants
| need jobs. Sounds like everyone winds unless you have a
| vague fear of brown people.
| arandomusername wrote:
| Just to be clear, are you asking why ethnically replacing
| the population isn't a viable solution?
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| I'm not the person you asked, but I feel very
| uncomfortable with the idea that cultures and societies
| should be subject to mass immigration in the name of
| economic activity.
|
| Immigration when done right, can have a positive impact.
| Both economically and culturally. However, I think mass
| migration into declining populations risks having the
| opposite effect. I'd like to present a historical
| example.
|
| Hawaii has a famously multicultural society. That being
| said, it became that way because rich plantation owners
| simply wanted cheap labor. In the span of a few decades
| the native Hawaiians became a minority in their own land.
| Traditional Hawaiian culture is practically extinct as a
| result. The economic situation of native Hawaiian
| communities remains improvised as well. They wound up
| being marginalized and almost all of the economic gains
| that resulted from the mass migration went to those who
| implemented it. Going further, the Kingdom was eventually
| overthrown. This was partially enabled by the fact that
| the population was so fractured and disunited.
|
| Since statehood, the politics of the state have been
| largely been controlled by Japanese Americans. Japan was
| the largest source of immigrants to the Kingdom. There is
| nothing inherently wrong with this, however. I allege no
| racism on the part of the descendants of plantation
| workers. I just wanted to illustrate how a society can be
| radically altered through mass migration in a relatively
| short amount of time.
|
| I can only speculate, but I imagine if the Hawaiian
| people in the 1800's had known this would happen, they
| would have chosen a depressed economy instead.
| antihipocrat wrote:
| You raise great points here. It's very interesting how
| the term racist (from the post you're responding to) gets
| thrown around by people to shut down every side of the
| discussion depending on what their objectives are.
|
| It's racist for people born in or who are citizens of a
| country - today - to resist the governing class allowing
| foreigners to immigrate to benefit the economy AND it's
| racist policy - historically - for a governing class to
| push immigration on a natively born population for
| economic reasons.
| Scarblac wrote:
| Why not? It happened over and over in history and will
| happen again.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Yes ,what has to give is a tiny fraction of the corporate
| and individual wealth hoarded by the richest and most
| powerful members of society.
| nradov wrote:
| How tiny of a fraction? Can you quantify this for us?
|
| In principle I think some kind of wealth tax on fortunes
| above a certain level would be a good idea. But there are
| a lot of practical implementation problems in terms of
| identifying and valuing illiquid assets. Like for example
| I have friends who own forestry land (for softwood timber
| harvesting) in a foreign country. Those assets have some
| value but trade infrequently so there's no reliable
| market price. And they probably hold the assets through a
| foreign corporation rather than directly in their own
| names. What is a "fair" amount for them to pay in taxes,
| and how would the government enforce that in a consistent
| and cost-effective manner?
| pydry wrote:
| Funny how AI will take your job when you're 35 but when you
| reach the age of 65 it loses the ability to do so.
| const_cast wrote:
| Bring in more young people via economic opportunity and
| immigration.
|
| Making kids easier to have really only has two real
| options:
|
| 1. Go back down the development timeline of a nation and
| remove rights from women (bad).
|
| 2. Implement more social programs to incentivize children.
|
| The reason we need to do 2 now and not in the past is we've
| developed. Women have rights now, and we need real reasons
| for them to have kids, not fake reasons like we had in the
| past.
| stevesimmons wrote:
| They don't all have to work to age 70. Anyone can stop
| working earlier, and fund their own retirement.
| joelthelion wrote:
| That's true. But I'd argue that everyone is better off when
| most people can chose to retire early, rather than the
| select few who are smart and disciplined enough to plan an
| early retirement.
| nradov wrote:
| Everyone is better off except the workers who have to pay
| higher taxes to support more retirees. That might still
| be a net positive for society but people are going to
| have a wide range of opinions on where to draw the line.
| glorygut123 wrote:
| If they're raising the retirement age, then it obviously didn't
| all go so right,
| jopsen wrote:
| 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.
| wat10000 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| jampekka wrote:
| > How did it all go so right?
|
| The highest total tax rate in the world perhaps?
| pembrook wrote:
| 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.
| jampekka wrote:
| Cuba, Vietnam and Albania have way lower tax-to-GDP than
| Denmark. They are way below OECD average. Care to share
| your tax statistics on USSR, Yugoslavia, North Korea and
| pre-2000s China?
|
| The Nordic model was created by socialist and labor
| movements in the 20th century. Finland, a tiny homogeneous
| Lutheran population, even had a brutal civil war over this.
| Nothing to do with religion or ethnicity.
| jq-r wrote:
| But it has all to do with corruption. Croatia has one of
| the world's highest tax burdens per 1000usd earned (or at
| least it had from a study done some years ago) and you
| would think that all is is great but this couldn't be
| further from the truth in reality. Corruption eats it
| all.
| username223 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| manmal wrote:
| 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.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| 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.).
| manmal wrote:
| We already have 15y to go here, at age 50. That's WAY longer
| than the median occupancy.
| generic92034 wrote:
| Also, large companies go out of their way to offer early
| retirement packages to their workforce, often starting even
| with 55 year old employees. That does not fit the
| expectation of people working till they are 70. Politics
| and employer orgs need to talk about that.
| tikhonj wrote:
| 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_99 wrote:
| 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+.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| This might not be the case for your hiring principles, but
| this doesn't reflect the reality and statistics in my
| European country. People after 50 have a near zero chance
| of getting hired here as confirmed by the unemployment
| office.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I didn't see them say it's not harder getting hired over
| age 50, I think they're questioning that the reason is
| really job hopping.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Employers will never say what the real reason is because
| they don't want to get sued for age discrimination.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I responded to a comment that said the reason getting
| hired over 50 is difficult is because employers are
| reluctant to hire someone who may retire soon. I objected
| to that rationale, which makes no sense IMO. I have no
| doubt that getting hired over 50 is more difficult than
| for younger people.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| Young people today job hop like there's no tomorrow.
| 8fingerlouie wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| There's a huge difference between endangering other people vs
| endangering only yourself.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| you've clearly never been fallen upon by a septuagenarian
| roofer
| 8fingerlouie wrote:
| Yeah, it's not like operating heavy equipment at a
| construction site will ever endanger anyone.
| eloisant wrote:
| The carpenter isn't endangering himself, he's being
| endangered by his employer (and the politicians who voted
| for that retirement age)
| esseph wrote:
| 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.
| 8fingerlouie wrote:
| So that's the plan ? Make sure enough people die before
| reaching retirement age ?
|
| My point is, if you're unfit to drive a vehicle due to
| cognitive or physical decline, you're probably also unfit
| for most jobs involving those skills, and yet you have to
| soldier on for 4 more years.
|
| What happens when they're putting a new roof on a building
| next to a crowded street, and the 73 year old carpenter
| drops a bunch of tiles to the ground 6 floors below ? or he
| falls and slips off, taking another colleague with him ? Or
| he simply operates heavy machinery somewhere and gets
| caught in it.
| epoxia wrote:
| You can concoct these make believe hypotheticals, or you
| can look at countries where this is the reality (South
| Korea; high elderly poverty), and how there is no
| "elderly employee accident crisis". Whether it is right,
| moral, just etc. is the issue. I would just say to not
| wait until retirement to "live your life".
| 8fingerlouie wrote:
| What does the unemployment statistics say about craftsmen
| in the age bracket 60-70 ? Or any other line of work ?
|
| Many craftsmen in Denmark are working contracts where
| they get paid more the faster they finish the job, and
| nobody wants a 70 year old dragging down their hourly
| wage just because they can't keep up, so the 70 year old
| will just have to "keep up", either making mistakes along
| the way, or wearing out their already worn out bodies
| some more.
|
| There are options for "early" retirement at 70, provided
| you've spent 46 years employed. That means you started
| working at 24 at the very latest, and was not unemployed
| for longer periods.
|
| Saving up for your own retirement is also hard with low
| to medium income wages in a country where you pay 40-50%
| income tax, 25% sales tax and retirement funds are taxed
| at deposit (meaning capital gains will be lower).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| "Older drivers have 3 to 20 times higher risk of fatal
| crash than non-older drivers" [1].
|
| We simply don't have those data for roofers.
|
| [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S
| 01674...
| LightHugger wrote:
| That makes perfect sense though?
| cmurf wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| charcircuit wrote:
| What's stopping people from just saving up money and stop working
| before 70?
| glxxyz wrote:
| Nothing, 'retirement age' is typically when people qualify for
| a state pension. Sometimes it's used for mandatory retirement
| when that exists.
| bachmeier wrote:
| 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.
| zkmon wrote:
| While the increase is not too bad, they should invest in having
| babies instead of making the old people work.
| patall wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Don't they know AGI soon?
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| 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.
| seydor wrote:
| 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.
| amag wrote:
| 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.
| wyager wrote:
| > 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.
| StopDisinfo910 wrote:
| 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.
| godelski wrote:
| Funny that we have a ton of people asking what people would
| do in a post scarce society. Stating that man needs work.
| Yet, it also seems to be said most by the people who have
| been free from the need to labor for generations. They
| still do, they still desire more, yet their lives are
| certainly post scarce. Hell, the whole goal of retirement
| is to become post scarce, and have a few years where you
| can live without the need to labor. Seems like we already
| have some decent evidence to what such a world would look
| like.
| wyager wrote:
| If you _stop_ "rich inheritors" from existing, this moves
| you away from the knee of the optimization frontier and
| you're certainly even worse off as an old person.
|
| If you can't conceptualize this as a constrained
| optimization problem, you're not even worth arguing with;
| you simply lack the tools to think about this in a useful
| way.
| amag wrote:
| 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.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| The point is, that the society does not owe you 10 years to
| do whatever.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Which is why he argues it should?
| amag wrote:
| You mean I can't sue society if I die nine years into
| retirement?
| Jochim wrote:
| This is how you end up with extremists.
| HappMacDonald wrote:
| And why wouldn't a society owe its citizens anything
| after 40+ years of keeping their nose at the grindstone,
| and obeying all of its laws?
|
| Society is _defined_ by what we owe one another in
| pursuit of civil interactions with one another.
|
| If the only contract society offers me is "work your
| hands to the bone and then be discarded once you can't
| work anymore" then I have no incentive to keep up _my_
| side of the contract and perform labor or observe
| property laws in the first place. And once everyone is
| trying to cheat and steal from one another then you no
| longer have a society anymore.
| godelski wrote:
| > 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.
| wyager wrote:
| > No, it is a resource allocation problem.
|
| There are finite resources to allocate. If you can't
| conceptualize this, there's literally zero chance you can
| think about this in a productive way.
|
| > 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
|
| That's usually indicative of a lack of understanding of
| highly connected networks, power law distributions, etc. -
| the types of things you need to grapple with if your
| question is "how do I maximize some economic objective for
| X million people?".
|
| > This isn't a zero sum game
|
| It's a constrained game (and there exists a zero-sum
| tradeoff between instantaneous allocation of resources to
| capital good production and consumable good production)
|
| > Cathedral ceilings to only have a dirt floor
|
| You're really leaning on this analogy that isn't very
| useful for actually thinking about the problem
| gessha wrote:
| 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...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Turns out retirement is just an illusion to convince you to
| give your best years for the system.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| No need to do any that, if you don't like the idea and have
| something else that works for you. But most people are
| somewhat mid and really don't.
| tomp wrote:
| You're just repeating anarchists' talking points.
|
| None of them considers that "the system" gives them food,
| water and energy, and that procurement of these _in the
| absence of system_ means literally toiling from birth until
| death.
| dralley wrote:
| Humans need a constant supply of resources and shelter to
| survive. There is no "system" which avoids this
| inconvenient fact. In the absence of any "system" at all,
| you would still need to constantly work for survival - and
| in fact you'd just die as soon as you were no longer able
| to do so due to illness or injury much less old age.
|
| In other words if there were no "system" there would be no
| such concept as "retirement" in the first place.
|
| We all wish that we could spend our best years doing
| whatever we want. That doesn't mathematically work out,
| though. European social safety nets are pretty damn
| generous all things considered. Plenty of vacation days,
| especially compared to the US. It's not like it's
| impossible to use those well during your "best years".
| intothemild wrote:
| 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.
| amag wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| YokoZar wrote:
| Healthspan in Denmark, who just raised the retirement age,
| went up from 67.6 to 71.0 from 2000-2019. (+3.4 years)
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/healthy-life-
| expectancy-a...
|
| Contrast this with Denmark's lifespan growth over the same
| period, of 76.8 to 81.4 (+4.6 years)
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-
| expectancy?time=2000...
|
| So from the data, prior to covid-19 Danes had gained about
| 3 and a half years of healthy life, and an additional year
| of unhealthy life.
|
| It makes sense that Healthspan and lifespan are well-
| correlated, as most of the ways we have of extending
| lifespan do so in a way that makes you clearly healthier
| (such as preventing chronic diseases).
|
| That said, it is true there is a bit of an increasing gap.
| This isn't just in Denmark, it's global - lifespan rose by
| 6.4 years from 2000-2019 while healthspan only increased
| 5.3 years.
| https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/mortality-and-
| globa...
| arexxbifs wrote:
| 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.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| You get downvoted a lot, but I challenge anyone to name a
| country that hasn't slashed _hard_ social benefits,
| pensions, % of GDP for healthcare, and similar..
|
| I get it that some countries have had a plethora of
| scammers (prescribing pregnancy meds to men so docs can hit
| quotas and get bonuses/bribes from pharmaceutical
| companies, people trying to fake blindness to get an early
| retirement, etc.
|
| But overall reduction of cost with reduction of salaries
| will ultimately lead to worse healthcare.
|
| A friend was in Germany skiing this past winter. The 10k
| population town he was staying didn't have a paediatrician
| and they had to drive 2h to get care for their kid. In
| Germany, in 2025. I wonder how this very town will be in
| 2030 or 2050 with that trend..
| arexxbifs wrote:
| It's a tough reality to face. Problems are piling up for
| the west that aren't easily solved, and not just with
| social benefits. Something as mundane as aging sewage
| systems is starting to become a real problem in many
| countries.
| devilbunny wrote:
| > docs can hit quotas and get bonuses/bribes from
| pharmaceutical companies
|
| This is a common thought. It is incorrect. I'm a doctor.
| I have gotten pharma money for talking for their drug
| once, which was absolutely game-changing and which I
| would speak for without money (sugammadex is the generic
| name, if you want to look it up). I get lunch twice a
| year. The age of free vacations is long gone.
| jongjong wrote:
| 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.
| bluGill wrote:
| Those old narritives were consiedered out dated for ever
| generation - but those who do it anyway tend to do well.
| arexxbifs wrote:
| Sure, but one of the reasons that people have fewer
| children is a bigger risk of downward mobility. The cost
| of raising a child to an expected middle class living
| standard has increased substantially.
| Amezarak wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The earlier they increase retirement age, the less painful it's
| going to be.
| Retric wrote:
| 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.
| tomp wrote:
| 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...
| timschmidt wrote:
| > 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!
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| I think what they missed is that people typically work for
| much longer than they are retired.
|
| If the periods were of equal length, I think the Ponzi
| scheme thing would be true.
|
| As is its sort of a modified fractionated ponzi.
| tomp wrote:
| > why taking care of the elderly, something humans have
| done since before recorded history
|
| Well yeah, but before government-organised pension, it was
| _your kids_ taking care of you when you get older, so the
| system was much more balanced (or rather, only imbalanced
| on the micro scale, not at a mega scale we see now...)
| jmyeet wrote:
| 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...
| downrightmike wrote:
| Capitalism would be a great filter, like nukes and never
| evolving past single celled life
| moominpapa wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Turns out not having kids has consequences.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-05-25 23:00 UTC)