Denmark is set to have the highest retirement age in Europe, after lawmakers voted to raise it to 70.
Parliamentarians passed a bill mandating the rise on Thursday, with 81 votes in favor and 21 against.
The new law will apply to people born after December 31, 1970. The current retirement age is 67 on average, but it can go up to 69 for those born on January 1, 1967, or later.
The rise is needed in order to be able to “afford proper welfare for future generations,” employment minister Ane Halsboe-Jørgensen said in a press release Thursday.
It doesnt apply to politicians though…
Wtf Denmark
Why do only the “later” generations get shafted though?
Cod e the people passing the law are probably in the earlier generations… They don’t want to fuck themselves over
I have very little confidence I’ll get a retirement. Even though I’m contributing to the Canada Pension Plan, I’m so far away that by the time I get there I have serious doubts the program will still exist. There is obviously calculations they make to determine the health of the fund, but I don’t think they are properly taking into account how much extra strain extended life expectancies will take on the program. If they plan for people to be on retirement for an average of 15 years, and suddenly that changes to 20 or 25 years, that fund will dry up quick. Combine that with the influx of boomer retirees and to me it doesn’t look so good.
We never know there could be a huge mega virus or giant mass cult death or something look on the bright side /s
I don’t think the shithead oligarchs who barely work a week outta the year should get to tell the working class how long they are forced to work.
And where do you expect them to work? No one is going to hire a 70 year old! (Except the US, bonus if they’re a rapist and felon)
This is getting ridiculous…
Work all your life to feed the pyramid pension scheme and when you finally retire, you’re too old to do anything meaningful with your life.
in this thread: Americans who have absolutely no idea what society looks like in Denmark. Or anywhere outside of the US actually.
The channel Economics Explained actually covered Denmark on this weeks video essay. The impression that I got is that they really have their shit together, even these planned retirement age changes are expected to be gradual so people can plan for it.
Most Europeans have a poor understanding of what the USA looks like as well… Turns out that most people have no idea what most of the rest of the world looks like! This could even mean inside of their own country! The USA is quite large and very much varied.
For the topic of this thread in particular I see a lack of knowledge that the average lifespan in the US is a full four years shorter than in other comparable countries.
https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-life-expectancy-compare-countries/
The USA is also significantly bigger than every single one of those “comparable” countries. Actually bigger (population, size, really just about any size metric possible) than all of them combined. It’s a bit disingenuous to clump all of the USA together. Which fuels and proves my point about outsiders not understanding the USA.
The range in “comparable” countries is also about 4 years… Why do you think that is? I mean the countries are basically right next to each other like states are here… yet for some reason despite sharing a border Switzerland and Germany have a 4.1 year difference in male life expectancy.
I’m willing to bet money that different parts of the US, possibly even on a state by state or even region by region location would have wildly varying life expectancy than is being insinuated with a single monolithic number for “the USA”… Just like the EU countries listed here…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_life_expectancy
Turns out that is wildly true… The top 30 states all compete with the numbers given and fall within the ranges between Germany and Switzerland given in the charts in your link.
Edit:
If you drill down to counties… which is at the very bottom of the wiki article. You can see even more disparity. And the only reason I bring this up is that some counties in the USA are bigger than entire as countries in the EU. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/largest-counties-in-the-united-states-by-total-area.html
There is issues with getting infrastructure EVERYWHERE when the country is just so damn big and sparse.
In Iceland we have massive pension funds where people pay for their own retirement.
So this rise for Denmark does not kick in on people born before 1970, so it does not count for baby boomers or the oldest and usually wealthiest sub set of Gen X. Oh, also Danish politicians can still retire at 60 right?
This is fairly typical with these age rises, applies to everybody BUT the largest group who have caused all the problem by being the largest group and who often haven’t paid their fair share in a lot of schemes as a lot of state pension schemes are a Ponzi scheme rather than an actual investment fund, including the Danes as its paid directly out of taxation.
This means all the poor fucks who will now retire later will still be paying for that largest ever group to retire at an earlier age.
What is particularly insidious with this type of change is that the private pension age has also been raised for people in the UK. This means even if you can afford to you cant take it as early as you once could. Absolutely done because they will be means testing the UK state pension at some point.
I generally think all politicians should be forced to retire from political work by at most 60yo.
I agree, also term limits for all of them.
However its egregious for them to be raising the mandatory retirement age for everybody else while leaving their volentary retirement age where it is, and with a particularly fat pension, its about £4k a month for only twenty years of service.
I think the average lifespan in America is 67.
People would be truly working until death, there.
Try 78: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/life-expectancy.htm
Obviously not everyone reaches that. Even if you set the retirement age at 50, some people would die first.
I mean US retirement age is 67, so we’re doing that already.
You guys are retiring?
I’m stashing cheap pistols around my house, so yes I’ve got a plan
Heh. “67 SO FAR” – homer
We’ve reached a point where my retirement plan involves suicide. It’s cheaper and I don’t want to go through all the health issues my parents are. Go to any nursing home and look at all the people so drugged up they have no idea where they are. People are just miserable and don’t even comprehend what is happening. That’s not living. That’s being kept alive by your family cause they are selfish.
That’s why you have euthanasia laws in some countries. It allows you to say goodbye with dignity while you are still sane. For example, if you get diagnosed with an aggressive and untreatable cancer, it allows you to say farewell to your loved ones before you become a husk of your former self simply waiting to die.
What spooks me is that most of the people currently living in these institutions likely would have had the exact same thoughts when they were younger.
The vast majority apparently fail to follow up. Will you? Will I?
EuroSocdem moment
I am a teacher and I could not imagine staying in a classroom for another 7 years. I barely made it to 63. My retirement begins next week. I just hope 50k a year is enough. That was my goal and when I it it I said I am done.
Congrats on retirement! What are you planning on doing with your newfound freedom?
Well I was going to go out west for a month but I don’t feel it is worth the hassle of putting up with the possibility of dealing with ICE. While I am a pale white old fucker my wife is not.
This is America, work a different job.
And then come the robots and AI, and there are no jobs anymore. Then they have a problem with too much unemployment.
This is my main issue with it too. I can retire at 72 or later… in more than 40 years. I’d expect to be replaced long before this, so what’s the point?
Not to mention the consumer base that makes this all function collapses.
Whoever owns the most effective killbots at year 0 inherits the earth. Everyone else gets murdered or starves to death.
Part of it makes sense. We live longer and longer, retirement age is something that needs to be adjusted with the human lifespan.
The problem is that our idea of what “work” should be is so awful that people look forward to retiring, and logically complain if they are denied the opportunity.
Ah, yes, the old argument of “you live longer, so the billionaires get to own more of your time”.
No. How about if I get to live longer, I get to enjoy my tiny little bit of time longer? It isn’t scarcity by nature - it’s scarcity by design.
We live longer and longer, retirement age is something that needs to be adjusted with the human lifespan.
I think it has more to do with the baby boom right after 1945. If those older people retire, there isn’t enough younger generation to support them, so more people need to work longer, so we don’t get too many retired people all at once.
I think it’s more of a “can we support the retired” kind of issue - not just “muh money”. It’s a little more nuanced than that.
You’ve seen a lot of oldies that are in working order after 60+? 70+? They are exceptions, not the norm. Longer isn’t healthier. Not on a functional level. Especially for those not in an office which is I think the majority.
If our Quality of life is increasing shouldn’t we be working less and for shorter periods of our lives?
We live longer and longer, retirement age is something that needs to be adjusted with the human lifespan.
Should it? We live longer and longer, but we’re also more and more productive. 50 years ago, for example, the national labor force produced enough for them and (almost) everyone else to retire after about 40 years of labor. Certainly lifespans have increased, but have they increased more than the productivity of the national labor force? I doubt it. Productivity has definitely increased enough to make up the difference in lifespans, especially since most women now work, meaning essentially double the number of workers. In that case, should we not spend the extra time (which we have earned with our own labor) with our families and friends rather than sacrifice it to some rich prick whose only contribution to society is a portfolio? There’s something distinctly dystopian about the idea that living longer means we should dedicate our time to enriching the already filthy rich rather than enjoy life.
… in Denmark? I mean, they’re the happiest population on Earth in general.
I’m just across the channel in southern Sweden and there’s no way I’m going to retire already in 17 years (67, which I think is the current retirement age for us)
