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.
why are so many people ok with raising the retirement age? it’s literally of zero benefit to anyone who isn’t insanely wealthy enough to just quit working whenever they want. if they ever worked in the first place
We are heading into a period with severe labor shortages as the elderly retire. Who will take care of the elderly? Who will handle be their doctors/nurses? This is not a problem that can be solved with money unfortunately. You need to either relax migration rules so foreigners take these jobs (very unpopular atm) or increase the retirement age.
The regulation is such an insane patchwork, sometimes people can retire earlier than the normal retirement age, if they’ve been working for many years. And if you health is bad there are special programs for that. (Yes as in multiple!)
But clearly as you state, the system is made to benefit the rich more an more. The social democrats who are part of the government are no longer looking after the average Joe, but making things worse, and then they make special programs for propaganda purposes.
A lot of people have been convinced this is necessary, as life expectancy increases, disregarding increased automation and wealth in our society.
Hate that, work until you’re 70 and too old to enjoy retirement. Or work until you’re so sick you can’t and then you don’t get to enjoy retirement.
A system designed to ensure you work until your labor has no value. Squeezing for everything you’re worth
Because it’s what the insanely wealthy want and that’s the only thing that counts
Because poor pensioners dying would look bad politically.
Stems from low birth rate and an insanely large boomer group.
It’s of benefit to society to reduce the dependency ratio (the ratio of non-working to working people)
If the number of people the government needs to support with state pensions rises, but the working age population doesn’t rise nearly as much, government finances become more and more pinched
i can’t help but think this “problem” could be solved in ways other than forcing people to work until they’re 70. like for instance TAX THE FUCKING RICH
i know propaganda is a powerful weapon, but you should be extremely skeptical of the people saying “the problem can’t be solved any other way…” and what their motivation might be (spoiler: keep themselves rich at the expense of everyone else. including, apparently, the elderly who have already spent their life working)
Most people can’t work at that age, and no one will hire you like after 55 anyways. So stupid and evil.
And you’re saying this about that bastion of right-wing economic policy… Denmark? Tax-to-GDP ratio in the mid 40s, second highest amongst OECD countries?
No-one here has said that increasing the pension age is the only solution. Indeed, on its own, it probably doesn’t solve the problem. But it’s one part of a plan. Other parts include addressing the other side of the equation - young people, so encouraging immigration and increasing birth rates (but Danish net immigration is already about 1% of its population per year which isn’t low, high levels of immigration are unpopular, and increasing birth rates is difficult and makes the problem worse for at least 18 years). Tax policy is another aspect of it, but you have to realise that having an older population doesn’t mean that working population is willing or able to bear higher tax rates (even if you try to target them at the rich) That is to say, if you have a high average tax rate already, as you do in Denmark, increasing it further to pay for an aging population is likely to start having adverse effects, and it doesn’t matter why you’re increasing taxation.
i don’t know what to tell you then, other than people might not be more excited to have kids knowing that they’ll be working until they’re 70. unless their plan is to move the entire family out of the country. which also makes the problem worse
I don’t think this will affect people’s desire to have children at all (Denmark’s strong social security system has a much stronger, and positive, effect on that).
I am of child-having age and my decision is based around what my life would be like for the next 18 or so years, not would it would be like at retirement. If I were to think about that, possibly having someone around to help me out and let me retire earlier would probably be a very tiny nudge in favour of having children.
lol “hey can you give grandpa a ride to work? his back’s gone out again and he’s used up all his pto”
Far from perfect, and with rising inequality, but Denmark has generally been relatively decent when it comes to taxing the rich and high-income individuals.
As born in the 90s I’m expected to retire at the earliest by 72. I don’t understand this at all though - I’m expecting a reduced need for labourers as many things become increasingly automatised anyway, so it’s an entirely wrong focus in the first place.
How are you gonna stop “the rich” from simply taking all of their digitally stored wealth and leaving the country that taxes them?
Not disagreeing with you necessarily, i’m just curious. With borders being more for show than anything and the ability to purchase a passport from countries with low or no income tax, how do you propose to stop them?
This is where the nationalists win against the globalists in all types of debate. They atleast have a strategy, even if it leads to other humanitarian problems. You have to start giving more of a shit about your own community, either by becoming rich and giving it back to the community or let the rich leave and deal with the aftermath of it.
I hate this argument.
If they’re not paying their fair share of taxes then leaving is beneficial. It’s like saying “yeah but if you ask the thieves to pay for their stolen goods they might leave the store”
Totally agree with you, im 41 and all my live i head this shit excuse innmy country that the billonaires takes all their money and fly, so we need to shit all the people only to save a small group of billonaires for nothing, they never fly away, it more expensive than taxes but, you know, the assholes thinks that defending billonaires could give them money
Its not so much an argument as it is the logical conclusion to open borders. They can leave if they want. Especially if they haven’t broken any laws. They simply leave when a law gets voted through.
What if they’re paying their share/most of their share of taxes now, but a change pushes them into not doing so? These things ar enot all-or-nothing.
In something like Denmark’s case, I could see an argument. In the US? Rich people pay nearly nothing, so I think forcing them to pay taxes is a slam dunk
They never leave, that’s propaganda from the rich class (Massachusetts passed a millionaires tax and I saw in person this to be a bunch of bologna). They obviously live there for reasons other than taxes.
They definitely do.
During the financial crisis in the 90’s, Sweden was close to defaulting due to the rich moving their wealth out of Sweden.
I would want to understand that data, as it was a lot easier to just say things are happening in the 90s than today. The rich tried to say this would happen 3 years ago too. However, in the current police state in America where there is no privacy for anyone, we have a concrete example of raising the taxes on the parasite class and there was no data to back this claim.
Why haven’t they already?
it’s not an easy thing to solve, and a large part of it comes down to not having a country where greedy selfish assholes make all the rules and hoodwink the populace into supporting policy that completely the opposite of in their own best interest
i don’t know about other countries, but investing more in the “common good” has basically become a pejorative where i live, where people who benefit the most from publicly funded resources whine the loudest about “socialism”
it may be too late. there may be no solution, other than the late 1700s french sort
Their wealth is digitally stored, but their business isn’t. A car dealership or a Walmart are physical things that they can’t take with them unless they close up shop entirely and miss out on the revenue, and those are taxed too.
This does nothing for the current problem, which is the single largest group of people, Boomers, needing their State Pension paid, as Denmark is paid for out of general taxation, and these changes do not apply to this group, as it only applies to some of Gen X and younger. This is the same group PAYING for the boomers retirement, so they being asked to pay more than ever before and getting fucked over with the higher retirement age.
The high dependency ratio is going to continue to be a problem for quite a while. The time to solve the aging population problem was decades ago when their could have been policy to create budget surpluses, so that the boomer generation paid for its own care. But that didn’t happen and we can’t go back in time to fix it. All solutions now suck because that opportunity has been lost: you can screw the boomers by leaving them to die covered in bedsores and filth, or you can screw the younger generations by making them pay for care, or some combination.
None of which is tied to raising the retirement age for the younger groups, this does fuck all to fix the actual problem.
None of which is tied to medical or elder care for the Danes, this is also mostly funded by taxation, again mostly paid by the young.
The actual solution is to start means testing Ponzi scheme state pension funds with a tapered reduction based on private pension income. However that will never every happen to this particular group as they are the largest single group, and this will be a single issue voting matter for them as they are in the middle of retiring.
Social care should be self funded by the government forcing sell off, of assets like the home, for those that can for this generation.
It means more tax take and less superannuation spending. Depends on the country’s superannuation system, of course.
That means more money available for all the things taxes are used for, many of which are very very necessary.
How can you justify cuts to the healthcare system because you claim to not have enough money, but then pay pensioners some thousand dollars a fortnight, regardless of what assets or other income they have?
Seems like they oughta tax the rich higher, not make the poorer work till they collapse
Yes,
But also, perhaps superannuation being (at least here in NZ) not means tested and larger than all other welfare combined implies there is a problem.