Germany is weighing sweeping pension changes, including raising the retirement age to 70. Meanwhile, football fans are celebrating after the men's national side qualified for the World Cup knockout stage.
You asked about maintaining wealth and not expanding wealth. Productivity is output per work. If the output per work grows, we need less work to maintain the current output --> workers can chill more. Whether they retire earlier or have a 4-day-week.
A 4 day week could be done, but I still think that we cannot retire earlier since we live longer. There would be a imbalance between the time we work (that gets shorter) and the time we spend retired (which get longer). But to pay for the longer retire time you need somehow have put aside more money. If we talk about a couple of years then ok, maybe we can retire earlier if we get paid more (given the higher productivity), but if we talk about longer period then I don’t think we could be find a stable solution.
The only real solution, in my opinion, is that you can retire after how many years you want but your pension is proportional to what you set aside during your working life (with the state that only pay the gap between what you get and a minimum level of sussistence). This way you can work as long as you want and if you want to retire earlier this decision is not paid by others. The additional bonus is that I think that in the end people would try to be paid more to put aside more (if they want to retire early)
Right now that surplus of productivity is just grabbed by the owning class.
Not totally I think. I am sure I have a better life than my parent (at the same age) or my grandparents.
Yeah, right. And if our society wants to take that fair share to expand retirement for everybody, that’s cool. And to what a ‘fair share’ is…that depends. In Germany in the 50ies they basically took 50% of everybodys assets and had an maximum income tax bracket of 95% (which would start at 850k € yearly income today, if they had kept it), literally a max income, if you want. And apparently people thought that to be fair, so there’s that.
If people thought that to be fair then the 95% tax bracket would be still be there.
Obviously, no one thinks it’s “fair” to work for about 1 million euros and end up with the same salary as someone who works to earn 10% of that amount.
A 4 day week could be done, but I still think that we cannot retire earlier since we live longer
Does not compute. If you can reduce your work load by 20% (4 days instead of 5), you could retire earlier instead. When in life you reduce those 20% does not matter. And life expectancy is not expected to grow by 20% out of the sudden. So there’s plenty of room. If anything, life expectancy will shrink dramatically with climate change.
But to pay for the longer retire time you need somehow have put aside more money
Yep, if society burdens the individual with the planning of their retirement economics. You could also just expand the pension system, or have whatever funny idea ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Look, if we think about western, wealthy societies: if e.g. in Germany tomorrow we have like 2 million more pensioners out of the sudden…do we have a problem supplying them? As in, will supermarkets struggle to provide the food, so that they can eat? Do the houses they live in just vanish? Are clothing stores immediately empty, and they need to freeze during winter?
I’d say no, that wouldn’t happen. They would only struggle, because somehow they would not have the money to buy those things, the society still has the means to supply them. So it just is a matter of monetary distribution. And the distribution of said monetary resources is just shit currently, namely to the disadvantage of the poor, the working people and pensioneers. We could fix that.
Obviously, no one thinks
Yeah, right, “obviously no one” 🙄. Except for a lot of people that is not fair. But those are “no one”, I see. I, for once, am fine with different compensations. But when people work and cannot afford basic necessities, while others rake in thousands or even millions per day (and even pay less taxes on average, because the tax system favors income from assets over income from work)…that’s where ‘fair’ stops.
It’s funny, that everybody wants a ‘Wirtschaftswunder’ back. As it happens, said ‘Wirtschaftswunder’ was happening, because the state redistributed wealth to a crazy high degree. But nobody wants to make that connection, because that would mean an ugly fight with the owners. So no ‘Wirtschaftswunder’ for us, instead low salaries and crumbling infrastructure ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
A 4 day week could be done, but I still think that we cannot retire earlier since we live longer. There would be a imbalance between the time we work (that gets shorter) and the time we spend retired (which get longer). But to pay for the longer retire time you need somehow have put aside more money. If we talk about a couple of years then ok, maybe we can retire earlier if we get paid more (given the higher productivity), but if we talk about longer period then I don’t think we could be find a stable solution.
The only real solution, in my opinion, is that you can retire after how many years you want but your pension is proportional to what you set aside during your working life (with the state that only pay the gap between what you get and a minimum level of sussistence). This way you can work as long as you want and if you want to retire earlier this decision is not paid by others. The additional bonus is that I think that in the end people would try to be paid more to put aside more (if they want to retire early)
Not totally I think. I am sure I have a better life than my parent (at the same age) or my grandparents.
If people thought that to be fair then the 95% tax bracket would be still be there.
Obviously, no one thinks it’s “fair” to work for about 1 million euros and end up with the same salary as someone who works to earn 10% of that amount.
Does not compute. If you can reduce your work load by 20% (4 days instead of 5), you could retire earlier instead. When in life you reduce those 20% does not matter. And life expectancy is not expected to grow by 20% out of the sudden. So there’s plenty of room. If anything, life expectancy will shrink dramatically with climate change.
Yep, if society burdens the individual with the planning of their retirement economics. You could also just expand the pension system, or have whatever funny idea ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Look, if we think about western, wealthy societies: if e.g. in Germany tomorrow we have like 2 million more pensioners out of the sudden…do we have a problem supplying them? As in, will supermarkets struggle to provide the food, so that they can eat? Do the houses they live in just vanish? Are clothing stores immediately empty, and they need to freeze during winter?
I’d say no, that wouldn’t happen. They would only struggle, because somehow they would not have the money to buy those things, the society still has the means to supply them. So it just is a matter of monetary distribution. And the distribution of said monetary resources is just shit currently, namely to the disadvantage of the poor, the working people and pensioneers. We could fix that.
Yeah, right, “obviously no one” 🙄. Except for a lot of people that is not fair. But those are “no one”, I see. I, for once, am fine with different compensations. But when people work and cannot afford basic necessities, while others rake in thousands or even millions per day (and even pay less taxes on average, because the tax system favors income from assets over income from work)…that’s where ‘fair’ stops.
It’s funny, that everybody wants a ‘Wirtschaftswunder’ back. As it happens, said ‘Wirtschaftswunder’ was happening, because the state redistributed wealth to a crazy high degree. But nobody wants to make that connection, because that would mean an ugly fight with the owners. So no ‘Wirtschaftswunder’ for us, instead low salaries and crumbling infrastructure ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.