Retirement age in Denmark set to raise to 70

[MikeRafone]

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg71v533q6o

I hadn’t realised Denmark was presently in line with uk on retirement age and now raising it to 70

and that’s for people born 1970 onwards! I wonder if this will be used for uk to fallow suit?

I ve just pointed out that manual workers don't live for many years after retirement! 3 or 4 if they are lucky.
Yet still get the reply "we all live longer" many do not.

Nor do we do jobs that are even possible to do as we age, nor should we want people too, do you want an electrician with poor eye sight and/or arthritic hands to be wiring your house?
Or 70yo lorry drivers?

We need more imaginative ways to manage retirement.

On net payers in etc.... if we have Govts that deliberately keep wages low, then this will be the result.

Civil Service pensions that people are currently paying into are generally pegged to the State Pension Age now. Yes, people can take early retirement before that as early as 55 but the value of their "pension pot" (no, it's not actually a pot) remains unchanged - they get a lower amount for a longer period.

Pensions used to be more generous but do you think there might be problems if an employer said "You've accepted lower salaries in exchange for better pensions for the 40 years but now we've decided to retrospectively remove your pension rights." ?

To add. My friend is a fit and healthy 58 -year old who retired from teaching at 55.
She started work at 22, so worked for 33 years.
If she lives to be 88, which she has a good chance of doing, she will have received her pension for longer than she paid into it.
My fil retired as a headteacher at 56. He's now 93. Contributed for 34 years has so far drawn his pension for 37 years.
It's not sustainable in any shape or form

yeah The reality is that Civil service pay is really low if you don’t factor in the pension, so good luck to them with recruitment if they go down that route.

Also agree that wage suppression is a real problem..

Is it though?
I know we are all conditioned into thinking public sector pay is low, but it really isn't

Well ... it depends how high the pension is. If someone retires early and takes an actuarially reduced annual pension then it's no less sustainable than if they retired at 67.

I know we're all supposed to believe that public-sector pay is generous, on a like-to-like basis, compared to private sector but it really isn't.

the world of work is going to change beyond all recognition in the next few years. There will be a much reduced need for people doing most jobs. robotics will be able to achieve most manual jobs. Even jobs like care work will be able to be done partly by increase in use of technology. All driving jobs will go, physical shopping will reduce, hospitality jobs will be replaced by ordering with an app. AI will take over most banking, legal, teaching jobs. All these things have already started.

What we do with our lives and how finances work will also need to change.

Yes it definitely is low paid.

I'm getting the impression that @Katypp has never got over failing the sift for a Civil Service job.

Real-terms pay has dropped "starkly" at all civil service grades since 2010, with senior civil service wages dropping by nearly a quarter in that time, a new analysis has found…Salaries have fallen by between 12% and 23% in real terms at each grade since 2010, according to the think tank's analysis of Office for National Statistics figures. The drop is greater at the higher levels, with senior civil servants seeing the biggest real-terms cut (22.9%), followed by Grade 6/7 (19.7%), SEO/HEO (17.2%), EO (16.4%) and finally administrative officers/assistants (11.7%).
. But it added that real-terms civil service earnings have also declined “starkly” this year compared to the private sector and that pay rises were “ungenerous” in comparison with other parts of the public sector

https://www.civilserviceworld.com/professions/article/civil-service-pay-cut-real-terms-inflation-since-2010-whitehall-monitor-ifg

I’m always amazed at some of the roles they advertise with heaps of responsibility for under 40K. But I would also say that I am aware this isn’t solely a civil service issue. Wage suppression in the UK is a thing. I just know in the Uk civil reason it’s been kind of quietly justified as a trade off for the decent pension.

Alternative options exist to have similar effect, I.e. charge nic on pensions, reduce the tax freeelement of the lump sum, higher rate of income tax on different types of income (like we used to have). Lots of options to get more tax out of pensions even if contractually the pension entitlements can’t be changed retrospectively. Always more than one way to skin a cat!

Yeah it’s a bit of a joke when some graduates in graduate jobs who also have student loans to pay and are not getting any UC top
ups end up no better off and even worse off than those on minimum wage.

Thats not to say NMW earners should get less btw, it’s not a race to the bottom - but the low middle group should get more raises too. Too many people have seen significant cuts in real terms.

So you would introduce different tax rules for pensions for public sector workers?

Well yes, obviously people won’t have the same income and spending power if they’re not working, so living standards will fall. It’s inevitable that fewer working people will mean less tax revenue, fewer benefits, etc. We can’t keep borrowing tens and hundreds of billions each year to pay people to do little or nothing!

Ah, I see what you're saying. My post was all about civil service pensions, including the final paragraph (though to be fair I didn't specify it there).

Different tax rules for all pensions over certain amounts and maybe certain ages. Or different tax rules only for defined benefit schemes. I don’t think it would be legally possible to differentiate between public and private sector, but tax revenues could be raised by tweaking the rules in other ways that hit the bigger and maybe earlier pension payouts which tend to be the public sector ones.

I’m wondering if it’s even worth worrying about putting money into a pension if it’s getting to a point you’d die before receiving it anyway.

You do realise that plenty of people die in their 60s or earlier and never get to claim SP?

Of course its sustainable, we introduced the SP when there was previous none, with women able to claim from 60

I hope your friend does live until she is 88 or longer, she will be paying tax on her pensions too, she should also be paying NI too....

I was talking about massive Government contributions to public sector pensions and workers retiring early

3 of my 4 grandparents have been retired longer than they worked. I don't think it will be all that unusual as we hit the tail end of those retiring at 55, but living until 80+.
A third of council tax is already going on pensions - and it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
There's been absolutely no thought or planning for who is going to pay for it all!

Many people in teaching etc retire early, but then do PT supply work, marking, etc etc

My sister did, friends in the Village where i live do too, not all but unless you have other means, a teachers pension at 55 isn't enough to live the high life on.

Even with a partner, who may still be working, its still a decent drop in income.

Plus people get bored!

Many manual council workers will die long before they get into the late 70s...

@Bumpitybumper The majority of the population are not net contributors, we were for many years. Not mega wealthy on a multi millionaire level but in top 5% of earning households for quite a number of years. We are older Gen X and have retired at 55/56 recently. Paying tax on our pensions and no benefits. Well @Badbadbunny as net contributors and better off we remain quite hated by some sections of society.

Some countries directly link entitlement to benefits to the amount of tax/ contributions that have been paid by an individual. Such as Spains unemployment system. I think systems like this could be looked at in the future.

Yes it is in the civil service. It's not conditioning it's true.

My view on private pensions is skewed by what happened to my mum. She took out a pension so that she would have " a bit extra" in retirement so consequently had less income whilst working.

However in retirement the pension brought her to just over the qualifying amount for pension credit, so she then lost out because if she hadn't paid in to a private pension, she would have got it from the state anyway, just like the people who never bothered with pensions and had the extra money whilst working.