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Europe in ‘most dangerous situation’ since second world war, Danish PM warns (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 2 weeks ago by Severus_Snape@lemmy.world to c/europe@feddit.org
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[–] gian@lemmy.grys.it 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Erm, we’re far away from those numbers, so let’s discuss THAT when the time comes.

My nunbers where only an extreme example, but the point stand. You can still not work less years then the ones you can live in retirement. While working you do not put aside more than 100% of your salary (ok, let's say even only the 50% )

But apart from that, yes, productivity gains which are shared fairly enable exactly that: work less, be it less hours or earlier retirement or a mix of both.

I could agree with working less hours daily, it could make sense in certain case.

The productivity gains do exactly what is needed for it: more output with less input, it is directly connected.

Only if the gains in productivity also produce a rise in the salaries, which is a condition to be able to retire sooner (you put aside more money with an higher pay).

[–] kossa@feddit.org 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You can still not work less years then the ones you can live in retirement

OK, I get from your comments, that you do not talk about pay-as-you-go pension funds. Still, for funded pensions you would need to account for capital gains. Which, as previously discussed when fairly distributed, could lead to working less and retire longer.

And on the other hand, in a pay-as-you-go system, as in a lot of European countries, we soon start that expeeiment involuntarily, when all the Boomers finally are retired. It would easily work, when the owners are taxed accordingly. On the whole society level we than have more retirement years than working years.

Only if the gains in productivity also produce a rise in the salaries

Yep, that is the condition. It was met between 1900-1975. Since then the productivity gains were larger than the salary gains. That is, why it feels wrong to want to work less these days. But it is a political decisison which was driven by greedy owners. They wanted more of the cake and now tell their workers "you cannot work less, even when your output has risen like never before".

[–] gian@lemmy.grys.it 1 points 1 week ago

And on the other hand, in a pay-as-you-go system, as in a lot of European countries, we soon start that expeeiment involuntarily, when all the Boomers finally are retired. It would easily work, when the owners are taxed accordingly. On the whole society level we than have more retirement years than working years.

Not sure. You can tax the owners accordingly but they cannot sustain the cost for everyone else.

Only if the gains in productivity also produce a rise in the salaries

Yep, that is the condition. It was met between 1900-1975. Since then the productivity gains were larger than the salary gains. That is, why it feels wrong to want to work less these days. But it is a political decisison which was driven by greedy owners. They wanted more of the cake and now tell their workers “you cannot work less, even when your output has risen like never before”.

I agree that owners are now more greedy (not last because for the market now the only thing that matter is the next quarter) but as I can see the real problem is that every time we are talking about working less/retiring earlier we ignore the reality: we live longer and longer and with all the gain in productivity we cannot expect to offset the fact that we want to work less years.

I would agree to work 4 days a week with the same pay if the productivity is the same, but if we want to retire earlier and live longer I see no other way that work some more years because what you will get once retired is proportional to what you put aside now (accounting capital gains and everything else), there should be an balancing between the two period duration, especially if we don't want to have an heavy impact on the social welfare.