Chinese Work Less For Longer Retirements

I have a writing blockade on my usual themes, so let me take up something different:

‘Unrealistic and unreasonable’: Outcry as Denmark’s retirement age to become highest in Europe at 70 - Independent, May 23 2025

Denmark will increase its retirement age to 70 by 2040 making it the highest in Europe, after its parliament adopted a controversial new law.

Since 2006, retirement age in Denmark has been tied to life expectancy, which is currently 81.7 years. It is revised every five years and is set to rise to 68 in 2030 and 69 in 2035.
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The policy is “unrealistic and unreasonable”, 47-year-old roofer Tommas Jensen told public broadcaster Danmarks Radio. “We work and work and work, but we can’t keep going.”

While it might be different for those with desk jobs, Mr Jensen added, workers with physically demanding jobs would struggle with the changes.

To which Hongshen Zhu, a western educated professor in Hong Kong, made an astonishing comment:

China’s new retirement age for males born in 1970/12 is 61.5, and females is 55.25. With life expectancy 81.5 🇩🇰 vs 79 🇨🇳 and China’s much longer working hours (2450 hrs vs 🇩🇰 1563), Chinese work 4600 hours for 1 year of retirement, while Danes need to work for 6500 hours.

I have checked his numbers and they are, give and take depending on sources, in the right ranges.

This calculation assumed Chinese start working at 20 years old and Danes start at 22 years old to account for higher education level in Denmark. Average retirement age 58.4 is assumed in China, just an average of male/female retirement ages.

So 🇨🇳 worked for 38.4*2450=94000 hrs in exchange of 20.6 yrs; 🇩🇰 worked for 48*1563=75000 hrs, retire for 11.5 yrs.

My personal 2 cent on this:

• Europeans should work longer, especially when they are at a younger age.
• We will have to change our model of working in one (manual) specialty throughout once life. One can not be a roofer at an age above ~65. Let the younger ones do the more physically demanding jobs to transition into less physically demanding jobs as they get old.
• Pensions should be universal. The should be at a uniform level and guarantee only the basics of a decent life.

Your opinion will vary ...

Palestine Open Thread 2025-112

by Debs is Dead
lifted from a comment

Lately I've been avoiding reading about Palestine being genocided by zionists as I'm too old and too crook to get out & do anything about it and it seems words which ain't worth SFA are the only thing I can do now.

However today is too much. Lookit the silly fuss from every western fishwrap & googlebox about a pair of dead zionists on today, a day when Gaza health report the first official notice of five children dying of starvation, the zionist army shot at a bunch of western diplomats to chase them away from a spot where the zionists were indulging in the usual rape, torture and murder of Gaza civilians and that same army today announced the evacuation order for all people in Northern Gaza, in the region of more than 500,000 human beings being chased off their land - again.

In the light of that how can anyone see the dc shooting of a brace of zionist diplomats as anything other than a deliberate set-up by the entity's propaganda machine. Like I said up-thread the photo the zionists released of the two dead apologists for genocide just happened to be much more than a corporate portrait as it showed the pair arm-in-arm in a posed shot standing in front of the embassy logos; a seemingly ideal PR portrait of two photogenic young people, as if the picture takers knew they would need something sympathetic for zionism as for the past few days western fishwraps haven't been nice about zionists (they'll get over that now but), so this is a pic for the front page of every western fishwrap once these two are shot & killed.

The timing stinks far too much to be coincidental, just like the opportune appearance of the picture.

Even starmer had something 'anti-semitic' to say to media yesterday.

Hmm ...

The Israel Embassy Shooter Manifesto - 900-word document cites Gaza as motive - Ken Klippenstein

News & views related to the war in Palestine ...

Ukraine Open Thread 2025-111

News & views related to the war in Ukraine ...

Open (Neither Ukraine Nor Palestine) Thread 2025-110

News & views not related to the wars in Ukraine and Palestine ...

Ukraine Negotiations Still Hover Around Its Root Cause

The most important sentence from President Trump about yesterday's phone call between President Putin and him is this:

Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire and, more importantly, an END to the War. The conditions for that will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be, because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of.

The most important sentence by President Putin about yesterday's phone call is this:

Notably, Russia’s position is clear. Eliminating the root causes of this crisis is what matters most to us.

Russia will not fall for ending the war without having achieved its main goal.

Western media, here the NY Times, continue to play dumb (archived) about what the Russia's main goal is:

[Putin] repeated his mantra that a peace deal needs to “remove the root causes of this crisis,” referring to Russia’s pursuit of wide-ranging influence over Ukraine.

David Ignatius, a CIA spokesperson at the Washington Post, makes a similar (archived) nonsensical claim:

He still wants victory, which he described once again after Monday’s call with the phrase “eliminate the root causes of the crisis.” That’s code for his conviction that Ukraine cannot be a European country, as it wants, but must remain under Russian hegemony.

Russia as well as Ukraine are European countries. Russia has no interest in having 'hegemony' or 'wide-ranking influence' over Ukraine. Its interest is the defense of the Russian Federation. It had to prevent Ukraine from becoming a U.S. (NATO) spear tip aimed at its heart.

A different NY Times piece about the Russian northern defenses build up after Finland joined NATO is far more correct when it states (archived):

From Moscow’s perspective, the Russians need to bolster their defenses to protect themselves from NATO expansion, which has always been a sore subject. The Baltic nations were the first members of the former Soviet Union to join NATO, bringing large stretches of Russia’s border up against NATO’s. The prospect of Ukraine, an even bigger former Soviet republic, following suit was so threatening to Moscow that it became one of the causes of the most devastating land war in generations.

It is NATO expansion, not Ukraine the country, that is the root cause of the war. It is NATO expansion that has to be eliminated.

The U.S. and its European allies are still in denial of that. To ignore that the U.S. has, for over 30 years, been driving the NATO expansion that led to the war, allows Trump to play a 'mediator' in war in which the U.S. is a dominant participant.

It is stupid for western media to accept Trump's claim (archived) of such a role:

Cont. reading: Ukraine Negotiations Still Hover Around Its Root Cause

Gaza 'Aid'

Amid US pressure, Netanyahu announces resumption of Gaza aid without Cabinet vote - Ynet News, May 18 2025

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday authorized the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, a decision made without a cabinet vote and against the apparent will of a majority of ministers. The move came amid mounting pressure from the United States to prevent a worsening humanitarian crisis in the territory.

Tobias Cole comments:

Bibi and the War Cabinet are clinically insane........30 trucks per WEEK, to feed a population of 2.3 million people, is not nearly enough and they clearing know that.

If the EU is dumb enough to fall for this charade, then I have a bridge to sell them.......these officials like Smotrich are engaged in massive war crimes and are admitting so in the media daily......they have now issued orders to evacuate the second largest city in Gaza - Khan Yunis and have already completely destroyed in the entire municipality of Gaza City.

In the midst of these evacuation they continue missile attacks on refugee tent cities and hospitals.....

The IDF is now flying drones near hospitals to specifically ID persons with wish to assassinate - including individual public servants, doctors, nurses, emts, ambulance drivers, police officers, firefighters, journalists, every one with a public service duty is now be marked for elimination by the IDF.....

Massive war crimes......all in the name of rump state of Israel..........

I could not verify the tweet below. But as Zionist sadism has no bounds whatever, it is certainly a possibility  ...

Sarah Wilkinson @swilkinsonbc - 12:18 UTC · May 19, 2025

It looks like flour, but it’s shrouds, which do NOT classify as “basic aid” morally or under any law: 9 lorries of burial clothes #GazaDeathCamps
Pic (of truck load)

Palestine Open Thread 2025-109

News & views related to the war in Palestine ...

Ukraine Open Thread 2025-108

News & views related to the war in Ukraine ...

The MoA Week In Review - OT 2025-107

Last week's posts on Moon of Alabama:

• May 12 - An Immediate Peace Is The Best One Ukraine Can Ever Get
• May 16 - Ukraine - Negotiation Failure Plus Other Items
  Related:
  - The Odessa Moment - Scott Ritter
  - Europe's sticks are a little limp - Responsible Statecraft
  - The Istanbul Talks Were a Success - American Conservative
  - Russia, Ukraine prepare for peace by getting ready for war - Indian Punchline
  
  - Russian Troops Are War-Weary, but Want to Conquer More of Ukraine (archived) - NY Times
  - Idiotic Orders and Losses: Magura Commander Resigns - Military Land
  - Western gamers at war: from reddit to Pokrovsk - Events in Ukraine
  Ukrainian officers beating and killing their subordinates, fortification problems, the war for logistics, suicidal counter-offensive at Toretsk. Analysis of the Kostyantynivka and Pokrovsk directions
  - Ukrainian voice on NATO and negotiations - Events in Ukraine
  Message from beyond the Ukrainian curtain. Baltic play-tigers. New EU tariffs against Ukrainian goods. Coalition of the Unwilling
  
  - How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Nazis (Part 1) - Azov Lobby Blog

• May 13 - Uncertainty Of Future Tariffs Continues To Hamstring Economy
  Related:
  - A Credit Crunch Is Coming Soon - Seeking Alpha
  - Trump’s pause on China tariffs is still a ‘huge nightmare’ for small businesses - Yahoo
  - When Illusions of Wealth Shape the Economy: Understanding Pseudo-Wealth, Macroeconomic Volatility, and Social Welfare - Naked Capitalism

• May 14 - In Saudi Arabia Trump Rejects Interventionism, Regime-Change Schemes
  Related:
  - Trump’s Clean Break With the Interventionists - American Conservative
  - Qatar's Gift to Trump Is Unsold Plane It's Been Trying to Dump for Years - Newsweek
  - Trump’s Pledge to the Middle East: No More ‘Lectures on How to Live’ (archived) - NY Times
  - Trump’s moving finger writes on Gulf — and having writ, moves on to India-Pakistan - Indian Punchline

---
Other issues:

Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review - OT 2025-107

Ukraine - Negotiation Failure Plus Other Items

After some diplomatic gyrations, talks between the Russian Federation and Ukraine took place today in Istanbul, Turkey.

The Russian side had sent largely same delegation which had negotiated with Ukraine in March and April 2022. It sees the current negotiations as a continuation of the older ones, provided that new facts on the ground are taken into account.

The Ukrainian delegation was headed by its Minister of Defense Rustem Umerov. Its task was to demand an immediate ceasefire and to prepare a meeting between the presidents of the two countries.

The talks ended after just two hours.

The Russian side is said to have demanded a Ukrainian retreat from the four oblast the Russians have largely conquered and integrated into their country.

The Ukrainian side demanded an immediate ceasefire, the return of children the Russians had removed from the areas involved in military operations and the exchange of all prisoners (of which Russia has many more than Ukraine). It is obvious that Ukrainian side is not interested (yet) in making peace.

Both sides rejected the other side's demands and that was it. For now ...

The balance of power in the war is clearly on the Russian side. The Ukrainian army will thus continue to bleed and lose on the battlefield.

Another exchange of dead soldiers also occurred today. Thirty four corpse of Russia soldiers were exchanged against 909 Ukrainian ones. The rather absurd relation of 1 to 27 has been the case for quite a while. Indeed it seems that Russian side has limited the number of Ukrainian corpses it is willing to release per exchange to 909.

bigger

There are three reasons that contribute to the strong divergence of the numbers of dead on each side.

• For the Ukrainian side the evacuation of dead (and wounded) soldiers is not a priority.
• The Russian side is moving forwards winning control of areas that the Ukrainian side has lost. This allows to collect all dead while not being under fire.
• The Ukrainian losses are in general much higher than the Russian ones.

Lieutenant-General Andrey Mordvichev, who the Ukrainians had claimed to have killed on March 19 2022, has become the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Ground Forces in the rank of a Colonel-General.

The Ukrainian government 'lost' over $700 million buying arms and munitions which were never delivered or unusable.

How Ukraine lost hundreds of millions on arms deals gone wrong (archived) - Financial Times, May 16 2025
Desperate to source munitions, Kyiv paid foreign brokers for weapons and shells that were sometimes unusable or never arrived

A Financial Times investigation, based on leaked Ukrainian state documents, court filings and dozens of interviews with procurement officials, weapons dealers and manufacturers, and detectives, has uncovered how hundreds of millions of dollars Kyiv paid to foreign arms intermediaries to secure vital military equipment has gone to waste over the past three years of war.
...
To date, Ukraine has paid out $770mn in advance to foreign arms brokers for weapons and ammunition that have not been delivered, according to figures from Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence, as well as documents seen by the FT.
...

Most the deals have (presumably) involved large bribes.