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May 23, 2025
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.
…
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 …

Posted by b on May 23, 2025 at 15:01 UTC | Permalink
Comments

Work is a Satanic perversion of the human spirit.
Don’t work.
Sit around in communes, play music and feed each other.
Even the lazy and useless.
We’re all going to die anyway.

Posted by: Arch Bungle | May 23 2025 15:07 utc | 1

Live longer today = work for longer tomorrow. That is only fair, if one expects to be taken care of with all the medical advances available to retirees today. Income support aside, old people take up the bulk of the healthcare system, while no longer contributing to either.
A 65 year old today cannot be compared to a 65 year old 100 or even 50 years ago. An extreme example, but Brad Pitt is 60 years old and just played a semi believable F1 driver. Even footballers are no longer seeing 30 as retirement age, rather the peak of their career which for many now reaches close to 40 or over.
You would think Governments could argue this obiouvs give and take reality a little better…

Posted by: Rubiconned | May 23 2025 15:12 utc | 2

Europe in 2040 is not a pretty thought

Posted by: Jacq | May 23 2025 15:13 utc | 3

Once again China is making progress as the West rent seeks itself into oblivion.
There are very few domains where the West leads the way, and in 10 years there will be none.
Get a passport while you can. China has been growing a visa free travel program for visitors to experience the first world in 2025.
In related news, BYD has now surpassed Tesla sales in Europe.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | May 23 2025 15:19 utc | 4

i saw this yesterday too… and i saw the numbers for china…
i know a roofer who is about 47 years old and his body is already breaking down… any roofer still at it in his 50’s, let alone 60’s – good luck with that.. it is a tough job.. i went out a few times with a good friend – a roofer.. he died about 15 years ago of lung cancer.. the job is generally very hard work and a young mans job..
i guess it is time to destroy the concept of retirement now…the capitalist system has worked hard to destroy unions.. now onto any ideas of retirement…

Posted by: james | May 23 2025 15:20 utc | 5

Assume people pay 20% of their salary into a pension pot, for 40 years. Assume this money gets invested in shares, at 10 % interst per year. Ignore compounded interest to keep the calculations simple.
After 10 years, 2 annual salaries gave been paid into the pot. Doubling to 4 after an additional 10 years, 8 salaries after 10 more years and 16 annual salaries when retiring after 40 years. Adding compounded interest, just the first tennyears of pension contributions would cover 20 years of pension payments, at 100 % of the early life salaries!
Most countries pay a lot less. And there are an additional thirty years of pension contributions. Drawing interst for many, many years.
If all this money every one of us is paying into the pension pot every month is not sufficient to pay every one of us a very decent pension after 30-40 years of working, somebody is either doing a lousy job looking after the money. Or someone is outright stealing from the pot.
High time for someone to investigate. Not Rob pensioners again by cutting their pensions!

Posted by: Marvin | May 23 2025 15:23 utc | 6

All trades should be able to retire at 55 with full pensions. I’m former trades person and at 55 your body is very tired

Posted by: jo6pac | May 23 2025 15:23 utc | 7

Posted by: Jacq | May 23 2025 15:13 utc | 3
> Europe in 2040 is not a pretty thought
Well it depends what is meant by ‘Europe’.
Geographically, it stretches from Iceland to Ural mountains and from Svalbard to Malta so looking that way perhaps it is not that bad.

Posted by: hopehely | May 23 2025 15:23 utc | 8

Can we please stop calling these outrageous cuts of pensions “increasing the retirement age?”
How many 65 year old people are getting hired into jobs? How many 60 year olds are getting fired for being too old?
Nobody wants old people in their company, it is simply not possible to work until 65. Or 67. Or even older. The companies won’t let you.
“Raising the retirement age” is a cheap plot to Rob pensioners of their money by reducing their pensions.

Posted by: Marvin | May 23 2025 15:27 utc | 9

Posted by: james | May 23 2025 15:20 utc | 5
> i guess it is time to destroy the concept of retirement now…the capitalist system has worked hard to destroy unions.. now onto any ideas of retirement…
Well capitalism is not against the concept of retirement, it it just against the concept of retirement pensions.
You can retire anytime you want, but fend for yourself.
Isn’t it that Japan does not provide retirement pensions?

Posted by: hopehely | May 23 2025 15:31 utc | 10

The trouble we’re having right now is we have to keep working longer because of demographics … there aren’t enough young people to take the places of retirees.
You would think that this would mean plenty of jobs for young people however that isn’t the case as all the manufacturing jobs have been offshored. There’s plenty of work in retail sales however the wages they pay doesn’t allow you to afford a place to live on a bus route and if you live out of town where the rents are affordable you need a car and the wages retail pays doesn’t allow you to make payments on an affordable car and a place to live so in many cases young people are just homeless.
You put the two of these conditions together and the only people who can afford to take a job are the ones who should be retiring which results in a vicious cycle where older workers who should be retiring can’t afford to because of the cost of accommodations and the young people who should be taking their places can’t afford to take the jobs even if they were open.
I was a contractor working in commercial construction however I’ve always had a hand in apprenticeship training and served as the training coordinator for the a carpenters union local. It is extremely difficult to find smart, productive apprentices these days … few want to work that hard any more.

Posted by: HB_Norica | May 23 2025 15:36 utc | 11

Posted by: HB_Norica | May 23 2025 15:36 utc | 11
#######
This is tied to social culture, family cohesion, breeding opportunities, and other social drivers of character and motivation.
The West needs a bottom up rethinking, IMO.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | May 23 2025 15:44 utc | 12

Although the Chinese earlier retirement is progressive, they have a generation dearth in new labour members so I believe China will have to extend the retirement terms in the next few years.

Posted by: canuck | May 23 2025 15:45 utc | 13

Europe in 2040 is not a pretty thought
Posted by: Jacq | May 23 2025 15:13 utc | 3
Agreed.
—————-
all the medical advances available to retirees today.
Posted by: Rubiconned | May 23 2025 15:12 utc | 2
Problem are rents associated
———————-
Once again China is making progress as the West rent seeks itself into oblivion.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | May 23 2025 15:19 utc | 4
BINGO!
—————-
would cover 20 years
Posted by: Marvin | May 23 2025 15:23 utc | 6
real inflatio is twice official rate
———-
How many 65 year old people are getting hired into jobs? How many 60 year olds are getting fired for being too old?
“Raising the retirement age” is a cheap plot to Rob pensioners of their money by reducing their pensions.
Posted by: Marvin | May 23 2025 15:27 utc | 9
Easier to lie…
———
Some decades ago I explained to a friend
As with women for a family before, first can’t work, afterwards it gives a good life and finally it’s mandatory just to get by

Posted by: Newbie | May 23 2025 15:47 utc | 14

Posted by: canuck | May 23 2025 15:45 utc | 13
The new retirement age is already settled for the next 15 years.
“Starting from January 1, 2025, the statutory retirement age for men will be gradually raised from 60 to 63 over a period of 15 years, and for women cadres the age will be raised from 55 to 58, and for women blue-collar workers from 50 to 55.”
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202502/1328945.shtml

Posted by: Surferket | May 23 2025 15:54 utc | 15

US–Consider:
1. When I retired and began getting Social Security payments, the age to get full payments was 65, but I retired early at 62 and got less. That worked out ok because inflation has been high–I needed it.
2. Start the kids on Social Security for their paid work. My parents did that for our work at the family store beginning when I was eleven.

Posted by: HelenB | May 23 2025 15:55 utc | 16

Although the Chinese earlier retirement is progressive, they have a generation dearth in new labour members so I believe China will have to extend the retirement terms in the next few years.
Posted by: canuck | May 23 2025 15:45 utc | 13
Energy and automation. If you don’t seek rents (nor crowd control by fear and exploitation) plenty of production with a fraction of work
Robots, AI, fission+fusion
An epoch to be remembered the one we live, either edge of post-scarcity or soon to be lost and forgotten golden age

Posted by: Newbie | May 23 2025 15:56 utc | 17

All trades should be able to retire at 55 with full pensions. I’m former trades person and at 55 your body is very tired
Posted by: jo6pac | May 23 2025 15:23 utc | 7
I hung up the tools at 55. I know so many guys who kept on working until 65 and ended up basically crippled with arthritis. I have arthritis and other wear and tear injuries however I keep it in check with exercise and a great relationship with a physio. I still have a cabinet shop and do small jobs but I make it clear I work to my own schedule not yours.

Posted by: HB_Norica | May 23 2025 15:57 utc | 18

That car or truck you have eats a hole in your income with its gas, insurance, and repairs. Locate home and job to reduce your time and money spent on commuting and shopping and other family transportation.

Posted by: HelenB | May 23 2025 15:59 utc | 19

Do you know who you meet on a random Chinese street at midnight? Gangs of 80 years old people doing tai chi or chatting with their friends. China have a much better respect towards older ages. They not only have better money on top the culture have respect for the people who created the wealth. Europe sucks…

Posted by: rico rose | May 23 2025 16:01 utc | 20

With all the technological advances, we should all be working less and retiring sooner. The only reason we don’t is because of capitalism. Billionaires can’t afford to cease exploiting us to death and they also can’t afford to allow us to live in a society where everyone has granted access to food and shelter. That’s it. It’s not complicated.

Posted by: Vit5o | May 23 2025 16:02 utc | 21

Posted by: rico rose | May 23 2025 16:01 utc | 20
#######
Hey man, that is freedom, democracy, and “European Values”. 😂😂😂
Culture matters. Traditions matter.
The soul matters.
Expecting a civil peaceful and respectful society from nihilistic materialists is crazy.
When nothing philosophical or existential is revered, it’s a race to the bottom.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | May 23 2025 16:09 utc | 22

The West needs a bottom up rethinking, IMO.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | May 23 2025 15:44 utc | 12
Absolutely. We’ve known for that the boomers would be retiring and they didn’t produce nearly enough children to support their retirement.
The problem as I see it is government here work on the 4 year plan. Year one they undo everything the previous government does. Year 2 and 3 they put their policies in place minus the massive amount of time they spend on vacation and the fourth year they run for reelection. There is ZERO long term planning in our political culture … it’s just getting elected then getting re-elected.
On top of that we have shit like the Canadian Medical Association whose mandate is to insure physicians make the most money possible by limiting the number of university seats available in universities and keeps foreign trained physicians from practicing in Canada. My wife’s company has trained over 100 foreign trained neurosurgeons, pediatricians, heart specialists and GP’s to be ‘patient navigators” because they aren’t allowed to practice. 6.5 million Canadians don’t have a family doctor and these fucks at the CMA are just concerned about their incomes and making sure those university seats go to their kids.
This is just one example … this attitude is also held by other health care professionals.

Posted by: HB_Norica | May 23 2025 16:14 utc | 23

****Our experience will vary
I am 65 years young and “retired” properly at 62.
I am now collecting $1650.00 CAD per month.
Not enough to live on my own but the wife makes a bit more than me so we JUST make it with all the bills. I am thrilled to death to be able to pound at the keyboard how long and whenever I want.
Lol, my work history is exactly the opposite of the situation b mentions, I was a sedentary IT specialist for 28 years until I couldn’t take it anymore. Idiocracy/Marching Morons yada yada…
I said screw it, I want to build something instead of fixing/repairing something (all the time) so I went back to school for Solar Energy tech and ended up humping 50 Lb solar panels while navigating gas-line and stinkpipe infested roofs all day lofl. Did that for 6 years after my 55th birthday laying down something like 16-18 MW’s in total until just after covid laid me off.
Everyday is Friday……

Posted by: bisfugged | May 23 2025 16:16 utc | 24

“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.”
My two cents: European wage slaves should dust off their history books and closely review both the Franch and Russian Revolutions. Study them critically. Organize themselves as a party of by and for European wage slaves and work systematically and non violently, when possible via organized general strikes, to politically and then physically oust the European bourgeois and all their loyalists from any position of authority. Once done, they should declare all industrial and bank property to be public property, provide work to all who can and guarantee a universal economic right to have ones basic human needs met including education as far as one can keep up. Needless to say, all support for Imperialist war in Ukraine, Israel and Asia would cease. Instead a revolutionary army would have been built from the seizure of power and it’s aftermath. That force would be professionalized and prepared to fight off Imperialist opposition and aid wage slaves seeking liberation in other countries.
B’s suggestions aren’t bad, but the wage slaves can only improve their lot after they have seized power and ousted the Imperialist pigs. Why? Because there is no semblance of democracy anywhere in the west, no means for even minor change have been left to the wage slaves within this system. Every reform mentioned on this thread today is frankly impossible without a social revolution.

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | May 23 2025 16:16 utc | 25

With all the technological advances, we should all be working less and retiring sooner.
Posted by: Vit5o | May 23 2025 16:02 utc | 21
yea … that kind of thinking went out in 1985 along with the “paperless office”.
What’s actually happened is technology means less workers, more profits, more competition for jobs and lower wages.

Posted by: HB_Norica | May 23 2025 16:17 utc | 26

Posted by: Surferket | May 23 2025 15:54 utc | 15
In my opinion this won’t be enough-they will have to continually raise the age to replace the dwindling younger workers as well as the economic cost for the older workers pensions.
Hope I’m wrong, but the math seems insurmountable ; anyways, ‘time will tell’.

Posted by: canuck | May 23 2025 16:18 utc | 27

Isn’t this whole issue mostly one of misallocation of means of existence, at least in modern societies? I mean, perhaps 5% or less people work in food production, maybe another 5-15% work in other types of “daily necessity” work. Most of the rest of us work service, teaching, selling and marketing, transportation, medical, etc. …
Isn’t the problem in most modern societies lack of work for the younger age working population … that us oldies are clogging up the advancement channels? I’d say shorter working weeks (a la France) are more appropriate than longer.
Finally, with AI and robotics advancing relentlessly, isn’t the main challenge finding adequate work and purpose in people’s lives, which is in rather short supply already? With self driving trucks, automated factories, AI legal, medical, and teaching … what we need is a discussion of what the hell we all are going to usefully do?
Or are we finally going to get to the vision of Of Mice and Men and all of us “live offa the fatta the land” …?

Posted by: Caliman | May 23 2025 16:19 utc | 28

Arch @ 1
HEAR HEAR (sound of fist pounding on desk).
I generally considered myself as a couch potato living in a hamster wheel world.
Thank god that’s over with. As an added bonus I get to draw my pension for a few years until it all implodes and nobody gets anywhere near what they deserve after 40 years of working and contributing.

Posted by: bisfugged | May 23 2025 16:20 utc | 29

The problem with “only the basics of a decent life”:
* Who defines “the basics”?
* Who defines “a decent life”?
My opinion is that at age 60 all necessary life expenses – housing, medical care, groceries, water, and electricity – should be covered by society. People who want to continue to work after that should be allowed to (there are plenty of seniors who love to work) but the burden of labor should be the burden of the young and able-bodied (who should also be given as much direction over their work as possible). Our society is more than wealthy enough, has great enough productive forces, to provide well-being for all.
I agree with @ Posted by: Arch Bungle | May 23 2025 15:07 utc | 1

Posted by: fnord | May 23 2025 16:21 utc | 30

Posted by: canuck | May 23 2025 15:45 utc | 13
Will China extend retirement? Well,they just did. It was 60 yrs up through 2019 when I was there. I left in 2019 due to COVID–as a foreigner during an epidemic, I was required to go.

Posted by: HelenB | May 23 2025 16:21 utc | 31

With all the technological advances, we should all be working less and retiring sooner.
Posted by: Vit5o | May 23 2025 16:02 utc | 21
Remove the ruling class and their system or wage slavery and we can. Just a question of cutting out the middle man. What do they do anyway? Play stock market? This class produces nothing but misery. The wage slaves produce every useful item you’ll encounter today as you go about your business.

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | May 23 2025 16:21 utc | 32

James @5
Bingo!!
Nailed it!

Posted by: bisfugged | May 23 2025 16:23 utc | 33

Arch Bungle @1:

Don’t work.
Sit around in communes, play music…

Hate to sound like I am picking on you, but someone has to make your Steinway, or your Fender Stratocaster and Marshall stack, otherwise your music will be rather primitive.

…and feed each other….

With what? Agriculture takes work. Mechanized agriculture takes less work, but requires massive industrial supply chains. Industry doesn’t happen without human work.
And what about the people who don’t happen to live where the weather is perfect year `round? Lounging in the weeds in the buff cannot work for everyone, as not everyone has a thick pelt. Clothing and shelter also require work.
Work is not only necessary, it is what defines us humans as a species.
Of course, there are ways to organize human labor other than for profit (capitalism). Rather than advocating lounging about until starvation takes us, it is more useful to think hard about better ways to organize socially useful productive human activity.

Posted by: William Gruff | May 23 2025 16:25 utc | 34

Changing a profession as suggested is possible as this is the path taken by myself. From roofer and other construction trades to warehousing then to computers when I was 40. Was fortunate to be able to use a government program for retraining after a mass layoff. Clickity click on the computer mouse/keyboard is much easier in my sixties than being out in the weather moving around heavy shingles or spreading hot tar on a roof.

Posted by: Tux | May 23 2025 16:27 utc | 35

Changing a profession as suggested is possible as this is the path taken by myself. From roofer and other construction trades to warehousing then to computers when I was 40. Was fortunate to be able to use a government program for retraining after a mass layoff. Clickity click on the computer mouse/keyboard is much easier in my sixties than being out in the weather moving around heavy shingles or spreading hot tar on a roof.

Posted by: Tux | May 23 2025 16:27 utc | 36

To me it is unacceptable that the government invites who they want, and hands out social security benefits as they wish. Universal social security ended with open borders.
Make all social security and pension payments personal and transferable. Personal, so it is for you only. Transferable, so you can give some to your loved ones, if you feel that is justificed. Stop paying when the money’s gone. Allow people to check how much they have saved in their personal account.

Posted by: Passerby | May 23 2025 16:27 utc | 37

The difference between the Chinese and Westerners is that one focuses on the method and the other on the result.
People should get x,y, and z.
Ok.
How?
What has to happen to achieve that?
Too much magic thinking when problem solving and effort are needed.
It used to be that parents would pay in blood to give their children a better future.
In the West today?
It’s everyone for themselves.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | May 23 2025 16:28 utc | 38

****
The Canadian CPPIB(?) that funds our pensions has a website that shows all the “investments” it currently has to build(lol) it’s money base to fund all the pensioners. It owns large office buildings that are so badly underwater that they sold one of their San Fran area office towers for a dollar!!
Better get yours while you can folks! If you’re Canadian, better start your pension journey at 60 if you’re not working full-time. Hurry lolol.

Posted by: bisfugged | May 23 2025 16:30 utc | 39

My opinion: Politicians voted in the Danish parliament to increase the age. Problem is Politicians. Solution 1, burn down the parliament with the Politicians who voted yes tied to their seats. Solution 2, create a one party system like China’s as it seems to be the only way to govern.

Posted by: Ogre | May 23 2025 16:30 utc | 40

“China is gradually increasing its retirement age for both men and women, starting in 2025. Currently, the retirement age is 60 for men and 55 for women in white-collar jobs, and 50 for women in blue-collar jobs. The gradual increase will ultimately raise the retirement age for men to 63 and for women to 58 in white-collar jobs, and 55 in blue-collar jobs.
Elaboration:
Gradual Increase:
The change will be implemented over a 15-year period, with the retirement age increasing gradually each year.
Reason for the Change:
China’s aging population and declining birth rate are major factors driving this change, as well as the need to address pension fund deficits.
Impact on Retirement:
This change means that individuals will work for longer before being eligible for full retirement benefits.”
There will be exceptions. How old is Xi Jinping???

Posted by: HelenB | May 23 2025 16:32 utc | 41

bisfugged @39
Forgot to add that the CPPIB pension fund also owns a lot of sovereign bonds that are soon to mature….at 1.5%. LMFAO This is seriously nighmare-ish people!

Posted by: bisfugged | May 23 2025 16:32 utc | 42

The pension age is increased so that less people will be able to work until the required pension age which as a consequence would be that those people will have a lower pension.
Even with desk jobs it becomes more challenging to work because of cognitive decline. I’ve had situations where I would explain something to an older person several times and 3 days later the person didn’t even remember we had interacted. No employer is really interested in old people who generally have less capacity to learn new things and adapt to new things than younger people. It reminds me of the episode of Workaholics S1E06 where 2 of the protagonists in their 20’ies are on strike and replaced by 2 old geezers.
I don’t know what the solution would be. The dwindling younger working population will be unable to support the aging inactive population. Maybe some base minimum pension would do it. Better than forced euthanasia or Soilent Green.

Posted by: xor | May 23 2025 16:33 utc | 43

Danish retirement in 2040 at 70 ???? I think the danish government hopes that no one in Denmark will reach that age.

Posted by: WMG | May 23 2025 16:37 utc | 44

Pensions are a pot of gold that no capitalist financier can resist debasing. Therefore equitable retirement schemes fall outside the scope of “profit sharing”.
The jist of it is that elderly people simply aren’t valued once they are no longer rentable.
Oliver Heavyside, to whom we are indebted for basically everything electronic, was reduced to penury in his old age ==> https://ethw.org/w/images/3/38/Heaviside_-_correspondence_regarding_heavisides_living_conditions.pdf
The reckoning for continuing such selfish shortsightedness will fall heavily upon us all.
Wisdom is not what it used to be.

Posted by: too scents | May 23 2025 16:38 utc | 45

“With all the technological advances, we should all be working less and retiring sooner. ”
Posted by: Vit5o | May 23 2025 16:02 utc | 21
That is quite a logical assumption, Vit5o but I will explain to you while in reality it doesn’t work.
Round up (agricultural Tech)other methods of destroying earth bound bacteria help in the short term in increased harvest yields. However, over 60-90 years the soil becomes more infertile such that more and more inputs (chemicals that are bad for your health) have to be used on the arable land to produce the same yields.
So more cost to complete that same yield because of ‘agricultural inputs’ is a hindrance to prosperity.
Furthermore, the chemical inputs have hurt people’s health-that costs money in terms of lost labour and medical care.
Our modern tomato, which has been genitically altered by adding more water and getting larger (there’s capitalism for you); TRIGGER WARNING: Although the modern apple is about 2.5 times the size of a 1933 apple it only contains 30% (!!!) of the nutrients in the 1933 apple.
Hence people have to eat more food to get the same nutrient level, (same with beef or grazing animals the soil has been poisoned/deleted so much that very little nutrients in the soil now exist so fewer nutrients in the animal meat we ingest) so people get obese and develop chronic diseases that lead to less labour and more medical costs.
Tech gave us the mRNA vaccines-I don’t think anyone still suggests they are, ‘safe and effective’ (turbo cancers as one side effect of these poisons); as a matter of fact they will cost us trillions in medical costs and lost labour in the coming decades.
Instead of using a cheap cure, Ivermectin, the PTB decreed we need expensive tech cause the Oligarchs have to have more dough. Uninformed people are put on many prescription drugs where if they just changed their diet and exercised properly they would not need the drugs which just treat the symptoms-a huge cost in lost labour and expense.
More pollutants lead to more costs.
I could go on but, in my opinion, we are going the wrong way to develop people retiring earlier and living longer

Posted by: canuck | May 23 2025 16:40 utc | 46

CORRECTION:
Furthermore, the chemical inputs have hurt people’s health-that costs money in terms of lost labour and medical care.
Our modern tomato, which has been genitically altered by adding more water and getting larger (there’s capitalism for you); TRIGGER WARNING: Although the modern tomato is about 2.5 times the size of a 1933 tomato it only contains 30% (!!!) of the nutrients in the 1933 tomato.

Posted by: canuck | May 23 2025 16:42 utc | 47

Yesterday was in town for med appts. This is a city in NorCal. Half the people, it seemed, were Asians, Black-Africans, emigres of one stripe or another. It goes without saying, the medical system here, in the belly of the beast, is patently absurd. The costs are ever skyrocketing, while services decline, and this is for the so-called middle-class tax payers. God forbid you are one of the unfortunate, like the homeless and dispossessed, and the many indigent cases — you will receive only scornful reproaches, at best. So, can we hope for pensions? —for anything? Why should we expect any succor, when the number of those deprived of reasonable help grows daily, exponentially even. Yet, people are apparently flocking here. There are riches everywhere, it is a crown of materialism, California, to be sure. But the crown of freedoms is unfortunately sometimes too heavy to bear up.

Posted by: Nothingburgers | May 23 2025 16:42 utc | 48

canuck @ 27
I believe with all my heart that we are being lied to since imo the situation with pensions is dire, there already is not enough workers contributing cuz many or most young people will never work 40 hours a week in their lifetimes!! That’s the culture! Here in wine country (Ontario) there are farmers trying to poach foreign workers from neighbours to tend their vineyards. You will never see a young Canadian of 20-22 years working in that environment.
I also believe that the military, hell ANY military is going to have serious problems filling any quotas for conscription IF it comes to that.

Posted by: bisfugged | May 23 2025 16:47 utc | 49

Dr Jason Hickel’s research demonstrates almost all work (80%) is performed to produce material surpluses for profits which accrue to the top 1% of income earners. Only 20% of production is needed to satisfy the median demand of the entire population. Overproduction is the cause of extraction beyond sustainability. Everyone in Western capitalist societies must toil to in order to create wealth for the power elites, the dominant minority, while the socialist society with Chinese characteristics is lowering the age of retirement.

Posted by: Keme | May 23 2025 16:53 utc | 50

EXCELLENT b,
Now let’s get to the crux of the issue or should I say propaganda of it all.
They try and make it – “How are you going to pay for it” story when the truth is it is a productivity story.
As full monetary sovereign countries issue and create money from thin air. It is NEVER a We can’t afford it story.
Part 1: Productivity Story
The working population has to be productive enough to supply the goods and services that everybody needs. That includes workers and the retired. If we are not productive enough then a battle happens over the goods and services we produce between those working and those retired which drives prices up.
So due to being not productive enough the government will either make people work longer or cut the spending power of pensioners. So that battle between workers and the retired doesn’t happen.
But rather than admit productivity is shite they lie using the tax payer money myth , deficit and debt myths and say the country can’t afford it.

Posted by: Sun Of Alabama | May 23 2025 16:56 utc | 51

Work is not only necessary, it is what defines us humans as a species.
Posted by: William Gruff | May 23 2025 16:25 utc | 34
A great point. No other animal lives by altering it’s environment through labor. Tigers have their claws, birds their wings and fish their find, but for humans it comes down to an amped up brain and opposable thumbs with which to radically alter mother nature to their benefit.

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | May 23 2025 16:59 utc | 52

canuck @46
There was a report that came out by a few doctors/researchers at posted at Expose.com that looked at mental/cognitive decline after mRNA vaccines(covid) for the period 2022 to 2024 and there is a widespread incidence of brain fog that is everywhere, from 30/40 years old’s and up. If this is a trend and in our future, I feel really sorry for young families with many kids. This is horrific for all of us.

Posted by: bisfugged | May 23 2025 17:02 utc | 53

Part 2: Productivity Story not an affordability story.
That brings us to the Paradox of productivity.So what is the Paradox of Productivity ?
The neoclassical Keynsian, monetarist and Austrian view still believes that the economy tends to fix itself. If we just sit back economic growth will go back to its maximum.
Oh yes, these people are ideologically insane.
Unemployment will drop to 2% what we consider full employment but it might need some help now and then. The Paul Krugman mainstream view. That There are no business cycles. Remember that when the globalist neoliberal UK Parliament claimed the business cycle is dead.
However, the truth is you could have the purist free market economy in the world but still have big unemployment numbers because the system tends to move towards breakdown.
Why ? Why does the system tend to move towards breakdown ?
Why can’t it be that higher wages force firms to invest in better management techniques and the most advanced technologies in order to get the most out of their higher cost labour?
That’s known as the paradox of productivity. Productivity improvements just lead to falling prices, so firms try to avoid doing productivity improvements and prefer to try and obtain monopoly power instead. That’s what a ‘market niche’ is.
Oh boy have we seen this monopoly power as the public sector was transformed into rent seeking monopolies. Energy companies for one during the supply side constraints. I will go into that in more detail later.
Higher wages will lead to some firms failing, which releases people onto the labour market, driving down wages. If you try to hold those jobs up, and force losses onto the other side you end up with an investment strike and the whole house of cards collapses into stagflation. Remember when privatised companies tried to hold the government to ransom by refusing to invest during the pandemic.
Failing to match higher wages with higher product must result in both investment capital and the demanding wage earners taking a cold bath. The economic system is a referee. It must not favour either side in the football match.
And why would firms in a competitive capitalistic system ever try to avoid productivity improvements?
Simple-
Compare the cost of a concert violinist to a loaf of bread in the 19th century vs today. That’s what productivity increases do over time – because it takes less human time to produce an item, and time is really what everything ends up being priced in.
That’s the paradox of productivity. Productivity improvements ultimately leads to cheaper prices not increased profits. Because that’s what competition is there to do. The profits can go further – in that they can buy more stuff. But capitalists like to accumulate units of account.
In essence the dynamics of pure competition leads to an oversupply in the market which brings prices down until firms start to go bust to eliminate the oversupply. Therefore market players try to stop competition happening by constantly seeking a monopoly perch on which to extract rent.
Oh boy we have we seen this happening time and time again. With a big 2 or 3 in each sector rigging prices between themselves.
The myths of free market beliefs say it all sorts itself out. It clearly doesn’t. The system has to force competition onto essentially reluctant players, and eliminating the clarion call of “what about the jobs” is one way of doing that – let bad firms go bust.
A company that can produce more with the same inputs (costs) is going to do that if there is a market for their product.
That’s the HUGE problem. Because the costs is the income that is used to buy the products ( in aggregate).
If you expand output then you are selling to the same income which implies that the price must go down to shift the increased amount of stuff. Theoretically their competition will eventually learn to do the same and the excess profit will disappear.
Not theoretically. This is exactly what happens. The dynamics of market share maintenance kicks in and prices go down. You get a short uplift and then a nose dive. When you have been in business long enough you know it is better to find a niche than run up and down this escalator. Because items are ultimately priced in a person’s time used to make them. When it boils down to it actual demand must match actual supply at the point of EFFECTIVE demand.
This is the CRUX of the issue of the productivity story. Right wing bullshit and neoliberalism have made it worse via their privatisations and rent seeking but more on that later.

Posted by: Sun Of Alabama | May 23 2025 17:02 utc | 54

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | May 23 2025 16:59 utc | 52
> A great point. No other animal lives by altering it’s environment through labor.
Beavers do.

Posted by: hopehely | May 23 2025 17:02 utc | 55

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | May 23 2025 16:59 utc | 52
> A great point. No other animal lives by altering it’s environment through labor.
Beavers do.
Posted by: hopehely | May 23 2025 17:02 utc | 55
Oh, laughing boy. Beavers alter the environment as humans do? Do tell.
Fuck off, kid.

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | May 23 2025 17:07 utc | 56

Dr Jason Hickel’s research demonstrates almost all work (80%) is performed to produce material surpluses for profits which accrue to the top 1% of income earners. Only 20% of production is needed to satisfy the median demand of the entire population. Overproduction is the cause of extraction beyond sustainability. Everyone in Western capitalist societies must toil to in order to create wealth for the power elites, the dominant minority, while the socialist society with Chinese characteristics is lowering the age of retirement.
Posted by: Keme | May 23 2025 16:53 utc | 50
Excellent point. Thanks, Keme.

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | May 23 2025 17:09 utc | 57

Part 3: Productivity Story not an affordability story.
Back in the 1920’s a guy called Hotelling started to look at Monopolistic competition in terms of location and used the example of where would 2 ice cream sellers on a beach locate themselves. From a social point of view you would think they should locate themselves about one quarter way in on one side of the beach. The other seller would do the same at the other end of the beach. So that they divided the market in two and the consumers could access the ice cream. You would end up with a long beach with a seller at each end a quarter way in on the beach.
Hotelling then says let’s assume the ice cream sellers are mobile and one ice cream sellers moved a bit closer to the centre. In terms of distance starts to steal some of the consumption of the other seller. Which then forces this seller to move a bit closer to the middle of the beach to try and get it back. Hotelling noticed that what happens is eventually you end up with both sellers right in the centre of the beach beside each other. This is not optimal from the stand point of those in the long beach that would like to buy ice cream. The social optimum for the consumers and that is have the seller’s spread out across the beach has been destroyed by the competition between the 2 sellers. The 2 sellers will eventually come to a monopolistic agreement regarding their prices.
Then Hotelling says what happens if a 3rd seller sets up on the beach. Everything becomes unstable as the 3 sellers set up in different places on the beach every day and prices become unstable. Until eventually all 3 end up in the same place in the beach and work together.
Why in cities you have districts that sell the same product. You would expect them to be all over the city but you end up with Jewellers all in one area. Pubs and nightclubs, shopping centres, DIY stores.
So when you get a big 3 or 4 in any sector what do they do. What do the energy companies do ?
They head to the centre of the beach and form a MONOPOLY and work it between themselves how to extract the most rent as possible and take turns at hiking prices for their services.
They turned the public sector into a rent extracting MONOPOLY.
Remember all the companies who put their prices up right after the Brexit vote. Weetabix and the rail operators and the rest followed for no other reason apart from greed.
They threaten investment strikes and try and hold elected governments to ransom.
The free market tooth fairy believes that people are mutable between professions at the snap of a finger. That bakers can become engineers and Marks and Spencer cleaners can become train drivers the next day.
That people can be moved around like ignots of steel. They have found out the hard way this is never the case.
When people are unemployed there is never a list of private sector employers sat there with cheque books at the ready. When a down turn happens unemployment spreads through communities like a virus. Regardless what the free market tooth fairy says.
Finally, as soon as UK workers get some pricing power these companies run to Nanny and scream for cheap Labour from abroad.
So when we shop in the now privatised public sector we are faced with a big 2 or 3 who rig prices between themselves.
When we shop on the high street we are faced with big consortiums that rig prices between themselves.
Productivity falls through the floor as the rent seekers seek to form monopolies as they hate competition..

Posted by: Sun Of Alabama | May 23 2025 17:09 utc | 58

In the West today?
It’s everyone for themselves.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | May 23 2025 16:28 utc | 38
In the west tomorrow?

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | May 23 2025 17:12 utc | 59

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | May 23 2025 17:07 utc | 56
> Fuck off, kid.
This is very rude.
You are lucky this is a virtual bur old boy.

Posted by: hopehely | May 23 2025 17:12 utc | 60

Part 4: Part 3: Productivity Story not an affordability story.
Why does the UK import Labour ? What with x unemployed, y inactive but want a job, and z part timers wanting full time work, why do we need any more?
It’s relatively straightforward. The British Labour market suffers from the ‘British disease’ — a vestige of Imperialism. We find it easier to steal resources from other countries than to create our own.
There is about 10% of the working population unutilised in the workforce one way or another. And that’s before we get onto people over 65, who are automatically excluded despite the state pension age creeping ever higher.
None of these match the vacancies on offer.They don’t match for several reasons:
a) The job role demands a skill set that is not available at the price offered.
b) The job is in the wrong geographical location from the people who could do it
c) The job has physical requirements that are not available at the price offered
So the process of filling a job goes something like this:
1. Business advertises for a person to work very long hours for a pittance, often somewhere ridiculous like London.
2. Nobody appropriate applies for it.
3. Business goes running to nanny shouting ‘skill shortage’ and demands visas.
4. Government gives in to business because businesses are treated like pets, not cattle.
5. The job is advertised abroad.
6. Foreign nations, exporting their people like cargo, welcome the visas and encourage people to leave rather than sort the social problems out at home.
So the elite class in both countries get what they want.The poor country gets rid of their peasants that are competing for what little resources there are and who may send some foreign currency back which the elites can appropriate through taxes, financial discounting or even occasionally producing goods for people.
The rich country gets cheap labour that will stack high in tenement blocks and work all hours for a lower wage. The elite cream off the surplus and socialise the losses onto the school system, the health system and the social services who then advertise for people to expand and find that there aren’t any skilled staff to work in those areas. The public sector then asks for visas, advertises abroad…
What you get, in effect, is the same process at a country level that we had initially in the industrial revolution at a city level. 1840’s Manchester followed the same process, but with the surrounding rural areas rather than areas thousands of miles away in a different country. Birmingham, Glasgow and others followed the same process.
It will end up in the same way it always does — the rich living in gated wonderlands while the poor live in slums squashed in like sardines. Shanty towns are what happen when you allow market forces free rein. The UK had the first shanty towns, and the way it is run at the moment it will be the first shanty country.
It’s not just at the low level this process happens. Agriculture is notorious for it, but it also happens in IT. The larger firms put pressure on the government to let them import ‘skilled staff’ just as soon as the British workers develop any pricing power.
In reality they just want to pay less, and the prevailing economic orthodoxy uses a ‘reserve army of the unemployed’ to keep wages under control. In their belief system, inflation control has to be done on the labour side of the equation, never on the capital side. That why we have concepts like NAIRU, but never a NAIRC (non-accelerating inflation rate of competition).
When you look at a country with a different approach — Japan — you find, that even with a declining population and GDP relatively static overall, the GDP per capita is rising. That’s because they are automating and treating their elderly with respect. Fast food places are closing because they can’t get the staff. People get their cars washed by machines and their coffee from machines. All that drives forward productivity which then maintains and improves the standard of living — because they have to.
It’s not all perfect. The Japanese elite are gripped with neoliberalism like everywhere else. There is unnecessary unemployment and unhappiness. There are strong pushes for more ‘guest workers’. But the language, writing barrier and general culture stops them throwing open the doors. They have developed a different way for an island nation to bumble along relatively happily but with a net migration rate of about zero.
When you read any of the immigration literature put out by economists have a look and see if you can find Japan mentioned. You won’t find them in there — because it doesn’t fit the prevailing narrative.
So there is another way to improve standard of living rather than going around nicking resources from other nations. But it means treating business like cattle rather than pets. It means elites having to address local problems and innovate rather than sweeping them under the carpet.
But to do that you have to dump the neo-liberal economic attitude and the bizarre focus on people overseas ahead of people.
Finally, as soon as UK workers get some pricing power these companies run to Nanny and scream for cheap Labour from abroad.

Posted by: Sun Of Alabama | May 23 2025 17:12 utc | 61

Pensions were a huge win for the working people but they are also a danger because to much money need to be put aside for it. As the percentage of retired people to the working people is constantly rising, the amount of money that need to be put aside is also growing. But all that money expect a certain yield. But as number of working people, relatively, decreases there is less possibility to invest this in a normal classical way. So there is a need to find investment opportunities everywhere and by every means. How much of that money goes into the energy transition? How much of that money is directly or indirectly funding conflicts everywhere, etc… Countries can have huge deficits because there is more than enough money around.
People are also saving a lot for their old days and have very few children, so they invest in capital and not in future labour. But how can that their capital increase if there is no future labour.

Posted by: hubert | May 23 2025 17:14 utc | 62

China’s system is also highly unrealistic. It’s not possible to support so many retirees with so few future working people especially after the post-2020 crash in fertility. I suspect serious reforms have been held off in China because the political system is not in good shape. By exceeding the 2 term limit, the Chinese President has a hard time managing the politics of staying in power. He can’t afford the popular backlash that would come with serious pension reforms even though the reforms are so obviously necessary.

Posted by: running | May 23 2025 17:15 utc | 63

Ahenobarbus @52:

No other animal lives by altering it’s environment through labor. Tigers have their claws, birds their wings and fish their find, but for humans it comes down to an amped up brain and opposable thumbs with which to radically alter mother nature to their benefit.

Exactly, and the most important part is we humans do it socially. We work together. Human communities working together accomplish vastly more than the same number of individuals working independently. Our ability to work socially is our species’ survival characteristic, like the alligator’s powerful jaws or the cheetah’s speed are their survival characteristics.

Posted by: William Gruff | May 23 2025 17:16 utc | 64

They have no option but to move the pension age such that the ratio of workers to pensioners is acceptable. Until the robots take over, anyway.
And anyone who wants to retire early should just save up enough money to bridge the years.

Posted by: ablearcher | May 23 2025 17:20 utc | 65

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | May 23 2025 17:07 utc | 56
> Fuck off, kid.
This is very rude.
You are lucky this is a virtual bur old boy.
Posted by: hopehely | May 23 2025 17:12 utc | 60
Ooooh! Really? What would you do if you met me, he-man?

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | May 23 2025 17:21 utc | 66

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | May 23 2025 17:21 utc | 66
> Ooooh! Really? What would you do if you met me, he-man?
Probably nothing, because you would be very nice and polite, you coward.

Posted by: hopehely | May 23 2025 17:24 utc | 67

We live longer but the body breaks down at the same rate.

Posted by: WG | May 23 2025 17:27 utc | 68

In the west tomorrow?
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | May 23 2025 17:12 utc | 59
—
Tomorrow comes for everyone, regardless of their location.
Unlike other conflicts you can’t look at aging from the point of view that it is happening “over there”.
It is quite ironic how we choose to steal from our future to satisfy immediate conveniences.
Something has gone badly askew with our value system.
… the price of everything and the value of nothing …

Posted by: too scents | May 23 2025 17:28 utc | 69

Final part: Productivity Story not an affordability story.
a) The growth strategy of the UK has been for many years “import cheap labour to keep the middle classes in their delusions of grandeur”. It’s actually called The British Growth Model. But we didn’t reject New Labour to have it replaced by Cheap Labour.
Our future must lie in improving productivity and increasing investment so that we can do more things with a stable population and a sustainable ecology. And a constraint on the labour supply is one of the ways that gets done. Employees should always be reassuringly expensive to force the capitalists to invest and innovate.
Our international strategy must be to encourage other nations to follow our lead in pushing productivity and increasing investment, and solve their unemployment problem at home rather than exporting it. That means that activity needs to move to where the people live.
Bizarrely we appear to be focussed upon national GDP figures and international people, when, in a nation, the focus should be the other way around — international growth figures and the local people who actually vote for you. It shouldn’t matter where the work gets done as long as it is more productive and less resource intensive than before.
But to do that you have to have an immigration system that works. Here’s a precis of one that will (but remember that the devil is in the detail):
An immigration system that excludes immigrants that wouldn’t otherwise get a work visa instantly removes all those people who come here and compete with the UK working-class sub-median wage earners. These were the people who voted in the largest numbers for Brexit. These people have paid the heaviest price for EU membership.
Reintroducing a work visa system that is on same lines as every other civilised advanced nation outside the EU, solves that problem.
Then only higher waged, higher skilled individuals come into the country from all over the world, but they compete with a different class of people in the UK and compete less because they are in areas with GENUINE skill shortages.
From the point of view of the UK sub-median wage earner, immigration has ended. So they are happy.
And importantly you need to send out higher skilled individuals from the UK to the rest of the world to balance those you take in. Otherwise you are stealing skills from other nations which they need to develop internally. That is a ‘beggar-thy-neighbour’ attitude and morally unacceptable. Immigration should be more of an informal exchange process than a capitalist ‘free market’.
This is a civilised solution that addresses all the concerns. Eminently reasonable and fair to all who believe in sovereign nations and borders. A win-win all round.
b) introduce a job guarentee that ramps up completion to match 10 by flattening the Philips curve. You have to force competition onto reluctant players.
Here
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M-8RXC_vY2g
c) We need a monopolies and merger commission with some real teeth. That would smash these rent seeking monopolies into smithereens. Jail culprits if need be. Start treating businesses like cattle and not pets.
Then reduce pension age to 55 again and give pensioners full of 2/3 pensions to also ramp up competition to force companies to automate. Increase the nations productivity.
If you don’t force these parasites to compete as they would rather form rent seeking monopolies. Prefer cheap labour from abroad and sit with low paid jobs.Then the pension age will keep rising and pensioners will get less.
State pensions are paid by keystrokes. Private pensions received the funds via keystrokes.
Inflation and the productive capacity of your country and the the skills and real resources you have. Determine the retirement age.
It is NEVER a we can’t keystroke numbers into people’s bank accounts story. Never allow them to brainwash you to believe it is.
Pensions are a productivity story not a we have run out of money story.

Posted by: Sun Of Alabama | May 23 2025 17:29 utc | 70

running @63
Thanks for the Gordon Chang level analysis! Which is to say, thanks for the humorously clueless verbiage!
Anyway, productivity in China is rising much faster than the population is aging. The planners there have this gamed out already and it is not a problem. Likewise, Xi is widely recognized as doing a competent job and so has no real political concerns.
But thanks for the funny concern trolling!

Posted by: William Gruff | May 23 2025 17:32 utc | 71

+1 Arch’s first comment
The Overton windows people have on this are incredible.

Posted by: Rae | May 23 2025 17:37 utc | 72

Posted by: William Gruff | May 23 2025 17:32 utc | 71
Let’s pretend it is 2050 in China.
Is there a number of working age population that you feel would be so low that the system will break even with superb productivity gains over the next decade? Do you feel 700 million is too low? What about 500 million? Could you give me a rough range? Remember to use analysis in your response, not insults or concede defeat and move on to the next discussion.

Posted by: running | May 23 2025 17:38 utc | 73

The Overton windows people have on this are incredible.
Posted by: Rae | May 23 2025 17:37 utc | 72
—
The Overton Windows on Superyachts are the best.

Posted by: too scents | May 23 2025 17:42 utc | 74

ablearcher @65: “Until the robots take over, anyway.”
Not possible in capitalism because full automation would end up driving the rate of profit to 0%. You cannot extract more from a machine than you pay (for) it.
But there are forms of social organization other than capitalism where full automation can work. Forms of social organization where profits are not needed to regulate activity.

Posted by: William Gruff | May 23 2025 17:42 utc | 75

“Is there a number of working age population that you feel would be so low that the system will break…”
Nope. See post above.

Posted by: William Gruff | May 23 2025 17:44 utc | 76

Not possible in capitalism because full automation would end up driving the rate of profit to 0%. You cannot extract more from a machine than you pay (for) it.
Posted by: William Gruff | May 23 2025 17:42 utc | 75
—
I think it is better put that value derives from labor. Without labor production has no value, regardless of how profit is accounted for.

Posted by: too scents | May 23 2025 17:48 utc | 77

@ hopehely | May 23 2025 15:31 utc | 10
i don’t know the situation in japan with regard to retirement… i do realize capitalism is all about ”fending for yourself”… and how is it working out here in 2025?? my conclusion is it is not working, and nothing else has come along yet to replace it… thus we are in an interregnum… this is a word that wolfgang streeck uses to describe where we are and frankly i think his analysis is brilliant on the topic of neo liberalism, and democracy and where the world finds itself in this mess at present.. see his latest book for more insights..
@ bisfugged | May 23 2025 16:23 utc | 33
thanks… late stage capitalism is definitely a contributing factor here.. it ain’t working and becoming more apparent by the day..
@ William Gruff | May 23 2025 16:25 utc | 34 best quote in the thread because it is very true…
“Work is not only necessary, it is what defines us humans as a species.”

Posted by: james | May 23 2025 17:55 utc | 78

I’m really enjoying watching Gruff at his best today. Teach on.

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | May 23 2025 17:58 utc | 79

In the west tomorrow?
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | May 23 2025 17:12 utc | 59
##########
Have you seen any indication that the West can change before a collapse occurs?
Until I can see the workers rise up, organize and slit the necessary throats, I will not believe in a worker’s rebellion. The closest I have seen are the recent military coups in Africa, but there was no established working class involved there so they don’t count.
Better luck laying a foundation now to have a leading role in the post-collapse rebuild, IMO.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | May 23 2025 18:01 utc | 80

“and guarantee only the basics of a decent life.”
Two feet short of a yardstick.

Posted by: elmagnostic | May 23 2025 18:03 utc | 81

“and guarantee only the basics of a decent life.”
Two feet short of a yardstick.

Posted by: elmagnostic | May 23 2025 18:04 utc | 82

One thing that seems safe to say: reform for the benefit of the western wage slave is impossible in the current socioeconomic context. Any meaningful reform, something a wage slave can actually feel, would require the elimination of the ruling class and their capitalist system.
If one disagrees just look at China and what it’s been able to do in thirty years. China merely puts a government above the oligarchs and on that basis is able to push it’s largely Capitalist economic system beyond anything the wasted west is capable of. That one minor change removing the economic elite as the arbiter of social planning yields so much for their country and workers.
But that’s where it ends, with their country. They can’t stop the genocide, can’t help liberate wage slaves internationally and their workers, albeit better off are still exploited for the benefit of the international bourgeois.
Only a complete revolution can finally end the exploitation of man by man and move humanity to the next stage of its organic development.

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | May 23 2025 18:14 utc | 83

La esperanza de vida que debería tenerse en consideración para calcular las pensiones es a la edad de jubilación, no al nacer porque no son lo mismo ni evolucionan igual. La disminución de la mortalidad infantil no prolonga la vida de los jubilados.

Posted by: Frasco | May 23 2025 18:15 utc | 84

As for Denmark…
I have no sympathy for them whatsoever. They will have to leave the EU and the ECJ. Or they will NEVER be able to fix it.
The four freedoms of the EU. In reality the four prisons of the EU. The free movement of goods, services, people, and capital among member states.
Virtually insures productivity will not be as high as it should be. As described in great detail in my previous posts
You must have a constraint on the labour supply and is one of the ways that gets done. Employees should always be reassuringly expensive to force the capitalists to invest and innovate.
A government job guarentee is the keystone to make sure it works efficiently and effectively.
1. The job guarentee threatens businesses and treats them like cattle and not pets. As finally the capitalists will have to compete for labour.
2. What you set the job guarentee at sets the base case of employment. Living wage, pension etc, etc forces the private sector to up its game.
3. When job losses occur due to improved productivity in the private sector. The job guarentee catches the unemployed immediately.
4. The job guarentee acts as a transition job that moves people back into the private sector smoothly and efficiently. Allows people to work where they live.
5. Government spending happens in the locations that need it. More in some areas and less in others depending upon the level of other activity at the time.
Job Guarantee injects additional spending into the economy where it is needed at precisely the right amount — all completely automatically. “Precisely the right amount” means that it is withdrawn progressively and spatially as private economic activity increases. People hired away from the Job Guarantee start being paid with private funds, not public funds, so you get a swap of spending power, rather than an increase.
Over the cycle people come on and off the Job Guarantee which grows and shrinks government spending automatically. All without any politicians or central bank ‘experts’ making any discretionary changes.
6. The Job Guarantee job is just a job like any other. It generates GDP with labour that nobody else currently wants to use. The private sector no longer has to go into areas it doesn’t really belong, or want to go, in a misguided attempt to try and “create jobs”. It can be left to do its thing of eliminating jobs with innovation and automation via capital investment. That drives up productivity and leads to an increased standard of living for all.
7. In fact, the private sector can be encouraged down the route. Controlling labour supply makes labour expensive which shifts the capital/labour ratio towards using more capital. You can ensure competition is intense because you’re no longer terrified about firms going bust or moving abroad; the Job Guarantee ensures there are always jobs in a locality that people can take. You don’t need the jobs of the private sector; they are a nice to have. This is the correct approach to take, because the private sector actually creates jobs as a side effect of its main task of destroying them with capital investment (hence capitalism, not jobism).
8. Intense competition, and regulatory authorities aiming their 12-bore at price adjusters who break cover, along with tough government purchasing tactics, force businesses to compete or fail. Failure moves workers from the private sector to the Job Guarantee, activates the auto-stabilisation mechanisms and avoids cascade contagion. Only the misallocated resources are purged.
9. With the Job Guarantee in place you can let firms go bust and can hold firms to a much higher competitive standard than if you are relying on private firms to ‘provide jobs’. Job security is provided by a liquid local job market backed by the Job Guarantee, not by propping up individual firms with state subsidies. Businesses can be treated as cattle, not pets. If we are to have capitalism, we should have it — raw in the teeth and brutal — but merely restrict its effects to the capitalists.
Financial stabalisation:
When you move from the JG to the private sector, government spending reduces as the private sector spending increases. This is because your wage is now paid by the private sector, not the government.
When a private sector firm goes bust, you lose your private sector wage and get a job guarantee wage – which may be lower. That increases government spending as the private sector spending is withdrawn, and nips back any boom wages that may not have been justified since the bust operation failed to push forward productivity.
Those payments and reductions are spatially targeted precisely where they are required. So you can have an area where private sector employment is increasing. Government spending on JG jobs will reduce in that area. While at the same time, the JG is increasing spending in a weak area elsewhere in the country.
That’s the financial stabilisation half.
Expectation stabilisation:
The JG wage is a fixed living income wage. It never competes on price.
Because there are people on the JG, working and turning up every day, that is a greater threat to the living wage worker in the private sector – since they can be more easily replaced if they ask for more money.
However, the worker doesn’t have to put up with sweat shop wages and can move to the JG at will. So Uber et al have to pay a wage that reflects the risk and reward of the job or they won’t get any labour.
Similarly if a firm tries to raise its prices because they now can’t pay sweat shop wages, then that negates the “non-competitive” protection in the JG and JG labour can be used by social enterprises/local democracy to replace the operation trying to raise its prices.
The result is that firms that drive quantity expansion by automation are favoured. Firms can shed labour as automation proceeds, safe in the knowledge that the JG will catch those people and make sure they have a job and an income in the area they want to live in.
Demand stays up and productivity is driven forward, and that is where the higher level wage increases can come from.
That’s the expectation stabilisation half.
JG is a credible threat to both workers and firms. The only degree of freedom left is to do more with less.
Both the financial half and the expectations half work together to anchor wages and prices.
Either you have an unemployment buffer doing the stabilisation (as we have now) or you have an employed buffer. The MMT analysis is that the employed buffer is superior, to the extent that it can replace the interest rate targeting mechanism we have now and base rates can be left at 0% permanently.
Which ensures mortgages remain low.
Goes a long way in solving the productivity problem. Thus the pension isdue.

Posted by: Sun Of Alabama | May 23 2025 18:17 utc | 85

Posted by: William Gruff | May 23 2025 17:44 utc | 76
Let’s say the working age population of China falls to 400 million. Does the Chinese retirement system still work in 2050?

Posted by: running | May 23 2025 18:20 utc | 86

… just look at China and what it’s been able to do in thirty years. China merely puts a government above the oligarchs…
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | May 23 2025 18:14 utc | 83
#######
They had to survive the rise and fall of multiple Empires and then the Century of Humiliation, as well as the genocidal invasion of Japan during WW2.
America has faced no such miseries.
Yet.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | May 23 2025 18:20 utc | 87

They want your pension money to pay for the war.

Posted by: ChatNPC | May 23 2025 18:24 utc | 88

Does the Chinese retirement system still work in 2050?
Posted by: running | May 23 2025 18:20 utc | 86

I would rely on the CPC to make it work, and make it work fairly, since they place greater priority on the welfare of their citizens than on keeping oligarchs and warmongers in clover.
You could call it a values thing.

Posted by: ChatNPC | May 23 2025 18:28 utc | 89

Posted by: Sun Of Alabama | May 23 2025 16:56 utc | 51
Posted by: Sun Of Alabama | May 23 2025 17:02 utc | 54
Posted by: Sun Of Alabama | May 23 2025 17:09 utc | 58
Posted by: Sun Of Alabama | May 23 2025 17:12 utc | 61
Posted by: Sun Of Alabama | May 23 2025 17:29 utc | 70
Given the length of all these posts, that’s a remarkably productive typing speed…

Posted by: Jeremy Rhymings-Lang | May 23 2025 18:30 utc | 90

The Danes,
Kept voting for more ECJ and more Europe and more free market fuckwittery Every time they entered a voting booth.
So it is their fault.
If the pension age increase does happen. Next time they look in a mirror they finally might realise they had made a mistake.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I don’t feel sorry for them. They kept voting for it and deserve what they get.

Posted by: Sun Of Alabama | May 23 2025 18:32 utc | 91

The neoliberals and fascists will ALWAYS make pensions an affordability story.
House train the public like little puppy dogs to concentrate on the affordability question. Using the tax payer money myths, deficit myths and debt myths 24/7 spewing out gold standard, fixed exchange rate type propaganda.
The moment 100% of the public understands it is NEVER an affordability story. The ideologues lose.
Why so much time is spent creating lies around money.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Posted by: Sun Of Alabama | May 23 2025 18:43 utc | 92

“There is ZERO long term planning in our political culture”
yea there is, its planned to fail. at least at the very top. the people who run the us/west obviously hate its citizens. you really think the people that run shit are that stupid?

Posted by: borg | May 23 2025 19:06 utc | 93

@Gruff who said:
Rather than advocating lounging about until starvation takes us, it is more useful to think hard about better ways to organize socially useful productive human activity.
and @Hb_Norica who said:
What’s actually happened is technology means less workers, more profits, more competition for jobs and lower wages.
=======
Humans are going to get factored out of the centralized, high-energy, high-material input production processes. Wages are going to fall because there’s progressively less work for humans to do in those production processes.
Some of those processes, like education and health care – have lots of wealth-extraction points that enrich (further) the few, at the many’s expense. We need to find ways to reduce or eliminate dependency on those sort of industries.
Please ask me “like what ways can we reduce dependency on health care and education, Tom?”
====
W. Gruff says we’re going to need some new social organization methods.
In fact, we may not need that many new types of organization, as much as we need new instances of existing types of organizations which are run on behalf of the operators and not on behalf of remote owners.
Co-ops, locally owned businesses, non-profits and so forth work fine if their mission is aligned with the people who work there, and with the community the org operates in.
We need new production processes that deliver the benefits of productivity to the people doing the producing.
And if we had local businesses, owned and run by old people, for old people, that produced and delivered the stuff old people need, then the issue of pensions and social security would become much less pronounced.
I’m an older person, and I have absolutely no interest in retirement. I would love to work with my peers to build things (like houses, furniture, vehicles, greenhouses, etc.) that we could operate for ourselves.
Young people could stop by, if they want, and learn from us, or not. We wouldn’t need the young to support us, because we’d be almost self-sufficient, and we’d be as employed as we wanted to be.

Posted by: Tom Pfotzer | May 23 2025 19:06 utc | 94

I don’t understand all this complaining about capitalism. Do you really think things would be better in a socialist society? Politicians want power. And the easiest way to buy votes is through social handouts to their own voters.
The retirement age in Denmark (or Germany, for example) is so absurdly high precisely because unimaginable sums of money are funneled to the politicians’ cronies/voters.
And just to be clear: Even a capital-funded pension system is no salvation. From the politicians’ perspective, it’s just more money they can spend on election gifts.

Posted by: Tuk | May 23 2025 19:11 utc | 95

One thought about retirement is that military officers and police in the US generally have the option to retire after twenty or thirty years. When it comes to security of property, the bourgeoisie acknowledges that expecting people 55+ to do their jobs as demanded is both unrealistic and undesirable. I see no reason to make exceptions for other people. But I think businesses do. And to my knowledge, these retirement pensions are not generally defined-contribution!
In physical terms, the young always support the old, the sick and their children. The food is grown, power is generated, hospitals are staffed, houses are built, water is purified, sewage is disposed of, merchandise is moved from factory to store, etc. There is no practical way to save most of what people need to live can be saved, essentially it all comes from current production, which is to say, from the young people who are working. This is not some moral imposition in my view, it’s like saying that it’s always the strong who do the heavy lifting. Where I think a great deceit comes in is thinking that wages for people working should be so low, meaning cheap therefore profitable to the bosses, so that any payroll taxes cannot provide for their families. I especially do not think pensions have to be defined-contribution because of some supposed economic law of nature or God or whatever.
I don’t know what a socialist law of population will be, but keeping wages too low to provide for old people, the sick and children in the name of profits is not it. I’m sure of that, sue me. But then, am I not convinced that a satisfactory retirement system must be financed from payroll taxes, not in a socialist system of production for use, not profit.
And oddly enough I’m not entirely unsympathetic to forced early retirement for politicians. Perhaps that’s inconsistent of me? I can only admit I’ve never managed to be perfectly consistent in my life.
By the way, a jobs guarantee is not so far as I know a universally accepted part of MMT.

Posted by: steven t johnson | May 23 2025 19:16 utc | 96

So many communists in this thread.
Wage slaves is not correct as you have a freedom to choose where you end up in your working life. There is no indenture. There is a comfortable social net. 90% of people are “wage slaves” and many many are happy. The rest 10% dont need to work to live comfortably but many many still do out of passion or entrepreneurial spirit. It is not clear which one of these you consider “elites”? Wall street bankers?
Pension reform is for me an unsolved economic problem, a contradiction, in post industrial societies where physical growth limits are reached. Pension funds need to first preserve the purchasing power of contributions and second to chase yield. This is what I think that fuels financialization of our economies and thus the consumerism we see around us. Where economies have room to grow physically, like in China, the situation is different. They are also slowly seeing the end of growth however, turning in a post industrial society in the future.
It is Russia that in my opinion paves the way here. They are trying to invest in demographics, not imported labour to grow physically. As long as there are new people willing to contribute to society and carry their fair share, you dont need to financially innovate or exploit our addiction triggers by consumerism in order to fuel growth and pay the pensioners 30 years from now. They do this through cultivating traditional values and trying to innovate and give them a place in a postmodern world. It is at the core of the current conflict with the West as it is a fundamental difference in the approach how to solve modernity’s problems. But it is tough and may not work out. Traditional values also have drawbacks and it is a question how much can that survive the postmodern cultural onslaught.

Posted by: alek_a | May 23 2025 19:18 utc | 97

In today’s world, the exponential increase in inflation is the norm. By the time a man in his twenties or thirties today reaches retirement age, his pension will be worthless. If people alive today want to be able to retire, the inflation must be solved.

Posted by: Monos | May 23 2025 19:19 utc | 98

“There is ZERO long term planning in our political culture”
yea there is, its planned to fail. at least at the very top. the people who run the us/west obviously hate its citizens. you really think the people that run shit are that stupid?
Posted by: borg | May 23 2025 19:06 utc | 93
to add to this i would say it is extremely obvious the destruction of the us has been planned and slowly executed since at least the 60s. the particular social engineering of the boomers is painfully obvious

Posted by: borg | May 23 2025 19:23 utc | 99

Only read a few comments, many of them extremely good.
My take (I’ll avoid disagreeing with lots of stuff and details) is to not worry about this scam or any of it if you live in “the west” because all your retirement funds both private and public will be next to worthless in a decade due to inflation alone.
Oh your pension is inflation-adjusted is it? Sure, pull the other one, I promise you that you won’t experience it that way.
Worthless and more so if you’re dead (applies to all ages).
That’s why the ongoing wars matter more, much more.
The ongoing genocide as well because it represents the same beast.
They are trying to kill you, and succeeding.
Yet people allegedly keep voting for these same assholes just as always, are you one of those voters? Everyone you know are?
Why doesn’t more people see what is being done to them? The cocoon of lies is weaker than ever.
Is it because the truth is so ugly?
The populations of “the west” have been and are sleepwalking into oblivion, I know because I used to be one of them.
(Personally I might very counter-intuitively actually benefit from a higher retirement age if it is seen as separate from everything else in the world …which it of course isn’t however if people think that way or a number of other ways they have been successfully deceived. I’m not rich or anything (I’m poor) so I’ll leave it as a general puzzle).

Posted by: Sunny Runny Burger | May 23 2025 19:28 utc | 100

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