139
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2026
139 points (99.3% liked)
Europe
11434 readers
833 users here now
News and information from Europe 🇪🇺
(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)
Rules (2024-08-30)
- This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
- No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
- Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
- No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism. We follow German law; don't question the statehood of Israel.
- Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
- If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
- Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in other communities.
- Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
- No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)
- Always provide context with posts: Don't post uncontextualized images or videos, and don't start discussions without giving some context first.
(This list may get expanded as necessary.)
Posts that link to the following sources will be removed
- on any topic: Al Mayadeen, brusselssignal:eu, citjourno:com, europesays:com, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Fox, GB News, geo-trends:eu, news-pravda:com, OAN, RT, sociable:co, any AI slop sites (when in doubt please look for a credible imprint/about page), change:org (for privacy reasons), archive:is,ph,today (their JS DDoS websites)
- on Middle-East topics: Al Jazeera
- on Hungary: Euronews
Unless they're the only sources, please also avoid The Sun, Daily Mail, any "thinktank" type organization, and non-Lemmy social media (incl. Substack). Don't link to Twitter directly, instead use xcancel.com. For Reddit, use old:reddit:com
(Lists may get expanded as necessary.)
Ban lengths, etc.
We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.
If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 7 or 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.
If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the admin that applied the rule (check modlog first to find who was it.)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Having to work until you are fucking 70 already is a disaster
My body is aching, and I'm not even 40. Couple of weeks back I listed something not that heavy, but my back went out and I could not walk for three days (all fine now). Knowing that I might not be able to work until I'm 70 the cist of living etc., there's a high probability that I'm going to take my own life. It's been fum while it lasted, though.
Save up and get out if you dont like your job. I know someone who stopped at 50 and now just works as a skiing instructor and wine farmer
-- you, apparently
He certainly isn't wealthy, but he enjoys this lifestyle much more. Small car, no big journeys, no house, ... but constantly doing something he likes
GG.
I suppose it depend on the work you do, but it is inevitable that if we live longer we somehow work longer.
Lmao no it is not. This is not a rule of physics or nature. This is a condition willfully brought upon us by the rich.
So, let me understand. You consider a situation where we live longer, we (want to) work less and we keep the same living condition (after retiring) possible.
Care to explain how ? Don't come up with the "tax the rich", they must pay their fair share of taxes but that does not means that they should pay for the longer retirement of everyone else.
While I agree that the higher productivity of the work should be paid more, I don't see how this difference can offset 15 or more years of additional retirement, even less if, like you suggest, we want to work less years.
Productivity gains.
Why not, though?
And on what your pay would be based ? The hours you work or the productivity ?
As I said, I agree that some of the productivity gains tranfer to the worker pay.
I simply do not belive that even if this trasfer happens then you can retire earlier having a longer live expectancy.
We can maybe work less every day for the same pay, like we work 7 hours a day and the hours we pool are used to hire some more workers, but that would not change the problem with retiring earlier and living longer (which are not problems per se)
Because that could be applied also to you, I bet you are richer than someone else.
In the end, once someone pay their fair share of taxes the question is over. How much money is left to the someone is irrelevant.
We can discuss how to make the rich pay their fair share of taxes eventually.
You asked about maintaining wealth and not expanding wealth. Productivity is output per work. If the output per work grows, we need less work to maintain the current output --> workers can chill more. Whether they retire earlier or have a 4-day-week.
Right now that surplus of productivity is just grabbed by the owning class.
Yeah, right. And if our society wants to take that fair share to expand retirement for everybody, that's cool. And to what a 'fair share' is...that depends. In Germany in the 50ies they basically took 50% of everybodys assets and had an maximum income tax bracket of 95% (which would start at 850k € yearly income today, if they had kept it), literally a max income, if you want. And apparently people thought that to be fair, so there's that.
A 4 day week could be done, but I still think that we cannot retire earlier since we live longer. There would be a imbalance between the time we work (that gets shorter) and the time we spend retired (which get longer). But to pay for the longer retire time you need somehow have put aside more money. If we talk about a couple of years then ok, maybe we can retire earlier if we get paid more (given the higher productivity), but if we talk about longer period then I don't think we could be find a stable solution.
The only real solution, in my opinion, is that you can retire after how many years you want but your pension is proportional to what you set aside during your working life (with the state that only pay the gap between what you get and a minimum level of sussistence). This way you can work as long as you want and if you want to retire earlier this decision is not paid by others. The additional bonus is that I think that in the end people would try to be paid more to put aside more (if they want to retire early)
Not totally I think. I am sure I have a better life than my parent (at the same age) or my grandparents.
If people thought that to be fair then the 95% tax bracket would be still be there.
Obviously, no one thinks it’s “fair” to work for about 1 million euros and end up with the same salary as someone who works to earn 10% of that amount.
Does not compute. If you can reduce your work load by 20% (4 days instead of 5), you could retire earlier instead. When in life you reduce those 20% does not matter. And life expectancy is not expected to grow by 20% out of the sudden. So there's plenty of room. If anything, life expectancy will shrink dramatically with climate change.
Yep, if society burdens the individual with the planning of their retirement economics. You could also just expand the pension system, or have whatever funny idea ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Look, if we think about western, wealthy societies: if e.g. in Germany tomorrow we have like 2 million more pensioners out of the sudden...do we have a problem supplying them? As in, will supermarkets struggle to provide the food, so that they can eat? Do the houses they live in just vanish? Are clothing stores immediately empty, and they need to freeze during winter?
I'd say no, that wouldn't happen. They would only struggle, because somehow they would not have the money to buy those things, the society still has the means to supply them. So it just is a matter of monetary distribution. And the distribution of said monetary resources is just shit currently, namely to the disadvantage of the poor, the working people and pensioneers. We could fix that.
Yeah, right, "obviously no one" 🙄. Except for a lot of people that is not fair. But those are "no one", I see. I, for once, am fine with different compensations. But when people work and cannot afford basic necessities, while others rake in thousands or even millions per day (and even pay less taxes on average, because the tax system favors income from assets over income from work)...that's where 'fair' stops.
It's funny, that everybody wants a 'Wirtschaftswunder' back. As it happens, said 'Wirtschaftswunder' was happening, because the state redistributed wealth to a crazy high degree. But nobody wants to make that connection, because that would mean an ugly fight with the owners. So no 'Wirtschaftswunder' for us, instead low salaries and crumbling infrastructure ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Work load != working life duration.
I can work 4 days a week and produce the same output, no doubt, and I can be paid the same, no problem here.
Then I want to to retire earlier, so fewer years worked, resulting in a lower pension contribution which should be paid for more years. And this is the "problem", in total I contribute less (less years worked) but I want to get back more.
Put it another way, you go to deposit in a bank 1000 euros, you get some interested (for sake of simplicity let's say 1%) but at the end of the year you want a result like you deposited 1500 euros instead of the 1000, and the difference to be paid by someone else with more money.
The society has means to supply them at a basic level of sussistence, no more. And while I agree that the distribution of monetary resources is shit I don't think is the root cause.
Again, you cannot think that you can work less years to retire younger while keeping the same standard of living for a longer retirement period. Or better, you can wanto to do it and leave the consequences to someone in the future.
Then why it is not still here ?
People get the government they voted for...
So the correct solution is to make possible for the working people to be paid more, not to go after the rich just because they are rich.
I never undestood the logic that to elevate someone you need to bring down someone else.
The "Wirtschaftswunder" happened because there were also the conditions to happen, not just because the state redistributed wealth left and right.
While I believe, that even a 4 day week and earlier retirement is possible, that was not the premise in our discussion. The premise was, that one could reduce work time. And if you can do a 4 day week, you could also do a 5-day week and retire earlier. After all, the output produced during your lifetime would be the same. So, if one is possible, the other is as well.
Even more. Do you think Amazon would run out of flatscreens in our hypothetical scenario? I doubt it. Probably not everybody could receive a 70 ft Yacht, but the vast majority could not afford that nowadays or if they worked, idk, three years longer ¯_(ツ)_/¯. We could easily sustain the hypouhetical retirees life standard, ez.
That was the main contributing factor, though. It is easier, when the country is in ruins and everybody is piss poor. But after the recent years we approach the latter once again. But with what the redistribution helps: money is spend fast. That is important for the economy to flourish and everybody profiting from it. Right now, the surplus is pocketed and 'invested' in real estate, or shares. That does not help anybody. If you hand that money to people with no assets, they buy shit. Cars, food, gardening tools, whatever. Then production is expanded, workers are paid more. As a government you have to make the money flow around. Easiest way to achieve that? Be Robin Hood and give to the poor. They will spend the money.
I think you are confusing work output with working time. If we look only at what you produced during your working life then you are right, we can probably retire earlier having already produced our share of "something".
The problem is that what we put aside is not proportional to the output (rightly) but to the time we work so if we retire earlier we miss some time during which we built our retirement fund (whatever it is) while expecting to live longer at the same time.
And while this can work in small numbers, it not work if you extend to the whole society.
No, but who pay for them ?
Tax the rich ? Right. Let's make an example: if we consider to tax the rich for 10.000.000.000 euros/year this means that every retired in Italy (about 23.000.000) get about 435 euro/year.
Even if the number of retirees whose pensions need to be supplemented were halved we just get a little less of 1000 euro/year. Too less to have any significance.
I think you should find the money some other ways.
I don't see how we are approaching a similar scenario, if nothing else because we are not a pile of rubble again (hopefully).
Except production is no more here, so you cannot pay the worker more as there are no (well, less) workers.
For the first or second year, then the rich would have nothing more or, more probable, moved their money out of your reach and you will be left with nothing.
What? If the worker gets a fair share of the productivity gains, they have higher salaries. They can put more in their retirement fund and could work less.
See that graph:
Productivity gains vs. salaries. That is what was stolen since the mid-seventies. Salaries, on average, should be double as high. You could basically set aside one month of living per month (and earn interest on it). Where did the monetary gains go instead? Into assets of the wealthy, they just did not vanish under mysterious circumstances.
People just underestimate how hard they got robbed, if they even consider that they were robbed, that is.
Let's make a better example. Why only 10 billion per year? Like, the private assets of German citizens are estimated around 5-6 trillion Euro. If we estimate like 6% interest (long-term gains on the financial market, evan higher the last few years, but granted, it's hot), that is 320 billion capital gains alone, per year. Take a meager 10% and you have 32 billion already, or you could go harder, why not? After all people still earn money.
Take as an example the Quandt family: they "earn" 500 million cash(!) on BMW dividends alone, but pay less than 1% tax on those earnings. Why do I pay like 32% on average on my income from work, while they almost pay nothing for doing nothing?
Tax inheritance accordingly. People can inherit like 100 million and never have to think about anything in their life. Why should they inherit billions?
100 billion estimated losses through tax evasion estimated in Germany, each year.
If we do all that, and still cannot afford less work for everybody, OK, I am convinced then. But not before the rich get taxed properly.
I don't know, have you looked around? Public infrastructure crumbles, people cannot afford basic necessities anymore. Funnily enough prime "Wirtschaftswunder" was in the sixeties, the rubble already gone.
Investments by the state are usually very locally sourced, as the state pays workers here, or invests in infrastructure. You buy flatscreens in China, allright, but you build streets, railways, bridges and public pools right here.
It's not like there's nothing you could do against that. Tax duties come with citizenship, like the U.S. does. Tax when people shift their assets away. A lot of assets cannot be shifted anyway. Look at the Schwartz or Abrecht families. Their assets are like thousands of supermarkets. Can they just pack them up and move them elsewhere? I doubt it.
Well the root problem is of course money, as always. We are already producing enough to feed everyone on earth for example. But since number must go up, the metric for rich assholes isn't actually productivity or needs being met, but growth.
For decades and decades we have automated more and more and yet work has not become less. Where do you think this surplus of value, created by automation and additional work by the working class ended up? I don't want to just "tax the rich", that is merely the first step. The goal has to be abolishing a system which not only allows for this concentration of wealth but is designed to do so.
True.
I don't think you can simply decouple productivity and growth.
Partially to the rich but partially (a maybe too small part, I agree) to the workers, to pay for all the new things we have in our life. We don't live like our parents or our grandparents honestly.
As long as the tax is proportional and not something like "you are a billionaire, so we will grab everything over 1.000.000 a year" I agree, else you will end up with nothing.
And not because billionaires will flee the country but because nobody will care to go over the 1.000.000/year (or whatever limit you decide)
To replace it with what ? I honestly don't see a better system actually.
And people are getting older (and stay healthier). Something has to give. Boomers are the largest generation in German history. Since then every generation has shrunk. Fewer workers have to support more retirees. We have been seeing this demographic shift coming and still have taken on more and more dead. And yes, I desperately want the rich to pay taxes, but that alone will not fix the issue. Not by a long shot.
We also have much better technology and produce much more stuff with significantly less labour.
This is not really about the rich people paying taxes, it's more about the fact that if we have better technology and production why do people have to work more?
Indeed, boomers are more; but I think we are able to sustain their lives without them having to work.
Because you pay people for the time they work, not for what they produce. You work 8 hours a day and you are paid for these 8 hours basically without taking into account of how much you produce.
In the end in a sane system what you set aside while you work should be what pay your pension when you will stop working (but it is not true anymore). You cannot expect to work less or equal and live longer and keep the same standard of living
No, we cannot. Many pension systems have been designed thinking that for every retired person there will be more than one worker. It worked at the time, when families had 3 or more children, it not work now when families have just one or two children, if even.
A few people have so much money, they could easily pay for elderly support and rent if you tax them
But no, let the poor idiots work till 80... you see how this is wrong?
boomers aee already mostly retired you idiot
its us who will pay for their early retirement while we wont get the same
and since we will work forevrr, our kids won't have kids because they have no grandparents to support them during their retirement
nobody will care for us when we are old