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Comment by WA | Hacker News Reader

It’s the other way around: a few decades ago people retired only a few years earlier, had 5-10 years of retirement and then died.

Now people live way longer, but the retirement age never got adjusted properly to the new reality. So 15-20 years of retirement is the new normal.

In addition, way fewer young payers for the now old.

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Sure. But is that the society we want to live in. Do we not have ambitions to have people work less, enjoy what little life they have more? I'm not saying this is an economically easy problem to solve, but we focus so much on economics and so little on policies that make people happy.

I would love to see a model That supports this.

I think it is possible, but we need to raise (corporate) taxes a lot, and this needs to happen globally, as companies move.

As a star I would love to see global minimum corporate taxes, and then take it from there.

No one is preventing you from saving more now and retiring earlier. Why must it be the government’s job?

Most people prefer it to be the government’s job, and that’s how they vote.

> Do we not have ambitions to have people work less, enjoy what little life they have more

Spend less, save more. Vote for governments that do likewise.

> Do we not have ambitions to have people work less, enjoy what little life they have more?

Isn't that something for the individual to decide, not the collective? Many derive from work a lot of meaning in life. If working is what makes some people happy, it would be nice to not punish people for working until they die.

> I'm not saying this is an economically easy problem to solve, but we focus so much on economics and so little on policies that make people happy.

Absolutely!

Drugs make people happy. It's not the state's job to define happiness for its people, it s there to manage the economy so they can find the happiness they like.

Also the actual pension payments have gone up massively. Almost doubled in the last 30 years in the UK.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/pensioners-incomes-...

So has inflation, and the cost of living.

That graph is inflation adjusted.

People live longer but not necessarily healthier.

They'll go directly from factory line to care home.

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