> -This sounds less like people in Europe are "discouraged" from working, rather than many Americans must work longer because they can't retire.
It is very difficult to generalise. In Belgium for example you are legally forbidden to work. If you work or earn more than a very small threshold you lose your state pension. But then the pension used to be good for regular employee, so there was not really a need to work for a lot either.
Really those analysis are like tea leaves reading. You can build whatever story, but at the end of the day each country is a unique snowflake and another country model cannot just be applied.
Take the Belgian model before, so now put an incentive for older generations to work and you realise that another difference with the US is that the unemployment is much higher and you just added additional pressure on the job market.
Dig a bit more and you realise that Belgium has a unusually high level of old generation unemployment because of the specific model (early pension) they used to handle the worst of factory closure. So those people have been written off the job market and putting them back in is just resurrecting the initial problem only worse considering you would need to compensate for the years/decades of missing investment in the affected region/sector.
It is very difficult to generalise. In Belgium for example you are legally forbidden to work. If you work or earn more than a very small threshold you lose your state pension. But then the pension used to be good for regular employee, so there was not really a need to work for a lot either.
Really those analysis are like tea leaves reading. You can build whatever story, but at the end of the day each country is a unique snowflake and another country model cannot just be applied.
Take the Belgian model before, so now put an incentive for older generations to work and you realise that another difference with the US is that the unemployment is much higher and you just added additional pressure on the job market.
Dig a bit more and you realise that Belgium has a unusually high level of old generation unemployment because of the specific model (early pension) they used to handle the worst of factory closure. So those people have been written off the job market and putting them back in is just resurrecting the initial problem only worse considering you would need to compensate for the years/decades of missing investment in the affected region/sector.