French workers protest plan to increase retirement age
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Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age
#2That's what you get when 60%+ of the wealth generated in the last two years went to the top 1% and you ask the bottom 80% to work two years longer to cover for an imaginary deficit
fyi taxing the 40 richest people in France 2% more would cover the same amount of money as having the entire active population work 2 more years.
edit: since it's not clear, I'm talking about pension related debt (the main argument of the french government for raising the retirement age), obviously not the national debt/deficit
edit2: ah and 25% of the poorest workers are already dead by 62 https://www.liberation.fr/resizer/J5W0vs_DrAdsjx5xHUxhhC_otn...
and 30% of people above 60 are unemployed because nobody hire seniors https://lemagdusenior.ouest-france.fr/article-78-combien-fra...
Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age
#3That's what you get when 60%+ of the wealth generated in the last two years went to the top 1% and you ask the bottom 80% to work two years longer to cover for an imaginary deficit fyi taxing the 40 richest people in France 2% more would cover the same amount of money as having the entire active population work 2 more years. edit: since it's not clear, I'm talking about pension related debt (the main argument of the…
I don't doubt you, but do you have a source? I don't know anything about the economics of France and I'm kind of interested now.
Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age
#4A wealth tax (instead of income tax) is the best way to reverse the capital hoarding which is destroying modern society. Go after their assets.
Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age
#5That's what you get when 60%+ of the wealth generated in the last two years went to the top 1% and you ask the bottom 80% to work two years longer to cover for an imaginary deficit fyi taxing the 40 richest people in France 2% more would cover the same amount of money as having the entire active population work 2 more years. edit: since it's not clear, I'm talking about pension related debt (the main argument of the…
France's deficit is not imaginary. Yes, taxing the right people the right amounts (and successfully getting them to pay) would solve the problem, but the hole that needs to be plugged is 100% real.
Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age
#6A wealth tax (instead of income tax) is the best way to reverse the capital hoarding which is destroying modern society. Go after their assets.
Would a wealth tax also apply to the NPV of pensions?
Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age
#7A wealth tax (instead of income tax) is the best way to reverse the capital hoarding which is destroying modern society. Go after their assets.
We have a tiny wealth tax in Norway, so now the richest are moving to Switzerland.
Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age
#8A wealth tax (instead of income tax) is the best way to reverse the capital hoarding which is destroying modern society. Go after their assets.
The best way to reverse the capital hoarding is to deeply understand the way the policy making system works, not to debate the merits of different policies. Folks who believe in a wealth tax also don't believe in putting their noses to the grindstone for decades to engage in the high octane chess game of bureaucratic power politics. So it'll never happen.
Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age
#9That's what you get when 60%+ of the wealth generated in the last two years went to the top 1% and you ask the bottom 80% to work two years longer to cover for an imaginary deficit fyi taxing the 40 richest people in France 2% more would cover the same amount of money as having the entire active population work 2 more years. edit: since it's not clear, I'm talking about pension related debt (the main argument of the…
No, this is what happens when you make almost the entire population dependent on the state for retirement, it makes changes and cuts difficult and limits the options the country has to adapt to changing economic, demographic, and other circumstances. Kind of like how at the start of COVID in the US there were arguments like "We can't close down schools because poor kids won't be able to get their free school lunches."
Edit: I looked it up and the net worth of all of France's billionaires is ~half a trillion dollars, so even if you seized it all it would basically cover the French government's budget deficits for a grand total of two years, assuming they were actually able to seize it all and it didn't have disastrous economic side effects. That's France's total deficit, not sure how much of that is directly attributable to the pension system.
Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age
#10The way retirement is done was broken from the start. If you have a fixed age, you will get issues when the population pyramid changes and fewer people are around to support the retired.
What the system ought to be is:
1) Everyone who can't work gets a pension/state support/whatever you want to call it. If you get run over by a car at 25, you are on this list until you die and the state supports you. It's expensive, but there aren't that many people who end up in this state. Maybe a few percent, eg 3%.
2) We set a pensioner ratio. For instance if it's 20%, the 3% of people in cat 1 above get a pension, and the 17% oldest people who aren't in cat 1 get a pension.
This would naturally change the age at which people get to retire, moving it up and down depending on birth rates.
What we have is not workable. There aren't enough young people for the number of boomers who are retiring, and not only that, the older people turn out more and have more votes, enabling them to force worse conditions on everyone else.