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French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

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Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#81

Post by lordnacho »

lm28469 wrote: post #73
lordnacho wrote: post #10

The 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,…

idk man, I've been sold capitalism as this great wealth generating machine, the trickle down economy, the invisible hand of the free market, yadda yadda yadda This isn't a maths equation, it's a societal choice, that's why Macron doesn't get it, he's a bead counter for Maastricht, what he does is making sure the spreadsheet is balanced

Got nothing to do with capitalism. If you're going to let some people retire, some other people are going to have to pay to support them. That's regardless of whether we're hunter-gatherers, feudal, or post-industrial.

What I don't understand is how people can't see through the framing. Do old people deserve to retire? Sure. Who is going to take care of them? Younger people. How do they not get a raw deal out of this?

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#82

Post by legitster »

My grandfather a few years back passed a rather profound point in his life - he had been retired so long that he officially spent less of his life not working than working (despite entering the workforce at 15).

And it's not lost on me I am essentially doing double work: it's not enough for me to generate enough economic value for myself, society kind of depends on me to generate enough surplus value to cover an entire life's worth of labor (Or more! After all I started much later than my grandfather).

In a way, when Keynes predicted that everyone in the future would work a 20 hour workweek, he was right! He just didn't appreciate how much we would use those productivity gains to backfill that vacation time later in life.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#83

Post by danaris »

fvdessen wrote: post #57
paganel wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there’s true political will one can do it, especially if you’re a country as big as France. Let’s say Arnault, the wealthiest French guy, decides to decamp for Switzerland were the French to introduce a wealth tax, then one of the most obvious solutions would be to nationalize his assets with pennies on the dollar, introduce an “emergency societal clause” in the mix to make it more “legal”, and I can assure you th…

Then people don't invest in France as much for fear of having their wealth nationalised and invest in neighbouring countries instead. Then the middle class leaves to the better jobs in the neighbouring countries.

Are you under the impression that most wealth in a country comes from rich people? Because observation over the past few decades strongly suggests it's the reverse. Rich people drain money out of the economy; working people create value, and thus wealth.

Or what do you think is going to happen? The billionaires will pull out, but they'll make sure to retain ownership of all the businesses they ran—and fire everyone, thus ensuring that those are just losing them money? How is that going to be better for them than paying the tax?

And how long before France just nationalizes the businesses and puts people back to work without the billionaires getting a cent?

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#84

Post by bm3719 »

jmclnx wrote: post #79

I have to say, the people in France really know how to live! Here in the US, people do not give a sh**. Already benefits have been reduced to the point were you cannot live on Social Security unless you pitch a tent next to a dumpster outside of a restaurant. Not only that, every year the retirement age is increased. For people born after 1960 full retirement is 67. The GOP in congress is trying to raise it to 70. Do…

Social security recipients got a +8.7% increase this year. It was +5.9% in 2022.

Pretty sure employee wages aren't tracking anywhere near that.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#85

Post by legitster »

lm28469 wrote: post #2

That'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…

Money is only superficially the issue. Your currency is only as valuable as there is a market of goods and services to spend it on.

Even if you ate the rich and took all of their money, all you've done is created inflation because the actual value of the economy hasn't shifted. An economy is more about the "stuff" than the money - even Marx would have agreed with as much.

So this is only ostensibly about funding a deficit - this is just as much a measure to prevent a GDP freefall from a shrinking aging working population.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#86

Post by bradlys »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #77
forgetfreeman wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Try injecting the majority of hoarded wealth into the equation and re-run the numbers, and then tell us there aren't enough workers to support the system.

How does the state seize the hoarded wealth when it can just move to a tax haven?

The state has this thing called the military. If it wants to - it’ll get you back and take your money by force.

I figured people would understand that this is an option when people like Jack Ma go missing for a few months.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#87

Post by AceJohnny2 »

The french pension reform attempts have been going on for decades. I remember in the mid-90s a huge, weeks- (months-?) long public transit strike which, funnily enough, kick-started Parisian's interest in roller-blading (and led to the awesome weekly Friday-night roller-blading tour [1]. If it's your thing, I highly recommend it! But be prepared to have to go over some cobblestone sections)

France's system has the working population pay for the pension on the retirees, as a social security tax. With the retirement age around 62-65, with the lifespan increasing, and with the Baby Boomers retiring, it isn't a sustainable system.

Every president, be they socialist or liberal, have attempted to tackle the issue, only to get country-paralyzing backlash. People will nitpick the details of whatever current plan proposes, but the fundamental problem remains.

[1] https://pari-roller.com

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#88

Post by legitster »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #44
wskinner wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impressive to pack so many assumptions in such a short comment. - wealth tax is the best way - capital hoarding is a thing - capital hoarding is destroying modern society

Not only are these not assumptions, they're trivially proven with even the briefest of research on the subject. Capital hoarding: go look at GDP graphed against wages over the last 60 years. Wages don't go up, so all that extra productivity is going in -someone's- pocket. Capital hoarding is destroying modern society: global news media is largely controlled by 7 organizations, the international housing market has bee…

Capital hoarding only refers to wealth being held back from the market. Investments wouldn't count because you are lending your money to others and that generates economic growth. I think you are conflating terms with some other inequality concepts.

You're clearly trying to shorthand a lot of disparate political topics into one point (a good share of hospitals and insurance companies in the US are non-profit - it clearly doesn't affect medical prices), but I don't think it's as clear cut an issue as you are making it.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#89

Post by HDThoreaun »

bradlys wrote: post #86
HDThoreaun wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the state seize the hoarded wealth when it can just move to a tax haven?

The state has this thing called the military. If it wants to - it’ll get you back and take your money by force. I figured people would understand that this is an option when people like Jack Ma go missing for a few months.

They do this and literally every billionaire will immediately leave. Seems a bit short sighted.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#90

Post by jmclnx »

bm3719 wrote: post #84
jmclnx wrote: post #79

I have to say, the people in France really know how to live! Here in the US, people do not give a sh**. Already benefits have been reduced to the point were you cannot live on Social Security unless you pitch a tent next to a dumpster outside of a restaurant. Not only that, every year the retirement age is increased. For people born after 1960 full retirement is 67. The GOP in congress is trying to raise it to 70. Do…

Social security recipients got a +8.7% increase this year. It was +5.9% in 2022. Pretty sure employee wages aren't tracking anywhere near that.

8% of nothing is still nothing. No one gets enough Social Security to live on without other sources of income.
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