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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

#211

Post by dahfizz »

pkaye wrote: post #201
dahfizz wrote: post #155

The idea of relying on the government for your retirement is insane to me, for exactly this reason. You're willing to bet your life that the government is always going to do right by you? Save your own money. If Social Security exists by the time I retire, great. I'm planning as if it won't.

Its crazy that we give 6.2% of our paycheck (and another 6.2% from our employer) and we can't expect much in return.

Yeah. Even if I do get to collect SS, I'd have been better off investing that 6.2% the whole time.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#212

Post by pkaye »

olddustytrail wrote: post #122
Izikiel43 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After seeing the pensioners in my home country living in poverty because of economic crisis destroying their pensions, the government using pension money as if it was its own, and being actively hostile to pensioners by delaying trials to pay the pension money fairly waiting for them to die, I will take a 401(k) over that always, my money is mine and no one else's.

I have some bad news for you then: many of the companies that provide 401(k) were on the verge of collapse in 2008. The only reason people didn't lose their pensions entirely was because the government bailed them out... You can always lose your money. Best to accept that and not worry too much.

The 401(k) money is held separately from the company funds.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#213

Post by dahfizz »

croes wrote: post #178
ur-whale wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're willing to bet your life that the government is always going to do right by you? Hear, hear, especially given the historical priors : (hint: across a generation-sized time spans, governments never keep their promises. Why should they, they usually are in power for decades at most). And yes, relying on governments to handle your retirement money is completely insane, but the vast majority of folks in e.g. the…

>Retirement plans the way they work in Western Europe were always an absolute con, very much like a ponzi scheme (new players pay for the earlier players) That's pretty much how families worked before retirement plans, the kids payed for the parents. This just got transferred to the whole society. And it worked as long the rise of productivity led to a rise of wages.

> And it worked as long the rise of productivity led to a rise of wages.

It worked as long as people had more than 2 kids. There was always a larger young population supporting the smaller old population.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#214

Post by morpheos137 »

dahfizz wrote: post #155

The idea of relying on the government for your retirement is insane to me, for exactly this reason. You're willing to bet your life that the government is always going to do right by you? Save your own money. If Social Security exists by the time I retire, great. I'm planning as if it won't.

Governments create money and sustain its value. If you are relying on saved money for retirement then you are relying on government.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#215

Post by Izikiel43 »

olddustytrail wrote: post #122
Izikiel43 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After seeing the pensioners in my home country living in poverty because of economic crisis destroying their pensions, the government using pension money as if it was its own, and being actively hostile to pensioners by delaying trials to pay the pension money fairly waiting for them to die, I will take a 401(k) over that always, my money is mine and no one else's.

I have some bad news for you then: many of the companies that provide 401(k) were on the verge of collapse in 2008. The only reason people didn't lose their pensions entirely was because the government bailed them out... You can always lose your money. Best to accept that and not worry too much.

> many of the companies that provide 401(k) were on the verge of collapse in 2008.

The stock market went to shit, not the providers. The 401k appeal is that it's an account you *own* and the government can't touch for money, it would be the same as expropriating a bank account, which to be fair, the Argentinian goverment kind of did in 2001, hence why since then, people there save money in usd cash or in a foreign account, not in the local financial system. If the US government has to expropriate or do weird stuff in general with 401k accounts, we are in a situation where shit hit the fan long ago.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#216

Post by supernova87a »

nebula8804 wrote: post #164
supernova87a wrote: post #156

One big challenge I see with the whole business about pension reform (and government spending in fact) as a public debate is that two sides are talking on totally different planes. In France, and someday very soon, here in the US. And the public in a certain sense, will problematically have to end up voting a simple yes/no on extremely complex topics which are incentivized to push buttons on single issues. cf. Brexit…

Pardon my language but where the f** is all this money going? Is it even humanly possible for a group of regular joes to audit where all the money is going? I think thats the first thing that HAS to happen, a clear transparent audit down to the penny. As a coder, this kind of complexity just drives me up the wall. Also on a side note, I love how sneaky that NY Times article leaves out the option to cut defense . Afte…

If you assume that most government programs have on the order of a very few % misspending or outright fraud (which is the case, aside from fiascos like the pandemic stimulus payments) then you just have to assume that the real decisions to be made are the "should we have this program at all" or "do rates need to increase / benefits need to decrease". The auditing and details will get worked out by an existing government apparatus designed to ensure this. You cannot let yourself get lost from the bigger picture believing that what is missing is the audit. The big questions are what need to be solved.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#217

Post by tristor »

dahfizz wrote: post #211
pkaye wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its crazy that we give 6.2% of our paycheck (and another 6.2% from our employer) and we can't expect much in return.

Yeah. Even if I do get to collect SS, I'd have been better off investing that 6.2% the whole time.

With just a 3% APR on a savings account, if you took the 12.4% that everyone currently pays into social security and deposited in that account for 40 years (25 to 65) of your working life, at the current median annual income, you'd have $715k in cash saved.

If you had invested that into a Roth 401k and invested it in the market at an annualized average return of 7.3% instead, it'd be $2.25M in retirement savings.

Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme because it's taking money as an "investment" from people working today, to pay out returns to previous "investors" who are now retired, while the government has raided it and filled it with IOUs to support spending unrelated to the pension.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#218

Post by TheGigaChad »

Convolutional wrote: post #192
supernova87a wrote: post #156

One big challenge I see with the whole business about pension reform (and government spending in fact) as a public debate is that two sides are talking on totally different planes. In France, and someday very soon, here in the US. And the public in a certain sense, will problematically have to end up voting a simple yes/no on extremely complex topics which are incentivized to push buttons on single issues. cf. Brexit…

The US has spent $100 billion in the Ukraine over the past year, with more on the way, it is sending billions a year to Israel and Egypt, is involved in Iran, China, Venezuela etc. It just stopped spending a ton in Afghanistan. All the money spent there seemed to have no positive effect. The US seems to have money to throw all over the world for this kind of bloodthirsty waste, if it cuts it can cut there. People get…

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Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#219

Post by 988747 »

nemothekid wrote: post #202
nyokodo wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every single pension system has the working population pay for the retirees. Which is just a socialized form of the previous social security system which had children or grandchildren look after their parents. Of course, the glaring difference is that social security schemes have motivated many millions, who otherwise might have, to not have children at all or an inadequate number and so contribute very little to n…

> Of course, the glaring difference is that social security schemes have motivated many millions, who otherwise might have, to not have children at all or an inadequate number This implied link between public pensions and demographic collapse paints a picture that social security was destined to fail because people wouldn't have children for the purpose of taking care of them in old age. The millennial generation, th…

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Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#220

Post by throw0101c »

justeleblanc wrote: post #98
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #87

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 w…

Every single pension system has the working population pay for the retirees. Where do you think the money comes from? Thin air? Any increase in the value of pension funds (for example) is coming from the workers.

> Every single pension system has the working population pay for the retirees.

Nope. At least not completely. Canada switched away from a pure pay-as-you-go (PAYG) system in the 1990s:

> Move towards a hybrid structure to take advantage of investment earnings on accumulated assets. Instead of a "pay-as-you-go" structure, the CPP is expected to be 20 per cent funded by 2014, such funding ratio to constantly increase thereafter towards 30 per cent by 2075 (that is, the CPP Reserve Fund will equal 30 per cent of the "liabilities" - or accrued pension obligations).

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Pension_Plan#1996_refor...

Asset returns are used to help fund benefits. A number of pension funds in Canada have moved away from a (pure) PAYG model:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pensions_in_Canada#Canada_Mode...

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