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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

#261

Post by notch898a »

BadCookie wrote: post #253

These stats are for the U.S., but one thing that usually get ignored in these retirement discussions is just how massively life expectancy depends on income level and sex: http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/health/ Raising the retirement pension age screws over the poor, especially poor men. Perhaps retirement age should be tied to income/wealth somehow ... and maybe even sex (as controversial as I imagine that w…

I figured the one upside of retirement was it was a baseline for the poor. If it screws them over too I think it should just be eliminated all together and return the tax to the worker to save/invest on their own.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#262

Post by retinaros »

vkou wrote: post #241
retinaros wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the system IS sustained. the main white collar one even generates profits. increase the salaries that will increase money being sent to retirement funds and it won’t be a problem anymore. france income per capita has been the same for the past 20 years. they are stealing our wages to make us slaves and they blame us for not working enough. christine lagarde pushed for blocking wage rise in the EU, european commission…

> and in a globalised world where most of the goods are made in countries where salaries are rising as well as inflation, blocking our wages is only sending us to the third world . Just throwing this out here, but in a globalized world, by what mechanism would one expect Europeans and Americans will be able to enjoy a greater standard of living than people in, say, Asia? Are they somehow smarter? More productive? In…

its normalizing but for the worst in developed economies. housing is now out of reach while decades ago a blue collar salary was enough,to own a house.(in the USA you can still get six digits blue collar jobs that lift you out of poverty and give you access to housing. in france that is merely a dream or a netflix show) today already for many qualified workers (tech for instance) staying in india vs coming to france is better (there are other factors like healthcare or other that are at play but in pure economic power it would just be better to have a good it job in india vs europe) that was definitly not the case 20 even 10 years ago.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#263

Post by jimbokun »

akavi wrote: post #233
throw0101c wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

PAYGO vs investment earnings is purely a financial construct. The central issue is that physical goods and services need to be produced around the time that they're consumed, and at a given point in time, an economy has a fixed capacity to generate these goods and services. If you have a non-producing population, and a producing population, then the only way for the non-producing population to consume a given quantit…

> If you have a non-producing population, and a producing population

Isn't this true of capitalism generally, and not just for retirees and young workers?

The "non-producing population" is commonly called "capital", and the "producing population" is commonly called "labor".

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#265

Post by strken »

rwmj wrote: post #115
luckylion wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the UK using pension funds?

It is (so is the US). But ultimately productive value from workers must be transferred to retired people. How exactly that happens, whether through deferred spending power (ie savings/investments) or through direct payments, it has to happen. Although I admit that there being other countries in the world does change the calculus a bit; it would be possible (albeit weird and unsustainable) for everyone in France to be…

"From workers to retired people" implies at a casual reading that the worker and the retiree are not the same person, when in many systems the majority of what the worker pays goes directly to their own retirement.

It's debatable whether paying into your own account is a transfer of wealth at all, even if you're not able to withdraw your money until retirement.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#266

Post by flashfaffe2 »

ur-whale wrote: post #181
rahen wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a French, I have absolutely no trust in the government to manage my pension. And no desire to hand them that power either. But as usual they'll fight tooth and nail to keep their monopoly, as they like us to depend on them as much as possible.

Vote with your feet (i.e: walk away from it all), it's the only option.

What I personally did but very hard to convince others to follow that way...

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#267

Post by myshpa »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #245
myshpa wrote: post #234

The world needs basic income, with guaranteed housing, internet and food. We have the means to do it. Upto 75% of population is employed in bullshit jobs anyway (= not producing anything, or even being harmful to the society). Only 2% of population working in agriculture already produces food for 10+ billion people, just 8% works in manufacturing (IIRC). Give the basic income population plant-based food (== use just…

> Upto 75% of population is employed in bullshit jobs anyway (= not producing anything). Source? I love that so many people are convinced everyone but them is doing nothing and somehow getting paid for it. > Only 2% of population working in agriculture already produces food for 10+ billion people. What's your point? Who's going to take care of sick people? Who's going to educate our next generation? Who's going to ma…

> Source?

https://libcom.org/article/phenomenon-bullshit-jobs-david-gr...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

> Who's going to take care of sick people? Who's going to maintain our infrastructure? Who's going to police people? Who's going to defend our country from war? Who's going to make sure your cellphone still works? Who's going to make sure your house still has electricity? Who's going to make sure the laws are being followed? Who's going to make new entertainment for you?

You simply seem uninformed. My english is not so good to be persuasive enough, somebody please help me.

Basic income doesn't mean all people will stop working. Jobs would still exist, and people would still choose to work, but for different reasons than they do now. They could do what they want, and stop anytime for any period of time, and start again whenever and with what ever they would feel like it.

We have voluntary firefighters now, don't we?

People just wouldn't have to choose job based on its capacity to provide sustenance for their family, but do what they love no matter the financials.

For example many teachers and nurses are now leaving the profession (in the US), because they're unable to earn enough to sustain their living expenses and would have to work multiple jobs.

> Who's going to take care of sick people?

Do you think that doctors and nurses are in it for the money, and nothing else than money? No, they do it because they want to help people. I don't fully understand it, but it is so. And they would still be awarded for choosing that vocation.

> Who's going to defend our country from war?

You're an american, are you not? Are you people really that scared? With all the money on your offensive defences and with bases in 3/4 of all countries of the world?

> Who's going to police people?

Don't keep people in poverty, and you wouldn't need so many policemen and prisons. Do you know you're 1st in the world in this area too? And do you think there would not be anyone who would want to police, without being forced to earn a living?

> Who's going to make new entertainment for you?

All those youtube attention seekers are not going anywhere.

Basic income would start a massive creativity boom. I'm sure of it.

> We need to do more than just have beans to eat.

We can be forced to do something, or choose to do something. That's the difference. The beans are just the failsafe.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#268

Post by capitalsigma »

retinaros wrote: post #240
andrekandre wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what is the cause of not having enough funds to maintain the current retirement age?

there are enough. there are using statistical models to predict that we wont have enough in the coming decades. a biased model that is financed by private pension funds and led by mckinsey… I have a very simple way to make enough funds to maintain current retirement age : increase our salaries. france income per capita is the same for the past 20 years, if you raise salaries it will raise how much money goes to pensi…

Increasing salaries will increase the cost of goods and services, meaning that more savings are required. It doesn't necessarily balance.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#269

Post by Jyaif »

yodsanklai wrote: post #195
ChemSpider wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many countries in the EU have 67 as retirement age - so 64 does not feel a big issue to me. (France and Malta are the only one with 62) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retirement_in_Europe

France isn't 62, it is (according to your link) > 62 to 67: Depends on the duration of contribution (minimum 43 years) For instance, for me it will be 67. Besides, these numbers don't mean anything without context.

Only just realised it will be 67 for me as well. In a way that's great news: I won't feel bad taking a sabbatical.

Unless the limit is raised of course.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#270

Post by JamesBarney »

76384638 wrote: post #248
supernova87a wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 governm…

There is no reason to believe government programs are ran efficiently or without large amounts of fraud and corruption. There has to be a reason it costs governments (including government contracts) several times as much to do things compared to the private sector and non-profits.

This isn't building houses, designing drugs, or developing software. It's collecting and distributing money, which the government is fine at.
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