French workers protest plan to increase retirement age • Hacker News Board

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#271

Post by creato » Tue, Mar 07, 2023, 10:43 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #249

creato wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The top 3 chunks of spending are social security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The majority of that spending is payments to individuals or on behalf of individuals for medical bills. You can probably find the exact fraction of overhead for each program somewhere.

> The top 3 chunks of spending After national defense, you mean. https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function

According to the link in the parent I replied to, social security and Medicare are larger, by more than 0.7%

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#272

Post by bsaul » Tue, Mar 07, 2023, 10:43 PM UTC

Twisell wrote: post #142

bsaul wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"france has never been as rich in history". Which number are you talking about ? It seems like a pretty hard fact to demonstrate. If you look at the production of france-based international companies, then you're also including the production performed by citizen of other countries. If you look at total revenue per inhabitant, then you need to adjust for inflation, and the fact that some citizen gain revenues from pr…

That's the point right wing neoliberal policies applied in France over the last two decades have degraded life conditions of the commons people and only maximized record profit of french shareholders (this is what OP was referring to "never as rich in history") So yeah maybe it's time to stop trying to fix the french model by applying the same recipes that increased inequalities in the US in the first place...

We are so far away from anything remotely looking like liberalism.. france has the worst of both worlds : a behemot of a public sectors, costing a fortune, but undergoing enough random budget cuts to make it also very bad at fullfilling its mission.

It’s a disaster, but it’s very very far from anything remotely looking like a liberal economy..

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#273

Post by datavirtue » Tue, Mar 07, 2023, 10:44 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #107

aetherson wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people assume that pension systems ought to or actually do work as savings/investment systems, like private 401(k)s do. So you pay into the system when you're working age, your money is saved, then it is paid out to you later.

I'm not sure about every pension system, but there are many that invest in government bonds. The problem what that approach is the sustainability of the system depends entirely upon interest rates, which have been at all time lows for the past 15 years. Some private pensions invest in the broader market. All investment systems suffer from this exact problem: returns aren't guaranteed. Even people with 401ks might exp…

They were working great until the looting started.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#274

Post by wizzwizz4 » Tue, Mar 07, 2023, 10:44 PM UTC

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…

> In control of more natural resources?

I mean… yeah. That's not really related to the thread's topic, though.

> why would you expect that the first-third world gap to not continue to normalize?

I don't think that's the criticism. "Blocking our wages" probably isn't increasing the wealth of the people in Cold War non-aligned countries: is the money going to them, somehow? The direct effect is that employers (= the people who would be paying the extra wages) don't have to spend as much money paying their employees. What knock-on effects would lead to that improving things for people?

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#275

Post by ubercore » Tue, Mar 07, 2023, 10:44 PM UTC

retinaros wrote: post #262

vkou wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Six figure blue collar jobs are not super common in the US.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#276

Post by 76384638 » Tue, Mar 07, 2023, 10:45 PM UTC

supernova87a wrote: post #255

76384638 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I didn't say efficiently. I said fraud, which is a different thing. If you want to attack efficiency, you have a lot of work to deeply change how the government, and in fact many aspects of our public / government works. How they use contractors, the kinds of contracts they're allowed to enter into, the reviews and permitting and public commenting they need to engage in, unions, labor rates, etc. That would be as big…

Maybe I should not have said efficiently, as it really understates it. It's like if someone gets hired to work full time and then only works 20 minutes per week. Is that person committing fraud or just inefficient? What if the person gives part of their salary to their boss to look the other way? What if the person is a company, their boss is a politician, and the money is given to campaign organisation?

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#277

Post by datavirtue » Tue, Mar 07, 2023, 10:45 PM UTC

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.

"You can always lose your money."

It went somewhere.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#278

Post by myshpa » Tue, Mar 07, 2023, 10:46 PM UTC

yrdmb wrote: post #243

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…

> The world needs basic income That's all we need. Basic income will allow people to get housing, internet and food.

Yes. But basic income means different things for different people.

I wanted to emphasize the level of sufficiency it should provide.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#279

Post by Spooky23 » Tue, Mar 07, 2023, 10:47 PM UTC

nyokodo wrote: post #157

justeleblanc wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. 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…

That’s a pretty crazy position. In the US, there’s lots of material out there on the conditions that led to the creation of Social Security and subsequent legislation like Medicare and Medicaid. Hopefully you are simply ignorant of that history and not demonstrating a blase tolerance of human suffering.

These systems are very sustainable, and the solution to the funding issues would be best served by indexing the cutoff for contributions to inflation.

As to birth rates, how do you expect people earning less than their parents to absorb the exponentially higher costs? My son was born over a decade ago. Thanks to a moderate, common complication, his birth cost $85k. His childcare at age 3 cost as much as our mortgage.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#280

Post by bsaul » Tue, Mar 07, 2023, 10:49 PM UTC

yodsanklai wrote: post #203

ur-whale wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> France pension system isn't close to bankruptcy. Citation required. Last I looked, France's national debt as a percent of its GDP wasn't exactly in happy territory. On the other hand, if you believe that France will continue to be able to borrow for eternity to feed its increasingly large retiree population, then yes you are correct: when a banker is always ready to lend you money however large your existing debt,…

I can't find citation in English https://www.retraite.com/dossier-retraite/le-deficit-du-syst... Roughly 20 billion euro per year, which isn't big. For comparison, public debt is 3000 billion. Bernard Arnault net worth is 120 billion (6 times more than 10 years ago), Total profit in 2022 is 40 billions. There must be ways to have better wealth redistribution.

The reason bernard arnault is rich is partly because of tax cuts, but mostly because the luxury industry sells well internationally.

The reason french people in general are poor is because france, as a country, is collapsing, because french people have been voting for the wrong people for the last 50 years.

People that managed to sell their skills to other countries are less affected.