Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

cbc.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 835 posts

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#381

Post by tropicaljacket »

bjourne wrote: post #321
atleastoptimal wrote: post #304

In the US at least, the original retirement age, set in 1935, was 65. The average life expectancy was 60. Today in the US it's 77.8. In France, it's 82. As populations age into a higher percentage of retirees, the system is forced to cope with more people who are purely consumers, and contribute nothing to the system. In a post-scarcity world, this would not be a problem, but currently with the oldest generations own…

At some point we have to rethink what "contributing to the system" means. What are web developers designing ads for online casinos contributing?

I understand the sentiment, but in this current system, that counts as contributing because eventually it can be exchanged into something that you consume (e.g. food, housing, healthcare). Even if there were no money and everything works with barters, you'd still have to offer something that other people need. Unless somehow you could survive without requiring food etc from someone else, then they won't force you to "contribute to the system"

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#382

Post by rcMgD2BwE72F »

compiler-guy wrote: post #5
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…

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.

There is no hole: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsL1wT8jxVU. The French government based their diagnostic on a report by the COR (their advisory board) but that report had only one (among many other) scenarios where they might be a hole. The President of that board said it very clearly in his Senate hearing (above)

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#383

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#384

Post by PeterisP »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #229
lotsofpulp wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The money is just an entry in the accounting ledger allocating society's labor. The pension fund can increase to trillions and quadrillions, and it will not make a difference if there is not enough people willing to change bedpans for as low of a price as was originally expected.

There will be a market clearing price for that work, and these accounting mechanizations are simply sussing out what that price is (in comparison to other broad societal work to be done). If caring for the elderly is made more valuable than say, slinging JavaScript, that’s where some of the labor will go.

Sure, but the fact that your savings or pension plan contributions "should have" been enough for a certain amount of care can't guarantee that it will be enough for all or even half of it when the time comes; it's perfectly plausible (and with certain worker/retiree ratios even inevitable) that the market clearing prices will have to be higher than what would be enough for most people.

And the key factor is that if everyone (or their government) saved twice as much, that wouldn't help because if the worker/retiree ratios are the same, then twice as much retirement savings should simply lead to a twice higher market clearing price for that work due to "these accounting mechanizations".

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#385

Post by Moissanite »

bjourne wrote: post #321
atleastoptimal wrote: post #304

In the US at least, the original retirement age, set in 1935, was 65. The average life expectancy was 60. Today in the US it's 77.8. In France, it's 82. As populations age into a higher percentage of retirees, the system is forced to cope with more people who are purely consumers, and contribute nothing to the system. In a post-scarcity world, this would not be a problem, but currently with the oldest generations own…

At some point we have to rethink what "contributing to the system" means. What are web developers designing ads for online casinos contributing?

Morals can be exchanged for goods and services!

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#386

Post by gleenn »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #343
atleastoptimal wrote: post #304

In the US at least, the original retirement age, set in 1935, was 65. The average life expectancy was 60. Today in the US it's 77.8. In France, it's 82. As populations age into a higher percentage of retirees, the system is forced to cope with more people who are purely consumers, and contribute nothing to the system. In a post-scarcity world, this would not be a problem, but currently with the oldest generations own…

That's just because people died young. The mode (most common) age of death was over 75 in France for men in 1930. I'm not sure how WWII factors into that. It's now about 82, eyeballing it (yes, still higher). https://www.cairn-int.info/article-E_POPU_1204_0683--the-mos... People were not "old" and dying at appreciably higher rates given they reached age 60 back then. The general premise that there's a lot of rich old…

My understanding was that almost all countries with advanced economies are experiencing negative growth in producing children. So even if you are right about the nuance in age, go look at Japan. Their population is shrinking.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#387

Post by piloto_ciego »

fleddr wrote: post #355
bjourne wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point we have to rethink what "contributing to the system" means. What are web developers designing ads for online casinos contributing?

Great comment. The status quo is so bizarre. Human life has no inherent value unless it makes continuous contributions to "the economy". It would be economically most efficient to drop dead on the day you retire. Thanks, human! All of this to keep a machine running that wrecks the planet and everything living on it, including ourselves. Probably some 50% of the economy is pure bullshit that nobody asked for, just kee…

Sometimes people fail to recognize that the oldest super powerful artificial intelligence is several hundred years old. It’s our economic system.

It’s the software running on all our “wet ware” that convinces us to value productivity and money over human life, the environment, or happiness. It is the paper clip maximizer and it’s happily churning away.

But we’re not maximizing paper clips we’re maximizing profits .

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#388

Post by ajmurmann »

fleddr wrote: post #355
bjourne wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point we have to rethink what "contributing to the system" means. What are web developers designing ads for online casinos contributing?

Great comment. The status quo is so bizarre. Human life has no inherent value unless it makes continuous contributions to "the economy". It would be economically most efficient to drop dead on the day you retire. Thanks, human! All of this to keep a machine running that wrecks the planet and everything living on it, including ourselves. Probably some 50% of the economy is pure bullshit that nobody asked for, just kee…

> Probably some 50% of the economy is pure bullshit that nobody asked for, just keeping each other busy.

Obviously this cannot be true. "The economy" isn't some magical object somewhere, but the emergent behavior from all our needs, desires and faults. If something is truly not wanted by anyone, nobody will pay for the work to get done. That's the magic of the invisible hand of capitalism. Doing stuff that truly nobody wants and getting paid for it is usually more of a feature of socialism and bureaucracies.

There are cases where individual motive leads to macro behavior that's not desirable by any individual, those are the cases where we need to tax negative externalities or regulate, depending on the problem. These issues usually don't emerge though because nobody wants something but because too many wanting a thing creates side effects that nobody likes. The book Micromotived and Macro behavior by Thomas Schelling covers that nicely.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#389

Post by [deleted] »

jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote: post #346
gymbeaux wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But at the same time I don’t want to be forced into paying say $1M into social security and only live to see $200k come back to me

Realistically that's what needs to happen. Wealth needs to be redistributed from the old rich to the old poor. Social Security is meant to be security for the old poor, not a middle class pension.

[deleted]

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#390

Post by nradov »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #162
phil21 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you save now so you get money later. How do you save labor for later? Current retirees need young folks to do the work they cannot do, and thus those young folks are paying in today. When those young folks retire they will be relying on even younger folks to do the work for them. If there are not enough younger folks to do that work, the money saved between generations will become relatively worthless. Thought anot…

How exactly does the same amount of labor need doing when there will fewer people who need anything in the near future? You seem to be saying more labor per person is necessary to satisfy this “need.” That doesn’t seem beneficial to workers as a whole. I thought innovation was supposed to benefit everyone? Where’s the hole in this logic?

Compared to productive workers, retirees will need less of some things and more of others. In particular demand for healthcare is increasing. Expect most countries to increasingly ration healthcare, especially for elderly people.
Post reply on HN