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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

#461

Post by zamnos »

WalterBright wrote: post #435
lumost wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be making an assumption that rich old people can consume their wealth. I suspect the reality is that they cannot and in many cases are obligate savers. This creates a problem for the economy as individuals may lack the capital to start new businesses, innovate, or grow the next generation. Having a nation of renters renting from rich old oligarchs is not efficient. some redistribution may be necessary.

This is the idea again that wealthy people hoard their money, and it must be liberated to benefit the economy. The fact is, their money is not stored in Scrooge McDuck cash vaults. It's all invested in the economy.

But a lot of times it's invested in the economy to the worker's detriment. Look at the huge investments into real estate recently. Are the new landlords going to price units at something remotely affordable for someone on part-time minimum wage to raise a family in like it's still the 50's, or are they going to charge an unaffordable market rate? Resulting in people living with roommates into their 30's and beyond. More active participation in the market by the government would do wonders - real estate developers are in business to make money, which is what's lead to so many luxury condos. The government is able to pay market rate to blue collar workers who actually do the construction while not taking any profit, and thus are about to build units that are affordable by plebeians.

Another example of socially irresponsible investing is in any company that hires minimum wage employees for 39.5 hours a week, just under what's needed to qualify for company-sponsored health insurance. The market's slowly changing, but you're deluded if you think that's not still happening and that corporations are just happen to make small accidental practices that result in wage theft from employees, especially those at the bottom rungs.

There are bourgeoisie who pride themselves on their philanthropic work, and socially responsible investing, but greed's a more reliable driver for how people invest.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#462

Post by legitster »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #196
legitster wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cle…

I mean if you want to pretend the issue is murky despite one being able to toss (at random) a loose collection of off-the-cuff examples so be it, but I don't think your confusion is rooted in much beyond cognitive dissonance. Put even more simply: the haves are taking too much from folks that actually work, hampering their social and economic mobility.

I'm not trying to argue against inequality or even a wealth tax.

But France is in a demographic collapse the likes of which has never been seen before in the country. There simply not going to be enough working age adults to supply all of the goods and services the dependents of the state are going to need. Furthermore, major international trading partners are a) increasingly cutting them out of trade deals and b) waging wars amongst each other.

So while I think inequality is certainly something to deal with, it is not the sole boogeyman. The idea that wealth is just some sort of economic piggy-bank that can be raided for easy gains is vaporware.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#463

Post by jtr1 »

piloto_ciego wrote: post #387
fleddr wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

They all like to say the free market is the optimal computer of value until you compare it to runaway AI

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#464

Post by Wingman4l7 »

lm28469 wrote: post #70
MikeTheRocker wrote: post #11

I have no comment on the issue at hand, but I've got to give it to the French for their always impressive level of civil engagement. It feels like Americans are far less willing to take to the streets to support/oppose political causes than they were in times past, and I think that's a shame.

Looks like an unregulated militia of unarmed citizens does the job

Solely because the French government hasn't decided to use force to disperse them.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#465

Post by cmehdy »

As a French citizen, I find it unsurprising that the usual top comments here are all about numbers. Life expectancy going up, do your part, work work work.

That people are angry is not about the damn numbers. It's about the attitude of a political class that had private restaurant dinners behind closed doors during lockdown times where the population was fined for being out walking their dogs, it's about a president that's been deliberately calling left-leaning ideas of the younger generations about ecology and equality "extreme-left" while joyfully siding persistently with the actual parties created by fascists, it's about a reform that comes in with a justification of a deficit that was literally created by giving money to large companies and rich people in the form of tax deductions, it's about some of his ministers who take part in all sorts of horrible things and continue to go unpunished, it's about people asking for compassion towards difficult jobs more than for their own selves, and I could go on...

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#466

Post by flangola7 »

refurb wrote: post #358
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

Everybody loves socialism until they get back less than they put in.

Not everyone, only the selfish and short-sighted.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#467

Post by supernova87a »

Manuel_D wrote: post #397
supernova87a wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the idea of Social Security was an insurance program to guard against you outliving your means if you live long enough, not an I-get-paid-back cash-out of your payments. Aren't you having a fundamental misunderstanding about what the purpose of SS is? And not sure if you know, but the dollar figures are more like: Max pay into the program: ~$300k over your 40 year working life (if you maxed out the contribu…

> I thought the idea of Social Security was an insurance program to guard against you outliving your means if you live long enough, not an I-get-paid-back cash-out of your payments. Is that a fundamental misunderstanding about what the purpose of SS is? Yes, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of social security. Social security isn't insurance or an investment, it's a tax that's presented as an insurance or inves…

I don't know what you're disputing over. It is both a tax, and it is an insurance program.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#468

Post by danaris »

fvdessen wrote: post #225
danaris wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Investors are usually not billionaires but either regular people putting money in the stock market for their savings or retirement money, companies looking to expand their assets, state looking to manage some of their funds, etc.

But that's not who was being talked about. The contention at hand was that if France were to tax its billionaires' wealth, they would leave and stop investing in France's businesses...and this would somehow destroy jobs.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#469

Post by akavi »

nimbleplum40 wrote: post #254
akavi wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Since you said capacity is fixed _at a given point in time_, this is technically true but not really useful. Populating aging happens over time, not all at once. Overall production also changes over time. It’s not inherently true that for “non-producing” (not sure exactly how you’d define that) people to consume goods the “producing” people must consume less, at least not relative to past levels of consumption.

You're right, it's not necessarily true relative to past levels of consumption. But there's a limit to economic growth, and the choice of "paygo" vs "investment" probably only has marginal effects on the rate of economic growth, so the point stands.

"Non-producing" people are retirees (as well as children). People who don't produce market goods/services that make up the vast bulk of our material needs.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#470

Post by matthewdgreen »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #411
supernova87a wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the idea of Social Security was an insurance program to guard against you outliving your means if you live long enough, not an I-get-paid-back cash-out of your payments. Aren't you having a fundamental misunderstanding about what the purpose of SS is? And not sure if you know, but the dollar figures are more like: Max pay into the program: ~$300k over your 40 year working life (if you maxed out the contribu…

The Social Security tax rate is 12.4%, not 6%. The “employer contribution” exists solely as a mechanism to obfuscate how much tax is being taken out of people’s paychecks to pay for it.

This was increased from ~10% to 12.4% in 1983 under the Reagan Administration. The extra funds weren't paid to beneficiaries: they were intended to build up a trust fund for future generations, but they were instead borrowed by the government for general spending, and to mask the effect of Reagan's tax cuts.
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