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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

#571

Post by gruez »

jasonfarnon wrote: post #449
ajmurmann wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 nobo…

I think OP's implication is not that nobody wants the 50% of pure bullshit, but that want is itself manufactured by the economy.

>but that want is itself manufactured by the economy.

Is that an issue? There's not much demand for 8k ohm SMD resistors from people, but people do want smartphones that require 8k ohm SMD resistors to manufacture. The same applies for stuff like managers and other "bullshit jobs". Nobody wants them, but they're nonetheless required to keep the company/economy humming along. And if they're actually not required, then the economy that supposedly cares what's "economically most efficient" should have eliminated them.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#572

Post by Panzer04 »

ALittleLight wrote: post #563
cmehdy wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not taking money that otherwise would be taken absolutely is giving money. Let me know if the government decides to absolve you of all taxes if you don't think at the end of your year that you've been given money. Also that's conveniently the narrative that Macron's party would adopt were it the other way (read: when they "give" a one-off cheque to students or poor people). Accounting tricks have broad shoulders to t…

Extremely grateful for all the money given to me by everyone who hasn't mugged or robbed me.

You are not robbed as a matter of course. The government takes your taxes as a matter of course. Not taxing you (by giving you a 10k tax deduction, for example) is, in a practical sense, basically identical from the government's perspective as giving away money.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#573

Post by OrvalWintermute »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #347
nebula8804 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

https://www.thebalancemoney.com/u-s-federal-budget-breakdown... For states and cities, see local government websites for reports. Or you can start here: https://www.truthinaccounting.org/ On the state/city level, all the money is going to former employees for labor performed in previous decades. The scheme is voters today purchase government employee labor for lower cash outlay today hence lower taxes today, then sub…

> On the state/city level, all the money is going to former employees for labor performed in previous decades. The scheme is voters today purchase government employee labor for lower cash outlay today hence lower taxes today, then subsequent taxpayers pay higher and higher taxes as the can gets kicked down the road.

This is why contracting out services makes public sector CFOs so happy.

Replace a large % of your civil servant workforce with a company that specializes in that one function, eat potentially higher or inflated OPEX, but no long-term costs regarding pensions. If the requirement for services change, scale down the contract.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#574

Post by gruez »

crazygringo wrote: post #545
cmehdy wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not taking money that otherwise would be taken absolutely is giving money. Let me know if the government decides to absolve you of all taxes if you don't think at the end of your year that you've been given money. Also that's conveniently the narrative that Macron's party would adopt were it the other way (read: when they "give" a one-off cheque to students or poor people). Accounting tricks have broad shoulders to t…

> Let me know if the government decides to absolve you of all taxes if you don't think at the end of your year that you've been given money. I... wouldn't? It just wouldn't have been taken from me. Why would I think it would have been given to me? I'm perfectly aware it's money I earned in the first place. In contrast with stimulus checks, for example, which were given, because even if you earned no money at all you…

>In contrast with stimulus checks, for example, which were given, because even if you earned no money at all you still got them.

At the end of the day, there's no difference from a fiscal perspective between handing a company a $1M check and giving them a $1M tax deduction. While I agree that this is technically a distinction (ie. tax deductions require a tax liability to actually be used, as opposed to cash which can be spent as-is), I don't think it's relevant here because the companies were already known to be making money. Even if they had a bad year and the tax credits could only be used on profits, they'd likely turn a profit sooner or later.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#575

Post by gruez »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #460
hcurtiss wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By increasing everybody's salaries, it seems likely to me the cost of goods and services would go up by virtue of inflation. There is no free lunch. At the same time, prosperity is not a zero sum game. The rise of China has coincided with increased living standards in nearly every country. I'm not sure who would be "stealing" your wages. If I were to say, it's French labor policies that are stifling innovation and pr…

Time and time again it’s the same bullshit argument. I’ve grown tired of it. The price of goods and services has decoupled from the cost for a while now, and prices are rising at a staggering rate without salary increases.

>The price of goods and services has decoupled from the cost for a while now, and prices are rising at a staggering rate without salary increases.

Almost as if there's multiple supply chain disruptions (from pandemic to ukraine) causing goods to be more scarce, causing consumers to bid up the prices for the goods that remain.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#576

Post by matthewdgreen »

csomar wrote: post #538
tomcam wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so you know, I would be happy to end the arrangement, even though it would mean losing my Social Security benefits, which I should come into soon. I think it’s a terrible system. I am just having trouble understanding your terminology.

His terminology makes sense and it hits directly to the core of the problem: It's a ponzi scheme. These people were not saving into "retirements". They were giving their money, freely, for other people in the expectation that the next generation will do the same.

The same thing is true of your investment account. When you buy bonds you're giving money to a company or the US Treasury who then spend it. That money is gone. You're assuming the borrower will choose pay you back from some future revenue stream. When you buy into a stock IPO you're betting that the company will pay you dividends from a future revenue stream (or do related things that make the stock perceived as valuable.) In the case of Social Security that future revenue stream is taxes drawn from the US taxpayer. None of this is a Ponzi scheme.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#577

Post by Twisell »

bsaul wrote: post #272
Twisell wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..

Yes and this is precisely why many french economists make this distinction by referring to the term "neo-liberalisme" maybe the meaning is somehow lost in translation.

French neo-liberalisme is what you describe, the worst of both world. A strong state that impose highly impacting laws on both public and private sector.

The difference between left wing strong state policies is that theses laws tends to benefit huge companies and shareholders instead of common people and small business.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#578

Post by OrvalWintermute »

ars wrote: post #393
Convolutional wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You call them wars of choice. It would be more correct to call this preventative money. They spend this money in order to prevent having an actual war later. Also a lot of the aid is actually jobs program where the aid recipient is required to spend the money on American made goods. So it's not quite as simplistic as you're making it out to be.

> You call them wars of choice. It would be more correct to call this preventative money.

No, we that served don't.

> They spend this money in order to prevent having an actual war later.

Having spent a good part of my life prepping for Fulda Gap defense against the USSR I know that is incorrect.

The US has spread NATO right up to Russian doorstep, on the cusp of inside their early warning systems for missiles, having fomented revolution and armed the Western Ukrainians in their civil war against the Eastern Ethnic Russian Ukrainians.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, the Arab Spring turned Winter - more of American Adventurism than critical national security objectives.

Am all for a strong military, just not it being overutilized for incorrect purposes.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#579

Post by ticviking »

jonfw wrote: post #496
ticviking wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly how America became America.

Except for the mainland of America has things like warm weather and days of uniform length

Sure.

And the settlers nearly starved the first few winters in every colony despite that.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#580

Post by tsimionescu »

SoftTalker wrote: post #536
hungryforcodes wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what will you say when you are 60 or 65? These people are not contributing during retirement, but HAVE contributed in the past. In fact people pay (especially in places like France) into a government retirement fund. And this happens over 20-40 years of work. This is a long time and if properly managed, should be fine. So people aren't just being given "free money", this is something that they have paid for and s…

But it wasn’t properly managed. It was spent immediately, with IOUs written to replace it. There is no retirement “fund” in the way that word implies.

That is the government's problem, not the workers'.
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