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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

#581

Post by amunicio »

RestlessMind wrote: post #437
billforsternz wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been pondering this exact point for a while. I think we are seeing Western economies regressing to the mean, it's a long term trend. I'm not happy about it, but I can't claim it's not fair.

> I can't claim it's not fair. Fair to whom? Why should middle class in the West vote to allow outsourcing to cheaper countries? That will just destroy their well-paying jobs in exchange for some cheap Chinese goods and Indian call centers. I also feel the same way about current "remote first" trend - American software engineers are shooting themselves in the foot by embracing remote work. Wait until your salaries ge…

> Why should middle class in the West vote to allow outsourcing to cheaper countries?

Because you can run but you can't hide. If you institute protectionist policies, you will in turn become less competitive. Hence, you will require even more protectionist policies, that in turn will make you even more uncompetitive. In the end, you will have higher prices for lower quality domestic products.

I don't like gravity, but it doesn't mean I can ignore it and jump from tall buildings. While economics is not an exact science (probably not even a science), you cannot ignore its principles.

If protectionist policies worked, we would have figured out by now. The truth is that limited protectionist policies might work to give a push to a nascent industry in the short to medium term. But it does hurt the country as a whole in the long term.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#582

Post by jjoonathan »

giantg2 wrote: post #567
gleenn wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you're making a big leap to saying that economics are the reason people aren't having kids. Many people who are financially well off don't want kids either. I haven't looked for good numbers, but it seems the poorest members of society have the most kids, while the richest have the least (could be some issue with lack of controls here). https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...

"Able to have kids" isn't the only economic factor. "Incentivized to have kids" is another.

Kids used to be cheap labor plus a retirement package. Now they are an expensive hobby. With privatized costs and socialized benefits (or, if you prefer, benefits that get sucked to the top of the social pyramid), kid production stopped making sense for kid producers and we are seeing a supply shortfall. If we fix the incentives we can fix the supply shortfall. Even a partial fix is probably sufficient -- people enjoy having kids, they just need the personal economic consequences to be less of a flaming trainwreck.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#583

Post by gruez »

cmehdy wrote: post #465

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 people are angry is not about the damn numbers. It's about the attitude of a political class [...]

You say it's "not about the damn numbers", but what does that mean? Does the underlying problem with the numbers not exist? Would the french pension system be fine without such reforms? If not, and reforms are needed, why are is stuff boiling over now? Sure, all the things you listed are legitimate grievances, but it seems counterproductive to get mad at politicians doing painful stuff that needs to be done. It's like getting in a fight with your spouse about how they're "controlling" or whatever, when your house is on fire and you need to evacuate. The only sensible interpretation I can think of is that the people think the reforms are not warranted or there's a better reform that's not being considered, and that's the straw that broke the camel's back and caused people to come out and protest. If that's the case, I wouldn't exactly frame that as "not about the damn numbers".

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#584

Post by jjoonathan »

gruez wrote: post #565
notch898a wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Purely economically, only a total moron would have a child. Child labor has been outlawed and society says the (grown) child is their cash cow not yours, so the retirement from taxing the kid is spread across everyone else. Meanwhile you're asked to pay the lions share of the investment for everybody else to cash out on. So the name of the game is to let everybody else have the kids and free-ride the fuck out of that…

>This is a huge departure from almost all of human history except the last 100 years in the developed world, where the family formerly was the safety net so these kind of investments and arrangements stayed in the family leaving a much stronger economic incentive for children. except the evidence seems to point towards kids being a net drain, even in preindustrial societies. https://www.econlib.org/archives/2009/10/w…

When options are thin, hope commands a premium. See: lottery tickets.

Would you give up planning for retirement just because all of the options were unreliable? I wouldn't, I'd pick the least bad and try anyway.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#585

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

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?

The rest of the economy to sell you junk you don't need to keep them employed?

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#586

Post by Twisell »

dh2022 wrote: post #158
Twisell wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you frankly believe that french civilisation is dumb or masochist enough to have produced like ten thousands of hours of passionates TV debates (to pick only one metric) if the underlying math was simple?

Because while the math is simple, the politics are very complicated. Which fills these hours of passionate TV debates.

Even if this was true, I would like to point out that a good part of this debates is about the accuracy of the input data used for the math. With disputed input data math is never simple just ask any data analyst around.

Edit: Also this math involve predictions about demographics evolution over the next decades in a global warming and war in europe context. Both can result in unpredictable populations movements. This is never simple ask any demographer around.

Edit2: What is complicated about politics especially in french strong state tradition is that laws reform are precisely meant to alter the input data of your model, often with unforeseen side effects, so it's not simple math ask any historian around.

This especially worst in France because it's a known and widely discussed issue that the government is indirectly doctoring some key statistics like unemployment data. Changing the metric while you are rolling out a reform is at this point a patented french strategy to prevent any citizen to evaluate a new policy.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#587

Post by tsimionescu »

ajmurmann wrote: post #388
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…

> 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…

Just look at the huge amount of money being invested into advertising, PR, and marketing. That industry is mostly focused on finding psychological tricks to manipulate us into wanting things we just don't need, in various ways.

One of the best known examples is the PR-manufactured tradition of diamonds in engagement rings, which sky-rocketed the demand for diamonds in the general population.

Another great example is the huge industry of "supplements" which is legalized fraud on a massive scale, selling useless pills to people with a promise of making them better in some way, and relying solely on the fact that it's hard to prove that they don't actually do anything since their claims are so vague.

These are prime examples of entirely artificial demand created out of whole cloth through manipulation. There are numerous other cases of more subtle effects, where marketing is significantly inflating a demand which would exist but be much smaller otherwise (toys, smartphone upgrades, new cars every few years, beauty products, fashion etc).

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#588

Post by TexanFeller »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #454
WalterBright wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> drastic productivity increases have somehow not really improved our lives in terms of freedom, time, physical/mental health, quite the opposite. Here's where the money went: https://www.federalbudgetinpictures.com/federal-spending-per... And that doesn't include all the state and local government.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-debt-25-percent/ (25% of national debt was incurred during the last administration; half was COVID relief measures, the other half was tax cuts for the wealthy) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fiscal-deficit-idUSKB... (Republican tax cuts to fuel historic U.S. deficits: CBO) Sources at bottom of the first link. This doesn’t include healthcare cost inflation due to a gros…

> the other half was tax cuts for the wealthy

The other political sports team cuts taxes for the rich too. For instance they recently removed the cap on the SALT tax deduction which primarily benefits rich people, largely in coastal cities, i.e. those most likely to vote for and donate to them.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#589

Post by AYBABTME »

cmehdy wrote: post #465

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…

This is all dramatic and very tragic, but the numbers don't make sense. It's not something where passion should win over reason. Current and future generations will be screwed if this pension system isn't reformed. If anything Macron deserves applauses for committing political suicide for the greater good

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#590

Post by emodendroket »

gleenn wrote: post #386
spywaregorilla wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you are employed in manual labor then I'm not sure how working into your mid-70s is supposed to work. It seems like it's just saying that people should go off and die.
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