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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

#611

Post by coding123 »

jjoonathan wrote: post #582
giantg2 wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 incentiv…

I can't even pay for my own food now, let alone for kids.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#612

Post by Aeolun »

I’m not quite sure what they expect? Do they want the government to just print money for them until they die? And will they have to keep doing that for every successive generation?

If people get older on average, and there’s less young people to take care of them (pension wise), then the old people will have to work longer. It’s not a hard equation.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#613

Post by croes »

dahfizz wrote: post #213
croes wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Retirement plans the way they work in Western Europe were always an absolute con, very much like a ponzi scheme (new players pay for the earlier players) That's pretty much how families worked before retirement plans, the kids payed for the parents. This just got transferred to the whole society. And it worked as long the rise of productivity led to a rise of wages.

> And it worked as long the rise of productivity led to a rise of wages. It worked as long as people had more than 2 kids. There was always a larger young population supporting the smaller old population.

It's about money, not population.

And the GDPs are growing faster than the population, at least in the first world. So it's bo a matter of quantity but of distribution.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#614

Post by deepsun »

jjoonathan wrote: post #582
giantg2 wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 incentiv…

Hmm, sounds like forbidding pensions would fix that (make older people rely on their kids).

Cheap labor is no more, especially in the age of highly specialized jobs requiring education (manual labor is greatly automated now, especially in agriculture, compared to 100 years ago).

How else would we incentivise it? Money payouts on birth don't work -- only poor people would make good use of it, middle class would see the payouts too small for them anyway.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#615

Post by coding123 »

tsol wrote: post #528
kaushikc wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the system is expecting population to grow infinitely and holding everyone to hostage for it then the system needs to change.

Be careful what you wish for. Societal change comes with disorder.

I don't think wishing or not will stop whatever is coming.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#616

Post by Aeolun »

OrvalWintermute wrote: post #554
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…

the question comes down to whether or not the money is viewed as the person's, as a part of personal property, or viewed as the government's, as a part of state ownership.

If you’d otherwise expect to lose the money as part of your income tax, you’d be hard pressed to see it as your money.

Businesses don’t count their VAT as profit either.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#617

Post by junofan »

hedora wrote: post #606
jmoak3 wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is summed up nicely. To add, simply take a look at the % of USA federal spending that goes to Medicare and Social Security, which are benefits for the over 65 population. It's 1/3rd. 1/3rd of Americans are also over the age of 55, which will push that number higher. We are consuming our young. As a 29 year old, unless technology advances radically and I have positions in the companies controlling it, I will not…

Social Security isn’t federal spending. People pay into the trust fund, then withdraw when they retire. It is set up so that it cannot run a deficit. However, congress raided the social security fund, spent the money, and now they are deflecting blame away from themselves by claiming the system was insolvent by design.

It’s federal spending. The Social Security Administration’s website clarifies that misconception [1].

[1]: https://www.ssa.gov/budget/?tab=0

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#618

Post by dv_dt »

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…

We are living in an artificial scarcity world is more of a problem than us not having enough capacity to sustain retirement and increase leisure time of the pre-retirement demographics.

Technologically, imho we have been beyond a post scarcity level for quite a while - its our economic system and its poor allocation of wealth and resource allocation that is antiquated, irrational, and constraining the system. Austerity is just giving up at actually building the system in the ways needed for more people to retire or even live out their lives avoiding things like climate change.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#619

Post by crawfordcomeaux »

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…

> and contribute nothing to the system

This is an ageist perspective and foundational to what you've written. Older people have a lot to contribute and it's unmeasured.

The same goes for partners who stay at home with young people instead of working. They're DEEPLY contributing without pay.

You're going after old people in a faux-scarcity world. How about you take on the collective issues, like capitalism choosing to gatekeep resources behind labor?

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#620

Post by Auracle »

RestlessMind wrote: post #448
anon84873628 wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if so, that money was paid by the premiums of all the other people in the plan. The point is that having children is simply too expensive, partly due to cost disease in healthcare.

Your insurance most certainly didn't pay out 85K. They have negotiated lower rates which are not transparent to us. Source - my own kids deliveries were billed 40-50K. We paid at most a few hundred.

I'm not sure where this thought comes from - on our explanation of benefits there's always a line item for how much they negotiated down and it usually never amounts to much.

Insurance profit margins are pretty tiny. We (or our employers) pay a ton for insurance because healthcare costs are beyond ridiculous in our country.

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