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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

#681

Post by bsaul »

Twisell wrote: post #577
bsaul wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

le néolibéralisme est une doctrine de critique radicale de la main-mise de l'état sur l'économie. La signification est la même en français.

C'est ce que faisaient regan et thatcher, et ça n'a rien à voir avec les politiques de de gaulle chirac ou françois hollande. Même les plus à droite comme sarkozy continuaient d'avoir une vision très jacobine de l'état.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#682

Post by bsaul »

supernova87a wrote: post #294
bsaul wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

baby boomers aren't retiring, they're dying . The pension system has already been through its worst period and managed to not get too badly hurt. I really don't understand this reform. However for me to understand it, one would need an 8 hour video stream full of spreadsheet with an actual expert working on that reform. And no media is ready to do that

I'm not sure where your facts (or opinions) are from. There is a coming wave of retirees, and an associated decrease in the workers per retiree to support them. https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/tr/2022/ See page 12, page 15. If you both are not understanding the issue, and not interested in learning about the details, then maybe you shouldn't take a strong opinion on the matter.

baby boomers are people born between 1945 and 1960. Meaning people between 63 and 78 yo. All of them are already retired, and the oldest ones are starting to die.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#683

Post by bsaul »

globalreset wrote: post #295
bsaul wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

baby boomers aren't retiring, they're dying . The pension system has already been through its worst period and managed to not get too badly hurt. I really don't understand this reform. However for me to understand it, one would need an 8 hour video stream full of spreadsheet with an actual expert working on that reform. And no media is ready to do that

https://www.populationpyramid.net/france/2022/ doesn't look like it. The bulk of population just started going through the retirement age. Click -5 6 times, then start clicking +5 and watch how it moves.

the bump between 2017 and 2022 is mostly around the 75 yo slice. That's the beginning of baby boomer generation. Meaning this generation has been retired for more than 10 years now.

It's going to be 10 more rough years, until 2032, and then the shape stabilizes. Changing the age from 62 to 64 won't change anything to this generation impact on the system.

Now is the 2032 shape sustainable with the current retirement age ? that's another question, but it's not a matter of protecting against the baby boomer impact.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#684

Post by rahen »

1letterunixname wrote: post #648
dv_dt wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Austeri…

Austerity is the neoliberal elites like Macron way of feigning poverty. They want a small, weak government, powerful businesses, and an impoverished society completely dependent on their whims and generosity.

Any government wants power, money, and having society depend on them. The bigger and more powerful the government, the more they can do.

Same with companies: the larger the more annoying, but at least you can choose them, and there's competition. Not so much with governments, they just act like a powerful monopolistic megacorp.

The goal is to make power decentralized, not further concentrated in a few hands, especially not a government that can get away with it as much as they want, and even use violence, contempt and oppression if needed.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#685

Post by philwelch »

vkou wrote: post #241
retinaros wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the system IS sustained. the main white collar one even generates profits. increase the salaries that will increase money being sent to retirement funds and it won’t be a problem anymore. france income per capita has been the same for the past 20 years. they are stealing our wages to make us slaves and they blame us for not working enough. christine lagarde pushed for blocking wage rise in the EU, european commission…

> and in a globalised world where most of the goods are made in countries where salaries are rising as well as inflation, blocking our wages is only sending us to the third world . Just throwing this out here, but in a globalized world, by what mechanism would one expect Europeans and Americans will be able to enjoy a greater standard of living than people in, say, Asia? Are they somehow smarter? More productive? In…

Lots of Asian countries have a high standard of living too.

One of the biggest differences is functioning institutions. As bad as some first world governments can seem from our perspective, they’re way better than the kleptocrats and warlords who rule some parts of the world. And yeah, when you have functioning institutions, you do end up with smarter and more productive populations because children can go to school instead of slaving away in the cobalt mines.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#686

Post by sneed-oil »

makeitdouble wrote: post #482
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…

> By increasing everybody's salaries, it seems likely to me the cost of goods and services would go up by virtue of inflation. But then everybody's salary stagnating hasn't made the cost of goods stagnate. There's no such simple and direct link between the two.

Maybe the cost of imported goods has gone up

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#687

Post by ideamotor »

liketochill wrote: post #550
ubercore wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Six figure blue collar jobs are not super common in the US.

Isn’t it pretty stabdars to make 100k plus as a plumber ?

I think that is the norm for plumbers servicing areas with 1m+ homes. Granted that likely means they have a long commute even with that salary.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#688

Post by retinaros »

bloppe wrote: post #677
retinaros wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the system IS sustained. the main white collar one even generates profits. increase the salaries that will increase money being sent to retirement funds and it won’t be a problem anymore. france income per capita has been the same for the past 20 years. they are stealing our wages to make us slaves and they blame us for not working enough. christine lagarde pushed for blocking wage rise in the EU, european commission…

I'll admit that I don't understand French social security well at all, but based on what I've read online it seems like increasing salaries would actually reduce the amount of money going to social security because that would mean lower profits for employers (who contribute a higher percentage of their income). Obviously, in terms of wealth redistribution, it's better to have higher wages. But increasing them would a…

basically you pay a % of your salary to the pension fund. the higher the salary the more money you pour into. yes it will reduce profits for employers but even that is only short term. if salary rise you are more competitive on the global talent pool and you can do like america where a big chunk of today s giant were built by highly educated immigrants that came mostly because of the high salaries

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#689

Post by retinaros »

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.

yeah most of our goods and food are now imported so it is not even local salaries that will increase the price of goods. container shipping price however…

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#690

Post by rahen »

csomar wrote: post #533
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…

So it's everyone's fault but... I don't get it. The system is a ponzi scheme. It was bound to have issues while benefiting the early players. Why not admit that?

Because once you're invested in a Ponzi, you lose it all when it crumbles.

It will, ineluctably, but if you can push the date further, then maybe you can get away with it.

To postpone its fate, they'll advocate for a harsher taxation of their neighbor and the business next door so they can profit from them the most ("I know they have money, while I'm so poor you know..."). They also need newcomers in the pyramid, so they advocate for more recruits.

Then they will call that "solidarity" so they don't have to face their short-term, greedy mindset, the same they blame others for.

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