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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

#701

Post by flashfaffe2 »

andrekandre wrote: post #124
flashfaffe2 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French here: Though the problem is well known (at least for 40 years), No french governments has considered diversifying the source of the revenue funding the pension system. Actually its worse as the only capitalisation existing are in a process to be nationalised. Moreover, this reform is purely the outcome of political game. Macron electorat is mainly the 'boomers' who fully beneficiated of th situation ( in fact…

what is the cause of not having enough funds to maintain the current retirement age?

The current system requires more workers ( with decent salary) than number of retirers... Given the population if getting older this creates an a very prévisible imbalance...

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#702

Post by ubercore »

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 ?

Knowing a few plumbers, I'm sure it can be, but it can be a very feast or famine trade. And most that make that own their own business, so still blue collar, but not exactly an everyman kind of job.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#703

Post by sw104 »

gruez wrote: post #571
jasonfarnon wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think the previous poster may be thinking more along the lines of a Mickey Mouse shaped bar of soap, rather than an important component of something useful, like resistors.

There is a mountain of trash end-products out there, which marketing is creating the want for. These products may not otherwise exist without the manufactured want, and could be removed entirely without much detriment to the very small amount of people that conscientiously decided of their own free will they wanted that product.

Marketing is what makes something like a Peloton a viable business, rather than those customers just taking a regular static bike and adding a tablet mount to the handlebars.

In some senses, I think the economy isn't always looking for the most efficient methods. I believe there is some political input involved to keep everybody's heads down under a quagmire of pointless work, so those people (even in a democracy) don't start asking too many questions. Some people could easily be automated out of work, yet they aren't, despite the efficiency it would bring.

To each their own, but I'd be fine with a huge amount of (what I deem) useless products and jobs being removed from the market. Most serve very little real purpose and as somebody else stated, are destroying our planet and wasting away the best years of our lives to attain them.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#704

Post by wdb »

retinaros wrote: post #235
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #87

The french pension reform attempts have been going on for decades . I remember in the mid-90s a huge, weeks- (months-?) long public transit strike which, funnily enough, kick-started Parisian's interest in roller-blading (and led to the awesome weekly Friday-night roller-blading tour [1]. If it's your thing, I highly recommend it! But be prepared to have to go over some cobblestone sections) France's system has the w…

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…

How's the European Commission not elected? You vote a government in your country and they than select the commissioner for this commission.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#705

Post by luckylion »

PeterisP wrote: post #394
luckylion wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure, but there's a difference between a promise that someone will do it for you, and you having currency to exchange for doing so. In the "having money" case, you have more options, but if you're given options, you also have more opportunity to make terrible decisions. And if it's a lump sum (or private investment of some kind), you can pass it on to your children - you can't do that with pensions in the other t…

What is currency if not an implied promise that someone will provide future services or goods in exchange for it? In a situation where workers can't/won't keep a promise to maintain retirees, the currency value will reflect exactly that, it will devalue so that the total amount of currency retirees have won't be enough to buy these services.

Yes, but we'll quickly spiral into infinity if we take it too far. For our intents and purposes, currency is a placeholder for value. If you have that value (whether actually material or represented by currency), you'll have a much better chance to find someone who will exchange it for services. Their incentive is getting something from you in exchange.

On the other hand, in the current system as it's used in France, Germany etc, their incentive is that hopefully someone else will do it for them in 40 years. But from what I gather, very few members of GenZ believe that our pension system will survive in its current form until it's their turn to benefit from it. They expect it to collapse, so everything they'd now put in would be wasted, much like if you invest in something after it has signaled that it will default soon.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#706

Post by pixelfarmer »

HaixuanTao wrote: post #676
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…

> left-leaning ideas of the younger generations about ecology and equality "extreme-left" Whatever the labelling you want to use, but we know for a fact that extreme ecology is going to destroy our country. We saw what happened with French nuclear, we are seeing it in the EU car industry, we are seeing it in French housing. We already know that radical ecology is going to bring social unrest. That the first to suffer…

> Macron is just trying to level the playing field and make France attractive.

... to whom?

> After this reform, we will still be one of the most generous country in the world even for pension and social net even among Europe and even more worldwide.

Not sure why I'm thinking about a frog being slowly boiled alive.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#707

Post by mrbadger »

wdb wrote: post #704
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…

How's the European Commission not elected? You vote a government in your country and they than select the commissioner for this commission.

Indeed. The Commission is appointed by the Council (member state govt heads of state) and appointments are ratified by the European Parliament. Same as with the executive in the US. Not complicated.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#708

Post by giantg2 »

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…

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

...

people enjoy having kids, they just need the personal economic consequences to be less of a flaming trainwreck.'

You start out saying one thing and end up saying something different.

The point is, even when people have the money, they don't want kids, or at least not very many. If people truly want kids, then they are already incentivized and just need to be able to.

Parents already get tax breaks for kids. Primary and secondary education costs are mostly covered via taxes, whether one has kids or not. So there are already economic incentives, they just aren't a net benefit to the parents. I don't believe making them a net benefit is the right course of action since that has potential problems as well.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#709

Post by giantg2 »

coding123 wrote: post #611
jjoonathan wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

The social safety net will cover that. SNAP, WIC, CHIP, Medicaid, school, are all covered. All you need is subsidized housing and to know where the different charities are that have free food and clothing.

If you look at the link I previously posted, the under $10k a year group have the highest birthrate. So it can be done.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#710

Post by p4bl0 »

realusername wrote: post #698
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…

The system ISN'T sustained, not even the most optimistic scenario supports your argument. And funneling even more money into it like you want to isn't an option, the GDP proportion dedicated to retirement increased a lot already. You've seen the low salary but you didn't understand the cause of that, the cause of that is the money is being funneled to the retirement system.

Literally everything you said is false.

The COR (Conseil d'orientation des retraites) has 4 working scenarios and only a single one of them has the retirement system going temporarily into the negatives. The situation is not alarming at all. In addition, there are a lot of solutions that have been on the table to help the retirement system do even better and allow people to retire earlier (for example paying women the same as men: the salary resulting increase will mechanically make more money go towards contributing to retirement funds).

If the GDP portion dedicated to the elderly is maintained at around 14% the system has nothing to worry about, the goal of Macron's reform is to lower this number because he prefers to use public money to fund private companies that are already making profits (through tax mechanism such as the CICE or the CIR for example).

Also, low salaries actually means less money "funneled to the retirement system", since this money is a percentage of salaries. Also, low retirements income means people still working have to financially support their parents. The elderly have to be supported one way or another. The question is whether you choose to do it collectively as a society, or go with the individualistic solution that won't work for everyone.

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