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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

#781

Post by gwright »

Aeolun wrote: post #616
OrvalWintermute wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The concern about the framing isn't about looking at the tax code at a particular point in time but instead setting a context for how the tax code and spending priorities evolve over time.

If you start with the idea that the money belongs to the government and you have to ask to get it back (via the legislative process) the discussion is going to be very different than if you start with the idea that the money belongs to the people and there has to be a very strong reason for the government to get any of it (via the legislative process).

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#782

Post by mmarq »

realusername wrote: post #716
p4bl0 wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can’t increase salaries de jure The law defines the minimum legal wage. History has shown that increasing the minimum wage generally quickly end up increasing all salaries.

History has also shown that it leads to higher unemployment and lower growth of the salaries above it.

History hasn’t really shown anything.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#783

Post by omegaworks »

PeterisP wrote: post #384
toomuchtodo wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There will be a market clearing price for that work, and these accounting mechanizations are simply sussing out what that price is (in comparison to other broad societal work to be done). If caring for the elderly is made more valuable than say, slinging JavaScript, that’s where some of the labor will go.

Sure, but the fact that your savings or pension plan contributions "should have" been enough for a certain amount of care can't guarantee that it will be enough for all or even half of it when the time comes; it's perfectly plausible (and with certain worker/retiree ratios even inevitable) that the market clearing prices will have to be higher than what would be enough for most people. And the key factor is that if e…

>then twice as much retirement savings should simply lead to a twice higher market clearing price for that work due to "these accounting mechanizations".

You assume:

* The labor market isn't flexible, that higher pay won't attract new workers

* There isn't a wage at which workers would be satisfied meeting their basic needs.

And this makes your conclusion that the labor would simply absorb additional funding too rigid.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#784

Post by andrepd »

notch898a wrote: post #425
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.

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…

Thankfully, people do things (especially having children) for reasons other than financial.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#785

Post by billforsternz »

billforsternz wrote: post #305
vkou wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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.

Most Westerners never think about why exactly their standard of living is much higher than the global average. The implicit assumption is that that's just the way things are and will always be.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#786

Post by andrepd »

candiodari wrote: post #737
p4bl0 wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has, partly. But a part of the inflation at least in France/Europe is also due to big corp choosing to increase prices because they can (since "there is inflation"). For example Unilever has distributed very high dividends (€19B, for a total turnover of €80B, that's almost a quarter of their total revenue going directly towards to their shareholders while their workers and consumers see nothing), while the numerou…

Then France should not have allowed Unilever to merge so much, or at least guaranteed competition in France. If this works, they must have had either state support or a monopoly position.

Why? Why is this an axiom?

Example: supermarkets where I live co-ordinate their prices. There are 5 big chains and they all increased prices in tandem (and margins, so nothing to do with increased costs). They get slapped with a 100 miliion euro fine every year or two, but what do they care? It's a drop compared to the amount they profit from the cartelisation.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#787

Post by joe_the_user »

Nasrudith wrote: post #673
joe_the_user wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The french pension reform attempts have been going on for decades ... Every president, be they socialist or liberal, have attempted to tackle the issue, only to get country-paralyzing backlash.... it isn't a sustainable system. Good For them? They've been trying to change this forty years? So they were trying to change this back when it ipso facto was sustainable, since it's survived 'till now. How credible does that…

Awkwardly that same logic applied to global warming would not work out well. Under the rug is not a solution unfortunately.

So?

Do you have any argument that these two questions should be approached the same way?

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#788

Post by spywaregorilla »

areyousure wrote: post #511
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…

> The mode (most common) age of death was over 75 in France for men in 1930. The most common age of death in France, for both men and women, in 1930 was 0.

Pretty much all life expectancy statistics are based on people who are successfully born.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#789

Post by andrepd »

sokoloff wrote: post #713
RestlessMind wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you institute protectionist policies, you will in turn become less competitive less competitive against whom? If West had not shipped its factories to China, I am sure West would have still stayed competitive against China by miles. In fact, by shipping its technical know-how for manufacturing, West has allowed China to become more competitive. > I don't like gravity, but it doesn't mean I can ignore it and jump…

In the 1960s, US auto-makers appeared content to make crappy, unreliable cars until Japanese imports (also crappy at first) came in and improved quickly, putting pressure on the domestics to also improve. Consumers have vastly benefited from that competition, far in excess of any losses from the domestic automaker labor group. It’s not entirely voluntary, but if you want to see what protectionism and economic isolati…

> if you want to see what protectionism and economic isolation will bring, go visit Cuba

Hasn't its neighbour and biggest economy in the world been levying an embargo on Cuba for over half a century? Doesn't seem like the appropriate example for your argument.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#790

Post by andrepd »

v-erne wrote: post #696
wonderwonder wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But are the ten thousand people he employs getting good wages because of his actions? Would they be making comparable salaries if he had not started his companies? He is not paid for productivity, he is rewarded for taking the initial risk and investing his own money.

I think this story/abstraction of "owning money" has to break at some level. I mean if you believe, as I do, that money (especially at trillion level) is direct substitution for power over people and even whole societies then what happens if we let this global game of Monopoly to play to its seemingly inevitable conclusion ? Isn't this somehow antidemocratic in nature? And if you notice that inheritance is not unlike…

> Isn't this somehow antidemocratic in nature?

The idea of joint-stock companies is antidemocratic in nature. If you were to propose that people could buy votes in parliament, everybody would (rightly) be outraged. But this is how joint-stock companies work: workers have 0 say in how things are run and how resources are allocated, owners can buy and sell voting rights and dividend rights.

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