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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

#441

Post by snapplebobapple »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #343
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…

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…

Did that article you link say anything about the ratio of those that reached 60 or not? In a pay as you go system what matters is the ratio of retired to working and in a system that is actuarialy sound and actually saving then the percentage that pays in and does not collect by dying before retirement matters a lot. The most common age you die given you make it to 60 is pretty irrelevant in both situations other than it indirectly partially relates to the load of old people you have to contend with in the system, which is what actually matters in both situations.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#442

Post by spywaregorilla »

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.

Mostly true, yes. But pension deficiencies are not generally because people are living a whole lot longer after retiring.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#443

Post by jxidjhdhdhdhfhf »

tomcam wrote: post #402
Uvix wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No - Social Security for the people who are already retired is paid for by the people who are currently working. Nobody is "paying into" anything.

I am trying to understand this. What were the mini tens of thousands of dollars I paid to the federal government over a period of 40 years in the form of Social Security taxes then?

It's a tax. That money is spent and gone. You no longer have any claim on it. If you live long enough, you may get to claim tax money paid by other workers, but that has nothing to do with what you were taxed.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#444

Post by hcurtiss »

jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote: post #363
akhosravian wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s really eye opening how big the gap is not just in labor costs but also perishable goods. When I was in morocco 10 years ago one of the buckles for my motorcycle pants suspenders broke. I was able to get a local leather worker to create a pattern from the broken piece, craft the replacement, and integrate it into my suspenders overnight for under 5 USD. This was arranged by the hotel I was staying at, and wasn’t…

You're only looking at that from a consumer perspective. On the other side of that transaction is a person earning only $5 for several hours of labor minus the cost of materials.

And there's not much meat on that bone to redistribute to the elderly.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#445

Post by scotty79 »

lordnacho wrote: post #81
lm28469 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

idk man, I've been sold capitalism as this great wealth generating machine, the trickle down economy, the invisible hand of the free market, yadda yadda yadda This isn't a maths equation, it's a societal choice, that's why Macron doesn't get it, he's a bead counter for Maastricht, what he does is making sure the spreadsheet is balanced

Got nothing to do with capitalism. If you're going to let some people retire, some other people are going to have to pay to support them. That's regardless of whether we're hunter-gatherers, feudal, or post-industrial. What I don't understand is how people can't see through the framing. Do old people deserve to retire? Sure. Who is going to take care of them? Younger people. How do they not get a raw deal out of this…

Industrial machines pay for us all for at least a few decades. Just some people get more of that money than others.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#446

Post by [deleted] »

eweise wrote: post #428
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…

If you're referring to social security, that money is not free at all. People pay into the system for 40-50 years so they can get a fraction of it back in retirement. Regarding college inflation, that's purely caused by young people taking out loans. Don't do that. My kid is taking a good number of his classes at the community college. If y'all started shopping for the cheapest way to get an education, costs would co…

[deleted]

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#448

Post by RestlessMind »

anon84873628 wrote: post #391
oblio wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you're a software developer in the US. Doesn't your awesome insurance mean that you are out of pocket just a few thousand dollars?

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.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#449

Post by jasonfarnon »

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…

I think OP's implication is not that nobody wants the 50% of pure bullshit, but that want is itself manufactured by the economy.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#450

Post by amalcon »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #370
_8j50 wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, you don't freaking need your own new house to start a family. In most countries most people never buy a new house. Second, wealth is not zero-sum, there isn't a magic pot of gold redistributed between people. As value and demand are added to the economy, so is wealth because the new young people with demands can provide skills or time to be used in value creation and then they also (and older folks that…

If we removed the electoral college in the US, or if voting day were a national holiday, all those issues would automatically be addressed. The old and conservative make too powerful a voting block, and it perpetuates every corporate, oligarchic, xenophobic greed cycle one could point to as a rot in our system. I don't think old people are bad because they're just taking government money and have big fancy houses, bu…

> if voting day were a national holiday

I see this suggestion a lot, but I struggle to understand what problem it's expected to solve. It certainly wouldn't help voter turn-out. Most service sector jobs (the kind where it's hard to get a couple of hours off to vote) require you to work more on national holidays, not less. It's mostly the relatively voting friendly office jobs that give the day off for a national holiday.

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