French workers protest plan to increase retirement age • Hacker News Board

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#691

Post by rldjbpin » Wed, Mar 08, 2023, 9:20 AM UTC

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…

you have more at stake in the topic than i do, but as someone still affected by the strikes, i got a few words to retort:

if the way to go about protesting is to choose days as per convenience and to have barbeque on the tram tracks, then feel free to do this on a weekly basis. meanwhile, the people on the grind are being affected by disruption of essential public utilities. just like the roller-skating phenomenon mentioned by another poster in the thread, it is only reinforcing the belief of not relying on others in society for your day-to-day needs.

the way people go about it in this instance is not garnering any sympathy by those who need the most support in society.

EDIT: grammar

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#692

Post by Aeolun » Wed, Mar 08, 2023, 9:28 AM UTC

speedgoose wrote: post #623

Aeolun wrote: post #612

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.

People just want to adjust the system so they don’t have to work when very old. It doesn’t mean the government has to print money. You can change more than the retirement age in the equation, or change the equation.

By all means. How exactly would you go about that?

You can pay people even less. Can you imagine how that would go?

You can make fewer young people pay even more.

You can redirect other taxes to cover the gap.

You can print more money to cover the gap (until your economy collapses from interest payments).

Retirement age is the least contentious variable as far as I’m concerned.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#693

Post by refurb » Wed, Mar 08, 2023, 9:57 AM UTC

BadCookie wrote: post #253

These stats are for the U.S., but one thing that usually get ignored in these retirement discussions is just how massively life expectancy depends on income level and sex: http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/health/ Raising the retirement pension age screws over the poor, especially poor men. Perhaps retirement age should be tied to income/wealth somehow ... and maybe even sex (as controversial as I imagine that w…

That’s a silly argument because social security is meant as insurance to cover a wide range of outcomes.

You can be poor and be an outlier who lives to 100, or a rich person who is an outlier and dies before even getting your first payment.

Saying the average life expectancy is lower ignores the huge overlap of actual life spans across both groups.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#694

Post by ChuckNorris89 » Wed, Mar 08, 2023, 10:21 AM UTC

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.

>But then everybody's salary stagnating hasn't made the cost of goods stagnate

Because Apple, Tesla and the international market for fungible goods like gas or grain, doesn't care about the stagnating salary in your country. They'll still want X USD for their products.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#695

Post by soco » Wed, Mar 08, 2023, 10:27 AM UTC

yodsanklai wrote: post #289

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…

> Every president, be they socialist or liberal, have attempted to tackle the issue, only to get country-paralyzing backlash. People will nitpick the details of whatever current plan proposes, but the fundamental problem remains. The Touraine Law in 2014 raised the number of worked years from 36 to 43, which is a big deal. So it's not like nothing happened. Also there are good reasons to dispute the current proposal,…

Indeed even here in the comments everybody gets heated about the details, so on the streets it will be even worse. What everybody (how conveniently for them) ignores is why, when this pension was invented, did they choose a certain age when to benefit from it. They chosen it by age expectation, that not everybody gets to reach it so the survivors will benefit. Nowadays this very principle is broken and we all get hung on 63 or 65 while the average/median/whatever live over 70. So basically everybody requests and expects a pension which wasn't even thought for everybody. It's not the system's fault here - it wasn't designed for today's pyramid - but I also recognize you cannot expect people to accept that, so here we are.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#696

Post by v-erne » Wed, Mar 08, 2023, 10:32 AM UTC

wonderwonder wrote: post #373

avgcorrection wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such “normalization” would then also, presumably, apply to the rich. Unless one thinks that a billionaire who makes ten million USD a day is ten thousand times more productive than even a very high-earning wage worker.

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 inheriting stance in aristocratic societies this capitalistic abstraction of ownership through money seems to crack.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#697

Post by myshpa » Wed, Mar 08, 2023, 10:35 AM UTC

mynameishere wrote: post #526

myshpa wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Source? https://libcom.org/article/phenomenon-bullshit-jobs-david-gr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs > Who's going to take care of sick people? Who's going to maintain our infrastructure? Who's going to police people? Who's going to defend our country from war? Who's going to make sure your cellphone still works? Who's going to make sure your house still has electricity? Who's going to make sure the…

You're probably 15 years old or thereabouts, so I'll keep this simple: With UBI, you will have to drive your trash to the nearest landfill yourself. And the car will barely work for lack of mechanics. And the road will barely function for lack of construction workers. And the landfill will just be a disordered rubbish tip, and not a proper facility. Because no one--and I mean no one--is working in garbage, grease, or…

Money is not the best or the only motivator.

Maybe (ignoring the fact that ours is the age of trash, one of the things that should be solved first) those jobs you've mentioned are in fact essential and the only thing it shows is that the way how incentives are set is artificial and has nothing to do with the real utility of the job.

Making majority of population to work their whole lives although there are (will be) ways to automate it completely just because we need few dirty & greasy jobs done is not a stupidity?

And I for one don't believe that doctors and nurses are in it only for the money, there are many examples of people choosing jobs and risking their lives for others, no money are worth that. People (can) act out of their heart, not just out of their greed.

It's a complicated topic, with many unknowns and many things that would have to change, but insisting that status quo is the best way to handle things ... that seems like blindness to me.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#698

Post by realusername » Wed, Mar 08, 2023, 10:37 AM UTC

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…

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.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#699

Post by rwmj » Wed, Mar 08, 2023, 10:44 AM UTC

strken wrote: post #265

rwmj wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is (so is the US). But ultimately productive value from workers must be transferred to retired people. How exactly that happens, whether through deferred spending power (ie savings/investments) or through direct payments, it has to happen. Although I admit that there being other countries in the world does change the calculus a bit; it would be possible (albeit weird and unsustainable) for everyone in France to be…

"From workers to retired people" implies at a casual reading that the worker and the retiree are not the same person, when in many systems the majority of what the worker pays goes directly to their own retirement. It's debatable whether paying into your own account is a transfer of wealth at all, even if you're not able to withdraw your money until retirement.

You're still relying on money being worth something in future.

Imagine a future where there are half as many the workers as retirees. It doesn't matter how much money retirees have in their pensions if they cannot hire workers to look after them (do their healthcare, produce the food they eat etc). You'd just get rampant inflation as the richer retirees competed to get workers, and everyone else goes without. In other words, in that scenario the value of the saved money would be eroded by inflation.

Now I will admit that this is complicated by there being other countries, or if we invent humanoid healthcare robots or whatever. But there's a principle involved that someone (/ thing) has to do the work.

Re: French workers protest plan to increase retirement age

#700

Post by GaelFG » Wed, Mar 08, 2023, 10:51 AM UTC

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…

"that would mean lower profits for employers (who contribute a higher percentage of their income)"

No, for equivalent 'net money on your wallet after tax' a company pay more tax for employees than for company owner.

Without detailling too much (and by choosing an 'arbitrary but realistic situation') the are two ways of getting money from your company to your personal bank account :

- a specialy taxed "company owner" salary (you can make simulation here : https://mon-entreprise.urssaf.fr/simulateurs/eurl , yes I choose a specific company category, but it's a common one, you can compare with a the 'standard' employee tax numbers : https://entreprise.pole-emploi.fr/cout-salarie/ ) which give you benefit from the social security system and which cost a bit less (for a standard company owner range of pay) than an employee salary.

- A 'company profit share' at the end of each year. You 'decide' how much you company profit was this year and that you want to give to owner, you pay a "less important tax than on salaries" give it to the owner, and then they pay their personnal income tax on it.

The optimisation game is to ensure yourself a sufficient salary to have a good social protection (and other perk like being abble to rent/buy/loan money easily) but also benefit from company income share wich is less taxed.

I dont even talk about legal trick to avoid parts of the company income tax, wich is way more complex to handle than a salary.