Urgh, so update: I have been trying to find, for the past three hours, some solid discussion and arguments around why French people are so outraged. All I can find is discussion about how outraged...
Urgh, so update: I have been trying to find, for the past three hours, some solid discussion and arguments around why French people are so outraged.
All I can find is discussion about how outraged people should be, because there is outrage and thus there should be more outrage. And if people aren't outraged, they should be outraged. You feel me?
Getting a general feel for things on r/france, it is literally just people upset that Macron is triggering this, despite saying he wouldn't. To which I say, fair, but also looking at the numbers, it's not good. France cannot keep up this system, especially as the quality of old life increases and people live longer.
We've had early retirement at 62 since 1955. The budget is bad enough that Macron is ready to sacrifice his entire approval rating into the trash just to force the cut. An adjustment that brings the age to 64, which... well, here are the ages across europe.
My take: It seems to be mainly the far left and the far right stoking the flames of all this. So it seems to me that this is Macron being the adult in the fucking room: Pulling the trigger on an unpopular albeit small change, which starts in 4 years, and avoids economic pain years later. I wonder how many of those protesting actually understand that the country not having a working budget will also fuck their quality of life up in one way or another.
Urgh. I feel like I wasted my time researching this. I should have stopped when I failed to find nuanced discussion over it... as usual, huge red flag.
Thanks for looking. People, the French aren't an exception, don't like being told in the middle of the "game" that the rules have changed and they'll have to work harder/longer to retire....
Urgh, so update: I have been trying to find, for the past three hours, some solid discussion and arguments around why French people are so outraged.
All I can find is discussion about how outraged people should be, because there is outrage and thus there should be more outrage. And if people aren't outraged, they should be outraged. You feel me?
Getting a general feel for things on r/france, it is literally just people upset that Macron is triggering this, despite saying he wouldn't. To which I say, fair, but also looking at the numbers, it's not good. France cannot keep up this system, especially as the quality of old life increases and people live longer.
Thanks for looking. People, the French aren't an exception, don't like being told in the middle of the "game" that the rules have changed and they'll have to work harder/longer to retire. Especially with the growing global rich/poor divide where only one side actually has to rely on the gov't retirement benefits. So I get why they'd be upset, telling people that through no fault of their own that they have to suffer for the poor decisions made by others over the last 60+ years is going to be unpopular. Then telling them you won't force it through without approval, then forcing it through without approval anyway. I'd be pissed too. Add to it that Macron suffers little here. Sure his popularity tanks and he may not win re-election next time (depending on how nutjob-y the right wing nutjob candidate is), but he gets to pull the 49.3 lever, gets a no-confidence vote that won't do anything, and if it does it dissolves his PM and cabinet, but he stays in power and then dissolves the Assembly in retaliation. And then since it's not a regular bill, but a budget bill the new government forms and he pulls the 49.3 lever again and again until he gets his way.
We've had early retirement at 62 since 1955. The budget is bad enough that Macron is ready to sacrifice his entire approval rating into the trash just to force the cut. An adjustment that brings the age to 64, which... well, here are the ages across europe.
Eh, just because it's higher elsewhere isn't justification for raising it in France. "You should suffer through the rat race longer because other people do" isn't a good sell.
Side note: What's up with the countries with different male/female retirement ages?
My take: It seems to be mainly the far left and the far right stoking the flames of all this. So it seems to me that this is Macron being the adult in the fucking room: Pulling the trigger on an unpopular albeit small change, which starts in 4 years, and avoids economic pain years later. I wonder how many of those protesting actually understand that the country not having a working budget will also fuck their quality of life up in one way or another.
I'm not saying it's not a hard decision and it's clear something needs to be done, but I do understand why people are pissed.
My understanding (somewhat limited) is that the relatively early retirement and pension is deeply cultural. It’s almost considered a right to be able to retire at 62, and there’s a different...
My understanding (somewhat limited) is that the relatively early retirement and pension is deeply cultural. It’s almost considered a right to be able to retire at 62, and there’s a different relationship to work. Apparently there’s also a desire to avoid the type of capitalism present in the U.S. and U.K., so there might also be the underlying Atlanticist versus Continental tension.
Yeah it seems like people just think there’s just a lever in Paris with the label “tax the rich” that Macron can just pull. Policy discussion is basically impossible at this point.
Yeah it seems like people just think there’s just a lever in Paris with the label “tax the rich” that Macron can just pull. Policy discussion is basically impossible at this point.
I'm not one to claim French political/constitutional expertise, but if he has a magical lever that he can pull to ram through wildly unpopular legislation is there not a lever that he can pull...
I'm not one to claim French political/constitutional expertise, but if he has a magical lever that he can pull to ram through wildly unpopular legislation is there not a lever that he can pull that skyrockets taxes on the rich to pay for it?
Reading up on 49.3 certainly makes it seem flawed. A president pulls the lever to push through unpopular legislation, a no-confidence vote can happen, if it succeeds the bill is blocked but the president who pulled the lever suffers no actual consequences outside of popularity (the PM and cabinet are removed, but not Macron) and Macron is threatening to dissolve the assembly making everyone have to run for re-election again if the no-confidence vote passes. Certainly seems like that 49.3 is an undemocratic I'm-going-to-get-my-way-and-there's-nothing-you-can-do-to-stop-me lever.
"the rich" are the portion of the population that has the least hard ties to their country of residence, and thus can most easily move to another. Especially because this is the EU we're talking...
is there not a lever that he can pull that skyrockets taxes on the rich to pay for it?
"the rich" are the portion of the population that has the least hard ties to their country of residence, and thus can most easily move to another. Especially because this is the EU we're talking about; as a French person, moving to another country is a matter of just deciding to do it. (I'm French, I've done it like five times)
If you skyrocket taxes, those most impacted by it are most likely to leave. This strategy only really works in the US because the US is one of the only countries in the world to send the taxman regardless of where you reside; so if you want to stop paying, it's not just a matter of moving, you have to renounce your citizenship.
And when you lose rich people, you don't just lose "political support" - Macron has shown that he's willing to throw his approval rating under the bus. You also lose economic support. Because most rich people are also most economically active: They own companies with thousands of employees, etc. If you lose them, you don't just lose their taxes, you affect entire sectors of the country's economy.
In other words, "tax the rich" is an incredibly unpredictable (and broad) lever to pull. On the other hand, pensions are a very reliable and predictable way to budget. They even come with a huge number of asterisks which ensure they remain predictable for the country, and they have to remain a good investment (the whole idea behind pensions being: Saving money long term is on average highly profitable for those whose money is mostly idle, so we will do it for you and make it appealing/mandatory). Increasing retirement age is also what is least likely to have negative side effects on the economy (quite morbidly: the older you are, the least likely you are to take decisions that have an impact on the economy)
So changing variables around pensions can turn a country's economy around very easily. Now to be clear I didn't look in depth at France's budget and numbers, I have other cats to whip as we say. But I'm not surprised it's what he's choosing to go after.
The being able to just leave is a good point, especially with the lack of taxman shadow which I didn't realize wasn't a thing over there, but I'm not entirely sold on the whole "rich people leave...
The being able to just leave is a good point, especially with the lack of taxman shadow which I didn't realize wasn't a thing over there, but I'm not entirely sold on the whole "rich people leave and take all of their companies with them" line as that's a frequented claim by people/politicians/talking heads to argue against raising taxes on the rich with little evidence to back it up. People may move easily, but companies, manufacturing, and all the related facets of such do not.
The other thing that I think goes ignored is the capacity for consumers to punish companies. If the middle and lower class are not in a state of desparation, they can reward/punish companies for...
The other thing that I think goes ignored is the capacity for consumers to punish companies. If the middle and lower class are not in a state of desparation, they can reward/punish companies for good/bad behavior.
Well, no, because "tax the rich" isn't an actual policy, it's a vague idea that can be turned into policy, but the various policy outcomes can range from hypothetically working fairly well to...
Well, no, because "tax the rich" isn't an actual policy, it's a vague idea that can be turned into policy, but the various policy outcomes can range from hypothetically working fairly well to economic collapse so it's not a particularly useful category.
What I mean is that "tax the rich" isn't a useful thing to want the government to do in the abstract. It's absurdly broad. Who are we taxing, what is the mechanism, and what are the potential effects of this taxation. Are you going to tax assets directly? Just income? How much? And so forth.
"Raise the retirement age by 2" is a specific policy that can be implemented, and Macron has made his argument for why it resolves the budget issues and what the effects are.
I don't know much about the specifics of France's government structure, but I'd imagine that many parliamentary systems could seem undemocratic from the perspective of an American. In Canada for...
I don't know much about the specifics of France's government structure, but I'd imagine that many parliamentary systems could seem undemocratic from the perspective of an American. In Canada for instance the amount of political power at the disposal of a PM with a majority of the HoC is unfathomable in America.
The benefit is that public policy results have clear and tangible ownership and that voters can and do take revenge at the ballot box. Thinking of all the political failings of the USA in the last few decades, many seem to feature riders such as 'well you can't really blame x, we didn't have support in body y or from person z'
I have very little empathy for france right now to be honest. We have the most worker friendly system in the world. Least hours, most paid holidays etc. I’m not sore what the issue is with a...
I have very little empathy for france right now to be honest. We have the most worker friendly system in the world. Least hours, most paid holidays etc.
I’m not sore what the issue is with a reform on a pension system that can’t pay for itself… I think people just want something to rally against. CMV…
Probably because they'll do things like this if anyone tries to take it away. When you fight for your rights, you tend to get more of them. Quick search suggests French workers are 5x as...
We have the most worker friendly system in the world. Least hours, most paid holidays etc.
Probably because they'll do things like this if anyone tries to take it away. When you fight for your rights, you tend to get more of them.
I’m not sore what the issue is with a reform on a pension system that can’t pay for itself… I think people just want something to rally against. CMV…
Quick search suggests French workers are 5x as productive as they were in 1950. I think it's perfectly reasonable for workers to be angry that with all that improvement, the onus still falls on them to work more.
I don’t grasp exactly how they are calculating this but you’d struggle to find a country where this isn’t the case if I understand correctly? Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for our...
In France, Productivity is the real value of output produced by a unit of labor during a certain time.
I don’t grasp exactly how they are calculating this but you’d struggle to find a country where this isn’t the case if I understand correctly?
Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for our workers rights. And no it’s not because “we riot if you take it away”. We have a culture of workers being taken care of; it’s ingrained. I don’t know how to explain it really but employers are supposed to take care of their employees and to us that’s the deal.
Pensions on the other hand… I dunno. I personally opted out of pensions. You don’t get a pension when you’re contracting all the time, and even if you started contributing they don’t transfer over when you move to another country. Too many restrictions with them. Figured I’d either die young or figure out how to have savings by the time I’m old… or just work longer than most.
I guess it’s just absolutely not surprising to me that retirement age could change; it’s been talked about basically all my life.
Why is it ingrained? What happens if employers, who have a financial incentive to do so, break the deal? Riots aren't the only reason the French have these rights, but I do believe it is a vital...
Exemplary
Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for our workers rights. And no it’s not because “we riot if you take it away”. We have a culture of workers being taken care of; it’s ingrained. I don’t know how to explain it really but employers are supposed to take care of their employees and to us that’s the deal.
Why is it ingrained? What happens if employers, who have a financial incentive to do so, break the deal? Riots aren't the only reason the French have these rights, but I do believe it is a vital one; it's a reminder that if the ruling classes hurt the working class, the working class has the ability to strike back.
Let's say that the pension plan is inevitable and necessary. I'd still personally say that the protests that have happened are the best move that could've been made. You can't only protest the significant stuff; that leaves you open to the slow erosion of incrementalism, until you're left to wonder how things could've gotten so bad. It's absolutely going to have a detrimental effect on most people's lives, and the people that make these decisions need to feel some of that, otherwise it becomes too easy for them. I guarantee that any politicians are going to be real hesitant to make any decisions that would take away peoples' rights for quite some time after this. And all the while, children are seeing that this is an option if they feel mistreated, that they don't have to simply accept abuse because of power imbalances. I think that's an important step in ingraining this into the culture.
I guess it’s just absolutely not surprising to me that retirement age could change; it’s been talked about basically all my life.
So this has been a foreseeable problem, but even though worker productivity has also been going up all that time, it's still on them to give more. I think this ties back into all the discussion of AI and automation. Why should it be a source of dread when your job gets automated, rather than a cause for celebration? Why do the gains from these sorts of improvements overwhelmingly go to the people who are already well off, even if they come at the expense of people barely scraping by? I don't live in France, but I suspect these sorts of societal considerations are a part of what's fueling the outrage for many people, as they tend to be an outcome of capitalism.
I have no idea. I can just tell you that it is. Cultural, maybe. This reminds me of when Patrick McKenzie talked about leaving a laptop (or some other expensive thing, don't remember) unattended...
Why is it ingrained?
I have no idea. I can just tell you that it is. Cultural, maybe. This reminds me of when Patrick McKenzie talked about leaving a laptop (or some other expensive thing, don't remember) unattended in a Japanese cafe, and coming back to retrieve it much later, finding it in plain view in the exact place he left it. Something which would be impossible in the US.
Some things are just cultural. I have clashed with a US cofounder years ago in terms of expectations, and I have tried my best to reproduce those expectations with people I have myself later hired.
I'd still personally say that the protests that have happened are the best move that could've been made.
You know, I'd like to be presented with more than just "it's bad because it's bad". Your comment is once again similar to what I had been reading yesterday: This is bad because it's not good, and the protests are good because the thing is bad. I must be missing something; someone clearly thinks this is exemplary so /shrug.
So this has been a foreseeable problem, but even though worker productivity has also been going up all that time, it's still on them to give more.
So, worker productivity is going up. I still don't know how that statistic is calculated exactly but let's take it at face value: What should workers get in exchange for higher productivity? I can't quickly find any numbers older than 2000 (here are some if you want to dig, but it's more work than I care to do for a Tildes reply), but the average salary has doubled since 2000. Inflation since 2000 is basically half of that, so by all accounts that same 5x productivity should have been met by far more than 5x compensation. What's more, that same 100€ from 1955 (converted and adjusted for inflation) buys a lot more today than back then. To put it simply, we didn't have star trek devices in our pockets back then. Hell, we didn't even have Star Trek.
"It's an outcome of capitalism" is lazy finger-pointing IMO. They are an outcome of economics, something you cannot really opt out of. I'm sure we could just not increase retirement age, but then what do you do instead? You just hope the govt is lying and the budget's actually fine? You wait for Bill Gates to take pity and give us money?
I find the cultural differences interesting, and winding them back to try to find the origin point can be even more so. Apologies if I'm misunderstanding the point of confusion here. The pension...
I have no idea. I can just tell you that it is. Cultural, maybe. This reminds me of when Patrick McKenzie talked about leaving a laptop (or some other expensive thing, don't remember) unattended in a Japanese cafe, and coming back to retrieve it much later, finding it in plain view in the exact place he left it. Something which would be impossible in the US.
Some things are just cultural. I have clashed with a US cofounder years ago in terms of expectations, and I have tried my best to reproduce those expectations with people I have myself later hired.
I find the cultural differences interesting, and winding them back to try to find the origin point can be even more so.
You know, I'd like to be presented with more than just "it's bad because it's bad". Your comment is once again similar to what I had been reading yesterday: This is bad because it's not good, and the protests are good because the thing is bad. I must be missing something; someone clearly thinks this is exemplary so /shrug.
Apologies if I'm misunderstanding the point of confusion here. The pension age increasing is bad because it prolongs the time people have to spend working, and most people dislike their jobs, often intensely. The prospect of spending another 2 years in them is galling, possibly more so because of a vision of the future that shows like Star Trek envisioned: a future freed from menial labor. A lot of the people in these protests remember the rapid advancement of phones as an example of how fast things can advance. But the future is here, and with it 2 more years of menial labor. (Setting aside whether percentage-wise it's more work factoring in increased life expectancy. People generally don't think in percentages, they just see the 2 year figure.)
Life expectancy in France in 1955 was 68 years. It is now 83 years.
This life expectancy increase has an impact on how economical pensions are, especially because once someone reaches pension age, they are still expected to live another ~25 years, 2 years longer than 20 years ago.
So, worker productivity is going up. I still don't know how that statistic is calculated exactly but let's take it at face value: What should workers get in exchange for higher productivity? I can't quickly find any numbers older than 2000 (here are some if you want to dig, but it's more work than I care to do for a Tildes reply), but the average salary has doubled since 2000. Inflation since 2000 is basically half of that, so by all accounts that same 5x productivity should have been met by far more than 5x compensation. What's more, that same 100€ from 1955 (converted and adjusted for inflation) buys a lot more today than back then. To put it simply, we didn't have star trek devices in our pockets back then. Hell, we didn't even have Star Trek.
"It's an outcome of capitalism" is lazy finger-pointing IMO. They are an outcome of economics, something you cannot really opt out of. I'm sure we could just not increase retirement age, but then what do you do instead? You just hope the govt is lying and the budget's actually fine? You wait for Bill Gates to take pity and give us money?
IIRC, pre-1800, 80-90% of people were farmers. Nowadays, it's more like 10%. The advancement of technology can open up possibilities that were previously unthinkable.
I nabbed some numbers from a graph in this paper, page 72. It's not the most recent, but for a Tildes reply for a topic that's likely to have a lot of information in a language I don't speak, it'll do. From 1980 to 2014, the top 10% increased their share of the total wealth from 50% to 55%. I'd be surprised if that trend hasn't continued. France is doing a lot better than the USA in terms of wealth inequality, but the rich are still siphoning wealth away from everyone else.
So when a financial crisis looms - the pension fund issue - is the solution to extract money from the 10%, the people who own the majority of wealth in the country at this point? No, it's to make everyone work more. I'm not going to blame anyone for being angry at that.
I mean, that's kind of my point, isn't it? People expect their pension to last 8 more years (LE delta at 18, when you start contributing to a pension), but only see the 2 years figure in terms of...
Setting aside whether percentage-wise it's more work factoring in increased life expectancy. People generally don't think in percentages, they just see the 2 year figure
I mean, that's kind of my point, isn't it? People expect their pension to last 8 more years (LE delta at 18, when you start contributing to a pension), but only see the 2 years figure in terms of work without pension.
France is doing a lot better than the USA in terms of wealth inequality, but the rich are still siphoning wealth away from everyone else.
So this is a separate topic, but before I dive into it, three points:
Wealth inequality is extremely difficult to avoid. See 1.
Wealth inequality is extremely difficult to reduce. See 2
The third point is most important, because assuming you could avoid/reduce it easily, you would not necessarily want to, because in a capitalist society it's a symptom of things working as intended. WI existing doesn't mean that those on the lower end live in disproportionate poverty. "How to allocate resources" is THE question economics tries to answer, it's not as simple as "anything that isn't equal is bad".
We have a stronger and more accessible education system, which means that if you're not rich, you can still get a good education and learn new skills to be useful on the workforce.
We have stronger social welfare. This wikipedia article goes over it in detail. This means that if you're poor, unemployed, or otherwise unable to work, you can still have a good life (and theoretically have a chance to return to the workforce, but that's not as successful)
We have unemployment security. This means that being fired is not as impactful. It means that if you want to train to get a different job, you can do so; employers have to pay for it -- it makes the workforce more fluid, and incidentally, it means most people don't necessarily dislike their job. (Most people hating their job seems like a more important problem to solve, than reducing how long they work for)
We have universal health care. This means that if you're ill, you aren't hit by massive medical bills, or that your life is ruined because you fell down the stairs.
These are not products always factored in how wealth inequality is calculated, because the rich have just as much access to it. But they do not need it; these systems are mainly designed to make sure everyone is cared for, regardless of where they are on the wealth distribution graph. Doing this is much easier than trying to make the graph flat.
It can be pretty easy to look at numbers, see "there's wealth inequality", and conclude that some vague plan that is popular to suggest in the US would apply in France. But in the US, "tax the rich!" is popular because the rich are disproportionately rich, disproportionately powerful, and being poor is a life sentence for most people.
Anyway, sorry this is getting so long and going into so much depth, but it's a complicated enough problem as it is and this idea that "you can always tax the rich more" is banal. The protests right now don't seem to have concrete suggestions/asks other than "don't do it".
In other words: "I don't care if the system is not viable. It won't be my problem by then." -- Sounds familiar?
Took me a bit longer to get around to this than I expected, apologies. Video Discussion This is tangential to the main point, so sticking these in here. The first video specifically addresses...
Took me a bit longer to get around to this than I expected, apologies.
Video Discussion
This is tangential to the main point, so sticking these in here.
The first video specifically addresses income tax, but there are other forms of taxation. The housing situation in the Netherlands I find somewhat concerning, personally. The analogy I'd use to describe the feeling is something akin to musical chairs; everything works so long as everyone keeps moving, but if the music stops for some reason things will fall short. The economy being so heavily reliant on the cheap and available debt that comes from home ownership seems like it's destined to take a beating in the current housing crisis, and I expect a lot of people to end up falling through the cracks as the system is slow to adjust to the new reality. The last point that bothered me in the video was the person saying that they'd rather be in the bottom 10% of the Netherlands than the top 10% of Ethiopia. Maybe this would be different if the global north wasn't still leeching massive amount of wealth from the global south. Colonialism never really ended, it just changed form, but global wealth inequality is a bigger topic for some other thread.
The second video states that wealth inequality is good because it motivates workers to go through the trouble of educating themselves in return for a higher paying position. Teachers and artists are a direct counterpoint to this; I know a 15 minute video isn't going to cover much nuance, but I think this is an important point. They go on to cite wealth inequality as a driver of innovation. They use patronage during the Renaissance as an example, but I think that may be putting the cart before the horse. Did the patronage enable the innovation to exist, or did the economic conditions restrict innovation such that it could only exist through patronage?
They go on to cite some noblemen inventing the steam engine as a hobby, as well as Bill Gates and the influence of Microsoft. These are a good example, but not of what the video maker says IMO. The noblemen could work on the steam engine due to the opportunity created by their wealth, and Bill Gates got a huge head start because his school was one of vanishingly few in the US that actually had a computer for students to work with. (It took a lot more people to make Microsoft than Bill Gates, who gets a disproportionate share of the wealth, but I'm guessing most if not all of them had similar opportunities.) But if it's the wealth that gives the opportunity, there would be far more innovation if it was more evenly distributed, allowing more people that same opportunity. Instead, only the wealthy can innovate.
They use the space race as an example too, but I feel that's disingenuous. Global wealth inequality played a role in it, but when people talk about wealth inequality they're generally speaking about the influence of the wealthiest people rather than governments. Furthermore, it's often overlooked just how important a role public money plays in innovation while overestimating the private sector. The space race, computers, and for a more recent example, the covid vaccine are all things that are unlikely to exist at best without public institutions. They're even an example of what reducing wealth inequality can accomplish in some ways; moving money from private hands, often of the rich since they have the most to give, to produce something for the public good.
But most importantly, France is not the US.
It's a good point, and one of the reasons I'm interested in the current situation. The paper I previously linked mentioned that, in the 1970s, the US had lower wealth inequality than France. While things even then may not have as good as they are in France, they went downhill quickly, starting in the 80s. 40 years isn't all that long a time for such negative effects to manifest, and many of them went hand in hand with the rise of wealth inequality.
We have unemployment security. This means that being fired is not as impactful. It means that if you want to train to get a different job, you can do so; employers have to pay for it -- it makes the workforce more fluid, and incidentally, it means most people don't necessarily dislike their job. (Most people hating their job seems like a more important problem to solve, than reducing how long they work for)
Quibble on this point; the ability to more easily switch jobs doesn't mean that one you like will be an option, and someone taking the best of a set of bad options doesn't mean that the option they picked is good. France does things much better than the USA does, but I think the current protests demonstrate that people in general still much prefer not working to working in the current system.
So to summarize your points (apologies if I misinterpret you or leave out some vital bit of nuance), wealth inequality isn't the issue, and is too often used as a simplistic catch-all for society's woes. The actual issues are the negative effects people face, and those matters should be dealt with more nuance than the old standby of "tax the rich".
My stance is that the pension plan does represent a negative effect in people's lives, and that it is fair to take a look at wealth inequality when dealing with problems caused by financial issues. Even if I am tilting at windmills here and the pension plan is necessary, I still do think that the reaction of the protestors is a vital component to ensuring that France doesn't have the same sort of rapid decline as the US. You fairly criticize the "not my problem" approach taken by the protestors, but it's often easy for those in power to take the same approach to the lower classes. Protests like this make it everyone's problem, which I think is a good approach when something affects the entire working class.
Anyone here actually in France and want to chime in?
Urgh, so update: I have been trying to find, for the past three hours, some solid discussion and arguments around why French people are so outraged.
All I can find is discussion about how outraged people should be, because there is outrage and thus there should be more outrage. And if people aren't outraged, they should be outraged. You feel me?
Getting a general feel for things on r/france, it is literally just people upset that Macron is triggering this, despite saying he wouldn't. To which I say, fair, but also looking at the numbers, it's not good. France cannot keep up this system, especially as the quality of old life increases and people live longer.
Neutral article in English: https://www.france24.com/en/france/20230315-france-faces-fresh-round-of-strikes-over-highly-contested-pension-reforms
We've had early retirement at 62 since 1955. The budget is bad enough that Macron is ready to sacrifice his entire approval rating into the trash just to force the cut. An adjustment that brings the age to 64, which... well, here are the ages across europe.
My take: It seems to be mainly the far left and the far right stoking the flames of all this. So it seems to me that this is Macron being the adult in the fucking room: Pulling the trigger on an unpopular albeit small change, which starts in 4 years, and avoids economic pain years later. I wonder how many of those protesting actually understand that the country not having a working budget will also fuck their quality of life up in one way or another.
Urgh. I feel like I wasted my time researching this. I should have stopped when I failed to find nuanced discussion over it... as usual, huge red flag.
Thanks for looking. People, the French aren't an exception, don't like being told in the middle of the "game" that the rules have changed and they'll have to work harder/longer to retire. Especially with the growing global rich/poor divide where only one side actually has to rely on the gov't retirement benefits. So I get why they'd be upset, telling people that through no fault of their own that they have to suffer for the poor decisions made by others over the last 60+ years is going to be unpopular. Then telling them you won't force it through without approval, then forcing it through without approval anyway. I'd be pissed too. Add to it that Macron suffers little here. Sure his popularity tanks and he may not win re-election next time (depending on how nutjob-y the right wing nutjob candidate is), but he gets to pull the 49.3 lever, gets a no-confidence vote that won't do anything, and if it does it dissolves his PM and cabinet, but he stays in power and then dissolves the Assembly in retaliation. And then since it's not a regular bill, but a budget bill the new government forms and he pulls the 49.3 lever again and again until he gets his way.
Eh, just because it's higher elsewhere isn't justification for raising it in France. "You should suffer through the rat race longer because other people do" isn't a good sell.
Side note: What's up with the countries with different male/female retirement ages?
I'm not saying it's not a hard decision and it's clear something needs to be done, but I do understand why people are pissed.
My understanding (somewhat limited) is that the relatively early retirement and pension is deeply cultural. It’s almost considered a right to be able to retire at 62, and there’s a different relationship to work. Apparently there’s also a desire to avoid the type of capitalism present in the U.S. and U.K., so there might also be the underlying Atlanticist versus Continental tension.
Yeah it seems like people just think there’s just a lever in Paris with the label “tax the rich” that Macron can just pull. Policy discussion is basically impossible at this point.
I'm not one to claim French political/constitutional expertise, but if he has a magical lever that he can pull to ram through wildly unpopular legislation is there not a lever that he can pull that skyrockets taxes on the rich to pay for it?
Reading up on 49.3 certainly makes it seem flawed. A president pulls the lever to push through unpopular legislation, a no-confidence vote can happen, if it succeeds the bill is blocked but the president who pulled the lever suffers no actual consequences outside of popularity (the PM and cabinet are removed, but not Macron) and Macron is threatening to dissolve the assembly making everyone have to run for re-election again if the no-confidence vote passes. Certainly seems like that 49.3 is an undemocratic I'm-going-to-get-my-way-and-there's-nothing-you-can-do-to-stop-me lever.
"the rich" are the portion of the population that has the least hard ties to their country of residence, and thus can most easily move to another. Especially because this is the EU we're talking about; as a French person, moving to another country is a matter of just deciding to do it. (I'm French, I've done it like five times)
If you skyrocket taxes, those most impacted by it are most likely to leave. This strategy only really works in the US because the US is one of the only countries in the world to send the taxman regardless of where you reside; so if you want to stop paying, it's not just a matter of moving, you have to renounce your citizenship.
And when you lose rich people, you don't just lose "political support" - Macron has shown that he's willing to throw his approval rating under the bus. You also lose economic support. Because most rich people are also most economically active: They own companies with thousands of employees, etc. If you lose them, you don't just lose their taxes, you affect entire sectors of the country's economy.
In other words, "tax the rich" is an incredibly unpredictable (and broad) lever to pull. On the other hand, pensions are a very reliable and predictable way to budget. They even come with a huge number of asterisks which ensure they remain predictable for the country, and they have to remain a good investment (the whole idea behind pensions being: Saving money long term is on average highly profitable for those whose money is mostly idle, so we will do it for you and make it appealing/mandatory). Increasing retirement age is also what is least likely to have negative side effects on the economy (quite morbidly: the older you are, the least likely you are to take decisions that have an impact on the economy)
So changing variables around pensions can turn a country's economy around very easily. Now to be clear I didn't look in depth at France's budget and numbers, I have other cats to whip as we say. But I'm not surprised it's what he's choosing to go after.
The being able to just leave is a good point, especially with the lack of taxman shadow which I didn't realize wasn't a thing over there, but I'm not entirely sold on the whole "rich people leave and take all of their companies with them" line as that's a frequented claim by people/politicians/talking heads to argue against raising taxes on the rich with little evidence to back it up. People may move easily, but companies, manufacturing, and all the related facets of such do not.
The other thing that I think goes ignored is the capacity for consumers to punish companies. If the middle and lower class are not in a state of desparation, they can reward/punish companies for good/bad behavior.
Well, no, because "tax the rich" isn't an actual policy, it's a vague idea that can be turned into policy, but the various policy outcomes can range from hypothetically working fairly well to economic collapse so it's not a particularly useful category.
What I mean is that "tax the rich" isn't a useful thing to want the government to do in the abstract. It's absurdly broad. Who are we taxing, what is the mechanism, and what are the potential effects of this taxation. Are you going to tax assets directly? Just income? How much? And so forth.
"Raise the retirement age by 2" is a specific policy that can be implemented, and Macron has made his argument for why it resolves the budget issues and what the effects are.
I don't know much about the specifics of France's government structure, but I'd imagine that many parliamentary systems could seem undemocratic from the perspective of an American. In Canada for instance the amount of political power at the disposal of a PM with a majority of the HoC is unfathomable in America.
The benefit is that public policy results have clear and tangible ownership and that voters can and do take revenge at the ballot box. Thinking of all the political failings of the USA in the last few decades, many seem to feature riders such as 'well you can't really blame x, we didn't have support in body y or from person z'
I have very little empathy for france right now to be honest. We have the most worker friendly system in the world. Least hours, most paid holidays etc.
I’m not sore what the issue is with a reform on a pension system that can’t pay for itself… I think people just want something to rally against. CMV…
Probably because they'll do things like this if anyone tries to take it away. When you fight for your rights, you tend to get more of them.
Quick search suggests French workers are 5x as productive as they were in 1950. I think it's perfectly reasonable for workers to be angry that with all that improvement, the onus still falls on them to work more.
I don’t grasp exactly how they are calculating this but you’d struggle to find a country where this isn’t the case if I understand correctly?
Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for our workers rights. And no it’s not because “we riot if you take it away”. We have a culture of workers being taken care of; it’s ingrained. I don’t know how to explain it really but employers are supposed to take care of their employees and to us that’s the deal.
Pensions on the other hand… I dunno. I personally opted out of pensions. You don’t get a pension when you’re contracting all the time, and even if you started contributing they don’t transfer over when you move to another country. Too many restrictions with them. Figured I’d either die young or figure out how to have savings by the time I’m old… or just work longer than most.
I guess it’s just absolutely not surprising to me that retirement age could change; it’s been talked about basically all my life.
Why is it ingrained? What happens if employers, who have a financial incentive to do so, break the deal? Riots aren't the only reason the French have these rights, but I do believe it is a vital one; it's a reminder that if the ruling classes hurt the working class, the working class has the ability to strike back.
Let's say that the pension plan is inevitable and necessary. I'd still personally say that the protests that have happened are the best move that could've been made. You can't only protest the significant stuff; that leaves you open to the slow erosion of incrementalism, until you're left to wonder how things could've gotten so bad. It's absolutely going to have a detrimental effect on most people's lives, and the people that make these decisions need to feel some of that, otherwise it becomes too easy for them. I guarantee that any politicians are going to be real hesitant to make any decisions that would take away peoples' rights for quite some time after this. And all the while, children are seeing that this is an option if they feel mistreated, that they don't have to simply accept abuse because of power imbalances. I think that's an important step in ingraining this into the culture.
So this has been a foreseeable problem, but even though worker productivity has also been going up all that time, it's still on them to give more. I think this ties back into all the discussion of AI and automation. Why should it be a source of dread when your job gets automated, rather than a cause for celebration? Why do the gains from these sorts of improvements overwhelmingly go to the people who are already well off, even if they come at the expense of people barely scraping by? I don't live in France, but I suspect these sorts of societal considerations are a part of what's fueling the outrage for many people, as they tend to be an outcome of capitalism.
I have no idea. I can just tell you that it is. Cultural, maybe. This reminds me of when Patrick McKenzie talked about leaving a laptop (or some other expensive thing, don't remember) unattended in a Japanese cafe, and coming back to retrieve it much later, finding it in plain view in the exact place he left it. Something which would be impossible in the US.
Some things are just cultural. I have clashed with a US cofounder years ago in terms of expectations, and I have tried my best to reproduce those expectations with people I have myself later hired.
You know, I'd like to be presented with more than just "it's bad because it's bad". Your comment is once again similar to what I had been reading yesterday: This is bad because it's not good, and the protests are good because the thing is bad. I must be missing something; someone clearly thinks this is exemplary so /shrug.
Life expectancy in France in 1955 was 68 years. It is now 83 years.
This life expectancy increase has an impact on how economical pensions are, especially because once someone reaches pension age, they are still expected to live another ~25 years, 2 years longer than 20 years ago.
So, worker productivity is going up. I still don't know how that statistic is calculated exactly but let's take it at face value: What should workers get in exchange for higher productivity? I can't quickly find any numbers older than 2000 (here are some if you want to dig, but it's more work than I care to do for a Tildes reply), but the average salary has doubled since 2000. Inflation since 2000 is basically half of that, so by all accounts that same 5x productivity should have been met by far more than 5x compensation. What's more, that same 100€ from 1955 (converted and adjusted for inflation) buys a lot more today than back then. To put it simply, we didn't have star trek devices in our pockets back then. Hell, we didn't even have Star Trek.
"It's an outcome of capitalism" is lazy finger-pointing IMO. They are an outcome of economics, something you cannot really opt out of. I'm sure we could just not increase retirement age, but then what do you do instead? You just hope the govt is lying and the budget's actually fine? You wait for Bill Gates to take pity and give us money?
I find the cultural differences interesting, and winding them back to try to find the origin point can be even more so.
Apologies if I'm misunderstanding the point of confusion here. The pension age increasing is bad because it prolongs the time people have to spend working, and most people dislike their jobs, often intensely. The prospect of spending another 2 years in them is galling, possibly more so because of a vision of the future that shows like Star Trek envisioned: a future freed from menial labor. A lot of the people in these protests remember the rapid advancement of phones as an example of how fast things can advance. But the future is here, and with it 2 more years of menial labor. (Setting aside whether percentage-wise it's more work factoring in increased life expectancy. People generally don't think in percentages, they just see the 2 year figure.)
IIRC, pre-1800, 80-90% of people were farmers. Nowadays, it's more like 10%. The advancement of technology can open up possibilities that were previously unthinkable.
I nabbed some numbers from a graph in this paper, page 72. It's not the most recent, but for a Tildes reply for a topic that's likely to have a lot of information in a language I don't speak, it'll do. From 1980 to 2014, the top 10% increased their share of the total wealth from 50% to 55%. I'd be surprised if that trend hasn't continued. France is doing a lot better than the USA in terms of wealth inequality, but the rich are still siphoning wealth away from everyone else.
So when a financial crisis looms - the pension fund issue - is the solution to extract money from the 10%, the people who own the majority of wealth in the country at this point? No, it's to make everyone work more. I'm not going to blame anyone for being angry at that.
I mean, that's kind of my point, isn't it? People expect their pension to last 8 more years (LE delta at 18, when you start contributing to a pension), but only see the 2 years figure in terms of work without pension.
So this is a separate topic, but before I dive into it, three points:
The third point is most important, because assuming you could avoid/reduce it easily, you would not necessarily want to, because in a capitalist society it's a symptom of things working as intended. WI existing doesn't mean that those on the lower end live in disproportionate poverty. "How to allocate resources" is THE question economics tries to answer, it's not as simple as "anything that isn't equal is bad".
But most importantly, France is not the US. Compared to France, the US has 5 percentage points more of its population living in poverty, and the social safety net is MUCH MUCH MUCH stronger in France; it's one of the strongest in Europe. Good article on LA Times about this.
We have a stronger and more accessible education system, which means that if you're not rich, you can still get a good education and learn new skills to be useful on the workforce.
We have stronger social welfare. This wikipedia article goes over it in detail. This means that if you're poor, unemployed, or otherwise unable to work, you can still have a good life (and theoretically have a chance to return to the workforce, but that's not as successful)
We have unemployment security. This means that being fired is not as impactful. It means that if you want to train to get a different job, you can do so; employers have to pay for it -- it makes the workforce more fluid, and incidentally, it means most people don't necessarily dislike their job. (Most people hating their job seems like a more important problem to solve, than reducing how long they work for)
We have universal health care. This means that if you're ill, you aren't hit by massive medical bills, or that your life is ruined because you fell down the stairs.
These are not products always factored in how wealth inequality is calculated, because the rich have just as much access to it. But they do not need it; these systems are mainly designed to make sure everyone is cared for, regardless of where they are on the wealth distribution graph. Doing this is much easier than trying to make the graph flat.
It can be pretty easy to look at numbers, see "there's wealth inequality", and conclude that some vague plan that is popular to suggest in the US would apply in France. But in the US, "tax the rich!" is popular because the rich are disproportionately rich, disproportionately powerful, and being poor is a life sentence for most people.
Anyway, sorry this is getting so long and going into so much depth, but it's a complicated enough problem as it is and this idea that "you can always tax the rich more" is banal. The protests right now don't seem to have concrete suggestions/asks other than "don't do it".
In other words: "I don't care if the system is not viable. It won't be my problem by then." -- Sounds familiar?
Took me a bit longer to get around to this than I expected, apologies.
Video Discussion
This is tangential to the main point, so sticking these in here.The first video specifically addresses income tax, but there are other forms of taxation. The housing situation in the Netherlands I find somewhat concerning, personally. The analogy I'd use to describe the feeling is something akin to musical chairs; everything works so long as everyone keeps moving, but if the music stops for some reason things will fall short. The economy being so heavily reliant on the cheap and available debt that comes from home ownership seems like it's destined to take a beating in the current housing crisis, and I expect a lot of people to end up falling through the cracks as the system is slow to adjust to the new reality. The last point that bothered me in the video was the person saying that they'd rather be in the bottom 10% of the Netherlands than the top 10% of Ethiopia. Maybe this would be different if the global north wasn't still leeching massive amount of wealth from the global south. Colonialism never really ended, it just changed form, but global wealth inequality is a bigger topic for some other thread.
The second video states that wealth inequality is good because it motivates workers to go through the trouble of educating themselves in return for a higher paying position. Teachers and artists are a direct counterpoint to this; I know a 15 minute video isn't going to cover much nuance, but I think this is an important point. They go on to cite wealth inequality as a driver of innovation. They use patronage during the Renaissance as an example, but I think that may be putting the cart before the horse. Did the patronage enable the innovation to exist, or did the economic conditions restrict innovation such that it could only exist through patronage?
They go on to cite some noblemen inventing the steam engine as a hobby, as well as Bill Gates and the influence of Microsoft. These are a good example, but not of what the video maker says IMO. The noblemen could work on the steam engine due to the opportunity created by their wealth, and Bill Gates got a huge head start because his school was one of vanishingly few in the US that actually had a computer for students to work with. (It took a lot more people to make Microsoft than Bill Gates, who gets a disproportionate share of the wealth, but I'm guessing most if not all of them had similar opportunities.) But if it's the wealth that gives the opportunity, there would be far more innovation if it was more evenly distributed, allowing more people that same opportunity. Instead, only the wealthy can innovate.
They use the space race as an example too, but I feel that's disingenuous. Global wealth inequality played a role in it, but when people talk about wealth inequality they're generally speaking about the influence of the wealthiest people rather than governments. Furthermore, it's often overlooked just how important a role public money plays in innovation while overestimating the private sector. The space race, computers, and for a more recent example, the covid vaccine are all things that are unlikely to exist at best without public institutions. They're even an example of what reducing wealth inequality can accomplish in some ways; moving money from private hands, often of the rich since they have the most to give, to produce something for the public good.
It's a good point, and one of the reasons I'm interested in the current situation. The paper I previously linked mentioned that, in the 1970s, the US had lower wealth inequality than France. While things even then may not have as good as they are in France, they went downhill quickly, starting in the 80s. 40 years isn't all that long a time for such negative effects to manifest, and many of them went hand in hand with the rise of wealth inequality.
Quibble on this point; the ability to more easily switch jobs doesn't mean that one you like will be an option, and someone taking the best of a set of bad options doesn't mean that the option they picked is good. France does things much better than the USA does, but I think the current protests demonstrate that people in general still much prefer not working to working in the current system.
So to summarize your points (apologies if I misinterpret you or leave out some vital bit of nuance), wealth inequality isn't the issue, and is too often used as a simplistic catch-all for society's woes. The actual issues are the negative effects people face, and those matters should be dealt with more nuance than the old standby of "tax the rich".
My stance is that the pension plan does represent a negative effect in people's lives, and that it is fair to take a look at wealth inequality when dealing with problems caused by financial issues. Even if I am tilting at windmills here and the pension plan is necessary, I still do think that the reaction of the protestors is a vital component to ensuring that France doesn't have the same sort of rapid decline as the US. You fairly criticize the "not my problem" approach taken by the protestors, but it's often easy for those in power to take the same approach to the lower classes. Protests like this make it everyone's problem, which I think is a good approach when something affects the entire working class.
Interesting that he chose to force this despite polls showing three quarters of the population being opposed.
The budget numbers must be dire.
https://archive.is/ltOdG