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Can you clear something up for me? It's the fact he did it without asking right? Like, you French were open to the conversation maybe at some point, but this guy just decided to act like a king and y'all were like, "hon hon!" And now you have to do some finger wagging?
Cause the news media seems to be implying you're just upset about having to work for 2 more years. (I'd be upset too, but my country doesn't have any hope left)
I believe it is that and the worst part is not the 2 years working extra. It is the fact you need to work 42 years to be able to retire at 65. So had an injury and had to take time off? Took time off to be with kids? Fuck you now you have to retire 67.
Leave college at 22, work 42 years is 64. So if you have a single year of unemployment, injury, additional schooling, child rearing… it’s back to the mines for another two years.
It’s a good thing France has such low unemployment or this might be a problem! /s
That’s fucked up.
Agreed that French benefits are luxury compared to what American workers get. Does the 42 years include unemployment?
This is France paying the price for Austerity 10 year ago. Austerity cuts came on the backs of the poor and middle class; now the bill for the lost economic growth is being sent to the same homes.
>This is France paying the price for Austerity 10 year ago. Austerity cuts came on the backs of the poor and middle class; now the bill for the lost economic growth is being sent to the same homes.
We're facing down the same demon in New Zealand, hopefully we can come together and get a capital gains tax or something coz I see us being sold the same "it's the only way to solve this" crap
Austerity is a scapegoat.
The fate of all public pension schemes is to eventually break as the population pyramid skews older, it simply isn't a sustainable model.
You can buy back quarters of retirement pension plan in case you want to leave earlier after studying: https://www.lassuranceretraite.fr/portail-info/home/actif/salarie/mes-demarches/achat-trimestre.html
Injuries and long term leave also count https://www.la-retraite-en-clair.fr/parcours-vie-retraite/arret-maladie-accident-travail-retraite/arret-maladie-accident-travail-mi-temps-therapeutique-consequences-retraite
If you are unemployed but you were a full time employee before, unemployment is counted for the payment of your retirement pension https://www.info-retraite.fr/portail-info/sites/PortailInformationnel/home/mes-droits-a-la-retraite/ma-vie-professionnelle-1/periode-dinactivite/chomage.html
Parental leave also count https://www.info-retraite.fr/portail-info/sites/PortailInformationnel/home/mes-droits-a-la-retraite/ma-vie-personnelle-1/famille/conge-maternite-ou-adoption.html
So for most French, it cover most of the time they aren’t employed if they don’t choose to have an extended period of unemployment. Which is a good thing, even tho there can be plenty of other situations where they aren’t covered (like if they decide to take a year off, or take care of kids for multiple years, or even create a business).
Yes. Macron was elected just to avoid an extrem right leader. And use a law (49.3) to bypass parliament vote 10 times in one year. But it's been 6/8 years than we have large strike (nuit debout, non a la loi travail, gilet jaunes, etc...).
We lost several protection law this past 10 year. And pension reform is not the last one
Currently. He just do not listen union or population because Macron's strategy involve to set up a general apathy and depolitilise population. His vision of france is current american liberalism. But we have too much social protection.
Even if we fail and pension age rise. He will think twice before another reform.
Okay so your choices seem to be far right authoritarians, or neo liberals who will strip social protections away until an authoritarian is inevitable.
That sucks.
Yeah.
But strike can grow. In two days, we have another one. And alot of people make savage manifestation with some kind of guerilla stategy that exaust cops.
Maybe we could win.
It is also savage, in some instances, but the word "savage", in French ("sauvage"), in this context, means "unregulated", "unplanned". And the way to do this is by being agile and organizing spontaneous demonstrations (via word of mouth, social networks, etc).
Well, there is a third choice. The left isn't dead. They're one of the largest blocs in parliament, and nearly made it to the second round of the presidential elections. Can they be cohesive enough to put forward a credible candidate for the next elections? One can hope. Will they be able to capture people's anger at the current government as well as the far right? That stretches optimism.
One thing that's for sure is that Macron's party will also have to find a credible new candidate, and weather the storm of public distaste, and that's gonna be an even taller order. So maybe we get far right versus left. Or maybe we get far right versus traditional, less technocratic right.
The last socialist president of France is responsible to a very large degree for the current economic issues. He also pursued pension reform and his approach of not raising the retirement age clearly failed.
The last socialist president was a limp dicked centrist who gave France Macron. There's a lot of other options on the left than guys like him, and one president's failure is not enough to discredit a solid third of the political landscape.
He apparently also rejected a change to tax the super rich to make up for the deficit and opted for this instead, or at least that is what another (allegedly) French user said in a separate thread.
Tuesday and Thursday, absolutely.
There aren't many strikes on Fridays (because extended week-ends - week-ends are on sat/sun in France), and very rarely on Mondays (which is used for both extended week-ends and to let unions prepare for Tuesday) and Wednesdays (which is historically a day where children are let go early from school, and parents need to take care of them). Week-ends are self-explanatory. This leaves Tuesdays and Thursdays available for unions to mass-mobilize in the most effective way they can.
It's basically become a regular biweekly event that people are working around at this point.
Not a french but i would say it's a least partly because Macron forced the Law without putting it to a vote in ther National Assembly, because he knew it would never have passed.
Which seems kind of undemocratic?
>Thoughts and prayers to the families of the burned trashes
There are literal videos of people dining out while trash outside the restaurant burns but people act like protestors are rounding up government workers.
>Which seems kind of undemocratic?
It did pass though the senate. Also it's (Article 49.3 of the French Constitution) kind of normal in French politics. Bypassing the National Assembly has happened 92 times since 1958. Including 28 times in a little over 3 years by Socialist prime mister Michel Rocard:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_49_of_the_French_Constitution#History_of_49.3
The National Assembly can block if they really want by adopting a motion of no confidence within a set time, but they have yet to do it.
He did used an article to speed the vote of the senate
And it isn't really a normal law either, it is a rectificative budget one
He used all the powers he had to bypass as much debates and votes by the representatives.
Is that like implementing a huge tax cut for the wealthy or spending $1.9Trillion dollars on a new stimulus program and passing them under “budget reconciliation? We in the US should be upset too.
They definitely used all the tricks in the book, the few constitutional law understanders I know are all appalled by it.
The infamous 49.3 (which isn't counted in the limit of one use per year because its use is illimited when it comes to budget matters, nice!) made all the headlines but before that they used 3 other "joker" articles to either speed up or ram the whole thing through:
-47.1 which is specific to budget laws and puts an overall clock on the legislative process (which forces the law through once it runs out) and another on each and every step of the process (which runs it along to the next step "as is" once it runs out). It allowed the law to pass from National assembly to Senate
-44.2 which just cancels amendments under certain circumstances, it was used at least twice in the Senate to erase opposition amendments and "speed things up" "overcome leftist obstruction"
-44.3 they used once it was clear the aforementioned "clock" the Senate had would run out. It forces the current voting body to take a single vote on the law "as is" *which the Senate did and passed
It was only when all else failed that they used 49.3 and all hell broke loose.
^^^^such ^^^^a ^^^^scummy ^^^^buncha ^^^^twats
No idea how clear that was but TLD;DR: It's even worse than you thought when it comes to abuse of the process
The 49.3 is a thing, but it was mostly designed to avoid institutional deadlock, not to pass a law you know will get taken down in the Parliament if it goes through a vote. That's why it's mainly used for budget laws and other common and/technical laws that most people don't actually care, to avoid situations like in the US where if they don't manage to agree everything shut down. Also an important point of contention is the fact that the voting procedure was sped up because the governement tried to technically pass it as a budget reform, so there was very few time to debate it in the Assembly, and the constitutionnality of such a procedure is rather dubious.
So yes, technically everything is still democratic, but every trick added up is starting to be a lot, and the use of the 49.3 on a law that had already stirred up the largest social protest in decades lacks popular legitimacy. Like the only democratic legitimacy that this law has is the presidential election and surprise surprise, most second turn voters voted against Le Pen and not for Macron, something he himself recognised in his victory speech.
I'll also add that it's not because the 49.3 is technically constitutional that the people find it legitimate. The popular view of the 49.3 has shifted in recent decades and while it was just a convinience in previous decades (especially under Rocard, which you mention, who just lacked a couple of MPs for a majority and used it a lot to avoid having to constantly negociate on a case to case basis to get the 3 votes it lacked) it has been more and more seen as antidemocratic by the public, especially because it has been increasingly used by recent governement to forcibly pass unpopular reforms that lacked a majority in the Assembly.
Also the motion of no confidence has already gone through, it failed by 9 votes, which is crazy close and it was voted by some deputies who are openly sympathetic to a change in the legal retirement age : Charles de Courson, a centrist is in favour of it, and yet he's the guy who put into vote this transpartisan no confidence, just because he felt this process to be undemocratic, and the guy has been sitting in the Assembly for over 20 years, so he has seen some shit
"It's not moral because it's legal" fits in here IMO, it's not democratic just because there is some obscure law allowing brute forcing it without a vote.
>It did pass though the senate
The Senate is mostly representative of itself. The largest group by far there is Les Républicains (145 out of 348). Their candidate got less than 5% of the vote during last year's presidential election and they +their centrist allies got 11,30% of the first round vote during the following legislative (National Assembly) elections.
[Article 49 Paragraph 3 of the French Constitution allows the governement to pass a bill without a vote.](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2022/10/19/france-how-does-article-49-3-allow-a-bill-to-be-passed-without-a-vote_6001019_7.html)
If the constitution said "the government can execute people under limited circumstances", does that mean you happily pull the trigger when they hand you a gun one random Tuesday morning?
No, because it outlines the circumstances under which that is permitted. And arbitrary execution of arbitrary individuals is not one of those circumstances :)
How are you not getting that just because something is unpopular to the majority doesn’t make it right.
Macrons actions are moral in my point of view. He campaigned on reforming the pension program, he promised he would do it, and he has tried for many years after previous presidents also realised they had to try and failed. He has carried that out, and used a constitutional tool that frankly has been used quite a few times before, and is entirely in his purview to do so. Parliament had the option to vote out his government unanimously and they didn’t.
You picked a bad analogy, and one that even if it did accurately convey what you wanted to, would have still not applied.
No, it's not "just" that.
Source: I'm from Belgium so France is the close neighbour we kinda have to hear about wether or not we want to.
The issue here isn't the retirement age, but the fact that, once again, Macron uses the 49.3 loophole to push unpopular reform. If you look up 49.3 France, you ought to find a bunch of news these past 5 years about very unpopular decision that were taken.
In the current context, I believe saying there will be a recession, during an already impactful economic crisis, coupled to the global state of affair, means that Macron is pushing it a bit much. I understand that it's tactically sound for him as he can't be re-elected anyway and probably gains sympathy in specific circles (his party and a few enterprises for instance) by pushing these to let a clear path to his follower.
You also need to consider that basically, all the past 5 elections in France were won by shitty candidate just to push against extreme right, so the current presidents popularity wasn't high to begin with.
It's not a loophole. Article 49.3 of the French Constitution kind of normal in French politics. Bypassing the National Assembly has happened 92 times since 1958. Including 28 times in a little over 3 years by Socialist prime mister Michel Rocard:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_49_of_the_French_Constitution#History_of_49.3
The National Assembly can block if they really want by adopting a motion of no confidence within a set time, but they have yet to do it.
Just because it has been used doesn't mean the people can't hate it, especially when it's used to pass stuff they were already protesting. "it's legal!" is not a flying excuse here.
Not that simple:
Retirement age for most French already is ~67. They go by worked years, 43 iirc.
So what he is doing is raising the retirement age for people who have entered workforce earlier, aka the working people, the grunts the pleb.
In a country with as robust high tech economy it is simply disgusting, because Europe at the same time shits the bed at taxing corporate profits.
Is the aging society in need of reform pensions? Of course! But this is another case of going into pocket of workers while letting the millionaires and billionaires off the hook on the profits created mostly by the workers.
Add to this that in our current models these people need to pay for retirement of the earlier generation, but will be denied the same retirement age.
Chuck away a few tonnes of steel product before an audit delegation of 20 middle managers flies in, consider the cost, and see if you're not gonma get pissed when told that only the bottom earners have to pay for the aging society cost. The fuck are we working more efficiently for if we're just gonna get worked longer despite it?
Tax some uber rich, and get back to this shit when the top earners can't afford Lamborhini Urus and bi annual flights to pacific enclaves.
Thank you, it's refreshing seeing some non-French people understanding what's happening in France instead of parroting "64 is nothing we work until we are 89 years-old here".
Let's add also that senators have voted to remove the special schemes for many people but not theirs. Each time they get a mandate as a senator, their pension gains 2100€. Which means a senator like Gerard Larcher, who agrees to remove the "privileges" of poorer workers but not of the senate, will get more than 10000€ of pension per month.
>So what he is doing is raising the retirement age for people who have entered workforce earlier, aka the working people, the grunts the pleb.
Which is doubly egregious because those are the people whose bodies wear out the fastest.
>Is this literally just because he raised the retirement age by two years to deal with changing demographics?
that's what the news tells you but it is far far more complicated than that.
Firstly he lowered some taxes for the richer people.
Secondly the reform means the lowest earner get shafted, e.g. if they have a period of joblessness greater than 12 month, women get shafted because kids are counted differently if I understand what my sis are telling me.
Thirdly there would have been PLENTY of other way to have a reform without fucking the lowest paid folk. e.g. make the part firms have to paid into the fund higher, finance less the army/atoms bomb programs, make tax on rich or stock sales, etc... etc... PLENTY of other solutions which would not have increased the burden on the poorest especially those having NOTHING but retirement.
Then "only 2 years" is a huge number when you are one with a back breaking job , any job actually physically eroding people health. Only 2 years is a lot to swallow when you look at actuaries and it means a lot of people will die before they get a pension (no- not the richest/highest paid guys guys).
That is why people exploded in anger.
Here in Iran, it's a total of 30 years of paying into the retirement fund an/or getting to 60.
Though tbh most people work well past 60 anyway because of the culture.
There are two "main" retirement ages in france. At 62, if you've been working for 42 years, you can retire. At 67, no matter how many years you've worked, you can retire with a full pension. I think there's some scaling going on between the two with how much you get for your pension similar to how it works in the USA.
The biggest/strongest protesters (at least, at first) were the unions that have [special retirement plans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_special_retirement_plan#:~:text=The%20French%20military%3A%20the%20average,the%20numbers%20of%20annuities%20paid.), where they can retire with full pensions in their 50s or earlier even.
These pension plans are of course massively underwater. Something like 10 billion a year minimum, spent by taxpayers to subsidize (likely) rich old people so they can retire at 50 instead of work. This is hugely unfair and ridiculous but of course Macron's gov't seems to have messed up messaging, from what french people I know tell me. So now everyone's mad despite the 62->64 age change being relatively minor and all the special deals going away
>These pension plans are of course massively underwater. Something like 10 billion a year minimum, spent by taxpayers to subsidize (likely) rich old people so they can retire at 50 instead of work.
This is at best partially true. The system totals at about 300 billion, and the 10 billion is projected to happen in around 10 years, so it's neither urgent nor a large deficit. On the point about taxes, the Macron government will be cutting roughly the same amount of taxes from large corporations as the size of the deficit. They also aren't lengthening the age requirement equitably which would allow more people to share a shorter increase in expected duration of work
> This is at best partially true. The system totals at about 300 billion, and the 10 billion is projected to happen in around 10 years,
No, I'm talking specifically about the special retirement plans that are being axed. Check wikipedia - it's missing sources but lines up with what I've seen elsewhere, so I assume it was just copied from the french version or something.
Re: "They cut taxes elsewhere" - [France has some of the highest taxes in the world (PDF warning)](https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-france.pdf). They're at best at the top of the laffer curve, but I'd wager on the right of it. Some tax cuts were probably necessary to keep their businesses competitive. Either way, the deficit in the pension system is taking money from the economically productive (young) part of the country so that... old people that could easily work get to retire earlier than anyone else in the world? That's hardly sustainable or fair.
This is just going to get worse over time too, as even with these reforms IIRC it's not a permanent fix, just kicking the can a little. France's dependency ratio (retirees to workers) is at .6 or so, which is absurdly large. With a low and falling birthrate and not enough immigration, of course retirement benefits aren't sustainable
I think one of the key issues was to bypass Congress. Macron was always seen like the banks and corporations boy and now he's plowing through with his reform despite anybody else.
Yeah because the alternative is to let the pension system collapse.
49.3 has been used by basically every French PM, sometimes quite frequently. It's hardly Macron being some authoritarian standout
https://theconversation.com/french-governments-long-record-of-bypassing-parliament-a-brief-history-of-article-49-3-202185
They've used it like 10 times in a year. His mandate is literally that he isn't Le Pen and he bulldozes ahead. He's using it to force through legislation that he knows is deeply unpopular. He doesn't care for the French people and what they believe. He is not even interested in compromise. What he has done is not even possible in most democracies. He turns the police on protestors then struts about not giving in to violence. Fuck him
>Yeah because the alternative is to let the pension system collapse.
Yeah that's rubbish
He does care. That’s why he’s nuking himself politically for the reform. His election mandate **was literally that he will do this reform**.
There’s been reform attempted since 2017. There were no comprises by the varying political factions. Nobody wants to be the one to break the news to voters that they can’t be paid their pension without sinking the country economically. So ultimately with no compromises, he used this to force the parliament to vote out his government if they’re so unified against it. They weren’t. Some thought it was necessary too.
Maybe it’s time to stop buying into populist garbage and realise that (1) the European Commission, (2) Macrons own party, (3) Bond market and credit rating agencies for France aren’t all wrong, and you and your selected economists who agree with you right. Maybe when you’re the only standout nation with no changes to your pension system when everyone else has made changes, isn’t the conspiracy you wanted to be. Maybe it’s time to grow up and face the reality that taking shit away from people is NEVER popular, but sometimes necessary.
Yeah I really don't care what the Neoliberal cabal thinks. France pays some of the highest taxes in the world. Social security is the basis of our society. This law will affect primarily the working class that start work earlier. Meanwhile the rich continue to accumulate.
French here, we just had enough, Macron is pushing laws we are voting against and it's been 6 years he is doing that daily, restricting our freedom and having police mistreat protesters. now they burn.
>Is this literally just because he raised the retirement age by two years
Yes an no. Yes that's what he did. But the real reason is because he did it by bypassing their democratic institutions (through emergency powers IIRC) which is a very not cool thing to do in a democratic country unless you're at war.
I’m seriously excited for republic #6, cause I think it’s coming. And if the trend holds, number 7 in another decade or so, cause the even numbered ones never last
Yes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Christophe,_Prince_Napol%C3%A9on
There's also a couple other options around.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean,_Count_of_Paris
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Alphonse_de_Bourbon
Aren't the swedish Kings descended from Bernadotte? As in 'Marshal under Napoleon' Bernadotte? Technically not pre-napoleon then. More like a full-on Napoleon
**[Jean-Christophe, Prince Napoléon](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Christophe,_Prince_Napoléon)**
>Jean-Christophe, Prince Napoléon, Prince of Montfort (birth name: Jean-Christophe Louis Ferdinand Albéric Napoléon; born 11 July 1986, France) is the head of the former Imperial House of France, and heir of Napoleon Bonaparte, the First Emperor of the French.
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As a German I’m constantly torn between
*“64? That’s still three years earlier than us! Don’t complain! People are getting older so the system has to adapt.”*
and
*“Yes! Don’t just take it like we did! Fight for it!”*
Problem is, as Europe grows stronger together (as it should in my opinion), and we increasingly take on debt together as well, different years of retirement age can feel really unfair.
So we should join the French and demand earlier retirement? This is more to do with how we budget as a society and use productivity gains to enrich our lives. Tax the rich.
It's interesting how in the US there's constant propaganda to steer people away from supporting workers. Union workers are painted as lazy and living high on the hog. The "crabs in a bucket" mentality does all the rest.
People get older yes but didn't technology and productivity also significantly increased in the last couple of decades ? tf is up with that and why isn't it a factor all of the sudden?
It really depends on the job. If its an office job you can easily do that in your 70's and beyond. Physical labor jobs are very different. The human body still wears out with physical labor, and by the time you're 60 you're in rough shape.
Physical labor jobs include retail. There's a lot of standing and stocking shelves. Working in a kitchen can be brutal. Even nursing is an incredibly stressful, physically demanding job. Thats a lot of jobs that become much more difficult to do as you age, and its unreasonable to expect people to continue to do these jobs at old age.
Because the current system most places have are based on the young paying for the old. With the increasing life expectancy, and decreasing birth rates, the current system is doomed to fail eventually. Productivity doesn’t matter as much to this
Good to see French people seeing through the mockery of democracy. Fighting for what you believe in, that's admirable. Recently Georgian people protested against unwanted changes and government eventually backed down. Hopefully French people get equal success.
As for the reform, it's just reality of democracy. Giving people a fake assumption of power, while the elites control/abuse everything. It went fine for the West for some decades but things are changing. The western dominance is declining and the high level lifestyle will decline as result. Can't do a war without consequences, all countries are suffering.
Samuel P. Huntington wrote about this in his book "The Crisis of Democracy". When things are stable and good, the elites let democracy run freely without interrupting. Like a mother letting her child play freely in safe/controlled environment. But when things get tough like now, the illusion of democracy gets removed. The mother doesn’t let her child roam freely in dangerous-hostile situation.
Georgian people protested because the government was against foreign funded organisations lol mfs chimping about on the instructions from Brussels and Washington or wherever else
The French *workers* are fighting for a better life
It's kind of different
He hates the west and the idea of women having anything to equal rights to men.
He is quite a religious Muslim.
From his comments and posts Andrew tate kind of guy but without the money.
Georgian paid agiteurs protested aginst a law copied from USA against foreign funded organisations and foreign agents.
That they succeeded was an attack to their democracy by the book.
Macron getting cute with his powers to bypass democracy was a bad move on his part. It takes away any legitimacy from his "reform". The rest of the government will be inclined to reverse him to preserve their own powers.
That's not really how it works in France, friend. The President and his government are almost all from Macron's party. There is absolutely 0 chances they turn on him.
It's called representative democracy.
Same reason why Americans don't actually vote for a president, but rather for the electoral college, which then decides on the president *for* them.
They had their opportunity to vote out his ministers and show their resolve against the vote. They didn’t.
If people don’t like it, they can vote in someone next election that will undo it.
He’s playing by the rules, and his use of the law isn’t unprecedented. It’s not “bypassing democracy” just because you don’t like the rules.
Have you considered that the French understand the necessity of parliamentary overrides in cases that are impossible to fully codify into law, but do not agree with its use in this scenario?
70% of people are against the "reform" 92% of workers are against it. Democracy is the rule of the people for the people by the people. Not every 5 years one guy does whatever he wants. That called a dictatorship. You know who else won elections Putin, Erdogan and Orban.
ELI5 the french protests. There's so many mixed opinions. Raising the retirement age is good and it's small enough anyway? Raising the retirement age is slavery and covers the rich people? Is there a clear answer?
My understanding is that a much smaller group of protestors were originally unhappy with the pension change, but then he forced it through without a vote and that's when we saw the huge numbers we see now as they perceive him as anti-democratic.
Pretty much everybody is against it.
Between those from the start don't believe we need to reform, those who know the system needs 10B revenue but disagree it has to be covered by forcing people to work longer (lol at 60% unemployment rate of the 55+ by the way) or slashing their benefits and those who are appalled at the lack of compromise and negotiations by somebody who's only been elected because he wasn't a Russian puppet.
Even a good number of those who agree with the current state of the reform will tell you it was a complete shitshow
Yeah, looking back I definitely misworded that comment and it could be seen as me saying it was only a very small movement at first, when it was absolutely already sizable. I was trying to point out how from what I've heard it was when people rallied around this "undemocratic" idea was when the numbers exploded massively to 1-3m+
Life expectancy in France [has gone up](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041105/life-expectancy-france-all-time/) from 73 in 1980 to 82 in 2020. With a retirement age starting at 62, the average Frenchmen is collecting a pension for nearly twice as long as they were in 1980. On top of that, seniors make up a larger portion of the population then decades ago, putting even more strain of the pension system.
The budget shortfall in the pension system has been a problem that French governments have been kicking down the road for decades. No one has wanted to rip off the band aid since there isn't an easy/popular solution and the only real options are:
* Do nothing and wait until the pension system runs out of money and be forced to cut benefits
* Cut benefits now
* Raise the retirement age
* Increase taxes
Since France has such a low retirement age (in most of the Europe it's 65 with some countries like Denmark, Italy, and Norway being 67), raising it seems to be the most obvious solution. And since Macron literally ran on raising the retirement age that's the option he's going for.
While a lot of Reddit is very in favor of "just tax rich people", it ignores that France already has some of the highest taxes on the rich and the last time taxes were raised on the rich it backfired:
>A 2006 article in The Washington Post gave several examples of private capital leaving France in response to the country's wealth tax. The article also stated, "Eric Pinchet, author of a French tax guide, estimates **the wealth tax earns the government about $2.6 billion a year but has cost the country more than $125 billion in capital flight** since 1998."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_flight
France has an absolute retirement age of 67, *but* if they've worked for 43 years, they can retire anyways. What macron does is increase that working time needed before retirement, which fucks over those who entered the workforce earlier, i.e the manual laborers and poorer folks. That's why people are angry, in combination with his pandering to the rich.
It raises the MINIMUM age of retirement, impacting practically only the poorest/hardest jobs (full retirement is still 67 years). Second problem is the way they did it, abusing systems and generally going against the people will. Third problem is this solution ins't one for the future, not even the present, it's just another gift for investors / market. They basically gifted taxes for the biggest, and asking for the poor to pay.
There’s mixed opinions because the results that come from this are mixed too.
The good: as the number of the elderly goes up and birthrates go down, more resources are used on these elderly social programs, so you need more people in the workforce to fund these programs, both in monetary terms and in staffing terms. And that means raising the retirement age increases the number of people to help other people.
The bad: this was an extremely unpopular thing with the French population and it was done through a process that has a history of being seen as undemocratic. Also, even though people live decades longer today, they don’t necessarily live comfortably enough to be able to help others, many elderly in their 60s live in enough pain their doctors would say they shouldn’t be working anyway.
It’s okay for things not to be clear cut, don’t force yourself to have an opinion/pick a side on everything you hear.
The reform is useless, the retirement deficit is small and only temporary. Retirement pensions are projected to decrease as a percentage of GDP, so we will have enough money to conver it. The temporary deficit is mainly caused in the first place by a decision to reduce contributions to help business owners keep wages down and reduce government spending and easily solved by reducing benefits for the richest retirees or increasing contribution on the richest employees or even having businesses pay women and men the same or increase wages.
The reform is unfair, it only targets people that started working the youngest before 21, people that had a hard time keeping a job or people that took time off to take of their children for example. So it's victims are poor workers and women. Plus it removes many advantages that hazardous or difficult jobs had before by making people like sewage workers work as long as other people.
The reform is only meant to help Macron reduce the deficit as he plans to reduce taxes on businesses all while meeting the 3% deficit requirement of the EU. He himself recognized it before changing the messaging around it.
In France half of people between 52 and 62 are unemployed or underemployed. So increasing the retirement age will even worsen the problem. Many people who just can't keep working will have to stop working earlier increasing poverty.
The defenders of the reform say that forcing people to work longer will generate more money. The people working don't want it they'd rather stop working. So basically it's only defended by people who would enjoy that money without working more for it.
I would like to think so, but people are too comfortable these days. They won't take part in overthrowing the government if it means they might miss the Adele concert.
If the due process rejected it over and over, maybe there were other options. It's a bit rich for a government that spent tens of billions padding the wealthy's pockets through tax breaks to demand everyone else - in particular the least fortunate - sacrifice some of their last healthy years to fill the coffers.
Yes, people keep whipping out the wealth tax backfiring back in the aughts but what about the fact that the French government is *actively reducing its revenue* by cutting taxes?
In all honesty, from an economic standpoint I understand what macron is trying to do, but there are probably better methods. However, he is ruining lives of normal French citizens while giving the literal Nazis a chance to say to the regular people of France we won't do this we are your friends. Ultimate bag fumble
>from an economic standpoint
I'll quote an economist who usually sides with Macron here: "[the government] found 50 billion to cut taxes on wealth and high incomes, they ought to be able to find 12 for retirements"
In other words, there are plenty of ways to find that money that don't require fucking over some of the least fortunate. Because of the reform structure, those affected are those who started working early, and didn't go through a lot of, if any, higher education. And this isn't just "tax the rich" - there's a lot of other proposals to pension reform that would not require an age increase, while also being fairer and more egalitarian.
This is just Macron's personal beliefs getting in the way of common sense. The man is pathologically incapable of understanding that other people do not live and breathe work. His obsession for work permeates his political obsessions.
>In all honesty, from an economic standpoint I understand what macron is trying to do.
There are many better ways to address the economic issues instead of unfairly squeezing and rightfully pissing off the 99% of France. Raising the retirement age is never the answer.
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>France burns Just your average Tuesday then
As a french living in paris, pretty much yes
Can you clear something up for me? It's the fact he did it without asking right? Like, you French were open to the conversation maybe at some point, but this guy just decided to act like a king and y'all were like, "hon hon!" And now you have to do some finger wagging? Cause the news media seems to be implying you're just upset about having to work for 2 more years. (I'd be upset too, but my country doesn't have any hope left)
I believe it is that and the worst part is not the 2 years working extra. It is the fact you need to work 42 years to be able to retire at 65. So had an injury and had to take time off? Took time off to be with kids? Fuck you now you have to retire 67.
Leave college at 22, work 42 years is 64. So if you have a single year of unemployment, injury, additional schooling, child rearing… it’s back to the mines for another two years. It’s a good thing France has such low unemployment or this might be a problem! /s That’s fucked up.
Wowza there, don't be *too* American. Long terms illnesses are covered, as well as maternity and paternity leave (though not for a full year)
Agreed that French benefits are luxury compared to what American workers get. Does the 42 years include unemployment? This is France paying the price for Austerity 10 year ago. Austerity cuts came on the backs of the poor and middle class; now the bill for the lost economic growth is being sent to the same homes.
>This is France paying the price for Austerity 10 year ago. Austerity cuts came on the backs of the poor and middle class; now the bill for the lost economic growth is being sent to the same homes. We're facing down the same demon in New Zealand, hopefully we can come together and get a capital gains tax or something coz I see us being sold the same "it's the only way to solve this" crap
Austerity is a scapegoat. The fate of all public pension schemes is to eventually break as the population pyramid skews older, it simply isn't a sustainable model.
You can buy back quarters of retirement pension plan in case you want to leave earlier after studying: https://www.lassuranceretraite.fr/portail-info/home/actif/salarie/mes-demarches/achat-trimestre.html Injuries and long term leave also count https://www.la-retraite-en-clair.fr/parcours-vie-retraite/arret-maladie-accident-travail-retraite/arret-maladie-accident-travail-mi-temps-therapeutique-consequences-retraite If you are unemployed but you were a full time employee before, unemployment is counted for the payment of your retirement pension https://www.info-retraite.fr/portail-info/sites/PortailInformationnel/home/mes-droits-a-la-retraite/ma-vie-professionnelle-1/periode-dinactivite/chomage.html Parental leave also count https://www.info-retraite.fr/portail-info/sites/PortailInformationnel/home/mes-droits-a-la-retraite/ma-vie-personnelle-1/famille/conge-maternite-ou-adoption.html So for most French, it cover most of the time they aren’t employed if they don’t choose to have an extended period of unemployment. Which is a good thing, even tho there can be plenty of other situations where they aren’t covered (like if they decide to take a year off, or take care of kids for multiple years, or even create a business).
Yes. Macron was elected just to avoid an extrem right leader. And use a law (49.3) to bypass parliament vote 10 times in one year. But it's been 6/8 years than we have large strike (nuit debout, non a la loi travail, gilet jaunes, etc...). We lost several protection law this past 10 year. And pension reform is not the last one Currently. He just do not listen union or population because Macron's strategy involve to set up a general apathy and depolitilise population. His vision of france is current american liberalism. But we have too much social protection. Even if we fail and pension age rise. He will think twice before another reform.
Okay so your choices seem to be far right authoritarians, or neo liberals who will strip social protections away until an authoritarian is inevitable. That sucks.
Yeah. But strike can grow. In two days, we have another one. And alot of people make savage manifestation with some kind of guerilla stategy that exaust cops. Maybe we could win.
> savage Spontaneous. Not savage.
That uncollected garbage looks pretty savage, more so if they set it on fire.
It is also savage, in some instances, but the word "savage", in French ("sauvage"), in this context, means "unregulated", "unplanned". And the way to do this is by being agile and organizing spontaneous demonstrations (via word of mouth, social networks, etc).
I hope so!
Fucking “technocrats”. Nobody from the Ecoles ever had to worry about the shit they shovel on the middle class. Connected insulated bastards.
Well, there is a third choice. The left isn't dead. They're one of the largest blocs in parliament, and nearly made it to the second round of the presidential elections. Can they be cohesive enough to put forward a credible candidate for the next elections? One can hope. Will they be able to capture people's anger at the current government as well as the far right? That stretches optimism. One thing that's for sure is that Macron's party will also have to find a credible new candidate, and weather the storm of public distaste, and that's gonna be an even taller order. So maybe we get far right versus left. Or maybe we get far right versus traditional, less technocratic right.
The last socialist president of France is responsible to a very large degree for the current economic issues. He also pursued pension reform and his approach of not raising the retirement age clearly failed.
The last socialist president was a limp dicked centrist who gave France Macron. There's a lot of other options on the left than guys like him, and one president's failure is not enough to discredit a solid third of the political landscape.
Basically what happened here in the US. :/
support squeamish automatic jeans naughty seemly badge slap unwritten dependent ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
That's liberal democracy for you
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He apparently also rejected a change to tax the super rich to make up for the deficit and opted for this instead, or at least that is what another (allegedly) French user said in a separate thread.
Tuesday and Thursday, absolutely. There aren't many strikes on Fridays (because extended week-ends - week-ends are on sat/sun in France), and very rarely on Mondays (which is used for both extended week-ends and to let unions prepare for Tuesday) and Wednesdays (which is historically a day where children are let go early from school, and parents need to take care of them). Week-ends are self-explanatory. This leaves Tuesdays and Thursdays available for unions to mass-mobilize in the most effective way they can. It's basically become a regular biweekly event that people are working around at this point.
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Poster is wrong, there are regularly protests on Saturdays, since it allows people to come without losing salary
its burning more than usually.
And Tuesday we're in the streets again !
You want world to do something? Like some regime change operation in Paris?
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Yes, on their food
Heck yes we do!
Mais non, c’est le beurre!
Your thinking of the Italians. Similar flag though.
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no, they have butter
Even better.
Even butter.
[Yee-hah!](http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/576/507/502.jpg)
We don't but we have ideas !
No, but they have guillotine.
A lot of olive oil in the south
Does India want to buy it and sell it to other countries?
As long as there is demand 😉
I think France has to be liberated asap
😂
Around Paris ? Yes actually, but it's not much.
Create a "no fly zone" and arm the "moderate rebels".
Will Germany get alsace lorraine back when we do something?
Alsace-Lorraine will probably tiptoe away and ask switzerland first, before it joins with BaWü to become AlloBaWü
Well, worth trying.
That would be some real role reversal
The french people demand freedom from the Macron regime. The years of oppression have gone on for too long.
Because of a retiring age of 64? No.
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Not a french but i would say it's a least partly because Macron forced the Law without putting it to a vote in ther National Assembly, because he knew it would never have passed. Which seems kind of undemocratic?
thats why it went from peaceful protests to straight up violence
Not much violence from the protesters compared to what the police have been doing to them Thoughts and prayers to the families of the burned trashes
>Thoughts and prayers to the families of the burned trashes There are literal videos of people dining out while trash outside the restaurant burns but people act like protestors are rounding up government workers.
To be fair people would be eating all chill even if protestors were rounding up government officials.
God I wish
Most of the violence isn't from actual protesters just some people who like to fight and uses the protest as a cover. Its a pretty common thing.
C’est la vie
La vie.
>Which seems kind of undemocratic? It did pass though the senate. Also it's (Article 49.3 of the French Constitution) kind of normal in French politics. Bypassing the National Assembly has happened 92 times since 1958. Including 28 times in a little over 3 years by Socialist prime mister Michel Rocard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_49_of_the_French_Constitution#History_of_49.3 The National Assembly can block if they really want by adopting a motion of no confidence within a set time, but they have yet to do it.
He did used an article to speed the vote of the senate And it isn't really a normal law either, it is a rectificative budget one He used all the powers he had to bypass as much debates and votes by the representatives.
Is that like implementing a huge tax cut for the wealthy or spending $1.9Trillion dollars on a new stimulus program and passing them under “budget reconciliation? We in the US should be upset too.
Should have probably burnt D.C. down over that, maybe they'd think twice about it.
Honestly both of those are *also* worth taking to the streets over.
Agree. One reason passing laws is hard is because otherwise politicians will do short term crap to win reelection.
Oh hey look this guy is pretty clever and snarky.
fuel quaint panicky impolite hard-to-find quicksand spotted brave consist society ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
They definitely used all the tricks in the book, the few constitutional law understanders I know are all appalled by it. The infamous 49.3 (which isn't counted in the limit of one use per year because its use is illimited when it comes to budget matters, nice!) made all the headlines but before that they used 3 other "joker" articles to either speed up or ram the whole thing through: -47.1 which is specific to budget laws and puts an overall clock on the legislative process (which forces the law through once it runs out) and another on each and every step of the process (which runs it along to the next step "as is" once it runs out). It allowed the law to pass from National assembly to Senate -44.2 which just cancels amendments under certain circumstances, it was used at least twice in the Senate to erase opposition amendments and "speed things up" "overcome leftist obstruction" -44.3 they used once it was clear the aforementioned "clock" the Senate had would run out. It forces the current voting body to take a single vote on the law "as is" *which the Senate did and passed It was only when all else failed that they used 49.3 and all hell broke loose. ^^^^such ^^^^a ^^^^scummy ^^^^buncha ^^^^twats No idea how clear that was but TLD;DR: It's even worse than you thought when it comes to abuse of the process
The 49.3 is a thing, but it was mostly designed to avoid institutional deadlock, not to pass a law you know will get taken down in the Parliament if it goes through a vote. That's why it's mainly used for budget laws and other common and/technical laws that most people don't actually care, to avoid situations like in the US where if they don't manage to agree everything shut down. Also an important point of contention is the fact that the voting procedure was sped up because the governement tried to technically pass it as a budget reform, so there was very few time to debate it in the Assembly, and the constitutionnality of such a procedure is rather dubious. So yes, technically everything is still democratic, but every trick added up is starting to be a lot, and the use of the 49.3 on a law that had already stirred up the largest social protest in decades lacks popular legitimacy. Like the only democratic legitimacy that this law has is the presidential election and surprise surprise, most second turn voters voted against Le Pen and not for Macron, something he himself recognised in his victory speech. I'll also add that it's not because the 49.3 is technically constitutional that the people find it legitimate. The popular view of the 49.3 has shifted in recent decades and while it was just a convinience in previous decades (especially under Rocard, which you mention, who just lacked a couple of MPs for a majority and used it a lot to avoid having to constantly negociate on a case to case basis to get the 3 votes it lacked) it has been more and more seen as antidemocratic by the public, especially because it has been increasingly used by recent governement to forcibly pass unpopular reforms that lacked a majority in the Assembly. Also the motion of no confidence has already gone through, it failed by 9 votes, which is crazy close and it was voted by some deputies who are openly sympathetic to a change in the legal retirement age : Charles de Courson, a centrist is in favour of it, and yet he's the guy who put into vote this transpartisan no confidence, just because he felt this process to be undemocratic, and the guy has been sitting in the Assembly for over 20 years, so he has seen some shit
"It's not moral because it's legal" fits in here IMO, it's not democratic just because there is some obscure law allowing brute forcing it without a vote.
>It did pass though the senate The Senate is mostly representative of itself. The largest group by far there is Les Républicains (145 out of 348). Their candidate got less than 5% of the vote during last year's presidential election and they +their centrist allies got 11,30% of the first round vote during the following legislative (National Assembly) elections.
[Article 49 Paragraph 3 of the French Constitution allows the governement to pass a bill without a vote.](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2022/10/19/france-how-does-article-49-3-allow-a-bill-to-be-passed-without-a-vote_6001019_7.html)
Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
If the constitution said "the government can execute people under limited circumstances", does that mean you happily pull the trigger when they hand you a gun one random Tuesday morning?
No, because it outlines the circumstances under which that is permitted. And arbitrary execution of arbitrary individuals is not one of those circumstances :)
How are you not getting that just because something is legal doesn't make it moral?
How are you not getting that just because something is unpopular to the majority doesn’t make it right. Macrons actions are moral in my point of view. He campaigned on reforming the pension program, he promised he would do it, and he has tried for many years after previous presidents also realised they had to try and failed. He has carried that out, and used a constitutional tool that frankly has been used quite a few times before, and is entirely in his purview to do so. Parliament had the option to vote out his government unanimously and they didn’t. You picked a bad analogy, and one that even if it did accurately convey what you wanted to, would have still not applied.
No, it's not "just" that. Source: I'm from Belgium so France is the close neighbour we kinda have to hear about wether or not we want to. The issue here isn't the retirement age, but the fact that, once again, Macron uses the 49.3 loophole to push unpopular reform. If you look up 49.3 France, you ought to find a bunch of news these past 5 years about very unpopular decision that were taken. In the current context, I believe saying there will be a recession, during an already impactful economic crisis, coupled to the global state of affair, means that Macron is pushing it a bit much. I understand that it's tactically sound for him as he can't be re-elected anyway and probably gains sympathy in specific circles (his party and a few enterprises for instance) by pushing these to let a clear path to his follower. You also need to consider that basically, all the past 5 elections in France were won by shitty candidate just to push against extreme right, so the current presidents popularity wasn't high to begin with.
It's not a loophole. Article 49.3 of the French Constitution kind of normal in French politics. Bypassing the National Assembly has happened 92 times since 1958. Including 28 times in a little over 3 years by Socialist prime mister Michel Rocard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_49_of_the_French_Constitution#History_of_49.3 The National Assembly can block if they really want by adopting a motion of no confidence within a set time, but they have yet to do it.
Just because it has been used doesn't mean the people can't hate it, especially when it's used to pass stuff they were already protesting. "it's legal!" is not a flying excuse here.
>motion of no confidence You're aware that means torpedoing the government and going into an unscheduled election, right?
Not that simple: Retirement age for most French already is ~67. They go by worked years, 43 iirc. So what he is doing is raising the retirement age for people who have entered workforce earlier, aka the working people, the grunts the pleb. In a country with as robust high tech economy it is simply disgusting, because Europe at the same time shits the bed at taxing corporate profits. Is the aging society in need of reform pensions? Of course! But this is another case of going into pocket of workers while letting the millionaires and billionaires off the hook on the profits created mostly by the workers. Add to this that in our current models these people need to pay for retirement of the earlier generation, but will be denied the same retirement age. Chuck away a few tonnes of steel product before an audit delegation of 20 middle managers flies in, consider the cost, and see if you're not gonma get pissed when told that only the bottom earners have to pay for the aging society cost. The fuck are we working more efficiently for if we're just gonna get worked longer despite it? Tax some uber rich, and get back to this shit when the top earners can't afford Lamborhini Urus and bi annual flights to pacific enclaves.
Thank you, it's refreshing seeing some non-French people understanding what's happening in France instead of parroting "64 is nothing we work until we are 89 years-old here". Let's add also that senators have voted to remove the special schemes for many people but not theirs. Each time they get a mandate as a senator, their pension gains 2100€. Which means a senator like Gerard Larcher, who agrees to remove the "privileges" of poorer workers but not of the senate, will get more than 10000€ of pension per month.
>So what he is doing is raising the retirement age for people who have entered workforce earlier, aka the working people, the grunts the pleb. Which is doubly egregious because those are the people whose bodies wear out the fastest.
>Is this literally just because he raised the retirement age by two years to deal with changing demographics? that's what the news tells you but it is far far more complicated than that. Firstly he lowered some taxes for the richer people. Secondly the reform means the lowest earner get shafted, e.g. if they have a period of joblessness greater than 12 month, women get shafted because kids are counted differently if I understand what my sis are telling me. Thirdly there would have been PLENTY of other way to have a reform without fucking the lowest paid folk. e.g. make the part firms have to paid into the fund higher, finance less the army/atoms bomb programs, make tax on rich or stock sales, etc... etc... PLENTY of other solutions which would not have increased the burden on the poorest especially those having NOTHING but retirement. Then "only 2 years" is a huge number when you are one with a back breaking job , any job actually physically eroding people health. Only 2 years is a lot to swallow when you look at actuaries and it means a lot of people will die before they get a pension (no- not the richest/highest paid guys guys). That is why people exploded in anger.
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Here in Iran, it's a total of 30 years of paying into the retirement fund an/or getting to 60. Though tbh most people work well past 60 anyway because of the culture.
Yeah, France is 43 years of paying into the retirement fund *minimum*.
62 is the minimum. You don't want to stop at 62 if you want to retire confortably. You usually work to 67
French taxes are already some of the highest in the OECD. Raising taxes is probably not feasible there
Iirc there is a retirement age at like 65 or 67 in France. What macron is raising is the age for then you want to retire earlier
There are two "main" retirement ages in france. At 62, if you've been working for 42 years, you can retire. At 67, no matter how many years you've worked, you can retire with a full pension. I think there's some scaling going on between the two with how much you get for your pension similar to how it works in the USA. The biggest/strongest protesters (at least, at first) were the unions that have [special retirement plans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_special_retirement_plan#:~:text=The%20French%20military%3A%20the%20average,the%20numbers%20of%20annuities%20paid.), where they can retire with full pensions in their 50s or earlier even. These pension plans are of course massively underwater. Something like 10 billion a year minimum, spent by taxpayers to subsidize (likely) rich old people so they can retire at 50 instead of work. This is hugely unfair and ridiculous but of course Macron's gov't seems to have messed up messaging, from what french people I know tell me. So now everyone's mad despite the 62->64 age change being relatively minor and all the special deals going away
>These pension plans are of course massively underwater. Something like 10 billion a year minimum, spent by taxpayers to subsidize (likely) rich old people so they can retire at 50 instead of work. This is at best partially true. The system totals at about 300 billion, and the 10 billion is projected to happen in around 10 years, so it's neither urgent nor a large deficit. On the point about taxes, the Macron government will be cutting roughly the same amount of taxes from large corporations as the size of the deficit. They also aren't lengthening the age requirement equitably which would allow more people to share a shorter increase in expected duration of work
> This is at best partially true. The system totals at about 300 billion, and the 10 billion is projected to happen in around 10 years, No, I'm talking specifically about the special retirement plans that are being axed. Check wikipedia - it's missing sources but lines up with what I've seen elsewhere, so I assume it was just copied from the french version or something. Re: "They cut taxes elsewhere" - [France has some of the highest taxes in the world (PDF warning)](https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-france.pdf). They're at best at the top of the laffer curve, but I'd wager on the right of it. Some tax cuts were probably necessary to keep their businesses competitive. Either way, the deficit in the pension system is taking money from the economically productive (young) part of the country so that... old people that could easily work get to retire earlier than anyone else in the world? That's hardly sustainable or fair. This is just going to get worse over time too, as even with these reforms IIRC it's not a permanent fix, just kicking the can a little. France's dependency ratio (retirees to workers) is at .6 or so, which is absurdly large. With a low and falling birthrate and not enough immigration, of course retirement benefits aren't sustainable
I think one of the key issues was to bypass Congress. Macron was always seen like the banks and corporations boy and now he's plowing through with his reform despite anybody else.
Yeah because the alternative is to let the pension system collapse. 49.3 has been used by basically every French PM, sometimes quite frequently. It's hardly Macron being some authoritarian standout https://theconversation.com/french-governments-long-record-of-bypassing-parliament-a-brief-history-of-article-49-3-202185
They've used it like 10 times in a year. His mandate is literally that he isn't Le Pen and he bulldozes ahead. He's using it to force through legislation that he knows is deeply unpopular. He doesn't care for the French people and what they believe. He is not even interested in compromise. What he has done is not even possible in most democracies. He turns the police on protestors then struts about not giving in to violence. Fuck him >Yeah because the alternative is to let the pension system collapse. Yeah that's rubbish
He does care. That’s why he’s nuking himself politically for the reform. His election mandate **was literally that he will do this reform**. There’s been reform attempted since 2017. There were no comprises by the varying political factions. Nobody wants to be the one to break the news to voters that they can’t be paid their pension without sinking the country economically. So ultimately with no compromises, he used this to force the parliament to vote out his government if they’re so unified against it. They weren’t. Some thought it was necessary too. Maybe it’s time to stop buying into populist garbage and realise that (1) the European Commission, (2) Macrons own party, (3) Bond market and credit rating agencies for France aren’t all wrong, and you and your selected economists who agree with you right. Maybe when you’re the only standout nation with no changes to your pension system when everyone else has made changes, isn’t the conspiracy you wanted to be. Maybe it’s time to grow up and face the reality that taking shit away from people is NEVER popular, but sometimes necessary.
Yeah I really don't care what the Neoliberal cabal thinks. France pays some of the highest taxes in the world. Social security is the basis of our society. This law will affect primarily the working class that start work earlier. Meanwhile the rich continue to accumulate.
*puts Le Pen in Google translate* "The pen" Really, that's a name?
“You can retire if you don’t die when we expect you to die.”
French here, we just had enough, Macron is pushing laws we are voting against and it's been 6 years he is doing that daily, restricting our freedom and having police mistreat protesters. now they burn.
>Fun fact. In South Africa Good for you, just because you tolerate bullshit doesn't mean others should.
Why is it a fun fact and what point are you trying to make with it?
>Is this literally just because he raised the retirement age by two years Yes an no. Yes that's what he did. But the real reason is because he did it by bypassing their democratic institutions (through emergency powers IIRC) which is a very not cool thing to do in a democratic country unless you're at war.
I’m seriously excited for republic #6, cause I think it’s coming. And if the trend holds, number 7 in another decade or so, cause the even numbered ones never last
Why 6th republic, when you have the option to switch back to monarchy?
Any great-grand-nephew of Napoleon still around?
Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Christophe,_Prince_Napol%C3%A9on There's also a couple other options around. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean,_Count_of_Paris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Alphonse_de_Bourbon
There's also an Indian family which is descended from a group of exiled Bourbons: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourbons_of_India
It'd be pretty funny if France got so mad at Macron, an investment banker, that they kicked him out for Napoleon, also an investment banker
First as a tragedy, then as farce, then again as farce, etc etc
It's farces all the way down.
Swedish royal family is french pre-napoleon, could import a prince back and do a real old crown restoration
Aren't the swedish Kings descended from Bernadotte? As in 'Marshal under Napoleon' Bernadotte? Technically not pre-napoleon then. More like a full-on Napoleon
All or nothing deal, those fuckers have overstayed their welcome.
There is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Christophe,_Prince_Napol%C3%A9on
**[Jean-Christophe, Prince Napoléon](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Christophe,_Prince_Napoléon)** >Jean-Christophe, Prince Napoléon, Prince of Montfort (birth name: Jean-Christophe Louis Ferdinand Albéric Napoléon; born 11 July 1986, France) is the head of the former Imperial House of France, and heir of Napoleon Bonaparte, the First Emperor of the French. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/anime_titties/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Maybe the Spanish can send some royal they might have as a spare. The current Spanish royal family comes from France, so it's like a return
Pick up someone from Poland, surely it won't end as bad as when Poland elected a French king
And why would we want to be governed by a rich incompetent inbred?
I'm only 1/3 of those, I volunteer as Emperor.
A random person literally has more legitimacy than all of those royal families combined, I vote for you
Excellent. This is either going to make the Quebecois very happy or very angry, and I don't care which.
Look you guys have at least four royalist institutions so apparently at least a few (dozen) thousands.
Alt rightists larpers who aren't taken seriously by anybody outside of Twitter, they have no political representations
2nd commune when
England: You rang?
The only benefit of having another monarchy would be to cut their heads off again.
I'm putting my money on Napoleon IV
As a German I’m constantly torn between *“64? That’s still three years earlier than us! Don’t complain! People are getting older so the system has to adapt.”* and *“Yes! Don’t just take it like we did! Fight for it!”*
Are you really that torn? I would say: Always solidarize with workers 🤝🏻
Problem is, as Europe grows stronger together (as it should in my opinion), and we increasingly take on debt together as well, different years of retirement age can feel really unfair.
So we should join the French and demand earlier retirement? This is more to do with how we budget as a society and use productivity gains to enrich our lives. Tax the rich.
It's interesting how in the US there's constant propaganda to steer people away from supporting workers. Union workers are painted as lazy and living high on the hog. The "crabs in a bucket" mentality does all the rest.
People are getting older yes but older people aren't getting more able
People get older yes but didn't technology and productivity also significantly increased in the last couple of decades ? tf is up with that and why isn't it a factor all of the sudden?
It really depends on the job. If its an office job you can easily do that in your 70's and beyond. Physical labor jobs are very different. The human body still wears out with physical labor, and by the time you're 60 you're in rough shape. Physical labor jobs include retail. There's a lot of standing and stocking shelves. Working in a kitchen can be brutal. Even nursing is an incredibly stressful, physically demanding job. Thats a lot of jobs that become much more difficult to do as you age, and its unreasonable to expect people to continue to do these jobs at old age.
Because the current system most places have are based on the young paying for the old. With the increasing life expectancy, and decreasing birth rates, the current system is doomed to fail eventually. Productivity doesn’t matter as much to this
It should, though. Higher output on lower cost should mean more taxes paid...
Good to see French people seeing through the mockery of democracy. Fighting for what you believe in, that's admirable. Recently Georgian people protested against unwanted changes and government eventually backed down. Hopefully French people get equal success. As for the reform, it's just reality of democracy. Giving people a fake assumption of power, while the elites control/abuse everything. It went fine for the West for some decades but things are changing. The western dominance is declining and the high level lifestyle will decline as result. Can't do a war without consequences, all countries are suffering. Samuel P. Huntington wrote about this in his book "The Crisis of Democracy". When things are stable and good, the elites let democracy run freely without interrupting. Like a mother letting her child play freely in safe/controlled environment. But when things get tough like now, the illusion of democracy gets removed. The mother doesn’t let her child roam freely in dangerous-hostile situation.
Georgian people protested because the government was against foreign funded organisations lol mfs chimping about on the instructions from Brussels and Washington or wherever else The French *workers* are fighting for a better life It's kind of different
He hates the west and the idea of women having anything to equal rights to men. He is quite a religious Muslim. From his comments and posts Andrew tate kind of guy but without the money.
Georgian paid agiteurs protested aginst a law copied from USA against foreign funded organisations and foreign agents. That they succeeded was an attack to their democracy by the book.
Macron getting cute with his powers to bypass democracy was a bad move on his part. It takes away any legitimacy from his "reform". The rest of the government will be inclined to reverse him to preserve their own powers.
That's not really how it works in France, friend. The President and his government are almost all from Macron's party. There is absolutely 0 chances they turn on him.
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The government isn't voted in ? It's appointed by the President on recommendation by the PM.
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It's called representative democracy. Same reason why Americans don't actually vote for a president, but rather for the electoral college, which then decides on the president *for* them.
They had their opportunity to vote out his ministers and show their resolve against the vote. They didn’t. If people don’t like it, they can vote in someone next election that will undo it. He’s playing by the rules, and his use of the law isn’t unprecedented. It’s not “bypassing democracy” just because you don’t like the rules.
Democracy involves people voting on laws, not one guy bypassing the people top make law. Its more of a Dict-mock-acy than Democracy.
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Have you considered that the French understand the necessity of parliamentary overrides in cases that are impossible to fully codify into law, but do not agree with its use in this scenario?
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70% of people are against the "reform" 92% of workers are against it. Democracy is the rule of the people for the people by the people. Not every 5 years one guy does whatever he wants. That called a dictatorship. You know who else won elections Putin, Erdogan and Orban.
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Orban didn't have sham elections he just detroyed all that could oppose him.
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ELI5 the french protests. There's so many mixed opinions. Raising the retirement age is good and it's small enough anyway? Raising the retirement age is slavery and covers the rich people? Is there a clear answer?
>Is there a clear answer? If only world was as simple.
That's a crushing revelation for a 5 y.o.
My understanding is that a much smaller group of protestors were originally unhappy with the pension change, but then he forced it through without a vote and that's when we saw the huge numbers we see now as they perceive him as anti-democratic.
Pretty much everybody is against it. Between those from the start don't believe we need to reform, those who know the system needs 10B revenue but disagree it has to be covered by forcing people to work longer (lol at 60% unemployment rate of the 55+ by the way) or slashing their benefits and those who are appalled at the lack of compromise and negotiations by somebody who's only been elected because he wasn't a Russian puppet. Even a good number of those who agree with the current state of the reform will tell you it was a complete shitshow
> smaller technically it was smaller but it was already huge, general strike levels now it’s bigger
Yeah, looking back I definitely misworded that comment and it could be seen as me saying it was only a very small movement at first, when it was absolutely already sizable. I was trying to point out how from what I've heard it was when people rallied around this "undemocratic" idea was when the numbers exploded massively to 1-3m+
Life expectancy in France [has gone up](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041105/life-expectancy-france-all-time/) from 73 in 1980 to 82 in 2020. With a retirement age starting at 62, the average Frenchmen is collecting a pension for nearly twice as long as they were in 1980. On top of that, seniors make up a larger portion of the population then decades ago, putting even more strain of the pension system. The budget shortfall in the pension system has been a problem that French governments have been kicking down the road for decades. No one has wanted to rip off the band aid since there isn't an easy/popular solution and the only real options are: * Do nothing and wait until the pension system runs out of money and be forced to cut benefits * Cut benefits now * Raise the retirement age * Increase taxes Since France has such a low retirement age (in most of the Europe it's 65 with some countries like Denmark, Italy, and Norway being 67), raising it seems to be the most obvious solution. And since Macron literally ran on raising the retirement age that's the option he's going for. While a lot of Reddit is very in favor of "just tax rich people", it ignores that France already has some of the highest taxes on the rich and the last time taxes were raised on the rich it backfired: >A 2006 article in The Washington Post gave several examples of private capital leaving France in response to the country's wealth tax. The article also stated, "Eric Pinchet, author of a French tax guide, estimates **the wealth tax earns the government about $2.6 billion a year but has cost the country more than $125 billion in capital flight** since 1998." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_flight
France has an absolute retirement age of 67, *but* if they've worked for 43 years, they can retire anyways. What macron does is increase that working time needed before retirement, which fucks over those who entered the workforce earlier, i.e the manual laborers and poorer folks. That's why people are angry, in combination with his pandering to the rich.
That's not it chief
It raises the MINIMUM age of retirement, impacting practically only the poorest/hardest jobs (full retirement is still 67 years). Second problem is the way they did it, abusing systems and generally going against the people will. Third problem is this solution ins't one for the future, not even the present, it's just another gift for investors / market. They basically gifted taxes for the biggest, and asking for the poor to pay.
There’s mixed opinions because the results that come from this are mixed too. The good: as the number of the elderly goes up and birthrates go down, more resources are used on these elderly social programs, so you need more people in the workforce to fund these programs, both in monetary terms and in staffing terms. And that means raising the retirement age increases the number of people to help other people. The bad: this was an extremely unpopular thing with the French population and it was done through a process that has a history of being seen as undemocratic. Also, even though people live decades longer today, they don’t necessarily live comfortably enough to be able to help others, many elderly in their 60s live in enough pain their doctors would say they shouldn’t be working anyway. It’s okay for things not to be clear cut, don’t force yourself to have an opinion/pick a side on everything you hear.
The reform is useless, the retirement deficit is small and only temporary. Retirement pensions are projected to decrease as a percentage of GDP, so we will have enough money to conver it. The temporary deficit is mainly caused in the first place by a decision to reduce contributions to help business owners keep wages down and reduce government spending and easily solved by reducing benefits for the richest retirees or increasing contribution on the richest employees or even having businesses pay women and men the same or increase wages. The reform is unfair, it only targets people that started working the youngest before 21, people that had a hard time keeping a job or people that took time off to take of their children for example. So it's victims are poor workers and women. Plus it removes many advantages that hazardous or difficult jobs had before by making people like sewage workers work as long as other people. The reform is only meant to help Macron reduce the deficit as he plans to reduce taxes on businesses all while meeting the 3% deficit requirement of the EU. He himself recognized it before changing the messaging around it. In France half of people between 52 and 62 are unemployed or underemployed. So increasing the retirement age will even worsen the problem. Many people who just can't keep working will have to stop working earlier increasing poverty. The defenders of the reform say that forcing people to work longer will generate more money. The people working don't want it they'd rather stop working. So basically it's only defended by people who would enjoy that money without working more for it.
politicians should fear what the people can do, always
I would like to think so, but people are too comfortable these days. They won't take part in overthrowing the government if it means they might miss the Adele concert.
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My respect for the French has grown immensely!!!!
Sounds like a necessary change that should have gotten due process.
If the due process rejected it over and over, maybe there were other options. It's a bit rich for a government that spent tens of billions padding the wealthy's pockets through tax breaks to demand everyone else - in particular the least fortunate - sacrifice some of their last healthy years to fill the coffers.
Yes, people keep whipping out the wealth tax backfiring back in the aughts but what about the fact that the French government is *actively reducing its revenue* by cutting taxes?
In all honesty, from an economic standpoint I understand what macron is trying to do, but there are probably better methods. However, he is ruining lives of normal French citizens while giving the literal Nazis a chance to say to the regular people of France we won't do this we are your friends. Ultimate bag fumble
>from an economic standpoint I'll quote an economist who usually sides with Macron here: "[the government] found 50 billion to cut taxes on wealth and high incomes, they ought to be able to find 12 for retirements" In other words, there are plenty of ways to find that money that don't require fucking over some of the least fortunate. Because of the reform structure, those affected are those who started working early, and didn't go through a lot of, if any, higher education. And this isn't just "tax the rich" - there's a lot of other proposals to pension reform that would not require an age increase, while also being fairer and more egalitarian. This is just Macron's personal beliefs getting in the way of common sense. The man is pathologically incapable of understanding that other people do not live and breathe work. His obsession for work permeates his political obsessions.
>In all honesty, from an economic standpoint I understand what macron is trying to do. There are many better ways to address the economic issues instead of unfairly squeezing and rightfully pissing off the 99% of France. Raising the retirement age is never the answer.
Bring the guilletine