[HN Gopher] France comes to a standstill as workers protest plan... ___________________________________________________________________ France comes to a standstill as workers protest plan to increase retirement age Author : thesuitonym Score : 106 points Date : 2023-03-07 15:41 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.cbc.ca) (TXT) w3m dump (www.cbc.ca) | jmclnx wrote: | I have to say, the people in France really know how to live! | | Here in the US, people do not give a sh**. Already benefits have | been reduced to the point were you cannot live on Social Security | unless you pitch a tent next to a dumpster outside of a | restaurant. | | Not only that, every year the retirement age is increased. For | people born after 1960 full retirement is 67. The GOP in congress | is trying to raise it to 70. | | Do US people care, no they do not. If this happened in France I | think the full government would be dragged out and "guillotined". | | I admire the French for standing up for their rights. | | https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/retirement/planner/agereduction... | bm3719 wrote: | Social security recipients got a +8.7% increase this year. It | was +5.9% in 2022. | | Pretty sure employee wages aren't tracking anywhere near that. | jmclnx wrote: | 8% of nothing is still nothing. No one gets enough Social | Security to live on without other sources of income. | WkndTriathlete wrote: | > Here in the US, people do not give a sh*. Already benefits | have been reduced to the point were you cannot live on Social | Security unless you pitch a tent next to a dumpster outside of | a restaurant. | | This is a problem with Congress not managing the Social | Security system properly over the last 85 years. | | > Not only that, every year the retirement age is increased. | For people born after 1960 full retirement is 67. The GOP in | congress is trying to raise it to 70. | | See the life expectancy and demographic tables published here | by none other than the SSA: | https://www.ssa.gov/history/lifeexpect.html | | That's because the combination of benefits times life | expectancy times demographics is either going to result in a | 25% reduction in benefits that the SSA can pay out or result in | a high tax burden on workers (read: major economic drag and | recessions) or some kind of half-assed compromise in between. | | Had Congress continuously and properly managed the retirement | ages, contributions, and SS trust funds properly over the last | 85 years we would not be having this conversation. But they | haven't, and now there will be pain for almost everyone because | of it. | guilhas wrote: | It is strange how a lot of countries claim they will have trouble | to pay pensions but at same time are campaigning for UBI | advisedwang wrote: | There's a lot of UBI proponents who really just intend it to be | a way to strip away current benefits with something that in | aggregate provides less. Not all UBIs are the same. | | There's a similar situation with the UK's universal credit. On | the face of it it was replacing a patchwork of benefits with a | single unified benefit, which should be better and more | efficient. However the _implementation_ was designed to | actually reduce benefits paid out (e.g. they replaced up front | payments with payment in arrears, made it difficult to sign on | to, kick people off for small issues, etc etc). | | Changes labelled with the same name can be radically different | in actual results, you really have to look into any given | proposal. | crmd wrote: | A wealth tax (instead of income tax) is the best way to reverse | the capital hoarding which is destroying modern society. Go after | their assets. | kwere wrote: | that and eliminating the creation of money out of thin air to | generate the famous healty 2% inflation, the money injected | into the financial system tend to go to the connected and | financial worthy aka already rich, creating bubbles and | cheating society. A 2% wealth tax would be more equitable | wskinner wrote: | Impressive to pack so many assumptions in such a short comment. | | - wealth tax is the best way | | - capital hoarding is a thing | | - capital hoarding is destroying modern society | forgetfreeman wrote: | Not only are these not assumptions, they're trivially proven | with even the briefest of research on the subject. Capital | hoarding: go look at GDP graphed against wages over the last | 60 years. Wages don't go up, so all that extra productivity | is going in -someone's- pocket. Capital hoarding is | destroying modern society: global news media is largely | controlled by 7 organizations, the international housing | market has been invaded by investment funds, healthcare | outcomes in the US continue to lag behind most industrialized | nations worldwide despite record profits, the list goes on. | It has never been harder to get a leg up (at least in the US) | at any point in the last 50 years, and the percentage of US | households that are living paycheck to paycheck keeps | increasing year over year. Not sure what you're stanning over | there but that is definitely an impressive set of blinders | you've got on. | legitster wrote: | Capital hoarding only refers to wealth being held back from | the market. Investments wouldn't count because you are | lending your money to others and that generates economic | growth. I think you are conflating terms with some other | inequality concepts. | | You're clearly trying to shorthand a lot of disparate | political topics into one point (a good share of hospitals | and insurance companies in the US are non-profit - it | clearly doesn't affect medical prices), but I don't think | it's as clear cut an issue as you are making it. | forgetfreeman wrote: | I mean if you want to pretend the issue is murky despite | one being able to toss (at random) a loose collection of | off-the-cuff examples so be it, but I don't think your | confusion is rooted in much beyond cognitive dissonance. | Put even more simply: the haves are taking too much from | folks that actually work, hampering their social and | economic mobility. | [deleted] | cperciva wrote: | Would a wealth tax also apply to the NPV of pensions? | WJW wrote: | Depends on how you arrange it. In the Netherlands we have a | wealth tax, but pensions are not affected by it. Pensions are | counted as "deferred income", so you can pay into them with | "pre-tax" money but when the pension is paid out the income | tax is applied. This makes it so that it is beneficial for | workers to save into their pensions, since the effective | income tax of pensioners is usually lower than for people | still working. | Thlom wrote: | We have a tiny wealth tax in Norway, so now the richest are | moving to Switzerland. | orangepurple wrote: | Switzerland also has a tiny wealth tax for all residents | Jensson wrote: | Switzerland has a tiny wealth tax instead of a capital | gains tax, Switzerland's is 0.3% and Norway's wealth tax is | above 1% and also has capital gains tax, totally different. | The total tax per wealth is much much lower. Also you can | opt for a lump sum tax, and then you don't tax your wealth | or income at all, you just pay tax based on your expenses. | Switzerland's tax is very lax. | paganel wrote: | If there's true political will one can do it, especially if | you're a country as big as France. | | Let's say Arnault, the wealthiest French guy, decides to | decamp for Switzerland were the French to introduce a wealth | tax, then one of the most obvious solutions would be to | nationalize his assets with pennies on the dollar, introduce | an "emergency societal clause" in the mix to make it more | "legal", and I can assure you that the rest of French | billionaires will be happy to pay an effective tax rate of | 50% (let's say) as long as the State will still allow them to | keep a nominal hold on things. | | And before anyone comes in and says "nationalization is a | thing that only dictators do", the modern history of France | is full of examples to the contrary. As recently as 1981 | Mitterrand won the presidency by promising just that, i.e. | nationalizations. | fvdessen wrote: | Then people don't invest in France as much for fear of | having their wealth nationalised and invest in neighbouring | countries instead. Then the middle class leaves to the | better jobs in the neighbouring countries. | danaris wrote: | Are you under the impression that most wealth in a | country _comes from_ rich people? Because observation | over the past few decades strongly suggests it 's the | reverse. Rich people drain money out of the economy; | working people create value, and thus wealth. | | Or what do you think is going to happen? The billionaires | will pull out, but they'll make sure to retain ownership | of all the businesses they ran--and fire everyone, thus | ensuring that those are just losing them money? How is | that going to be better for them than paying the tax? | | And how long before France just nationalizes the | businesses and puts people back to work without the | billionaires getting a cent? | fvdessen wrote: | Investors are usually not billionaires but either regular | people putting money in the stock market for their | savings or retirement money, companies looking to expand | their assets, state looking to manage some of their | funds, etc. | gordian-mind wrote: | > As recently as 1981 Mitterrand won the presidency by | promising just that, i.e. nationalizations. | | And what a colossal failure that was. After two years of | this policy, he was forced into a severe austerity turn. | France's economy was never the same afterwards. | | After all you're right, if there's true political will, | anyone can shoot themselves in the foot. | paganel wrote: | 40 years later I don't see the neoliberal policies as | having done the trick for France, hence the current | conundrum. | tpmx wrote: | The wealth tax in Norway: | | $160k - $1.9M: 1% per year | | $1.9M and above: 1.4% per year | scotuswroteus wrote: | The best way to reverse the capital hoarding is to deeply | understand the way the policy making system works, not to | debate the merits of different policies. Folks who believe in a | wealth tax also don't believe in putting their noses to the | grindstone for decades to engage in the high octane chess game | of bureaucratic power politics. So it'll never happen. | forgetfreeman wrote: | Many do. Invariably they run into issues trying to finance | their campaign when competing with candidates who are funded | and offered media coverage by oligarchs. So having thrown our | hands in the air and given up should we just make serfdom a | thing again officially, or should we just go on pretending? | fvdessen wrote: | France already has a wealth tax and it is famous for being | completely ineffective. Very wealthy people just move away with | their wealth to richer countries. | orwin wrote: | And it's suppression changed nothing, so getting it back | should be nice. | PeterStuer wrote: | No-one hires 58+yo people. This is just about pushing more people | into poverty. | dahfizz wrote: | The idea of relying on the government for your retirement is | insane to me, for exactly this reason. You're willing to bet your | life that the government is always going to do right by you? | | Save your own money. If Social Security exists by the time I | retire, great. I'm planning as if it won't. | ur-whale wrote: | > You're willing to bet your life that the government is always | going to do right by you? | | Hear, hear, especially given the historical priors : (hint: | across a generation-sized time spans, governments _never_ keep | their promises. Why should they, they usually are in power for | decades at most). | | And yes, relying on governments to handle your retirement money | is _completely_ insane, but the vast majority of folks in e.g. | the EU have drunk that kool-aid even though it was guaranteed | to fail since day one. | | Retirement plans the way they work in Western Europe were | _always_ an absolute con, very much like a ponzi scheme (new | players pay for the earlier players). | | When the young, working population was vastly larger than the | old retiree population (because the retirement age was designed | so that most people died before reaching it), the government | milked their working young for all they were worth. | | Now that the age pyramid has inverted (large retiree | population, few working youngs), there simply isn't enough | income generated by the young to pay for the old and retirement | income is paid using debt. | | What a freak show. | croes wrote: | >Retirement plans the way they work in Western Europe were | always an absolute con, very much like a ponzi scheme (new | players pay for the earlier players) | | That's pretty much how families worked before retirement | plans, the kids payed for the parents. | | This just got transferred to the whole society. And it worked | as long the rise of productivity led to a rise of wages. | dahfizz wrote: | > And it worked as long the rise of productivity led to a | rise of wages. | | It worked as long as people had more than 2 kids. There was | always a larger young population supporting the smaller old | population. | creato wrote: | It's the same scheme that has existed for all of humanity: | the tribe's young people work to provide for the children and | elders. No one was retiring by hoarding a pile of gold. The | tribe is just bigger now. | at_a_remove wrote: | If it doesn't, well, American society has already bred the | perfect group of shock-wave troops: a bunch of dead-eyed, lives | paused, waiting for an apocalypse that never came Gen Xrs who | will dub their explosive-laden waistcoat's "retirement vests." | They're tech-savvy, they've waited for killer bees, land | invasions, acid rain, nuclear war, and watched the low-risk sex | of their elders transform into a high-stakes gamble at a | lingering death. They remember 9/11 _and_ Ruby Ridge. They won | 't factor into any threat profile because everyone forgets they | even exist. They waited dutifully for the Boomers to retire | only for 2008 to put a big hold on that, and the Millennials | just climbed over them on the ladder. If that quote about | "Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his | hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats" rang | true for a group, that's the one I'd pick. Probably the last | bunch you'd want to ditch Social Security on. | adra wrote: | Most people (in the world) live entirely without saving and are | making do in whatever way possible. For democracies that have | stable governments sans USA, there is absolutely the assumption | that the gov will pitch into avoid people starving in the | streets. | icelancer wrote: | > Save your own money. If Social Security exists by the time I | retire, great. I'm planning as if it won't. | | I would guess that most people my age (between 35-45) got told | some variant of this in their business and economics classes in | university. At least, I hope they did. | | Looking at Social Security budgets for about 20-30 minutes and | what politicians have proposed to do to fix it is enough to | make most reasonably-minded people understand that expecting | anything more than token amounts of money from the program is | idiotic. | weakfish wrote: | Most don't want to by choice! Many Americans specifically can't | afford to save, so what option do they have? | frenchman99 wrote: | That's if you have enough salary to save enough for retirement. | Which is not the case for a lot of people unfortunately. Hence | a government lead system where wealthy people are required to | pay more to help less wealthy have a somewhat acceptable | retirement. | icelancer wrote: | > Hence a government lead system where wealthy people are | required to pay more to help less wealthy have a somewhat | acceptable retirement. | | Nothing stopped about this. Our demographics have changed for | the worse in this regard, is all. From the latest report from | the SSA's Board of Trustees: | | "Social Security and Medicare both face long-term financing | shortfalls under currently scheduled benefits and financing. | Costs of both programs will grow faster than gross domestic | product (GDP) through the mid-2030s primarily due to the | rapid aging of the U.S. population. Medicare costs will | continue to grow faster than GDP through the late 2070s due | to projected increases in the volume and intensity of | services provided." | | Furthermore: | | "For the sixth consecutive year, the Trustees are issuing a | determination of projected excess general revenue Medicare | funding, as is required by law whenever annual tax and | premium revenues of the combined Medicare funds will be below | 55 percent of projected combined annual outlays within the | next 7 fiscal years. Under the law, two such consecutive | determinations of projected excess general revenue constitute | a "Medicare funding warning." Under current law and the | Trustees' projections, such determinations and warnings will | recur every year through the 75-year projection period." | | It's a good read beyond the summary, too: | | https://www.ssa.gov/oact/TRSUM/tr22summary.pdf | dahfizz wrote: | The pension money doesn't come from nowhere. The people who | are living paycheck to paycheck are paying 20% VAT and ~20% | income tax. Maybe they would have less financial trouble if | they could keep some of their own money. | | I'm all for a safety net. Scaling the system way down so that | it only serves the people who need it would reduce the tax | burden and solvency issues. | croes wrote: | No, you're betting that their always will be a government and | other people who pay taxes and social security fees. | | If you save for yourself it's likely that you lose. | JamesBarney wrote: | There are very few if any institutions that sophisticated | investors trust to pay back money more than the U.S. | government. | | Banks go bankrupt, gold changes value, cash gets stolen. Seems | like the U.S. government is the best option. | ur-whale wrote: | https://www.officialdata.org/us/inflation/1800?amount=1 | | I'd love to have to repay my debts with those conditions. | dahfizz wrote: | US T-bills, sure. Not so for Social Security. | | I would trust my retirement to the US Treasury. No sane human | would trust their retirement to the US Congress. | maxilevi wrote: | Only because the debt is denominated in USD, so the | government can always print it to pay it back. It's not like | it's the most fiscally responsible government around | lotsofpulp wrote: | The government issuing the money can reduce the purchasing | power of "your" money anytime it wants, and most governments do | every year. | cypress66 wrote: | Your savings wouldn't be all USD or bonds. It would include | stocks, commodities, investments in other countries, maybe | precious metals and crypto. | yamtaddle wrote: | Mandatory pension schemes remove the option to defect and spend | money that "should" go toward retirement to instead compete in | zero-sum games for benefit today for yourself and your kids | (say, housing in good school districts, tuition, et c.). That | part's pretty nice. | pkaye wrote: | Its crazy that we give 6.2% of our paycheck (and another 6.2% | from our employer) and we can't expect much in return. | dahfizz wrote: | Yeah. Even if I do get to collect SS, I'd have been better | off investing that 6.2% the whole time. | tristor wrote: | With just a 3% APR on a savings account, if you took the | 12.4% that everyone currently pays into social security and | deposited in that account for 40 years (25 to 65) of your | working life, at the current median annual income, you'd | have $715k in cash saved. | | If you had invested that into a Roth 401k and invested it | in the market at an annualized average return of 7.3% | instead, it'd be $2.25M in retirement savings. | | Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme because it's taking money | as an "investment" from people working today, to pay out | returns to previous "investors" who are now retired, while | the government has raided it and filled it with IOUs to | support spending unrelated to the pension. | 988747 wrote: | [dead] | skywal_l wrote: | What makes you think that if people are stupid enough to elect | corrupt government officials they will be smart enough to | invest their money wisely? | | If you trust the financial markets more than the government | that you elect, I have a bridge to sell you. | | Sure some smart people will be able to extract profit from the | market but most won't. I'd rather live in a country where the | people I chose can organize to ensure that nobody needs for | anything rather than in a country where I gamed the system and | now have to protect my loot against hordes of have-nots. | | And if I can't do that, the joke is on me. | dahfizz wrote: | > Sure some smart people will be able to extract profit from | the market but most won't. | | Source? Put your money in an index fund. The S&P 500 from | 1958 to 2008 went up 90x. The worst case scenario - All your | savings are in stocks and you retire during the second worst | financial crisis ever. And your returns are 90x. Not 90%, | 9000%. | | The idea that "most won't extract profit" is nonsense. In the | long term, its free money for everyone. | | https://www.officialdata.org/us/stocks/s-p-500/1958?amount=1. | .. | loudmax wrote: | I'm relying on a functional democratic government still | existing when I retire. It doesn't seem like a high bar, though | admittedly less of a certainty than we would have imagined a | decade ago. | morpheos137 wrote: | Governments create money and sustain its value. If you are | relying on saved money for retirement then you are relying on | government. | dgudkov wrote: | If you don't trust your government, what makes you think that | your money will keep its value over time regardless of | government actions? A reckless government can destruct not only | the retirement system, but the monetary system as well. A few | populist decisions about inflation and your savings go to the | waste bin _forever_. | supernova87a wrote: | One big challenge I see with the whole business about pension | reform (and government spending in fact) as a public debate is | that two sides are talking on totally different planes. In | France, and someday very soon, here in the US. And the public in | a certain sense, will problematically have to end up voting a | simple yes/no on extremely complex topics which are incentivized | to push buttons on single issues. cf. Brexit. | | On the one side (hopefully meaningful to this crowd) is a group | that when confronted with the sheer numbers involved and | tradeoffs that would make any dent in the coming demographic- | driven bankruptcy (shorthand name for it), have to keep things | running and try to come up with the actually mathematically | workable or "implement this decision" plans with the resources | they have. Not aspirations. | | Take a look at this for example: | | https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/06/upshot/balanc... | | See those numbers/scenarios, there is no getting around the | severity of the situation. | | Then on the other plane, there are people (politicians, and | people in general in the country) who deal in "symbols" and | qualitative statements about what they think who is entitled to, | what was promised, etc. "Eat the rich!" etc. | | And lately it seems, rarely the twain shall meet. Or at least, | it's quite rare to find leaders who are equally incentivized or | capable of handling both sides of this adeptly. Also, the people | who don't understand the numbers generally tend to shout and | insist they're right. On the other hand, numbers people don't | usually shout (and underplay the severity of coming problems; the | type that analyzes is usually civil about it). Also, and this is | an evolving thought -- I don't think democracies are very well | suited to allocating the pain of a country's long-term downturn | very well, or having people understand when your country's | resources are actually decreasing. | | One thing is for sure -- there is a massive unpleasant reckoning | coming in terms of what benefits and tax rates people believed | they would experience. There is no magic getting out of this | hole, it will be one of / combination of: | | -- taxes will rise (for whom?) | | -- benefits will decrease (for whom?) | | -- retirement age will increase | | -- borrowing will increase (from whom?) | | And undoubtedly it will largely fall on the next generations. Or | just in time for my retirement. | Convolutional wrote: | The US has spent $100 billion in the Ukraine over the past | year, with more on the way, it is sending billions a year to | Israel and Egypt, is involved in Iran, China, Venezuela etc. It | just stopped spending a ton in Afghanistan. All the money spent | there seemed to have no positive effect. | | The US seems to have money to throw all over the world for this | kind of bloodthirsty waste, if it cuts it can cut there. People | getting back money they put into Social Security should be the | last thing to go. | | The US spends hundreds of billions on these wars of choice, | that can be cut very easy. | TheGigaChad wrote: | [dead] | croes wrote: | >There is no magic getting out of this hole. | | There is magic, the rise of productivity. It just didn't reach | the ordinary people. | silisili wrote: | Maybe I'm too pessimistic, but sometimes I feel that bloc got | all the goodies at everyone else's expense. This isn't a | typical 'boomers' or anything argument against the people, but | perhaps the demographic itself and the way politics played out. | | Pensions are unheard of now, and companies are still struggling | to keep up with them, likely meaning lowered wages for the next | group(and no pensions). Tough luck. | | I fully expect to pay social security my entire life to | subsidize those getting it now, and to be dead before I'm ever | able to collect a dime. | | Honestly, even having paid into it my whole life, I wish they'd | just kill it off. It's an unsustainable pyramid scheme, | especially as birth rates flattened. Even if I do live long | enough to collect, I don't want that burden on the next | generations. | | The age is going to keep being raised. A quarter of Americans | don't even live to 'full retirement age.' And when it's raised | so high it's profitable, the USG is just going to raid it like | a slush fund. | ErikVandeWater wrote: | Is there a fundamental reason that cuts would have to be to | benefits? Why not cut xx% of the government budget anywhere but | pensions? | dangus wrote: | Do you have some kind of similar study that doesn't come out of | the Republican Party? Maybe something a little more non- | partisan? | | An example of the flaws of this argument/article is how Social | Security is self-funded, and not in any financial jeopardy on | its own. [1] Some of the other entitlement programs on the list | also work that way. | | Regardless, my understanding is that a government's budget | never has to be balanced. It doesn't operate like a family | household. Oftentimes, national debt is used for pursuits that | return on their investment, just like how startup companies | operate at a deficit on purpose to prioritize growth that will | make the company more valuable in the long term. Inflation also | lessens the value of the national debt over time. | | I quite like one of those options: taxes on the wealthy and | ultra-wealthy have a lot of room to rise. Jack them up, | billionaires shouldn't exist, and people like Jeff Bezos | shouldn't have a single-digit tax rate. | | The other part would be looking at government inefficiencies | and flawed policies that aren't on your list, the kind that | result in wasted spending that's hard to demonstrate tangibly. | For example, should we not talk about how suburban development | and the interstate highway system is a monetary drain on wealth | for the majority of the country? | | It's really obvious to me how building more sewer, road, and | utilities per person and forcing everyone to own one car per | capita or more is a dumb waste of money on a national level. | Our government on every level plays a heavy hand in subsidizing | that development pattern. | | It would be really easy to afford my tax rate increasing to a | much higher level if I wasn't forced to own more than one car | just to get myself to work. It would also be easier for me to | afford housing if a bunch of single family home owners weren't | preventing dense housing from being built, and then all that | extra money I saved could go toward something more economically | productive than a parking lot. | | The average American spends somewhere between $5,000 to $10,000 | per vehicle annually. Imagine a USA where everyone could go | down to one car per family and how the rest of that money could | be used. | | But no, instead let's add _one more lane_ and make our retirees | work until they 're 85 rather than fixing our structural | problems that make America a very expensive and energy-wasteful | place to live. | | Because, when you think about it, national wealth is basically | access to energy, and America is squandering their own wealth | by dumping it into their GMC Yukon Denali Ultimate that gets | 14MPG. | | I don't understand why there's a temptation to jump to the | conclusion that the answer is to make people retire later in | life or cut safety net programs, which are often investments | with ROI (e.g., hungry kids learn poorly, hungry kids result in | reduced workforce education and productivity). | | Are 70 year old employees particularly productive for the | economy in the first place? It seems like there are smarter | ways to save wealth or earn more wealth for the nation. | | [1] https://www.aarp.org/retirement/social- | security/info-2020/10... | supernova87a wrote: | > " _Do you have some kind of similar study that doesn 't | come out of the Republican Party? Maybe something a little | more non-partisan_?" | | Not sure what your point is. I'm not sharing the | article/infographic and animated budget scenarios as "this is | what needs to happen" from some party's perspective. The | point is a graphical display of the size of different buckets | (which I take as fact) and the sliders that you can play | with. The cases being presented are just examples. You can | mentally slide the bars / cut line and see how much is | required. | | > _" I also find it funny how the infographic doesn't show a | scenario where only defense cuts are made, because it would | show us how cutting defense spending is a really simple path | toward a balanced budget without changing anything else_. | | I don't know if you have looked at it, but the defense bar is | as big as each of the Medicaid, other mandatory, and "all | other" spending bars each. You would have to cut the entire | defense budget and still not solve the problem, and only make | a fractional share of what is achieved if you implemented | cuts to those other programs. | | > " _Another example of the flaws of this argument /article | is how Social Security is self-funded, and not in any | financial jeopardy on its own. [1] Some of the other | entitlement programs on the list also work that way_." | | Maybe you have to redefine your definition of self-funded. | Sure it is self-funded, as long as taxes increase a lot, | given the demographic wave coming. If taxes don't increase, | or one of these other options, it will run out of funds. If | we don't agree on that, we have a problem. This is the entire | debate about the problem we face. | | > " _Regardless, my understanding is that a government 's | budget never has to be balanced. It doesn't operate like a | family household_...." | | Well, correct, but the question is how deep do we go into the | hole. If you read the story, and the charts, you can see the | projections of debt going to 200% GDP. At that point we will | be paying enough interest on our debt to have funded several | large programs themselves. | | > " _You 're saying our only options are for taxes to rise, | benefits decreasing, increasing retirement age, or | snowballing debt. But why are those our only options_?" | | And the other options are? | | > " _The other part would be looking at government | inefficiencies and flawed policies that aren 't on your list. | For example, should we not talk about how suburban | development and the interstate highway system is a monetary | drain on wealth for the majority of the country_?" | | Sure, talk about it, but can you change the bulk of the US to | capture whatever benefit you can from that change, within 50 | years to save the programs needing the money? | | > " _I know I 've spent a lot of time on this one issue as a | specific example, but it's really just one of many ways in | which being smart and efficient about the use of the vast | wealth generated by the US would go a long way_...." | | The talking is all good, but the bottom line is will your | proposals come up with the money in time? | vkou wrote: | > Sure, talk about it, but can you change the bulk of the | US to capture whatever benefit you can from that change, | within 50 years to save the programs needing the money? | | We can start changing it today, and save ourselves the pain | of having to deal with it when _we_ retire. | | It would also improve the quality of our day-to-day life on | many dimensions, long before we do. | | What the grandparent poster is alluding to is that our | culture is sick with a myopic, penny-wise-pound-foolish | mentality, where people are personally spending tens of | thousands of dollars for a service that could be provided | collectively for thousands of dollars. While also | complaining about outrageous taxes. | supernova87a wrote: | I agree with this very much of course. | icelancer wrote: | These pensions were bankrupt the minute they were implemented - | the capital appreciation rates were completely insane to start, | and have only looked worse as time rolls on (which, I have to | stress, is extremely tough to imagine). Delusion around pension | portfolios eclipses all but the most insane crypto scams. | | Quite a bit of my university work in the early 2000s revolved | around studying and modeling pension-type retirement plans, | primarily in the United States (Chicago and Philadelphia mostly | come to mind), but a little in foreign countries. While EU | pensions tend to be in worse positions, it's a distinction | without a difference: Pension reform is basically impossible. | Catastrophic bankruptcy and refusal to pay benefits is coming | to a theatre near you, because the political will to even begin | meager cuts (and so-called "drastic" cuts are indeed merely | meager) does not exist. | | Politicians who propose meaningful cuts to pensions are | guaranteed a single term in office while the candidates waiting | in line promise to keep the Ponzi scheme going. | ecshafer wrote: | Philadelphia's pension "scheme" is crazy and borderline | criminal how its implemented. Pay days on retirement date | based on salary in the past several years, absolutely rampant | overtime fraud, cronyism abound everywhere. There are plenty | of stories of people retiring milking tens of thousands of | dollars from fraudulent overtime, getting a one time payment | on retirement in the hundreds of thousands, and then getting | a pension higher than their real salary. | | I support pensions, but this has to be done at the federal | level, and funded heavily through taxes and pro-natalist | policies to keep demographics correct. Cities, states, | counties and companies are not able to adequately fund | defined benefit pensions. | 76384638 wrote: | A federal system sounds like a horrible idea and a really | dangerous single point of failure. The consequences of such | a system collapsing would be apocalyptic, and forcing | everyone into a single system without competition all but | guarantees corruption and mismanagement. Social security is | bad enough, please don't expand it. | supernova87a wrote: | I have heard these schemes and problems being perpetuated | by agencies like the police, where they have terminal | salary-based retirement benefit plans. (or in the style of, | "your last 3 highest paying years") The officers conspire | to get the retiring man as many hours as possible in his | last years, overtime etc. It's a bad oversight / policy by | the government that allows this to happen. And hard to | change politically. | nebula8804 wrote: | Pardon my language but where the f** is all this money going? | Is it even humanly possible for a group of regular joes to | audit where all the money is going? I think thats the first | thing that HAS to happen, a clear transparent audit down to the | penny. As a coder, this kind of complexity just drives me up | the wall. | | Also on a side note, I love how sneaky that NY Times article | leaves out the option to cut _defense_. After all we can NEVER | reduce our military industrial complex, only cut everything | else to the bone. | creato wrote: | The top 3 chunks of spending are social security, Medicare, | and Medicaid. The majority of that spending is payments to | individuals or on behalf of individuals for medical bills. | You can probably find the exact fraction of overhead for each | program somewhere. | rootusrootus wrote: | > The top 3 chunks of spending | | After national defense, you mean. | | https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function | creato wrote: | According to the link in the parent I replied to, social | security and Medicare are larger, by more than 0.7% | supernova87a wrote: | If you assume that most government programs have on the order | of a very few % misspending or outright fraud (which is the | case, aside from fiascos like the pandemic stimulus payments) | then you just have to assume that the real decisions to be | made are the "should we have this program at all" or "do | rates need to increase / benefits need to decrease". The | auditing and details will get worked out by an existing | government apparatus designed to ensure this. You cannot let | yourself get lost from the bigger picture believing that what | is missing is the audit. The big questions are what need to | be solved. | 76384638 wrote: | There is no reason to believe government programs are ran | efficiently or without large amounts of fraud and | corruption. There has to be a reason it costs governments | (including government contracts) several times as much to | do things compared to the private sector and non-profits. | JamesBarney wrote: | This isn't building houses, designing drugs, or | developing software. It's collecting and distributing | money, which the government is fine at. | supernova87a wrote: | I didn't say efficiently. I said fraud, which is a | different thing. | | If you want to attack efficiency, you have a lot of work | to deeply change how the government, and in fact many | aspects of our public / government works. How they use | contractors, the kinds of contracts they're allowed to | enter into, the reviews and permitting and public | commenting they need to engage in, unions, labor rates, | etc. That would be as big a challenge as the above | debate. | 76384638 wrote: | Maybe I should not have said efficiently, as it really | understates it. It's like if someone gets hired to work | full time and then only works 20 minutes per week. Is | that person committing fraud or just inefficient? What if | the person gives part of their salary to their boss to | look the other way? What if the person is a company, | their boss is a politician, and the money is given to | campaign organisation? | icelancer wrote: | > Pardon my language but where the f* is all this money | going? Is it even humanly possible for a group of regular | joes to audit where all the money is going? | | Not really, but for as bearish as I am on the government in | general, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is a bright | spot, and they do very good work at forecasting, auditing, | and evaluating tax cuts, tax increases, budget cuts, and so | forth. The average person can have faith that the CBO does | mostly good work because politicians on both sides of the | aisle really dislike the department when they tell the truth | about their plans. | HDThoreaun wrote: | The graphic lets you include defense cuts. It doesn't | originally because republicans have pledged to block any cuts | in defense spending. | noelsusman wrote: | https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer | julienchastang wrote: | As a side note, I like to listen to RFI or France Culture in the | morning in my time zone since there are a couple of good science | shows at that time (Autour de la question, La Science CQFD). | Lately, though those radio stations have just been playing music | as those shows are canceled during nationwide strikes in France. | :-( | cudgy wrote: | Top 10% wealthy of population in France holds almost 50% of net | wealth of the country, which is around $16 trillion. That gives | $8 trillion that could be taxed at higher rates, which is a far | greater pool to extract from than just billionaires discussed | throughout this thread. | sva_ wrote: | There will still be work to be done and I'm not sure if just | throwing money at it will make that work go away, if you don't | have the people? | lordnacho wrote: | The way retirement is done was broken from the start. If you have | a fixed age, you will get issues when the population pyramid | changes and fewer people are around to support the retired. | | What the system ought to be is: | | 1) Everyone who can't work gets a pension/state support/whatever | you want to call it. If you get run over by a car at 25, you are | on this list until you die and the state supports you. It's | expensive, but there aren't that many people who end up in this | state. Maybe a few percent, eg 3%. | | 2) We set a pensioner ratio. For instance if it's 20%, the 3% of | people in cat 1 above get a pension, and the 17% oldest people | who aren't in cat 1 get a pension. | | This would naturally change the age at which people get to | retire, moving it up and down depending on birth rates. | | What we have is not workable. There aren't enough young people | for the number of boomers who are retiring, and not only that, | the older people turn out more and have more votes, enabling them | to force worse conditions on everyone else. | [deleted] | forgetfreeman wrote: | Really? Try injecting the majority of hoarded wealth into the | equation and re-run the numbers, and then tell us there aren't | enough workers to support the system. | HDThoreaun wrote: | How does the state seize the hoarded wealth when it can just | move to a tax haven? | bradlys wrote: | The state has this thing called the military. If it wants | to - it'll get you back and take your money by force. | | I figured people would understand that this is an option | when people like Jack Ma go missing for a few months. | HDThoreaun wrote: | They do this and literally every billionaire will | immediately leave. Seems a bit short sighted. | bradlys wrote: | That's the fun part - your military makes it so they _can | 't_ leave. | HDThoreaun wrote: | Europe has open borders. How is that going to work? | bradlys wrote: | Europe doesn't have open borders... Even if they "left" | their home country somehow - extradition treaties are a | thing. | forgetfreeman wrote: | Capital flight is a potential risk, true. There are any | number of potential remedies on a niceness continuum | ranging from using the legal system to freeze assets on the | nice end to guillotines on the not-so-nice end. You're | encouraged to consult any number of history texts for past | examples of wealth transfer from the elite classes. | vikingerik wrote: | _1) Everyone who can 't work gets a pension/state | support/whatever you want to call it._ | | Of course, this creates a giant perverse incentive to get | yourself classified as "can't work". Ask the US Social Security | disability system how that goes. | lordnacho wrote: | It's an incentive, but not a perverse one. It's actually a | straightforward incentive: you get a meal ticket for life. A | perverse incentive is like the Hanoi rat bounty: it creates | more rats instead of fewer. | | There's no way around it though. Either you make a judgement | about who gets a pension, or you just let people who've | gotten paralyzed in an accident try to fend for themselves. | lm28469 wrote: | idk man, I've been sold capitalism as this great wealth | generating machine, the trickle down economy, the invisible | hand of the free market, yadda yadda yadda | | This isn't a maths equation, it's a societal choice, that's why | Macron doesn't get it, he's a bead counter for Maastricht, what | he does is making sure the spreadsheet is balanced | lordnacho wrote: | Got nothing to do with capitalism. If you're going to let | some people retire, some other people are going to have to | pay to support them. That's regardless of whether we're | hunter-gatherers, feudal, or post-industrial. | | What I don't understand is how people can't see through the | framing. Do old people deserve to retire? Sure. Who is going | to take care of them? Younger people. How do they not get a | raw deal out of this? | MikeTheRocker wrote: | I have no comment on the issue at hand, but I've got to give it | to the French for their always impressive level of civil | engagement. It feels like Americans are far less willing to take | to the streets to support/oppose political causes than they were | in times past, and I think that's a shame. | klyrs wrote: | When Americans take to the streets in some states, it's legal | to drive through them. | [deleted] | cudgy wrote: | In which states? Under what conditions? What is allowed if a | mob threatens or begins to pull you and your family out of | your car and beat you to death? | advisedwang wrote: | This is a reference to Florida's Combating Public Disorder | Act (2021 HB1). Amongst other things it creates a defense | to civil damages for personal injury, wrongful death, or | property damage if the injured person was "acting in | furtherance of a riot" (a crime created in the same act). | This was widely reported at the time as being a response to | cases of people driving through or shooting rioters, which | was seen by the right wing as justified self defense | against criminals. | | FWIW it looks like there's a injunction against the law | being implemented while courts decide on whether it | infringes right to protest [1]. From what I understand | though, that means any civil suits trying to use that | defense would be on hold. | | [1] https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/courts- | law/2023-01-25/floridas... | lm28469 wrote: | Looks like an unregulated militia of unarmed citizens does the | job | yoyohello13 wrote: | It's nice to see a populace willing to defend itself from the | ruling class. If only we had this kind of organizational | capability in the US. | MagicMoonlight wrote: | I love it when the ruling class campaigns to make the serfs pay | more tax so that they can retire in nicer castles | orwin wrote: | Thanks. Some of us were so well organized with cool songs and | stuff, I'm jealous so we're writing one for next week (probably | based on Vian, Lluis Llash or Ogeret). | grecy wrote: | And when Australia moves the retirement age to 67... nothing | happens. They're already talking about moving it to 69, to pay | for stuff like US nuclear submarines and even paying the French | $830,000,000 to NOT buy their nuclear submarines! | | We can all learn A LOT from how the French hold their elected | representatives accountable, and don't let them get away with BS. | Zealotux wrote: | In France, most people have to work until 67 if they want to | get the full retirement benefit; that's a vastly overlooked | fact of the current debate. | Foobar8568 wrote: | Yet most people can't remain employed after a certain age. | | edit:can't | moremetadata wrote: | This is another example of how the state gets its numbers wrong, | promising something it can not deliver without bankrupting the | country. | | France is not alone, other country's have raised the pension age, | but other countries use their food legislation to keep the | population docile, high house prices to keep people from | protesting for fear of losing a roof over their head, and other | tactics people are getting wise to and slowly rejecting when they | wake up to the subtle forms of manipulation that goes on. | yodsanklai wrote: | > This is another example of how the state gets its numbers | wrong, promising something it can not deliver without | bankrupting the country. | | France pension system isn't close to bankruptcy. It needs | _some_ adjustment but pushing retirement age isn 't the only | option. Also one thing to understand is that there are two | criteria to get a full pension | | 1. work 43 years (this used to be 36.5 but has been increased | 10 years ago), so we're not feeling this yet | | 2. be at least 62 | | The reform wants to push 62 to 64 in 2. The problem is that | educated people will already retire after 64 because of the | first constraint. So this reform targets explicitly those who | started to work younger, and who are also those with lower life | expectancy and with the hardest job. This is unfair. At the | same time, France (as in French citizen) has never been as rich | in history as it is now. There should be better wealth | redistribution here. It's very apparent when you look at the | numbers. | | Another issue is employment. In practice, a lot of people | struggle to find a job when they are 55+. These reforms will | increase poverty in the country. | | Last point. France isn't like the US were people are incentized | to build equity for their retirement. The rule of the game here | is that current employees pay for retirees and in exchange | expect their pension to be taken care of when they are older. | The rules are changing midway and people are upset about it. | ChemSpider wrote: | Many countries in the EU have 67 as retirement age - so 64 | does not feel a big issue to me. (France and Malta are the | only one with 62) | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retirement_in_Europe | yodsanklai wrote: | France isn't 62, it is (according to your link) | | > 62 to 67: Depends on the duration of contribution | (minimum 43 years) | | For instance, for me it will be 67. Besides, these numbers | don't mean anything without context. | Jyaif wrote: | Only just realised it will be 67 for me as well. In a way | that's great news: I won't feel bad taking a sabbatical. | | Unless the limit is raised of course. | jandrewrogers wrote: | > France isn't like the US were people are incentized to | build equity for their retirement. | | This is true but puzzling for one reason: the US pension | system (Social Security) pays retirees the same amount of | money as the French one. US pensions are not ungenerous | compared to Europe. Americans are incentivized by the | government to build equity _in addition_ to their government | pension, so that they are not wholly dependent on the | government pension -- this has been a consistent part of the | messaging. | | I think this takes some pressure off the US pension system, | since it creates a joint responsibility between the | individual and the government, rather than putting it all on | the government to unilaterally solve this problem to | everyone's satisfaction. I do understand that it is easier to | build equity in the US than Europe, so that probably is a | factor in how the population views it. | yodsanklai wrote: | Yes, an American friend of mine just started to claim its | SS pension and it seemed reasonable compared to what we | would get, but that's just one data point. And the US is a | much richer country with higher wages, so that plays a | role. | | I think, for most French, the retirement model was that we | should own a house/apt by the time we retire, and then our | pension would be enough to cover our expenses. It seems | we're transitioning to a system more akin to the US and | it's causing some friction as we're not prepared. | | Another interesting point to me is that the retirement age | is causing protests, but we were essentially screwed when | they increased the number of worked years from 36 to 43 - | which arguably was a necessary reform. Someone who started | to work at 23 (college graduate - HN demographics) won't | retire before 66. At that point, my concern isn't so much | about working until 66, but having a job at that age. | Working in tech, I don't see many people over 50 around me. | ur-whale wrote: | > France pension system isn't close to bankruptcy. | | Citation required. | | Last I looked, France's national debt as a percent of its GDP | wasn't exactly in happy territory. | | On the other hand, if you believe that France will continue | to be able to borrow for eternity to feed its increasingly | large retiree population, then yes you are correct: when a | banker is always ready to lend you money however large your | existing debt, you can never physically go bankrupt. | yodsanklai wrote: | I can't find citation in English | | https://www.retraite.com/dossier-retraite/le-deficit-du- | syst... | | Roughly 20 billion euro per year, which isn't big. | | For comparison, public debt is 3000 billion. Bernard | Arnault net worth is 120 billion (6 times more than 10 | years ago), Total profit in 2022 is 40 billions. | | There must be ways to have better wealth redistribution. | bsaul wrote: | The reason bernard arnault is rich is partly because of | tax cuts, but mostly because the luxury industry sells | well internationally. | | The reason french people in general are poor is because | france, as a country, is collapsing, because french | people have been voting for the wrong people for the last | 50 years. | | People that managed to sell their skills to other | countries are less affected. | bsaul wrote: | "france has never been as rich in history". Which number are | you talking about ? | | It seems like a pretty hard fact to demonstrate. If you look | at the production of france-based international companies, | then you're also including the production performed by | citizen of other countries. If you look at total revenue per | inhabitant, then you need to adjust for inflation, and the | fact that some citizen gain revenues from production | performed in other countries (via shares, or simply working | in a multinational company) | | What's clear however, is that france as never been ranked | _lower_ in every international ranking (education and | economy) as today. | Twisell wrote: | That's the point right wing neoliberal policies applied in | France over the last two decades have degraded life | conditions of the commons people and only maximized record | profit of french shareholders (this is what OP was | referring to "never as rich in history") | | So yeah maybe it's time to stop trying to fix the french | model by applying the same recipes that increased | inequalities in the US in the first place... | bsaul wrote: | We are so far away from anything remotely looking like | liberalism.. france has the worst of both worlds : a | behemot of a public sectors, costing a fortune, but | undergoing enough random budget cuts to make it also very | bad at fullfilling its mission. | | It's a disaster, but it's very very far from anything | remotely looking like a liberal economy.. | dh2022 wrote: | But the rules have to change because the demographics | changed. The number of old people is increasing, the size of | the workforce is not increasing. | ChemSpider wrote: | That.Is.It. Simple math. | | France will (have to) move to 64 and later to 67. If not | this year, then in a few years. | | Any many EU countries might even have to move to 70, | Germany for sure. | | People live longer (great), so they also have to work | longer. | Twisell wrote: | Do you frankly believe that french civilisation is dumb | or masochist enough to have produced like ten thousands | of hours of passionates TV debates (to pick only one | metric) if the underlying math was simple? | dh2022 wrote: | Because while the math is simple, the politics are _very_ | complicated. Which fills these hours of passionate TV | debates. | conradfr wrote: | It's already 67 for a full pension if you have not | contributed enough "quarters". | aaomidi wrote: | So you're telling me with all the technological increases | we've had, France can't afford to feed its people for the | few extra years of life expectancy they have? | | That seems absurd, and it seems like if that is truly the | case, then a lot of other things should change before | this. | | France does have a history of not accepting crap from the | ruling class with bloody results for the ruling class. | Less the ruling class forget that. | conradfr wrote: | One more point is that the employment rate for 55+yo in | France is quite bad (56% in 2021 for 55-64yo). | | So for a lot of people pushing the retirement age means | surviving two more years with their savings and the small | welfare benefit (as regular unemployment benefit is capped at | two years). | | This is not addressed at all by this reform. | | Also the government was caught lying about some aspects of | this reform (and still do). | | edit: not sure why downvoted for adding facts | omegaworks wrote: | >promising something it can not deliver without bankrupting the | country. | | If the government can not get something basic like covering | subsistence-level costs for its population over 62 working | without bankrupting the country, the government is broken, the | economic system is broken and shutting it down is an | appropriate response. | | Technology and efficiency has caused labor productivity to | increase [1] and that increase has not been captured in wages. | It has been instead captured by private capital as profit. | | 1. https://www.lemonde.fr/blog/piketty/2017/01/09/of- | productivi... | LeftHandPath wrote: | Fascinating article. Loved this quote in particular: | | > The truth is that this trade surplus is not really a | choice: it is the outcome of decentralised decisions made by | millions of economic actors and in the absence of an adequate | mechanism for correction. To put it simply: there is no pilot | in the plane, or at least the pilots available are not very | accurate. | dh2022 wrote: | The reason for discrepancy between productivity growth and | wages stagnant is because the productivity initiatives were | created by a few people that benefited handsomely, not by the | masses employed in call centers / coffee shops / warehouses. | I think one probable reason for this change was technology - | technology made spreading knowledge and controlling processes | among thousands of entities a lot cheaper. Who are these few | people? Most likely you will find them in corporate centers. | These people constantly fine tune processes, haggle with | suppliers, diversify their suppliers, create new machines, | lobby for legislation to make off-shoring easier, etc... I | had the opportunity to work 4 years in Amazon as Financial | Analyst. None of the cost savings initiatives came from call | centers / distribution centers. Even more to the point, as | part of ACES program, bright motivated individuals in call | centers / distribution centers would be picked up and brought | to HQ so their initiatives can be applied to the entire | company. When I worked as Financial Analyst with Starbucks | there was only one cost saving initiative that came from a | store manager - that store manager figured out how to use | less milk for the lattes. All the other cost saving | initiatives came from HQ. | [deleted] | nitwit005 wrote: | No one can predict this stuff decades out. You'd need to | somehow predict technological changes, major wars, and other | events that require basically being a prophet. | | Even when people do vow not to cut these programs, they are | planning on making a change, it's just what they plan to change | is the tax rate or amount of debt issued. | TrainedMonkey wrote: | AFAIK, pension age raise is driven almost entirely by | demographic collapse of the developed countries. Specifically | there are more people are retiring than entering the workforce. | After that happens pension funds start bleeding money and | something has to give. Pension age raise is a giant hammer, but | the alternatives include raising taxes, making healthcare | drastically cheaper, or Machiavellian tactics like banning | abortions/contraception 20 years prior... | | France already has high taxes and amazing work-life balance. I | don't know much about state of medical industry to comment. | However, if its not completely terrible, then raising the | retirement age seems like the only knob that could be turned. | [deleted] | nemo44x wrote: | > "We haven't been heard or listened to...." | | Maybe they have been heard and listened too and the | democratically elected government of the people disagrees. Just | because you don't get your way doesn't mean you haven't been | listened to. | | > "We are using the only means we have left: it's the hard strike | ... we are not going to give up." | | This is the part where the petulant child that doesn't get what | it wants threatens to hold its breath until it turns blue. This | is anti-democratic and nothing but coercive, naked extortion. | Like literally extortion. | Timshel wrote: | With comments like this you are closer to the petulant child | than the people, some with low paying jobs, who decided that | the issue is critical enough that they prefer a loss of income | in the short term ... | anigbrowl wrote: | Without commenting on the French government specifically (which | I haven't followed closely): | | Consider the fact that politicians can be elected and then | _break the promises they made during the campaign_. The | electoralist response to this is 'well you can vote them out | next time,.' But that ignores the cost of the damage that can | occur during the interval, plus it's not clear how the populace | is supposed to hold other politicians to account - to the point | that there is a general _expectation_ of politicians being | dishonest and mendacious. | | Really, in what other job are you only subject to review every | few years and if people don't like what you're doing in the | meantime you can reply with complete BS, often overtly? | | Democratic elections are a good thing, but they are not the be- | all and end-all of politics. Strikes and boycotts are | absolutely a legitimate form of political expression, in which | labor or consumer market participants coordinate their economic | activity to obtain political leverage. If you won't tolerate | anything other than elections, North Korea has those. | mcsniff wrote: | "In the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard." | - MLK | | Protesting is the mechanism they have at their disposal. | legitster wrote: | My grandfather a few years back passed a rather profound point in | his life - he had been retired so long that he officially spent | less of his life not working than working (despite entering the | workforce at 15). | | And it's not lost on me I am essentially doing double work: it's | not enough for me to generate enough economic value for myself, | society kind of depends on me to generate enough surplus value to | cover an entire life's worth of labor (Or more! After all I | started much later than my grandfather). | | In a way, when Keynes predicted that everyone in the future would | work a 20 hour workweek, he was right! He just didn't appreciate | how much we would use those productivity gains to backfill that | vacation time later in life. | BadCookie wrote: | These stats are for the U.S., but one thing that usually get | ignored in these retirement discussions is just how massively | life expectancy depends on income level and sex: | http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/health/ | | Raising the retirement pension age screws over the poor, | especially poor men. Perhaps retirement age should be tied to | income/wealth somehow ... and maybe even sex (as controversial as | I imagine that would be). | notch898a wrote: | I figured the one upside of retirement was it was a baseline | for the poor. If it screws them over too I think it should just | be eliminated all together and return the tax to the worker to | save/invest on their own. | AussieWog93 wrote: | That's basically the system we started rolling out in | Australia in the 90s (see mandatory super). | | Unfortunately it doesn't work for everyone, though, and a | traditional pension is still needed as a backup. | notch898a wrote: | It seems like unfortunately many governments have proven | incapable of responsibly handling the money. In the case | the government is entirely incapable of handling the money | I'd at least see the worker get that tax waved to have | something for whatever meager existence is left with the | money. | AussieWog93 wrote: | Honestly, our system works really well for 90% of people. | Look into it. | Overtonwindow wrote: | My wife and I only just started putting money away for | retirement. It took us until 40 to get to a financial position | where we could. At this rate, we can retire eventually, but it | will always be tight. Likely looking at 70 at the earliest.. | That's if no one has a major health crisis. | karaterobot wrote: | Honest question: what should the French government do instead? | Some people in this thread have said that the government doesn't | need to increase the retirement age by 2 years. If that's so, why | are they proposing to? Have they done the math incorrectly, are | they being needlessly cruel, or ...? | lm28469 wrote: | That's what you get when 60%+ of the wealth generated in the last | two years went to the top 1% and you ask the bottom 80% to work | two years longer to cover for an imaginary deficit | | fyi taxing the 40 richest people in France 2% more would cover | the same amount of money as having the entire active population | work 2 more years. | | edit: since it's not clear, I'm talking about pension related | debt (the main argument of the french government for raising the | retirement age), obviously not the national debt/deficit | | edit2: ah and 25% of the poorest workers are already dead by 62 | https://www.liberation.fr/resizer/J5W0vs_DrAdsjx5xHUxhhC_otn... | | and 30% of people above 60 are unemployed because nobody hire | seniors https://lemagdusenior.ouest-france.fr/article-78-combien- | fra... | earlyam wrote: | I don't doubt you, but do you have a source? I don't know | anything about the economics of France and I'm kind of | interested now. | lm28469 wrote: | https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/richest-1-bag- | nearly... | | https://www.tf1info.fr/economie/reforme-des- | retraites-2023-y... | | https://www.cor-retraites.fr/node/595 | | https://linsoumission.fr/2023/01/16/retraites- | milliardaires-... | HideousKojima wrote: | The total net worth of all of French billionaires is ~half | a trillion dollars, so it could only cover the 30 billion | per year pension deficit for about 15 to 20 years if you | seized _100%_ of their wealth (and somehow didn 't cause | disastrous economic side effects in the process). Not | seeing anything in your first two links to support your | claim, not going to bother with the other two links. I just | really wish the "eat the rich" UBI crowd wasn't so | innumerate. | lm28469 wrote: | > 30 billion per year pension deficit | | > I just really wish the "eat the rich" UBI crowd wasn't | so innumerate. | | It was +3.2b in 2022, + 0.9m in 2021, with a slight | deficit predicted in the short term and equilibrium from | 2030s (average scenario) | | tl;dr : it's not a big deal, and certainly not the real | reason of the change in retirement age | earlyam wrote: | Thanks | compiler-guy wrote: | France's deficit is not imaginary. Yes, taxing the right people | the right amounts (and successfully getting them to pay) would | solve the problem, but the hole that needs to be plugged is | 100% real. | lm28469 wrote: | > France's deficit is not imaginary | | The deficit due to the pension system*, even the governmental | agency in charge of it said so | throwaway5959 wrote: | So there is a hole? | lm28469 wrote: | According to Macron, yes. According to the people in | charge of determining if there is one, no | boole1854 wrote: | > fyi taxing the 40 richest people in France 2% more would | cover the same amount of money as having the entire active | population work 2 more years. | | My back-of-the-envelope calculations: | | Sum of wealth of top 40 richest people in France: 556 billion | [1] | | Annual income of top 40 richest people in France, assuming 10% | growth of wealth: 56 billion | | 2% additional tax on that income: _1 billion_ | | Size of active working population of France: 40.8 million [2] | | Size of about-to-retire population: 1 million (guess based on | [3]) | | Annual pension cost per retiree: 18000 [4] | | Direct pension savings by delaying retirement by 1 year: _18 | billion_ | | [1] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_French_billionaires_by... | | [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTFRQ647N | | [3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/464032/distribution- | popu... | | [4] | https://www.connexionfrance.com/article/Practical/Everyday-L... | incrudible wrote: | I think the idea is to tax the wealth, not the income on it, | which at 10% would be well above the yields of pretty much | any asset. | sam_lowry_ wrote: | This is what? Personal wealth? But wealth in France is rarely | personal. It is rather distributed over controlling shares of | private businesses and foundations, board seats and god knows | what. | | The richest family of France counts at least 700 members and | most of these people run businesses from retail to mobile | apps to media. | | The French are no stupid. The state can not easily extort | money from the likes of Mulliez, but it should try harder, | not seek easy money from the working class. | lm28469 wrote: | Feel free to contact oxfam: | https://www.oxfamfrance.org/rapports/nouveau-rapport-la- | loi-... | HideousKojima wrote: | Where in your link does it say taxing the ultra wealthy | would be enough to cover the pension shortfall? I'll give | you a hint: nowhere. | lm28469 wrote: | > Oxfam France a calcule que seulement 2% de la fortune | des milliardaires francais suffirait a financer le | deficit attendu des retraites. | danaris wrote: | I suspect the disconnect, then, is that the statement you | quote appears to be referring to a tax on wealth, not | income. | | Moving the 2% to that puts it in the right order of | magnitude; at that point, the discrepancy is likely to be | in the guess of the retiring population size. | dahfizz wrote: | You claimed: | | > taxing the 40 richest people in France 2% more... | | That quote is about a 2% wealth tax. | marcusverus wrote: | > Annual income of top 40 richest people in France, assuming | 10% growth of wealth: 56 billion | | Unrealized capital gains aren't "income". Are the words | "wealth tax" scary or something? | HideousKojima wrote: | No, this is what happens when you make almost the entire | population dependent on the state for retirement, it makes | changes and cuts difficult and limits the options the country | has to adapt to changing economic, demographic, and other | circumstances. Kind of like how at the start of COVID in the US | there were arguments like "We can't close down schools because | poor kids won't be able to get their free school lunches." | | Edit: I looked it up and the net worth of all of France's | billionaires is ~half a trillion dollars, so even if you seized | it all it would basically cover the French government's budget | deficits for a grand total of two years, assuming they were | actually able to seize it all and it didn't have disastrous | economic side effects. That's France's total deficit, not sure | how much of that is directly attributable to the pension | system. | lm28469 wrote: | I'm talking about pension related debt, not the entire | national debt | | > Kind of like how at the start of COVID in the US there were | arguments like "We can't close down schools because poor kids | won't be able to get their free school lunches." | | You should ask yourself why kids can't get their basic needs | such as nutrition covered then... | HideousKojima wrote: | The pension deficit is 30 billion a year, so seizure of | _all_ French billionaires ' wealth would still only cover | the shortfall for 15 to 20 years. | orwin wrote: | 30 billion a year? Second time I read this, where does it | come from? I thought the system was beneficiary in 2021 | and 2022? +900M in 2021 and +3B in 2022? | | I'd love to find where your information come from, mine | is from the Cors (public entity) and from Agirco (private | entity). Do you have this information from Facebook? | | Edit: full disclosure, I just walked 3 hours, danced in | front of the police while holding a sign, so I might have | my sources wrong, but I tried to only get them from ddg | front page. Didn't see the 30B figure anywhere, I know | it's a lie, and I just want to embarrass parent poster | for it. | lm28469 wrote: | No deficit for now: | https://www.dna.fr/social/2022/09/13/le-regime-de- | retraite-b... | | Slight deficit expected in short term | | Equilibrium at medium term | throwaway5959 wrote: | Don't worry, those free school lunches won't last for much | longer at the rate things are going. | yoyohello13 wrote: | Yes, much better to leave them to their own devices. Then the | state is free to just let those inconvenient poor people die. | fvdessen wrote: | The guy you replied to didn't advocate to leave people to | their own devices but to have a retirement system that is a | healthy mix of different sources of revenue / investments | rather than 100% from the state. | HideousKojima wrote: | And similarly I wasn't saying to not feed poor kids, I | was saying that by making it dependent of physical | schools it limits the ability of the country to adapt and | make changes like remote learning, responding to a | pandemic (though I'm doubtful school closures | accomplished much if anything in that regard), etc. | Flexible ways to accomplish the same or similar goals are | preferable to enshrining one specific way of doing so in | law. | legitster wrote: | Money is only superficially the issue. Your currency is only as | valuable as there is a market of goods and services to spend it | on. | | Even if you ate the rich and took all of their money, all | you've done is created inflation because the actual value of | the economy hasn't shifted. An economy is more about the | "stuff" than the money - even Marx would have agreed with as | much. | | So this is only ostensibly about funding a deficit - this is | just as much a measure to prevent a GDP freefall from a | shrinking aging working population. | kwere wrote: | Or maybe the poorer parts of society should stop trying to be | overeliant on the tax levied on a minority of skilled earners | (so no trust fund kids) creating welfarism/populism, breaking | the fabric of society (as in ancient Rome),incentivizing | emigration/delocalization of taxbase; and try to be more | selfsufficient from a budget stanpoint, like having a self- | funded pension system, that in France case would be increasing | contribution, raising retirement age, linking pension output to | having kids (to stabilize age pyramid) | | here France revenues brakdown: | https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-france.pdf | tgv wrote: | Blame and tax the poor, and force them to breed. Nice plans. | Perhaps you'd like to start your plan by swooping into France | via Belgium. | kwere wrote: | ironically the leverage that poor people had and have is | their children, once upon a time for farming landlords & | factory owners, today for government revenues, bcs poor | people & middle class pay the most taxes in % as VAT, | income tax, fees, contributions, etc... and dont have tax | planning while making the welfarism looking remotely | sustainable, but with modern demographic trends things are | changing for the worse, and with printing money and "eating | the rich" as the only policies on the table, we dont solve | anything except kicking the can down the road | | And for the invading France via Belgium joke, it is | hilarious bcs one of the compelling reasons why he started | his aggressions in 1939 before the nation was ready was | because he emptied German coffers to prop up his | Nationalsocialistic welfare system and (he felt he) needed | just an imperialistic trip to refill them[0]. the rest is | history | | [0]https://youtu.be/mLHG4IfYE1w?t=1108 | lm28469 wrote: | So what the US is doing ? | | I don't feel like they're doing much better, especially for | the bottom 30% | kwere wrote: | USA is a lot inefficient with spending money as a lot of it | get syphoned in one way or another from various interest | groups, from big pharma/healthcare/insurance, hedge funds | that run universities to local government that run homeless | shelter in opaque way (ask Cuomo sister). As OECD data, US | social spending as % of GDP is above OECD average at | 22.7%[0] | | [0]https://data.oecd.org/socialexp/social-spending.htm | forgetfreeman wrote: | They aren't doing any better, and for the same reasons. | lm28469 wrote: | > the same reasons. | | Which reasons ? Both systems are about as opposed as you | can imagine without straight up walking out of capitalism | forgetfreeman wrote: | Yes, keep going... | lm28469 wrote: | You're the one making vague arguments, I'm not going to | do your homework | forgetfreeman wrote: | "skilled earners" here being a euphemism for inherited wealth | oligarchs and trust fund kiddies, or are we pretending wage | earing individuals are included in the top 1%? | cperciva wrote: | _are we pretending wage earing individuals are included in | the top 1%?_ | | You seem to be confusing the top 1% with the top 0.01%. The | vast majority of top 1% income earners -- in Canada, the | number was recently reported as 95% by Statistics Canada -- | are employed, with the largest numbers being in management, | medicine, and "business professional" (lawyers, | accountants, etc) professions. | forgetfreeman wrote: | I suppose that's fair. Quibbling about where to put the | decimal point doesn't invalidate the larger issue | however. | kwere wrote: | most income for the state is from income tax, trust fund | kids and oligarchs dont have high income tax[0] , and the | wealth tax can be easily lowered by tax planning | | [0]https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-france.pdf | forgetfreeman wrote: | Seems like a fixable problem. | [deleted] | incrudible wrote: | Wealth was not generated, prices rose. Those are valuations, | they did not come out of the pockets of the workers. A wealth | tax would suppress those prices, not to mention capital flight. | It just does not work. If it did, everyone would do it. | lm28469 wrote: | So I pay my gas twice as much as 5 years ago, the dude | selling the gas gets twice as much money, but nothing changed | ? | | ok | | http://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/27887.jpeg | incrudible wrote: | The gas supply did in fact change, as did demand. Even a | small shortage can drive prices up dramatically, because | gasoline is critically important. | lm28469 wrote: | Prices yes, you're looking at _profits_ though | incrudible wrote: | If you have a 5% profit margin and the price doubles, so | do your profits. Of course you _could_ lower your profit | margins and pass up on the opportunity of the decade. | myshpa wrote: | The world needs basic income, guaranteed housing, internet and | food. | | We have the means to do it. | | Upto 75% of population is employed in bullshit jobs anyway (= not | producing anything). | | Only 2% of population working in agriculture already produces | food for 10+ billion people. Include just plant-based food in | basic income population (== use just 25% of agriculture land) and | automate distribution of vegetables, beans and grains (just look | at amazon with its warehouses, it's doable) and transport | (automatic trains), and nobody has to be hungry again. | | We'll save the environment, stop biodiversity loss and store more | carbon than produced since 1750 (reforest grazing lands), solve | the world hunger, save the environment (no need to own so much | cars, burn so much fuel and time going to meaningless jobs, to | pay for a roof over ones head with 40 years of ones life, no need | for so much pesticides/herbicides, deforestation etc.) ... | | Hm ... time to stop dreaming. Back to work. | yrdmb wrote: | > The world needs basic income | | That's all we need. Basic income will allow people to get | housing, internet and food. | myshpa wrote: | Yes. But basic income means different things for different | people. | | I wanted to emphasize the level of sufficiency it should | provide. | onlyrealcuzzo wrote: | > Upto 75% of population is employed in bullshit jobs anyway (= | not producing anything). | | Source? | | I love that so many people are convinced everyone but them is | doing nothing and somehow getting paid for it. | | > Only 2% of population working in agriculture already produces | food for 10+ billion people. | | What's your point? | | Who's going to take care of sick people? Who's going to educate | our next generation? Who's going to maintain our | infrastructure? Who's going to police people? Who's going to | defend our country from war? Who's going to make sure your | cellphone still works? Who's going to make sure your house | still has electricity? Who's going to make sure the laws are | being followed? Who's going to make new entertainment for you? | | We need to do more than just have beans to eat. | myshpa wrote: | > Source? | | https://libcom.org/article/phenomenon-bullshit-jobs-david- | gr... | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs | | > Who's going to take care of sick people? Who's going to | maintain our infrastructure? Who's going to police people? | Who's going to defend our country from war? Who's going to | make sure your cellphone still works? Who's going to make | sure your house still has electricity? Who's going to make | sure the laws are being followed? Who's going to make new | entertainment for you? | | You simply seem uninformed. My english is not so good to be | persuasive enough, somebody please help me. | | Basic income doesn't mean all people will stop working. Jobs | would still exist, and people would still choose to work, but | for different reasons than they do now. They could do what | they want, and stop anytime for any period of time, and start | whenever they would feel like it. | | We have voluntary firefighters now, don't we? | | People just wouldn't have to choose job based on its capacity | to provide sustenance for their family, but do what they love | no matter the financials. | | Many teachers and nurse are now leaving the profession (in | the US), because they're unable to earn enough to sustain | their living expenses and have to work multiple jobs. | | > Who's going to take care of sick people? | | Do you think that doctors and nurses are in it for the money, | and nothing else than money? No, they do it because they want | to help people. I don't fully understand it, but it is so. | And they would still be awarded for choosing that vocation. | | > Who's going to defend our country from war? | | You're an american, are you not? Are you people really that | scared? With all the money on your offensive defences and | with bases in 3/4 of all countries of the world? | | > Who's going to police people? | | Don't keep people in poverty, and you wouldn't need so many | policemen and prisons. Do you know you're 1st in the world in | this area too? And do you think there would not be anyone who | would want to police, without being forced to earn a living? | | > Who's going to make new entertainment for you? | | All those youtube attention seekers are not going anywhere. | | Basic income would start a massive creativity boom. I'm sure | of it. | ErikVandeWater wrote: | > I love that so many people are convinced everyone but them | is doing nothing and somehow getting paid for it. | | That's not the point. The point is what they are producing | isn't contributing value to our lives, or actually creating | negative value. Building highways looked very productive on | paper in the 50's, but now we live in car dependent sprawl, | and we continue to pay people to maintain that sprawl when we | could have walkable cities that are human friendly. | AceJohnny2 wrote: | The french pension reform attempts have been going on for | _decades_. I remember in the mid-90s a huge, weeks- (months-?) | long public transit strike which, funnily enough, kick-started | Parisian 's interest in roller-blading (and led to the awesome | weekly Friday-night roller-blading tour [1]. If it's your thing, | I highly recommend it! But be prepared to have to go over some | cobblestone sections) | | France's system has the working population pay for the pension on | the retirees, as a social security tax. With the retirement age | around 62-65, with the lifespan increasing, and with the Baby | Boomers retiring, it isn't a sustainable system. | | Every president, be they socialist or liberal, have attempted to | tackle the issue, only to get country-paralyzing backlash. People | will nitpick the details of whatever current plan proposes, but | the fundamental problem remains. | | [1] https://pari-roller.com | retinaros wrote: | the system IS sustained. the main white collar one even | generates profits. increase the salaries that will increase | money being sent to retirement funds and it won't be a problem | anymore. france income per capita has been the same for the | past 20 years. they are stealing our wages to make us slaves | and they blame us for not working enough. | | christine lagarde pushed for blocking wage rise in the EU, | european commission non elected leaders are pushing for it too. | salaries for blue collar in france are becoming those of much | poorer countries and in a globalised world where most of the | goods are made in countries where salaries are rising as well | as inflation, blocking our wages is only sending us to the | third world . | | it is nothing else than a betrayal at the highest level of the | state | vkou wrote: | > and in a globalised world where most of the goods are made | in countries where salaries are rising as well as inflation, | blocking our wages is only sending us to the third world . | | Just throwing this out here, but in a globalized world, by | what mechanism would one expect Europeans and Americans will | be able to enjoy a greater standard of living than people in, | say, Asia? | | Are they somehow smarter? More productive? In control of more | natural resources? If not, why would you expect that the | first-third world gap to not continue to normalize? | wizzwizz4 wrote: | > _In control of more natural resources?_ | | I mean... yeah. That's not really related to the thread's | topic, though. | | > _why would you expect that the first-third world gap to | not continue to normalize?_ | | I don't think that's the criticism. "Blocking our wages" | probably isn't increasing the wealth of the people in Cold | War non-aligned countries: is the money going to them, | somehow? The direct effect is that employers (= the people | who would be paying the extra wages) don't have to spend as | much money paying their employees. What knock-on effects | would lead to _that_ improving things for people? | bboygravity wrote: | Because the USD is the world reserve currency. | | That's why. | 4gotunameagain wrote: | well, we _do_ have a head start and stable | (post?)industrial societies with mechanisms already set in | place. | retinaros wrote: | its normalizing but for the worst in developed economies. | housing is now out of reach while decades ago a blue collar | salary was enough,to own a house.(in the USA you can still | get six digits blue collar jobs that lift you out of | poverty and give you access to housing. in france that is | merely a dream or a netflix show) today already for many | qualified workers (tech for instance) staying in india vs | coming to france is better (there are other factors like | healthcare or other that are at play but in pure economic | power it would just be better to have a good it job in | india vs europe) that was definitly not the case 20 even 10 | years ago. | ubercore wrote: | Six figure blue collar jobs are not super common in the | US. | notch898a wrote: | Definitely one of those "it depends" situations. For | instance, you could be illiterate middle school drop-out | and pretty easily make very close if not six figures if | you worked near minimum wage canning work all year in | Alaska or something by working the season of every | available catch (16 hours a day lots of OT). And you'd | bank all your post-tax earnings as they provide the | housing/food normally too. | | You may work yourself to the bone but pretty much anybody | in the US can make a killing. | flashfaffe2 wrote: | French here: | | Though the problem is well known (at least for 40 years), No | french governments has considered diversifying the source of | the revenue funding the pension system. Actually its worse as | the only capitalisation existing are in a process to be | nationalised. | | Moreover, this reform is purely the outcome of political game. | Macron electorat is mainly the 'boomers' who fully beneficiated | of th situation ( in fact their pension are impacted despite | having higher wealth than the majority of the workers). | | I personally would consider a reform only if there an effort | requested for everyone. | rahen wrote: | As a French, I have absolutely no trust in the government to | manage my pension. And no desire to hand them that power | either. | | But as usual they'll fight tooth and nail to keep their | monopoly, as they like us to depend on them as much as | possible. | ur-whale wrote: | Vote with your feet (i.e: walk away from it all), it's the | only option. | flashfaffe2 wrote: | What I personally did but very hard to convince others to | follow that way... | andrekandre wrote: | what is the cause of not having enough funds to maintain the | current retirement age? | retinaros wrote: | there are enough. there are using statistical models to | predict that we wont have enough in the coming decades. | | a biased model that is financed by private pension funds | and led by mckinsey... I have a very simple way to make | enough funds to maintain current retirement age : increase | our salaries. france income per capita is the same for the | past 20 years, if you raise salaries it will raise how much | money goes to pension funds. problem solved | capitalsigma wrote: | Increasing salaries will increase the cost of goods and | services, meaning that more savings are required. It | doesn't necessarily balance. | supernova87a wrote: | And where does the money for raising salaries come from? | maxlamb wrote: | Same reason as most other countries - reversal or | population age pyramid because they're of baby boomers | generation being more populous than younger ones. Soon | there will be more retired baby boomers than gen X and | millennials working so there will be less money going in to | pension funds than going out. | bsaul wrote: | baby boomers aren't retiring, they're _dying_. The pension | system has already been through its worst period and managed to | not get too badly hurt. | | I really don't understand this reform. However for me to | understand it, one would need an 8 hour video stream full of | spreadsheet with an actual expert working on that reform. | | And no media is ready to do that | rat9988 wrote: | it isn't a sustainable system. | | This is wrong. We have an institute that has one mission. | Evaluate its sustainibility, and it disagrees with you. | Alupis wrote: | In other news, lawyers say you need a lawyer, plumbers say | you need a plumber, etc. | | Not a single pension program on earth is sustainable - | including the US' Social Security System. All of them are | political 3rd rails and kill careers of anyone seeking to do | meaningful reform. | | Why did we get to a situation where the _government_ is in | charge of safeguarding your retirement and wellbeing? It 's | insane... we should compel people to have IRA's or some sort | of retirement account, but the money needs to be under the | control of the person it belongs to. | golemotron wrote: | We should make a list of organizations that have one mission | and fail in that mission. It would take much time. | Twisell wrote: | Well the irony is that our french government is precisely | relying on one cherry picked scenario of this organization | to justify it's reform... | | So it's why polls quite unanimously report that 70% of the | population is opposed of this reform on a quite developer | friendly axiom : "When it ain't broken don't try fix it!" | | Bonus fun fact 1 : Even with the cherry picked scenario of | our gov the system might be in slight imbalance starting | 2027 while it's currently balanced. To put this in | perspective 10 years ago the same organisation predicted a | great imbalance for today. | | Bonus fun fact 2 : The 70% rejection poll is an average. | One of the only group that is less rejecting the reform | consist of already retired people. There is a growing | resentment against baby boomers in the xyz generation. | skywal_l wrote: | That is not correct. Have a look at this 20mn interview: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngnxmampNBM | joe_the_user wrote: | _The french pension reform attempts have been going on for_ | decades _... Every president, be they socialist or liberal, | have attempted to tackle the issue, only to get country- | paralyzing backlash.... it isn 't a sustainable system._ | | Good For them? | | They've been trying to change this forty years? So they were | trying to change this back when it ipso facto was sustainable, | since it's survived 'till now. How credible does that make the | current effort. | | Certainly, America has changed a bunch of supposedly | "unsustainable" things into ... utter misery for the average | person. | omegaworks wrote: | France has control of its currency. The pension system does not | need to be paid by taxes on working people. | | Oops I forgot about the Euro. Oh well, so much for sovereignty. | tiedieconderoga wrote: | If they print more money to meet their pension obligations, | that causes inflation which quickly erodes the value of the | payments. | | So, printing money to meet pension obligations has a similar | effect to reducing the amount which is paid out. | | Also, I don't think many people accept Francs as currency | anymore. | retinaros wrote: | nope it is not the same outcome. one sacrify the working | class and the current generation that went through multiple | economic crisis and a horrible housing market while the | other sacrifies boomers that lived through full employment | and the golden age of france economy. I ve made my choice. | omegaworks wrote: | > that causes inflation which quickly erodes the value of | the payment | | Pension payments cover basic subsistence-level costs for | goods that can be mitigated by supply-side production and | productivity increases. Claiming that they cause inflation | is just rebranded austerity politics. Inflation is caused | by fraudulent debt-relief for "businesses" like we saw with | PPP and low interest rates that create asset price and | shitcoin bubbles. | argentinian wrote: | > Inflation is caused by fraudulent debt-relief for | "businesses" | | Sure? Tell that to Argentina, Venezuela, Zimbawe and | Turkey. | yazantapuz wrote: | I don't know why someone downvoted you, as you are right. | But it seems that gigaton of useless little pieces of | paper called pesos with which that the governments has | flooded the economy since decades has nothing to do with | out inflation problems. | AceJohnny2 wrote: | > _France has control of its currency_ | | No it does not. It uses the Euro, which technically requires | it to maintain a balance. | sokoloff wrote: | Honest question: is that the case? I thought the Euro | adoption meant they couldn't print currency with the same | freedoms that say the US or UK could. | ccooffee wrote: | You are correct and Euro comes with restrictions on | creating currency for macroeconomic reasons. This was in | the limelight during the 2008-2012 Greek debt crisis, and | also came up around that time for other EU countries (Spain | and Portugal at least). Additionally, Iceland, which does | not use the Euro, had at one time pegged their krona to the | Euro which caused issues in the 2008-2012 time period | (though as I recall the main problem had to do with some | other nation taking a major Icelandic bank into | receivership post-2007 collapse). | justeleblanc wrote: | Every single pension system has the working population pay for | the retirees. Where do you think the money comes from? Thin | air? Any increase in the value of pension funds (for example) | is coming from the workers. | luckylion wrote: | Isn't the UK using pension funds? | rwmj wrote: | It is (so is the US). But ultimately productive value from | workers must be transferred to retired people. How exactly | that happens, whether through deferred spending power (ie | savings/investments) or through direct payments, it has to | happen. | | Although I admit that there being other countries in the | world does change the calculus a bit; it would be possible | (albeit weird and unsustainable) for everyone in France to | be retired, so long as say the Philippines was young and | working and French retirees owned all the shares in | Philippine companies. | luckylion wrote: | The main difference is that in the pension fund model, | you (at least in theory) don't need the next generation | to pay: you save now so you get money later. | | In the more common model, you pay for the previous | generation hoping that the next one will pay for you, and | you need intergenerational agreement on what's a fair | amount. You don't need that with the fund model, as you | (usually) agree & know beforehand how much you'll pay and | how much you'll get. | | I'm fortunate to not be part of it, but I'm pretty sure | German employees are looking at France where rents are | higher and retirement age is lower and think "hey, you | can do that?". I guess we'll see whether you can (though, | fair enough, Germany is a special case, the reunification | cost a lot of money). | konschubert wrote: | I think you missed the finer point that GP made: At the | end of the day, somebody has to change that bedsheet. | | Consider this extreme edge case: If everybody is retired | and no is is working, inflation goes to infinity and all | those savings and stocks become worthless. | phil21 wrote: | > you save now so you get money later. | | How do you save labor for later? Current retirees need | young folks to do the work they cannot do, and thus those | young folks are paying in today. | | When those young folks retire they will be relying on | even younger folks to do the work for them. If there are | not enough younger folks to do that work, the money saved | between generations will become relatively worthless. | | Thought another way: The same amount of labor needs | doing. If the current generation of workers stops paying | in (read: working), then the entire system stops. One | generation saving more (or being larger) than the next | doesn't change much other than that saved wealth chases a | decreasing amount of available labor once that generation | retires. Quality of living will be predicated on the | amount of available labor - not saved capital. | | It gets a little more wishy washy when you can plow | capital into long-lasting infrastructure, international | wage arbitrage, etc. but in the end you simply cannot run | retirement systems if you have less labor available while | keeping the same quality of life for all parties. Someone | is going to lose. | actually_a_dog wrote: | How exactly does the same amount of labor need doing when | there will fewer people who need _anything_ in the near | future? You seem to be saying more labor per person is | necessary to satisfy this "need." | | That doesn't seem beneficial to workers as a whole. I | thought innovation was supposed to benefit everyone? | Where's the hole in this logic? | phil21 wrote: | When the current crop of retirees were in peak earning | periods, there were something around 6-8 workers per | retiree. Data on France isn't super easy to come by. | | By 2030 this is expected to be about 2, which is better | than I expected. You would need massive productivity | gains inside the span of the past 40 years to make up 4-6 | workers per retiree in labor. | | The fact I have 4-6 less cousins my age to sell my labor | to to help take care of grandma doesn't seem to offset | that huge amount of labor now needed to be expended on | largely unproductive tasks. We went from 4-6 people | pitching in to help out grandma each day to just myself. | If you look at that in hours vs. dollars, the problem | starts to become quite apparent to me. I don't feel I'm | 500% more efficient at what I do than my elders. | | Perhaps we've innovated so well that we can now support | old folks with a fraction of the labor, but I'm | skeptical. Fixed costs seem rather fixed, and from where | I'm sitting I think a whole lot of that "innovation | budget" has been spent already on rising expectations of | minimum quality of living. | marcosdumay wrote: | > it would be possible (albeit weird and unsustainable) | for everyone in France to be retired, so long as say the | Philippines was young and working and French retirees | owned all the shares in Philippine companies | | That is basically the same situation, but you are | replacing local people that see the retired ones with | remote people that can refuse to send any money and won't | even see old people starving. | | A strong military can make the situation more | sustainable, in a highly immoral way. But that again | isn't new, you can enslave people near you too. | strken wrote: | "From workers to retired people" implies at a casual | reading that the worker and the retiree are not the same | person, when in many systems the majority of what the | worker pays goes directly to their own retirement. | | It's debatable whether paying into your own account is a | transfer of wealth at all, even if you're not able to | withdraw your money until retirement. | [deleted] | throw0101c wrote: | > _Every single pension system has the working population pay | for the retirees._ | | Nope. At least not completely. Canada switched away from a | pure pay-as-you-go (PAYG) system in the 1990s: | | > _Move towards a hybrid structure to take advantage of | investment earnings on accumulated assets. Instead of a "pay- | as-you-go" structure, the CPP is expected to be 20 per cent | funded by 2014, such funding ratio to constantly increase | thereafter towards 30 per cent by 2075 (that is, the CPP | Reserve Fund will equal 30 per cent of the "liabilities" - or | accrued pension obligations)._ | | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Pension_Plan#1996_refo | r... | | Asset returns are used to help fund benefits. A number of | pension funds in Canada have moved away from a (pure) PAYG | model: | | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pensions_in_Canada#Canada_Mod | e... | bjourne wrote: | On a macroeconomic scale it is still the workers paying for | the retirees. Doesn't matter how many millions you have in | the bank if there aren't working people you can trade your | money for goods and services with. | akavi wrote: | PAYGO vs investment earnings is purely a financial | construct. | | The central issue is that physical goods and services need | to be produced around the time that they're consumed, and | at a given point in time, an economy has a fixed capacity | to generate these goods and services. | | If you have a non-producing population, and a producing | population, then the only way for the non-producing | population to consume a given quantity of goods and | services is for the producing population to not consume | those goods and services. Whether you call the reduction in | consumption ability of the working population "taxes" or | "investments" doesn't change this fundamental fact, except | insofar as it alters certain behavioral incentives around | deferring consumption and legal frameworks around property | rights. | | (This isn't 100% of the story, since you can "lay claim" to | production of working people overseas via international | investment, but is accurate in broad strokes.) | nimbleplum40 wrote: | Since you said capacity is fixed _at a given point in | time_, this is technically true but not really useful. | | Populating aging happens over time, not all at once. | Overall production also changes over time. It's not | inherently true that for "non-producing" (not sure | exactly how you'd define that) people to consume goods | the "producing" people must consume less, at least not | relative to past levels of consumption. | jimbokun wrote: | > If you have a non-producing population, and a producing | population | | Isn't this true of capitalism generally, and not just for | retirees and young workers? | | The "non-producing population" is commonly called | "capital", and the "producing population" is commonly | called "labor". | UncleOxidant wrote: | And it wasn't a problem when the working age population was | always increasing... but when it no longer is (as is the case | in much of Europe) it becomes problematic. | aaplok wrote: | > when it no longer is (as is the case in much of Europe) | it becomes problematic. | | Not necessarily. What matters here is whether production | matches demand. If the proportion of people in the | workforce declines, but their productivity increases by the | same amount (which isn't far from being the case in Europe) | you don't have a problem. | | And even that is too simple. As the population ages, demand | changes. It increases im certain domains (health) so | productivity increase might not suffice. | | ...but then of course the productivity of older people | declines too, together with their health (higher | unemployment, more sick leaves), so there is a lower and | lower ROI as you put these people in the workforce. And | then making people work longer accelerates the health | decline, and so increases the demand. Except those people | die younger on average, lowering the demand. | | So it's a supply and demand issue, but not quite a supply | and demand of workers. It's a complicated economic problem. | All of this is talked about in the French debate, which is | a lot more subtle than the loud vociferations reported in | the news make it out to be. | nyokodo wrote: | > Every single pension system has the working population pay | for the retirees. | | Which is just a socialized form of the previous social | security system which had children or grandchildren look | after their parents. Of course, the glaring difference is | that social security schemes have motivated many millions, | who otherwise might have, to not have children at all or an | inadequate number and so contribute very little to nothing | towards the future maintenance of the system while still | cashing the checks once they retire. Of course this system | does help the minority who can't have children for whatever | reason but it does look like we've swapped looking after that | cohort for a few decades for effectively no social security | system for anyone once this ponzi scheme collapses. | Spooky23 wrote: | That's a pretty crazy position. In the US, there's lots of | material out there on the conditions that led to the | creation of Social Security and subsequent legislation like | Medicare and Medicaid. Hopefully you are simply ignorant of | that history and not demonstrating a blase tolerance of | human suffering. | | These systems are very sustainable, and the solution to the | funding issues would be best served by indexing the cutoff | for contributions to inflation. | | As to birth rates, how do you expect people earning less | than their parents to absorb the exponentially higher | costs? My son was born over a decade ago. Thanks to a | moderate, common complication, his birth cost $85k. His | childcare at age 3 cost as much as our mortgage. | nemothekid wrote: | > _Of course, the glaring difference is that social | security schemes have motivated many millions, who | otherwise might have, to not have children at all or an | inadequate number_ | | This implied link between public pensions and demographic | collapse paints a picture that social security was destined | to fail because people wouldn't have children for the | purpose of taking care of them in old age. The millennial | generation, the largest American generational cohort, were | born almost 50 years after the founding of social security. | How does it make sense that public pensions motivated | millennials to not have children, but not their parents? | | Across all developed countries where you have demographic | collapse you have societies where it becomes more and more | expensive to raise children. The public pension system | requires that the economy grows year after year and that | becomes hard when your population shrinks. As to why the | population is shrinking you have to look at why people | aren't having children. And when you ask that question you | get way more "I can't even afford to buy a house" and not | "the government is going to take care of me when I'm old". | 988747 wrote: | [dead] | aetherson wrote: | I think a lot of people assume that pension systems ought to | or actually do work as savings/investment systems, like | private 401(k)s do. So you pay into the system when you're | working age, your money is saved, then it is paid out to you | later. | mywittyname wrote: | I'm not sure about every pension system, but there are many | that invest in government bonds. The problem what that | approach is the sustainability of the system depends | entirely upon interest rates, which have been at all time | lows for the past 15 years. Some private pensions invest in | the broader market. | | All investment systems suffer from this exact problem: | returns aren't guaranteed. Even people with 401ks might | experience this same issue if investment returns fall below | the conventional wisdom rate of ~7% (or 4% real). But even | if that rate holds up over the long-term, there's still to | risk of a "lost decade" of no-returns or losses for and | extended period, followed by a sudden market pop. | | Pensions are hard. | datavirtue wrote: | They were working great until the looting started. | yamtaddle wrote: | Whose labor is giving those investments value? Who's doing | the labor that gives those IOUs (dollars) value even if you | just stick them in a savings account and don't invest them? | It's not retirees. | Izikiel43 wrote: | After seeing the pensioners in my home country living in | poverty because of economic crisis destroying their | pensions, the government using pension money as if it was | its own, and being actively hostile to pensioners by | delaying trials to pay the pension money fairly waiting for | them to die, I will take a 401(k) over that always, my | money is mine and no one else's. | olddustytrail wrote: | I have some bad news for you then: many of the companies | that provide 401(k) were on the verge of collapse in | 2008. The only reason people didn't lose their pensions | entirely was because the government bailed them out... | | You can _always_ lose your money. Best to accept that and | not worry too much. | datavirtue wrote: | "You can always lose your money." | | It went somewhere. | jobs_throwaway wrote: | How does that work? The 401(k) providers are lending out | the securities that their customers own? | lotsofpulp wrote: | No, 401k admins do not own the securities, the employees | do. The comment is incorrect in implying the government | bailed out the administrators, but the government did | backstop the price the securities (the stock market) | itself. | | Hence why I think an SP500 investment is risk free on a | >3 year timeline. | [deleted] | pkaye wrote: | The 401(k) money is held separately from the company | funds. | Izikiel43 wrote: | > many of the companies that provide 401(k) were on the | verge of collapse in 2008. | | The stock market went to shit, not the providers. The | 401k appeal is that it's an account you *own* and the | government can't touch for money, it would be the same as | expropriating a bank account, which to be fair, the | Argentinian goverment kind of did in 2001, hence why | since then, people there save money in usd cash or in a | foreign account, not in the local financial system. If | the US government has to expropriate or do weird stuff in | general with 401k accounts, we are in a situation where | shit hit the fan long ago. | yazantapuz wrote: | Argentinian? The government theft of the private funds | was outrageous. Although the AFJPs were far from being a | 401(k) system. | Izikiel43 wrote: | > Argentinian | | Takes one to know one | eniotna wrote: | Money is never truly yours if you are not the issuer. | That's why we need more "hard" money (gold, bitcoin). | globalreset wrote: | All financial savings are an illusion. They are just claims | on productivity of other people in the future. | | Boomer generation globally accumulated a lot of claims and | considered them their "wealth" but forgot to produce enough | people that are going to be willing to put an effort to | satisfy these claims. | | Now is the time when boomers will want to use their savings | and discover their error. | ur-whale wrote: | > Every single pension system has the working population pay | for the retirees. Where do you think the money comes from? | | Disagree. | | Counter-examples: | | 401k in the US | | Second pillar in Switzerland. | | The money comes from the people saving and investing their | own money for their old age. | | Shocker, I know. | cdavid wrote: | it is a common misconception that how the retirement is | funded makes a huge difference in how much you need to | save. In most situations, it does not matter nearly as much | as people believe. Dependency ratio will determine in large | part how much people will need to save to get a given level | of retirement income. | | For example, your 401k ability to pay for your retirement | will depend on productivity gains , growth, saving, | investments happen in the future. Those will look very | different if you have 4 working age people for one non | working person, vs 2 working age people for one non working | one. In the extreme case, if nobody is working anymore when | you retire, your 401k will likely worth almost nothing. | | The problem in France is not _how_ it s funded, but the | fact that retirement incomes are way above the funding | level. France, with Italy, are the only two OECD countries | where retirees have a higher income that working people, | which is insane. However, since retirees vote much more | than other demographics, their too large income will not be | touched. | lazyasciiart wrote: | Those are not pensions. The 401k system is _explicitly_ an | alternative to the older pension systems. Words mean | things. | justeleblanc wrote: | You utterly missed my point. You say people invest money. | Aren't they expecting a return? Where does that return come | from? If there is no return on investment, are we really | talking about a pension, or just saving up for late age | unemployment? | lotsofpulp wrote: | The money is just an entry in the accounting ledger | allocating society's labor. The pension fund can increase to | trillions and quadrillions, and it will not make a difference | if there is not enough people willing to change bedpans for | as low of a price as was originally expected. | hartator wrote: | Yes, they can play with inflation and debt, but at the end | of the day, it's just a question of people resource and | time allocation. Money is just a proxy. | toomuchtodo wrote: | There will be a market clearing price for that work, and | these accounting mechanizations are simply sussing out what | that price is (in comparison to other broad societal work | to be done). | | If caring for the elderly is made more valuable than say, | slinging JavaScript, that's where some of the labor will | go. | coryrc wrote: | China's building massive amounts of underused housing. US | boomers could have built long-lived buildings and | infrastructure (high-speed trains) which provide usefulness | to people later in exchange for them paying some money for | retirees. | | Instead, they built ever-decaying roads and rotting ticky- | tacky boxes and left nothing durable for future generations. | Hell, they even ripped out trains in cities across the | country. (Seattle interurban among so many examples). | yodsanklai wrote: | > Every president, be they socialist or liberal, have attempted | to tackle the issue, only to get country-paralyzing backlash. | People will nitpick the details of whatever current plan | proposes, but the fundamental problem remains. | | The Touraine Law in 2014 raised the number of worked years from | 36 to 43, which is a big deal. So it's not like nothing | happened. Also there are good reasons to dispute the current | proposal, it's not just nitpicking details, it will impact very | negatively some people and perhaps there are other ways to fix | the system. | skee8383 wrote: | You can beat millinials and zoomers into the ground with low | wages and no one bats an eye, but if you mess with the boomers | the retirement the entire country is shut down. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-03-07 23:00 UTC)