[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.
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