EPTEuropean Politico-economics QA Mega-thread - Page 1260
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xM(Z
Romania5281 Posts
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TheDwf
France19747 Posts
There was a big day of strike and demonstrations last week, the 5/12. It had been prepared for at least 2 months. It was a grassroots movement, initially coming from the workers of the transport sector (train, metro) who will lose much with the new reform. Between 806 000 (according to the Interior) and 1.5 million (according to unions) people demonstrated against the reform. The strike rate was very high at the SNCF (train company), the RATP (metro in Paris), among the teachers (who are expected to lose hundreds of euros per month with the new system), at EDF (electricity company), etc. That was the biggest start for a social movement for decades, and it was the first time since 2010 that there were that many people in the streets. The demonstrations were particularly crowded in small and medium-sized towns. A successful show of force from the unions, which did not win anything on a national level since 2006. The Prime minister said that he would make announcements about the reform on the 11/12 (yesterday). A new day of strike and demonstrations gathered between 339 000 and ~900 000 people the day before. The Prime minister confirmed the main axis of the reform and managed to anger even the most compliant trade unions. Now every union is calling for a day of demonstration the 17/12. It should be big. This is the first time since 2010 (when Sarkozy increased the retirement age from 60 to 62) that there is a relative unity in the ranks of unions, even if it should quickly shatter when the governement makes concessions. Public transports in Paris' region and trains in the whole country have been heavily disrupted for a week. The activity in ports and refineries is also disrupted by strikes and/or blockades. This should be the beginning of a harsh and long conflict. | ||
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opisska
Poland8852 Posts
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Nyxisto
Germany6287 Posts
Also, the retiring age seems absurdly low given that increasing life expectancy, demographic shift, and better elderly care all increase the cost of the system. Seems completely unsustainable in the long term unless either cost is cut, working-age is increased or payment is increased, none of which I assume the protesters will agree too. | ||
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stilt
France2749 Posts
On December 13 2019 07:55 Nyxisto wrote: The point-based system that the government seems to propose seems significantly fairer for everyone because it's based on how much people contribute. This just looks like rent-seeking behaviour on part of the unions who don't want to give up their privileged conditions. Also, the retiring age seems absurdly low given that increasing life expectancy, demographic shift, and better elderly care all increase the cost of the system. Seems completely unsustainable in the long term unless either cost is cut, working-age is increased or payment is increased, none of which I assume the protesters will agree too. How can someone seriously think like this ? It's hard to believe in your good faith because it seems so cynical to me. My pension should lose around 5-600 euros which would make me approximatively at 1300 euros, I better not have grandchildren that's for sure, traveling should be proscrit too. I suppose "everyone" concern only the people of your social statut, well, that's clearly not a majority. Btw, what do you make Nixysto ? Not that I am really interested, that's more a rhetorical question anyway because I am pretty sure it's way more than I gonna make on my whole life. It's weird because for the bourgeoisie, anyone who is above the minimum salary wage is obviously a privileged like ... themselves, no matter what the gap is. What a strange confusion in a time where the inequalities are skyrocketting and the middle classes are suffering. As for your liberal argument which is trying to explain why a large chunk of people should be impoverished (while your dear Singapor traders will do billions on the back of the whole planet, why on earth it's always the richest who are asking to others a sacrifice ? This dear Bernard Arnaud could spare us a few billions euros while not suffering anything on it while millions on people will actually suffer from this reform)... Anyway, thanks to the policies you support, France has a decreasing healthcare, closed or overcrownded hospitals (cuz saving lives actually cost too much, we're becoming like in USA/England, someone with a cancer has to ask for charity if he lacks money. What a barbaric model it is), the life expenctancy is nowadays heavely depending of your social statut, in France, that's 13 years for the men if you take the 5% richer and poorest. I didn't find much stuffs about the difference between the city and the countryside but in some region it must be ugly. So if I apply your logic, the retiring age should be rised only for the richest as they are the ones who live the longest, I am not opposed to it for sure, their jobs are not hards anyway. Sadly I am pretty sure you will stop being so reasonnable and tempered if such wise measures were adopted because "it wouldn't be fair". Oh btw, here is an article about Jean-Paul Delevoye, the High commissioner to Pensions, this dear man is one of the artisan of this reform nominated by Macron and guess what ? He assumed his function while working for a group specialized in insurrance formation and payed by their think tank. https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2019/12/12/cumul-des-postes-jean-paul-delevoye-s-engage-a-rembourser-les-sommes-percues-depuis-2017_6022648_823448.html Not that I am surprised, a liberal governement is nothing but a clusterfuck of lobbyism and conflict of interests in which the words "virtue" and "public good" are insulting. He was paid around 3 times what I currently gain just for being part of this. No shame at all. | ||
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Nyxisto
Germany6287 Posts
Btw, what do you make Nixysto ? Not that I am really interested, that's more a rhetorical question anyway because I am pretty sure it's way more than I gonna make on my whole life. It's weird because for the bourgeoisie, anyone who is above the minimum salary wage is obviously a privileged like ... themselves, no matter what the gap is. What a strange confusion in a time where the inequalities are skyrocketting and the middle classes are suffering. I make an upper middle class salary but I had the same political opinions when I lived on 750 bucks in uni, so that has nothing to do with it. As for your liberal argument which is trying to explain why a large chunk of people should be impoverished (while your dear Singapor traders will do billions on the back of the whole planet, why on earth it's always the richest who are asking to others a sacrifice ? I don't want people to be impoverished at all. That is some seriously bad faith. I'm actually very interested in getting as many people as possible as good a pension as possible, but the system also needs to be equitable and have the right incentives. People who contribute most to the pension system and are willing to work longer and pay more into the system than they take out ought to be rewarded. There is no reason why every store clerk, cleaning lady, every single mother who works part-time and or any gig worker should be treated worse than a rail union worker just because the transport worker threatens to shut the public transport system down as they see fit. There is no reason at all to privilege people in certain industries over the general population, that is the basis of the argument for a point system and against this strike culture which hurts the economy, shuts down vital infrastructure, and undermines the political process by force. There is really no excuse for it or to even treat it as some issue of economic justice. The move towards a point-based system isn't going to impoverish more people, it's going to be fairer for more people, namely every individual worker who is not part of this vocal minority of organised employees. And yes there's nuance to it. People who work hard physically obviously should be able to enter retirement earlier than a white-collar worker. Teachers receive too little compensation in general and education is undervalued. Poverty needs to be alleviated. But this largely fake woke attitude in defense of organisations who disrupt day to day life to largely safeguard cushy jobs is not the way at all. | ||
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PoulsenB
Poland7710 Posts
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Harris1st
Germany6889 Posts
On December 13 2019 18:09 PoulsenB wrote: Just FYI Nyxisto, $750 is almost twice as much as current minimum monthly wage in Poland, it would be a very decent salary for many people here. I know the discussion is about France, just putting things into perspective a bit Hard to compare really. Rent, food, water, electricity, ... is waaaay more expensive in countries like France, Germany, UK ,.. The only real way to compare IMO is % based. Like 20% from salary for rent, 25% food,... To the discussion at hand: There are a lot of valid points made by Nyxisto Most countries in Europe already have retirement age of 65+ thanks to the demographic changes I don't really know the system in place right now in France but it sounds horribly unfair. A point system seems way fairer. I can't really follow your live expectancy example. It is a measured in average after all. And the average is slowly rising. Obviously the pension payout needs to be capped at some point so the "rich" pay somewhat for the pension of the "poor" as well with this system. And they probably don't need it anyway. To put in perspective: This is just my opinion on stuff I heard in the media. I don't really have any deeper knowledge | ||
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TheDwf
France19747 Posts
![[image loading]](https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Fniallmccarthy%2Ffiles%2F2015%2F12%2F20151202_Pensioners_Fo.jpg) | ||
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arbiter_md
Moldova1219 Posts
So far, I see Macron as a good president, at least for the country's economy. He will probably not get re-elected, but the measures he is taking will at least allow the country to get through the next populist they will elect. It's obvious that 62 retirement age cannot work, and must be increased. The faster, the better for the future generations. And it's obvious that it's fairer to give the pension benefit based on the whole contribution that you've made to the system. And of course there will be plenty of people that will oppose the change, because they see only their own personal loss. | ||
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farvacola
United States18824 Posts
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Nyxisto
Germany6287 Posts
On December 13 2019 21:39 TheDwf wrote: France has one of the best pension systems in the world. It works, though of course it comes with a certain cost. That's why neoliberals want to destroy it. There are plenty of structural differences between multiple of the systems that do well on the metric of poverty. The Dutch system is a typical three-pillar system with plenty of private support and it does fairly well for example. The problem with the French system is not that it isn't relatively generous enough, it is its high cost and the way in which it is a very two class system depending on what kind of job it is you're working. Nobody wants to destroy a pension system as some kind of evil plan of making people worse off, that's silly. But the cost is important. Reforms that manage to bring down the cost of pension systems are needed everywhere if you want to keep them sustainable for the future. That's a basic obligation any society has to the people who are going to pay for the system in the decades to come. For example if you want to argue that elderly poverty needs to be avoided I completely agree. But that can be done by subsidizing pensions to above poverty levels rather than keep the pension age at 62 at a time when many people at 62 are still perfectly capable and healthy and can continue to contribute to the system. | ||
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opisska
Poland8852 Posts
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On December 14 2019 06:38 opisska wrote: Well I don't understand how anyone can really defend unequal rules where specific occupation get higher pensions than others. What is good about that? It quite seems to me that the transport sector has better conditions because they have better leverage because they can keep the rest of the society hostage. I am not a big fan of pensions based on how much you "contributed" because I consider them services of the state and the "social insurance" to be a tax and tax-based benefits should be equally distributed to everyone, so I am not in favor of that part of the reform, but removing benefits that some groups have achieved instead of others by having a better strike impact is definitely good. Yeah OK, but instead of pensioneers let's start with entepreneurs. Instead of having 2000 different regulations for occuptions we make one: If it is a transfer of a good or a service it is equally taxed. No more "oh, but this is for busness purposes so no VAT", "oh, but this is capital gain and not wage so we only tax the gains and not the whole volume of transfer like with wages (regardless of the persons spending unlike with gain taxes)". It's silly to start with pensions when the whole fucking economic system is based on the fact that we treat entrepreneurs, workers and consumers all differently. (but somehow the bourgeoise propaganda tells us it is a "free" market) | ||
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farvacola
United States18824 Posts
On December 14 2019 07:41 Big J wrote: Yeah OK, but instead of pensioneers let's start with entepreneurs. Instead of having 2000 different regulations for occuptions we make one: If it is a transfer of a good or a service it is equally taxed. No more "oh, but this is for busness purposes so no VAT", "oh, but this is capital gain and not wage so we only tax the gains and not the whole volume of transfer like with wages (regardless of the persons spending unlike with gain taxes)". It's silly to start with pensions when the whole fucking economic system is based on the fact that we treat entrepreneurs, workers and consumers all differently. (but somehow the bourgeoise propaganda tells us it is a "free" market) Totally agree, this framing makes a lot of sense to me in terms of how priorities inform the positions that people take. | ||
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opisska
Poland8852 Posts
On December 14 2019 07:41 Big J wrote: Yeah OK, but instead of pensioneers let's start with entepreneurs. Instead of having 2000 different regulations for occuptions we make one: If it is a transfer of a good or a service it is equally taxed. No more "oh, but this is for busness purposes so no VAT", "oh, but this is capital gain and not wage so we only tax the gains and not the whole volume of transfer like with wages (regardless of the persons spending unlike with gain taxes)". It's silly to start with pensions when the whole fucking economic system is based on the fact that we treat entrepreneurs, workers and consumers all differently. (but somehow the bourgeoise propaganda tells us it is a "free" market) This is pure whataboutism. Having other problems to solve is not an argument for ignoring any. Also I am not sure you understand how VAT works, because your qualm with it doesn't make technical sense. Can't agree more on that capital gains are tragically undertaxed though. But the idea of naively equal treatment if everything would probably rbd up doing the opposite of what you want and helping the rich, a lot of exceptions actually protect small enterprises. I don't really understand your rage about "touching the pensioners" - there always will be some sum of money, why not distribute it more fairly? | ||
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Simberto
Germany11486 Posts
And what BigJ would prefer is if instead of spending less money on the working class part of the population, we could take more money from the owner class, if there is indeed not enough money to pay for the pension system. | ||
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Sr18
Netherlands1141 Posts
The thing with analysing social security measures is however that you need to look at the whole picture. This means that it's pretty hard to just compare systems of two otherwise very different countries. | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On December 14 2019 18:09 opisska wrote: This is pure whataboutism. Having other problems to solve is not an argument for ignoring any. Also I am not sure you understand how VAT works, because your qualm with it doesn't make technical sense. That is not what I am saying. What I am saying is that the system is not meant to work like that at all. We have different regulations for every type of job, every type of product. We have a whole economical system based on the thought that some people declare what they are doing to "business operations" and those operations are basically untaxed. Only when those people start interacting with whatever the state defines as "private operation" than we demand a VAT (and those can differ, e.g. for food, drugs, tourism or "luxury" products...). And then there is one type of business operation which we tax particularily high, which is whatever the state declares to be "work". So no, don't tell me that there is an underlying thought that we treat everyone and everything with the same ruleset, that is just not true and was never meant to be true. If the same people that accept all of that and often want to make those things even worse suddenly start with "but how is it fair when one pensioneer gets a better return of investment" then you know that you are being played. On December 14 2019 06:38 opisska wrote: I don't really understand your rage about "touching the pensioners" - there always will be some sum of money, why not distribute it more fairly? And how is this "more fairly" per se? You realize that when I take on a job I may already start calculating what type of longrun benefits like pensions I will get?! now you reform that 30 years later. How is that any different from not repaying some debt that was made 30 years ago. But somehow the one promise always gets kept - on the cost of everyone elses. Sure, if the whole system of promises cannot be kept then we should reform and someone will lose out. But the promise to pay out certain pensions or help someone in need are always under attack. Start treating the promises that were made to rich people equally to those of pensioneers, before you start to micromanage which pensioneer gets too much. | ||
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Dangermousecatdog
United Kingdom7084 Posts
That said I also agree that tax should be reformed to be simpler, but France is already a country where half the GDP is government. Should tax reform take precedence? Or pension reform? Which one is more burdensome currently, and which reform would provide the greater benefit? | ||
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