Riotous Rejection
Sarkozy and his government have not budged in raising the minimum age for retirement from 60 to 62, which means a full pension is not available until age 67 (currently, it is 65). All this is intended to prevent the pension system from going bankrupt.
According to NPR, “demonstrators say the retirement reform is unfair because the working class is being asked to bear the brunt of the burden when there is money to be found elsewhere.”
Cartoon by Arend van Dam
France is very much tied to the idea of having their first chance to retire at the age of 60, which was a policy Mitterand implemented in the early 1980s.
According to an article in the Telegraph,
…the strikes have turned into a referendum on Nicolas Sarkozy – not his actual policies, so much as his style. The perception is that he panders to the rich, an unfair one when you consider his predecessor Jacques Chirac, who never paid for any holiday he took in or out of office…
In the face of economic trouble, many countries in Europe are revising their policies on pensions, and certain countries are accepting austerity measures more willingly than others. How much does culture inform a society’s reaction to this? What are the key factors in determining the success of such measures?
Charlene
It looks like the unions worldwide will be one of the main causes of global bankruptcy for most economies, much as they are here in the USA. In the 1930′s, the unions had a place in the business world to right the wrongs of management’s treatment of workers. Today, there is no longer a place in the corporate environment anywhere in the world for unions, and the unions have certainly out lived their usefulness for business profitability. In fact, the opposite is true. They have a negative affect on company profits and the union leaders are very ignorant of that, because they will fight to the end to get what they want (not need) even if it means the company has to close its doors because of insolvency. It’s very, very sad.
Strikes sucks!
Dono the French pension funding scheme, but suspect the problem is much the same as in my part of the woods, where workers aiming for early retirement are actually ‘snatcing’ welfare benefits from other publicly funded efforts like hospitals, kindergardens, schools and the unemployed.
We’re experiencing the same debate – though hardly the same debcale in the streets – after Danish politicians a few years back decided to gradually increase the age for early retirement by one month each year until age 62 by 2020.
The problem here is that workers actually have in fact not ‘earned their right’ to early retirement through a long worklife because pension funding has been part of the Danish governments regular fiscal accounts.
Danish politicians never dared insulating social contributions to pensions in savings funds for future payouts like the Swedes did, removing at least some of the risk of an ageing population.
That means workers now homing in on retirement only paid for pensions paid to those retirering through the 1970′s to this decade, when the work force was still expanding (at least till the late 1990′s).
That also entails current pensioners got a relative tax break as public sector pension funding was less of a fiscal burden on public finances back in those days.
In other words workers insisting on early retirement have managed to push pension costs to be picked up by their own kids and grandkids, while wrongfully claiming to have paid their dues to society, they also spur cuts in welfare services like kindergardens, schools, benefits for the disabled etc.
So people on strikes in France, Greece (can’t be long before more strikes arrives) and elsewhere might consider JFK’s famous words once again before arguing there’s no need to be responsible for the future economies of their countries or leaving a strong economy behind for their kids to reap the same benefits they did:
- And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.
Chz
Peter
One cannot have “de föifer und s’Weggli” (the money and the bread) as a Swiss proverb is saying: either an early retirement and less pension or a later retirement and (hopefully) more benefit….
As if other European countries paid for French retirees … utterly ridiculous, and very ignorant of European financial realities. only French residents (i.e. working in France) pay for French pension system. So what’s the problem for the others ? Envy ?
Btw French actually do pay the most for Europe per citizen. Even more than German ! who would believe this ? But it’s true and in the open : just check the Europe Commission financial reports. The message conveyed by this cartoon is just an urban legend that show complacency against French. It reflects a state of mind that fit very well un/anti-european interests agenda, chiefly across the pond and beyond.
BR/Marcolino
Apparently, a commonly-held view is that this relatively early retirement age (60) opened up more work opportunities for younger French people. Unemployment among recent college graduates in France is massive, and one of the reasons they are so unhappy with this change is that they fear that older workers who would otherwise retire are going to hold onto their jobs, keeping younger workers in temporary jobs or entirely unemployed. Most economists argue that jobs are not a zero-sum game, though: that the total number of jobs is not a “pie” (or maybe a tarte aux pommes!) to be sliced up among workers. But French are less focused culturally on job creation and more focused on how the “good stuff” is apportioned among interest/demographic groups. It’s quite different from a stereotypical American mentality.