Get ready for riots. Macron trying to increase pension age in France

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Any pension reform needs to be fair and just to manual workers, paying particular attention to those at the bottom of the income distribution. The problem with Macron's reform is that it really makes no concessions to these workers. Once again, France's President of the Rich pursues a reform that punishes these people, while he continues to pursue policies to benefit elites in France. Pension reforms are obviously necessary in France but this is not an approach I favor.

Have to agree with this.

Usually I would agree that 64/65 is a perfectly reasonable retirement age, and white collar workers should be encouraged to work longer through pension bonuses if they are able and willing, but Macron's pension reforms are paired with an economic agenda that prioritizes tax cuts for the well-off and large corporations.

As stated earlier in the thread, France's pension system actually is currently running surpluses, and the projected deficits going forward are actually quite small considering the size of the pension outlays. Those shortfalls could easily be covered by funding from general revenues and/or lifting the payroll tax caps (side note: why is calculating the pension payroll taxes so needlessly complicated in France? Jesus christ you people made it more convoluted than Germany).

They could also probably save some money from merging the funds together. The unions also have a very good point that, in a time of record profits and inflation, raising wages would also benefit the pension system by having some of those wage increases captured via the payroll tax. Finally, solving the issue of youth unemployment would also help here, since more people working = more people paying into the system.

Does France even have a disability pension and offer early retirement? Because if the proposal was raising the retirement age, combined with a solid disability pension and early retirement for manual workers, while also asking more from those who are well-off by things like raising the payroll tax cap, then perhaps people would be more accepting in the name of shared sacrifice.

But Macron's agenda quite obviously isn't about shared sacrifice, as we see him pursue these reforms while also cutting the corporate income tax this very year, the cost of which would cover more than half of the pension shortfall*. So hard not to sympathize the French people here.

*EDIT - just looked it up, the pension shortfall is projected to be 8-12 billion EUR per year from 2027 onwards, out of a total outlay of 340 billion EUR per year, and the corporate tax cuts for 2023 and 2024 alone are worth 8 billion EUR combined, so.....there we go.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

- that is rejected by a large and growing share of the population as it is perceived as unjust and as disproportionately hurting manual workers and women and is mostly supported by pensioners, i.e. the ones who will not been affected by it.

Again can someone explain how the pension reform hurts women more than it hurts men according to Sir John from above?

Well first of all, he didn't say it "hurts women more than men". He said it hurts manual workers and women.

He even admits it hurts manual workers which I guess is correct but most manual workers especially in heavy and dangerous manual work are men. Women might do other stuff like say hotel cleaning which poses much less risk to their body. The only way I can see it hurting women is that on average they will now retire later because they are more likely to enter and graduate from college.

If you look at it from an actuarial standpoint. Previously lets say the average French male person at retirement would get 18 years of  retirement while a women would get 22. Now it might instead be 16.5 and 20.5. This percentage cut hurts men more than woman if you look at it that way.

Because the reform now requires that you pay into the system for 43 years before you get full benefits. This disproportionately will hurt women because they are more likely to take time off for childcare, and the maternity leave that is given to women counts against them when calculating pensions. Furthermore, there is more social pressure/expectations for women to stay home with children in countries like France, Germany, Italy, etc.