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

[lfromnj]

http://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/01/10/france-macron-to-push-for-pension-reform-again-despite-potential-strikes.html
A neccesary reform but the Fr*nch are sadly too dumb . Fortunately Macron is ignoring the will of the idiots .

Macron is serving his second term as France's president but overhauling the pension system is a long-standing promise that dates all the way back to when he was first elected in 2017.

France's legal retirement age is currently 62 — lower than many developed markets, including much of Europe and the U.S. The public sector also has "special regimes," or sector-specific deals that allow workers to retire before they're 62.

[lfromnj]

Still not convinced the mania worldwide for *increasing* the pension age is a good thing, mind.

At the absolute worst, it seems pretty close to a necessary evil.

Those on the left should want the electorates to back pro-worker policies. This seems much more likely to happen if more voters are workers (or classed as working age).

Pro-natalist policy is limited in its effectiveness and often neglected, particularly with respect to housing; electorates are skeptical of immigration, too. Unless and until there are more solutions to ageing itself (governments aren't doing nearly enough here), we're going to have ageing populations. These tend to be quite comfortable to keep pensions growing at the expense of everything else (the rest of the welfare state first, debt and taxes next).

The buck has got to stop somewhere. People who are too sick to work obviously need guarantees and manual labourers may need to retire earlier than the rest, but otherwise, raising the state pension age seems the easiest solution.

One other factor to mention along with increasing lifespan and decreasing birth rates is that  the average age of entry into the workforce is increasing as well. In the Baby Boom era people would have full time jobs on average probably by the time they were 18, by now its probably atleast 20 if not 21. 

[lfromnj]

https://www.ft.com/content/0629e392-5b28-4114-9f52-2a00ed804e47

Macron decides to ignore Parliament. He is the hero who France needs but not what they deserve.

[lfromnj]

Article 49.3 was also used dozens of times under Mitterand. Its effectively opt out instead of opt in and is basically a do or die. I apologize for my framing by saying Macron did it. This does allow soft supporters scared of the public to hide behind the government.  IIRC didn't Trudeau do a similar move a few months ago?

[lfromnj]

Why does increasing pension age hurt women more than men?
Women are less likely to do manual labour and live longer .

Is this anglophone wokism infecting France?

[lfromnj]

Fwiw i do have qualms about the use of 49.3 but not in a scenario where unions threaten to cut power to politicians . It clearly takes a strongman like Macron to stand upto this terrorism.

https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/french-union-threatens-cut-electricity-mps-billionaires-amid-nationwide-strike-2023-01-18/

[lfromnj]

- 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?

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.

[lfromnj]

Slighty off topic, but I wonder whether Macron would actually lose if the 2022 election was re-run now?

One thing to note is that Macron made this unpopular policy a campaign promise . I actually respect Macron a lot for doing that. The warnings were clearly there, anyone who cared so much about pensions could have voted for icky Le Pen.

[lfromnj]

- 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?

Here an article in English summing up the situation:

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.

Some highly feminized jobs are particularly exhausting, physically (and sometimes also psychologically) speaking, like home carers, hospital nurses and nursing home employees, all jobs implying difficult schedules and hard work in critically understaffed sectors (because of cuts and disastrous administrative restructuring in public hospitals; because of the greed of private investors in nursing homes – not an exaggeration, there has been a relatively recent scandal about systemic carelessness of residents in the leading company of the sector, Orpea).

Agree with you on the first point regarding mothers but the fact is that male physical jobs are much more physically demanding jobs than stereotypically female jobs. The supermajority of all workplace deaths are male . Im not denying that those jobs aren't difficult but from a statistical point of view a woman is much less likely to engage in the type of work that requires retirement before normal age.

[lfromnj]

The 2022 presidential election was an almost perfect 3-way split between the left, the neoliberal right (Macron+Pécresse) and the nationalist far-right (Le Pen+Zemmour+NDA). This meant that in theory, with the right vote distribution, any of these three factions could have qualified for the runoff. However, Mélenchon is at somewhat of a disadvantage, since many people on the left hate his guts and would probably not vote for him against Macron. So unfortunately Macron probably wins no matter what. There will not be a clear alternative to Macron unless either the left gets its sh*t together and nominates a candidate who isn't extremely divisive, or the dam against FN finally breaks and Le Pen actually wins.

One thing to note is that Le Pens trying to get left wing votes alienates the Zemmour wing who is much more right wing economically . Le pen exceeded her factions vote share in the 2nd round in most areas except very strong Zemmour areas.