28-year-old French here. Like almost everyone I know, and most of my generation, I won't be able to retire before 67, *even if the 'legal age' remained at 62.* That's bc my generation typically studied 5 years of uni (Bachelor's degree = 3 years, Master's = 2 years). Add in a gap year and/or a few trimesters looking for a job after uni, and virtually no one in my generation really started their careers before 24. Since you need to have worked 43 years, the de facto legal age to retire is 24+43= *67 already.* So we're not really protesting to retire at 62. But consider this: - All jobs aren't the same. I work sitting at my desk and I'd probably be alright working till I'm 70. But setting the same age for a nurse who needs to lift patients, a delivery person, an industrial or agricultural worker, etc is just absurd. Some people just work more physically demanding jobs. Coincidentally, they generally start working earlier, have a lower income, lower life expectancy, and lower healthy life expectancy than the national average. And, btw, *they* were the essential workers who carried everyone else on their backs during the Covid pandemic. Calculating everything on the national average is unfair. - Having *both* a minimum legal age *and* a minimum worked years is unfair. Because you need to satisfy *both* criteria OR reach the age of 67, it means that someone who started working at 16 will typically have to work for 48 years in a physically demanding job; while someone who had very long studies and started working at, say, 27, and then had a desk job their whole life would only have to work 40 years. *It should be the other way around.* (EDIT: that was true of the initial government proposal. In the amended version that the government bypassed Parliament with, there are some compensations to account for people who started their careers early, essentially making 44 worked years the maximum. Still, 44 years for typically low-pay, physically demanding jobs vs 43 for the average worker and potentially even less for high-earning, physically non-demanding jobs is unfair. Again, it should be the other way around). - Consider this: in Italy, where the 'legal' retirement age is 67, you can retire after only 35 working years if you've worked in a physically demanding job. So while on paper the theoretical retirement age is 'higher' in Italy, their system is actually a lot more fair and would probably go down a lot better with the French public than Macron's scheme. - All in all, this reform aims at saving about €10B a year on pensions, but this amount is saved *entirely* on the pensions of lower-income, blue-collar workers who have a lower life expectancy and a lower healthy life expectancy than the national average. Macron could have saved, say, half of this amount by taxing high-income pensioners a bit more -- but he won't, as they represent the overwhelming majority of his electorate and are pretty much the only ones who support his reform. Not to mention, bypassing Parliament shouldn't be an option. It might be constitutional, but it's wildly undemocratic. Even more so when 2/3 of the population and 90% of the working age population is against your reform. *This* is why we're protesting. PS: my grandma, who retired this year at the ripe age of 80 after having worked a white-collar job for almost 60 years (yeah, she's a bit of a workaholic and really loved her job) is against the reform because she can see that it's unfair to the nurses who take care of her.
How about this, instead of mandating legal age, just get a letter from Social Security bureau as part of pay slip, stating this: If you retire now, your pension will be... and retire once you are happy with the sum. Feel free to retire after one month of work with 0.4 centr per month or at 100 with 3000 euros. Hardworking people at physical jobs will see this and demand higher wage (hence higher tax and contribution) and no stupid definitions of what is and is not demanding job will be obsolete. Every job is hard. I work at desk, but I will be braindead by 70.
I do hope the protests amounts to something better such as lowering working years to 38 instead of 43. This is inhumane especially for some people who cannot find work after 55
@@MathewLewit Actually, there is not mandating legal age for retirement in France. You can work at 100 if you want. And if somebody is ready to keep you employed at such an age, of course. 62 years is the minimum age to be able to retire (even though there is a process to get an early retirement if you meet certain criteria and your employer agrees), but you'll need to be 67 years if you don't want your pension to be severely cut. What Macron wants is to move those ages to 64 and 70 years respectively.
Italy has enromous debts and is only kept alive thru massive loans (which wont be paid back) from the Euro's central bank, ie German tax payers. Not a good example to follow.
Retirees who struggle to meet their basic needs are the ones who could not accumulate enough money during their active years to meet their needs. Retirement choices determines a lot of things, my parents both spent same number of years in the medical profession, my mom was investing through a financial advisor while my dad through the 401k. On retirement, my mom retired with about $5million, while my dad retired with roughly $3.8million.
It’s unfortunate most people don’t have such information, I don’t really blame people who panic cos lack of information can be a big hurdle. I’ve been making more than $25k passively by just investing through an advisor, and I don’t have to do much work. It doesn’t matter if the economy is crashing, great CFA will always make good returns.
My financial advisor is "Margaret Johnson Arndt " she’s highly qualified and experienced in the financial market. She has extensive knowledge of portfolio diversification and is considered an expert in the field, I recommend researching his credentials further. She has many years of experience and is a valuable resource for anyone looking to navigate the financial market.
67 years is NOT the maximum retirement age AT ALL. It is the actual minimum retirement age to get your complete pension for most people. There is no maximum age of retirement in France. Some jobs do have one, and your employer can decide to retire you at any moment past the age of 67, but you can if you want still work at 100 years old. You can cumulate a retirement pension and a job if you want. Nobody prevents you from it. Most employers won't recruit someone past their 50s, but nothing forbid you from it.
This ^ Also to be noted that at 67 you don't really automatically get a full pension, only the multiplying factor automatically get to the max (0.5) but you still only get a ratio of the number of quarters you did on the number needed. So incomplete career still lose a bit of money after 67 but less than before 67. Before 67 you basically get fucked square on your missing quarters.
@@tim3440 What career plan? To be able to go on retirement at 62 you need to have started to work at 19yo and never missed a quarter. If you did a master degree before to start working you directly ends up at 66yo to have a full retirement. If for any reason you have some quarters not working in your life (accident, unemployed, break for a world tour, long parental leave, etc.) this will only push back as much the age for a full retirement.
@@Fe_lix yeah? So what? Arent you working? I work until I was 15 lmfao. You have no clue how primadonna it sounds. ''You only have to work for 42 years''. That litterly means I could quit working when I am 57 lmfao. Why on earth cant you work beside your masters degree? I have also worked beside my degrees? ''Accident'' -> Most accidents dont take a quarter of a year to recover from. ''Unemployment'' -> Career planning. Dont choose something you find amazing, choose something you actually can find work in and excell in. ''Break for a world tour'' -> Again mate, you do you have any idea how primadonna and privileged you sound? Lmfao. Long parental leave -> Only mothers for babies. Beside that? And sure 62 is still pretty young if you realise that the average age is 81.
Partially false ! Approximately 20% of workers are civil servants in France and there's a mandatory retirement age to almost all of them. You'll never find a 73 years old agent welcoming you for instance at the entrance of a public building. As a French lawyer and a French professor of law, I know that because I had to defend a client on THAT specific topic. What you wrote is valid only for the private sector of professions like mine (lawyer).
I think the main solution they should be looking at is to help old people who have not yet reached the pension age be employed more. They are so often fired and can't find a job. Raising the retirement age in this situation is just moving the payments to unemployment, it will not help save money in the grand scheme of things.
Okay, and what then? An old person taking a job is one more young person who will not have one, and unemployment of the younger, poorer people is already a huge problem.
@@texanplayer7651 There are hundreds of thousands of open positions in my country. It is not because an old worker finds or keeps a job that there will not be one for younger people. I think the main issues are with the employers who do not hire young workers or offer crappy conditions in some cases.
@@ruud9761 My position is indeed that an incentive that is given to both the older worker and the employer who hires or keeps them is a win win. If the incentive is only given when in work it would definitely not increase overall spending, and would increase tax revenue and national consumption.
I'm pretty sure a long term unemployed person won't be paid as much as a retiree. If what you say plays out then it's effectively a reduction of social security spending, not just a plain numbers game
@@tomlxyz In western Europe where I am from I can tell you that you will almost never get a pension that is more interesting than a salary. The reason is the way most pensions are calculated, based on a percentage of your life salaries, and also because this pension is very low if you have not fulfilled all conditions.
@@fz8691 maybe if you achieve home ownership... I hear that's pretty simple just skip a few Starbucks. All you've got to do is save up enough to show you can pay your mortgage every month whilst paying for someone else's mortgage and tipping them for the privilege.
@@dww6 nah, the only hope is to automate everything. When the price to automate the next job becomes more expensive than hiring people we will have equilibrium.
Why wouldnt you be able to create a privat pension plan if you like to retire earlier? Stop being so dependant on the government mate. Live within your means and simply save money. You could easily saved around 100k when you are 60 if you want to retire some years earlier.
When those protests started, I did feel like the French were protesting over almost nothing. But after looking into it and thinking about it, I'm more wondering why we aren't all protesting. Like every last one of us in Europe and North America. Sure there are western countries with worse retirement already but there shouldn't be. Politicians keep telling us there's not enough money for poor people and the middle class while the 1% in every western countries have more assets than everyone else combined and usually don't pay a single penny in taxes.
@@owenlindkvist5355 lmao the other way around. People don’t protest anymore, hell the closest thing we’ve come to French Revolution/Civil rights style protests, is France THIS year and BLM like 2 years ago in America but they turned out to be skimming money
@@owenlindkvist5355 people’s idea of “protesting” now is putting a black square on their pfp or kneeling during and anthem. Even after growing up on hunger games and other revolution movies, people sit back and do nothing
@@philliptemple9841 in most cases the rich can buy services that handle their taxes which takes time and effort to make waterproof,and through legal tax evasion overly wealthy do evade part of the progressive taxation,further more rich can take loans by putting asssets as collateral to get the loan, and evade taxes that way if they want to get money but don´t want to cash in dividents which would be taxed,tax codes have myriad of loopholes and shortcomings and its financially beneficial for the rich to exploit these shortcomings in the tax code because they have the resources to do so efficiently to begin with. it isn´t a myth, wealth breeds inequality and those who have more do have the incentive to be more ``equal`` than others.
The fairness of the reform can also be debated in a non-economy axe (which is often not even mentioned). It also supposed to contain "unifying" different retirement handlers/budgets (there are more then one in france, depending on the sector of activity). Which would be an OK thing if it had all handlers unified. But strangely enough, ministers and senators are not concerned by this unification, which gives it a really cynical look of making a "unification". Taking the risk for others.
So-called "régimes spéciaux" have been conquered by workers subject to "special" conditions (usually more difficult than others) and thus do help make the system fairer. Removing them all to allow everyone to live on a mere pittance doesn't make it fairer, it makes it worse for people that aleady suffer more than other at their place of work. Wanna believe the bullshit the government offers on that subject and make it look like workers are fighting for unearned "privileges", be my guest, but do not expect me (or anyone else) to take you seriously ... By the way, senators and representants are excluded from the reform but they're not alone: most notably, police officers also are (last time they weren't and obtained this simply by threatening to join the movement, which is why they're now considered traitors by demonstrators ...)
@@Bloodysugar As I said somewhere else, it was in the cards ... and then immediately removed as far-right unions (which hold consequential majorities among police officiers) simply THREATENED to not do their job aka repress the movement as usual (which is why no one shouts "the police with us" these days ;)).
Fairly good video but i think you could have mentioned a few points that make the reform not look as good : - productivity has been rising while the worker/pensioner ratio decreased, so were still producing enough wealth even with less workers in proportion - the minimum age mostly affects people who started working early, people with blue collar jobs, that can potentially be more tiring than others - there are other solutions, like reducing the highest pensions currently received by people who used to have high paying job (why should their pension be that much higher when they work just as hard as any other pensioner currently?) - a progressive introduction into retirement could be introduced, with a system where youre not expected to do as many hours when youre old, at least for state employees (bc their lesser productivity wouldnt be as huge a problem as in the private sector) - Unemployment is very high for people over the age of 58. Macron is assuming the 62-64 age group will be able to work and add to the national wealth, to maintain the pension system, but its very likely that increasing the retirement age will just create more unemployed people. Whats the difference between a pension and unemployment benefits then ?
First needs statistic backup, I agree with the second, although the reform is needed, it also needs a touch of socialism. For the third stat, they get better pensions because they gave more to the pension system during their working life in tax. Now do they need 20k a month at 75yo is debatable but yeah. The last two are also quite right I think, but it really depends on each individual job.
@@antoineaublin3812 First point I believe is the most important to backup, the rest I see them as fair arguments from you. The fifth could also need a source.
@@supermatx since when do u guys include sources in every comment u write lmao... and productivity has been rising in literally every country in the world. You can find the data on the oecd or eurostat sites. productivity per worker and per hour both have been increasing for the past 30 years. its just a very well known phenomenon
Another point to add.... the expected deficit is not eternal. It will only happen over the 15-20 years before boomers pass away enough to lower the pension draw. The system will naturally balance itself before those of us under ~45 reach retirement.
That's not accurate. It's not just that boomers are many. Every single generation after them has less and less children. It would balance out, but not sure how one that would take. At least 2 or 3 generations. So it is more likely the system would collapse before it balanced out. Yet, there's gotta be a way to keep it but it needs a reform. Which I doubt is MAacron's.
Was the issue not that people are living longer and there's not going to be enough people to support it? All countries have the same issue, it's a sad reality. But we just have to accept that we're going to have to have a good private pension to retire young.
Thanks for these kind of videos, which help to explain the problem in France, but as a french economist student (and not an English studen as you have probably already discovered), I have to say there's some things missing to understand the picture: - The 10B€ missing into the pensions balance come from a document produced by the "Conseil d'orientation des retraites" (a public organisation producing reports on pensions balance), in this document, there's not only one "pronostic", and among nearly 10 scenarios, Macron have selected the 10B€ which is the really worst one and not the most realistic, as the "director" of the COR said on the parliament himself. - Pensions ARE NOT distributed by the government or the state, but by independent organisation (part of the social security), managed by unions of worker and associations of corporations and is responsible for his own equilbrium, and do this well since 1910. - As you showed the statistics of "state" (but more accurately state + social security + city + ...) spendings on GDP, as it was 50%, Macron reduced it to 46.6%, which represents 100B€. This lowering of "cotisations" is mostly targeted on big corporations and on low incomes (minimum wage worker pay nearly no taxes) - The only way to understand these protests is to look closer to the government "attitude" : Lying, spiting in the face of the most moderate unions, leading to a massive "Intersyndicale" never seen since decades
One thing you didn't talk about is the life expectensy of the people doing the hardest jobs are not the same than those doing paper works. Blue collar have very significanly lower age expenctensy. A lot of people will be dead before geting to the retirement age. The minimum pension age passing from 62 to 64 when you put that into account comes to ask from the poorer to work for the richer to get their pensions.
That's why every law can and must have it's amendments counting for exceptions and corner cases. A firefighter's retirement age should OBVIOUSLY be way lower than an accountant's.
@@raducora7159 France actually does have different pension schemes for specific sectors, but that exactly one of the thing Macron’s new plan is trying to get rid of
Hello TLDR. Thanks for your video. As always, great pleasure hearing from you about my country. I'm 30, French, employed in the tech industry for what's its worth. I'm definitely not someone who complains too much about pension ages and retirement - I've been lucky to find jobs quite easily. HOWEVER, I'm also adamantly for the protests; and the reason is that, from my point of view, they are a direct challenge to the people of France. The pension reform is not a priority currently and the government spending on economic stimuli and handouts for corporations dwarfs the pension deficit. M. Macron has also promised a green transition that is completely not happening. Article 49.3 is not a techicality : its a make-or-break article that involves the government threatening to resign, essentially. If the reform passes here, is the president not going to feel emboldened to pass security laws ? More handouts ? More cuts to hospitals ? Trust in the government is abyssal, and the government looks comically incompetent from my point of view. Police brutality is escalating. I don't think pensions are the main issue here. Power checks and balances are. And the people of france need to check the powers of the presidency, or suffer the consequences.
About the 49-3 article : it's not the government threatening to resign, it's far worse than that. In every other country, when the government engages its responsibility for a text, the Parliament vote on the text and then if it fails to pass the government resigns. In France, the Parliament never get to vote on the text, the law passes unless : 1) enough deputies present a motion of no-confidence (yes, the motion of no-confidence is not even automatic), and 2) the motion of no-confidence is adopted. Plus the text pass into law as it was presented, without any amendement, even if some were actually adopted during the parliamentary examination process. To my knowledge, France is the only country where such a procedure exists.
That's BS, power checks, I don't see Macron Presidency as particularly oppressing, we are in europe, when you compare with what many states in the US, like Florida, that's facism, they are banning books, doing big culture wars and oppressing minorities. In France, it's the populace pushed by the stupid LFI and the right wing that are much more dangerous. Economic stimuli is better than having a deficit and no jobs. It's incredible how ignorant can be the populace, even educated people like yourself. Young people always with huge dreams of revolt, meanwhile the rest of the world sees how dumb the extremists are in France and how stupidly billions of Euros are wasted in stupid revolts. Even if the populace eventually wins, it will be a waste of time. Will the chinese pay our pensions? or the Greek? Just sheer ignorance.
Their other channel talk about this move of macron compliment him and bashing people that oppose..... We truly are brainwashed not only for the mass media but also influencer media in TH-cam
Wherever you are from, your country has very poor education standards. Healthcare coverage in the US is 90%+. Try to use google sometime rather than spout incorrect talking points.
@@birdatbattlefield lol, sure... 90% if you include those who go bankrupt just to access healthcare. That or they end up with debt that they will never be able to pay off for their entire life.
Thank you guys so much for this video, like you said, as an American English speaker I didn't really understand what the protest were really about until this video, and now I can sympathize with the French people a lot more, so thank you for explaining this.
Hum, nope. Nobody understand economics. I must know, I spent 6 years studying models, which expose conclusions, that basically lie (double sense intended) in the original hypothesis, most often non realistic hypothesis by the way.
The French Retirement Orientation Council (which works for the first minister) already stated that there is only a small temporary deficit planned, nothing much, and this temporary deficit has only been made up by the government's recent deletion of contributions (on overtime, etc.) Macron loves to give tax giveaways to the big company and the wealthy but 25% of the poor men are already dead at 62 (the current retirement age) and now, because they created a tiny hole on purpose, they want the people to retire at 64++ so the poor pay for the rich pension and die before they can even benefit from what they contributed. In addition, there is already a lot of unemployment, especially for young and old, so the increase in the retirement age is absurd, a lot of old people will end up to the unemployment office which will also be expensive and the young will have even more difficulty to find work. Macron himself said in 2017 that it would be hypocritical to do such a reform lol.
So fucking what. Tax the rich and increase the multi billion euro corporation. I fucking sick and tired of always hearing that we don't have the money so we need to keep people working more. There's more than enough money if you are willing to tax those who barely worked in their lives bcs they're capitalist parasites. Enough with this bullshit. Burn it all down for all i care. Power to the people
It's absurd here in NL. I don't mind an increase in pension age, somewhat in line with life expectancy, but at least also put taxes up on the boomer generation. Especially wealth and inheritance taxes need to go up!
@@tip00former1 i fully agree with you. Wealth tax should be a thing but also don't forget the multi billion parasites. Tax the fucking rich. No one needs 2 yachts and 3 houses while others are scrapping by with 600 euro pensions.
The pension age in germany is not 65 years and a few months. It depends on your year of birth. For those born 1947 it is 65, for every year after it goes up by one month until, with those born in 1964, it reaches 1967. So for all intents and purposes, for most people working currently it is 67 years, with talks of increasing it further to 70.
But that is a sensible policy. To some extent at least. I think the idea of pension age going up as people live longer is inevitable. I'm a farmer myself. And honestly even with technology advancing so much there is and always will be a great need for animal husbandry . ( Such a rather old fashioned word now, yet describes what 'husbands' are supposed to do!). A farmer's job is not to drive machines and fancy gear. It is to take CARE of animals. By that definition the 'farmers' I see left are getting too old for purpose imo.
Would you be interested in making a european version of the "this week in parliament" series. I'm not really that interested in british politics and the activities of the europarliament are often not talked about. I'd definitely pay for a nebula subscription for something like "This week in euro-parliament"
Nebula is so cheap and they only get a fraction of that. You would need to pay 1000x that to actually pay their costs for the production so bring a thousand friends and that will probably make it break even for them. I did 20 years in film and tele and know that there are real costs to production unless you just don't pay people and is that reasonable?
@@joythought I know perfectly well that my interest isn't enough for them to make such a series. I merely suggested a topic for a series and they'll evaluate weather it makes sense. Maybe people are interested in it and it would make financial sense, but a suggestion is where it all starts
I think you get at the core of the point. The French public sees this rightly as a truncated debate. Economists painted the expectations which are now proven to be bait and switch. Indeed it seems like an early retirement or life of ease has miraculously transformed itself into a life of ease for the well off and hardship for the masses. It is as if all the productivity gains means nothing to the population.., funny how that worked out.
What productivity gains over the last 10 years? Very minimal - on the other hand cheap labour has become many times more expensive, no shit people lose purchasing power. But that's completely normal
Productivity gains have increased the per capita income and wealth over the decades. And among other things, it paid for the pension system thus far. However, a potentially shrinking workforce and longer life expectancies have eroded the gains made by higher productivity.
@@aritragupta4182 A large chunk of the working population in the lower income range, particularly men, live to about 71. Similar numbers are true in the US and UK. Tell the highly paid salaried people to work to 78 because their life expectancy is 82 or so. Austerity is the deliberate methodology of plutocratic despotism. The French understand what Macron is doing and to me Macron is simply indulging in free market fundamentalist terrorism.The wealthiest want to return to Tsarist Russia, a world of nobility for billionaires and serfdom for the people.
I feel like we need videos like this just explaining government systems 💀, 18yo College student with no clue how the pension/tax/legal systems work in the countries of which I am a national or the countries in which I have lived
Before seeing this video I was a little skeptical on the French protesting this, but after you've cleared up what happens and what will happen, I can safely say, the French are based and they should keep fighting
Thanks for a more nuanced overview of the situation. Most reporting I've seen has never bothered to explain the details of why people are protesting and just resorted to "the French will protest anything"
to be honest, he skipped a few things : -the president has been under fire for a while because of his behaviour. Like how the gov payed like 1M € to McKinsey for a powerpoint that was never shown? -police violence is a thing. there's many clips on the internet if you search for it. many times a police officer was recorded saying lewd things or being verbally and physically abusive. 2-3 years ago, his security director was caught hitting protesters dressed as a policeman (Alexandre Benalla). -they say unemployment has never been lower, but they actually kicked out a lot of people from the governmental organisation in charge of helping out. -they refused to raise the lower salary treshold. -inflation makes a lot of people uncomfortable financially. Like, people going to NGO to get food is higher than ever.
Maybe the government shouldve read the report theyve asked for and notice that "the pension situation is already under control" according to the COR (conseil d'orientation des retraites) director Economist Michael Zemmour actually qualified this reform as a short term solution to reach deficit caused by their choice of reducing company contributions to the financing of pension
Not to mention the government's choice not to give raises nor recruit more public workers (especially medical staff, which if we follow the rethoric of "the population is aging" we'll need a lot more) is the main reason for the projected deficit... Less raises and workforce mean less contributions to the pension system. But they don't care about the root cause of the issue. All they want is to siphon even more wealth from the working class while leaving the privileged untouched.
@@axel6269 Well, the government hiring people is not the solution to unemployment, and the government not hiring enough people is not the cause. Your solution would cut govt spending on pensions, but would increase govt spending on employee wages.
@@me-myself-i787 The government hiring people *can* be part of the solution to unemployment, especially if the government hires for jobs with a high added-value (such as, you know, medical staff to care for aging population). To pretend otherwise only reveals one's ideological bias. There is no unsurmountable incoming deficit for France's pension fund. It currently earns more than it costs (+3 billion € this year). The government underpaying and underhiring public servants is the main cause for the coming moderate deficit of around -10B€/yr for the next few decades (before the baby boomers pass away). That's not just me saying it, but the COR's (France's pension fund expert consultants) findings. Balancing government budgets is not Macron's actual concern. If it were, he wouldn't have removed the tax on the wealthy, nor would he have created special subsidies for companies (such as the CICE), and he would've taxed the record profits earned by fossil corporations this year, like pretty much every European country did. "Balancing the budget" is merely an excuse to bleed the working class dry while leaving his ultra-wealthy pals untouched.
One of your best videos for a while, great work! This is what tldr is all about... Taking those news stories that we've all seen headlines for, but not understood the context or details until watching this 😊
This video is complete BS. All they do is repeating Macron's talking points for 10 minutes. There's just one problem : those are lies. Straight up lies. Even the neoliberal COR (Conseil d'orientation des retraites) which oversee the pension system recognizes that there is no economic argument for this reform, there is no deficit problem, the system pays for itself and will for at least 50 years.
@@Bob_The_Builder190 Because static images are boring, topic images for slide shows are expensive to obtain (legal licenses), animations about the topic are expensive to produce, and filming the presenter is cheap, but good enough. They have a video somewhere explaining this.
Sometimes when foreigners complain about the French "whining" and that even the raised age wouldn't match their country's age... I think those people are mad at the wrong thing. Be mad your state has got it's priorities worse. Be mad that you're having to work until you only have a couple years left to enjoy life. Don't be mad at people who demand better.
Reminder that increased productivity (and thus profitability) has far outpaced increases in wages. If that was passed on to workers instead of companies we'd easily cover the problem of people getting older
Indeed, if we took that into account (world wide, not only in France), then we'd work 30 hours per week (or less!) and retire at 60 if not earlier, sadly we don't because the rich want to pocket that extra productivity (despite the fact that it is certainly not management/the boss who got more productive, no it's the people doing the actual work - especially those controlling the machines and/or servers which help the company be more productive!)
That's stupid. The goal of any for-profit company is to maximize it's profit and the way it does that is by maximizing its revenues and minimizing its expenses. Workers are an expense therefore every for-profit company will try to pay its workers as little as possible while also trying to make them work as hard as possible. If workers want to be paid more, they have to negotiate with the company. That's the reason labor unions were invented so workers could negotiate collectively thereby increasing their bargaining power.
@WorldWithoutApples This argument doesn't capture the full issue either, though. The extra productivity increase and its subsequent profit increase is not all put into investments into better equipment, r&d, etc. A good chunk of that is put into the few at the top as seen by the absurd wage gap between the 0.1% and 1%, not even compared to the rest of the 99% of earners.
As spaniard I am PROUD of what our french friends are doing. For me the biggest problem for this is that he PASSED the law without a vote. 42-43 years for full pension is demential. LET'S GO FRENCHIES, VIVA LA REVOLUCIÓN Y EL TRACKMANIA!
I doubt this can be addressed in an 8-minute video. These things always go way deeper than they look. There are always (unjust) laws and jurisprudence that impact how much money Social Security has, and nobody seems to discuss whether it's fair that rich-people tax evasion could fill the gaps.
I disagree. In that case it's pretty simple and easy to understand. The opposition tries to find some complicated arguments about how the effects of this change will affect some people more than others and whatnot (and some of these arguments hold some truth but the pensions system is not meant to solve all those issues) but in general it's pretty simple: raising the pension age is largely a consequence of an ageing population that lives longer and has better health than ever. It's possible to not change it but it makes so much sense for public finances and for the economy. Nobody wants to work longer, everybody would rather just receive a pensiona and be on holiday till the end of their lives, and yes it is more tiring to work at 64 than at 60 so it's difficult to accept but the issue is in reality not super complicated. I mean retirement at age 60 would be great, even 55 or 50, but nothing comes free so somebody's going to have to pay (the young)
@@huguesjouffrai9618 No, he's right, although the retirement system is simple on itself, all the implications for the future can go really really deep.
@@huguesjouffrai9618 The system is not losing as much money as they say, the law doesn't do what they claimed it does (remember the 1200€ minimum pension they kept talking about? It was a lie). And if they worried about public finances, they wouldn't pass so many laws to exempt rich people and big corporations from paying taxes.
If he raises it too much, the French parliament might decide to vote no confidence, which would prevent the policy from going into effect and cause Macron to be ousted.
@@me-myself-i787 A transpartisan vote of no confidence was already proposed by senators and deputees against the pension reform, which was rejected by the president of the parliament... The french parliament is under the yoke of Macron and his government!
@@me-myself-i787 well - I don't think he can do this again, because it wasn't a law but a "rectificative finance budget for 2023". He can't rectificate it as many times as he wishes, that would be shut down by the Constitutional Council (the current reform might be shut down as well for that reason, but it's unlikely) - if he decides to make it pass via law, that means he can use the article 49.3, but he can use it only once a year for regular laws. And the prime minister promised she would never use this again for a law, only for budgets (except that's exactly what she was already doing so it's a stupid point), so that would make her a lyer again - and lastly you said that a no confidence vote would oust Macron which is not true. It would oust his prime minister and government
Yes, the age of death in france can be higher than the retirement age, but when we look closer, we realize that 1/4 of the poorest population dies before reaching retirement age.
As a French, I disagree. I hope the following helps to balance the video, which is correct factually, but not the full picture. There exists a body in France that is specifically looking at the pensions : the COR. According to the government, pensions might be in a slight deficit of 12 billions a year, and the COR explains the reason is the income reduction induced by the government : from distributing premiums that do not contribute to the pensions instead of raising wages that do, to reducing the amount of money companies need to contribute to the pension etc... In France, pensions are a common good for workers. It is deffered wage. For now, the deficit can easily be absorbed by the pension's independant treasury until at least 2027 where it will be in a slight overshoot until 2032, where it balances again. Other solutions exist to prevent the deficit & overshoot. The first is to increase the contribution. The second is to increase the number of contributors i.e. reducing unemployment. The third is to reduce pensions. The fourth is to find exceptional contributions for the imparted overshoot. Or a mix of them. The reason we are mad, is that Macron chooses one solution, the most brutal of all, when he puts the system in crisis himself. He doesn't even make it fair, taking into account working conditions, or the fact that women usually are the ones stopping their career to take care of the child, therefore leaving work later than men. And of course, the use of all constitutional tools to avoid a vote on a law that neither the people nor the Assembly is in favor of.
Stopping to work to take care of a child is an individual choice that is the responsibility of the person making that choice. There's kindergartens and schools, there's the possibility of the man stepping up responsibility in fostering children. That's the responsibility of the family, and not the state. If the family makes the wrong choices and it affects one part, then that's their responsibility. Not the state. Take Norway, you know that oil rich country up north that just thrives endlessly on their gas stockpiles. If you compare Norway to France then Norway's government makes more money every single year by having extra female tax paying workers than all their oil and gas revenue. Norway having more female workers is of more importance to their wealth than their entire oil and gas sector. But France is somehow going to cry for all these lazy women that stayed at home with their children instead of contributing to society by working? And because French men are too lazy to do housework and help foster children, compared to Norwegian men? I don't buy that argument at all. If a family decices one of the parents will quit working to raise children, then that's _their choice_ and thus _their responsibility._ If that ends up biting them in the arse once the woman retires, then _that's exactly what they signed up to._
This makes zero sense if you consider that in a few years there won't exist reforms to anyone. The system will collapse and people need to save money while they work, and not depend from the pension. In fact, retirement pension should be just given to people in real need, not to everybody.
The French system looks fairly stingy to me... 50% of your 25 best-paid work years just makes sure that your years as underpaid cashier at Macdonalds don't get into the final sum. And in those 25 years, you still need to make sure you buy your own house and set enough money aside. Macron just wants to please his many corporate friends.
@Apsoy Pike The real issue isn't even retirement age in its own, the real issue is that Macron uses laws that allow him to pass a law without vote at the assembly, and he ignores completely the democratic system and millions of protesters. Interestingly, he decided not to touch the retirement plans of his politician friends, nor that of the police forces, who also got extra cash. The real issue is Macron becoming a literal dictator. Even Putin lets his laws be voted at the kremlin. Sure, the people there are all in his pocket and would never contradict him, but still. This is just so you get reference how evil the french government has become.
As a French person studying the Social Security System, this video is... okay for vulgarisation. Will probably make people think twice before saying the French don't like to work! One thing though. You mention that there's indeed a 14% of GDP spent in pensions here in France and that is correct (it would be more 13% post-COVID though). Yes it's double to the OECD average. However, you seem to imply that this choice looks weird and in itself justifies a pensions reform. But it's not that simple again. This is historically the results of two things: - the introduction of a generous social security system throughout the 20th Century (~1890-1945 mostly) which was added to the program of the French Resistance during WWII; - the reforms of François Mitterrand you mentioned in your protests' video. As it is historically part of French society, in the end, this very high pensions/GDP ratio is a part of the French social contract in the end. It is a choice we have made. Reducing this share is a highly political and risky move that changes the social contract for a ton of French people, explaining the protests. This is why the approach you present would definitely be seen as a pro-Macron one. In fact the ratio pensions/GDP was taken by Macron himself, as he argued we spent "too much on social security" for years now; in the 2019 reform, he wanted to reduce the share of pensions to around 10% of our GDP. A goal he maintains with this reform (although as far as I'm aware, not publicly). The worst is that in your protest video (at 3:55, not this video, the other one, the "Figure 2.19"), you show a graph issued from the annual report of Conseil d'Orientation des Retraites (COR). This COR thing showed two "conventions": - EPR or "équilibre permanent des régimes": this is where the pensions regimes paid by public authorities (for their own employees, around 5M people in France) and of complementary regimes (that are organised differently depending on the type of job you practice, but are still mandatory; they serve to add more money than the 50% basis you described in this video, restoring nearly your entire wage actually) are balanced to their current levels. In this scenario, no one pays more than required to balance both regimes, and that would mean, as GDP grows, a reduction (in relative terms) of social security contributions and of the pensions/GDP ratio. In this scenario, mostly showed by the Government, the balance is indeed negative in three GDP average annual growth scenario. So big trouble if you take that one. - EEC or "effort de l'État constant" : this is where public authorities would keep their current effort going, at a fixed rate of 2% of GDP for public pensions. It would mean to raise contributions, but at the same pace as GDP grows - which means it shouldn't affect public workers' incomes, as the State derives its resources from GDP increases (thanks notably to the very French invention of VAT here). (There's actually a third one, TCC which is constant rates of social security contributions, which gives a mixed result but closer to the EEC one). The point is: take the EEC convention, you have no pensions deficit in 3 growth scenarios out of 4. Take the EPR one, which means no more effort from the State and complementary regime, and you have pensions deficit up to 13 billions in the worst case scenario. I find it weird you mention basically the worst case scenario, which is why it kind of sounds macronist and not neutral. However to your credit you present another option - taxing the rich - which could be another way round. Macron doesn't want this either because it's his friends or because of ideological reasons like "it will hurt our competitivity". But it's truly an alternative Spain has recently used, actually. But it's not the only one!
The ideal solution would be to properly tax the multinational companies who keep reporting increased profits every year, but the problem is that they'll resort to all kinds of loopholes to avoid paying what they're due. And if they don't get their way they'll just take their business elsewhere to a country with more laxed rules, that's the biggest issue of living in a globalized economy.
No we could impact them a lot by simply not giving them any "public" money, paid by the government (so thanks to taxes), that were supposed to increase employment but instead goes to sharholders thanks to the loopholes you mentionned. And if they threaten to leave the country we already know how much they avoided paying so we can simply threaten them back with that. All in all, macron is just the slave of vanderlayen and billionaires, the reform makes no sense since it's actually not in a deficit and won't be. Yes, you heard that right.
Living conditions can be better in some places than in others, I sure hope my country doesn't decide to give up welfare state mechanisms because in Uganda they have it worse. The same applies when comparing France to the USA or Italy really. Let the French or any country do it better if they can, and I just think they can. We are just giving too much power to investors around the globe, letting them get more and more of our work for less and less compensation. We need to check our priorities and live by them.
Living longer doesn't mean that you need to work longer. The only reason people in the west do is because their governments got complicit and refuse to tax companies fairly.
Exactly, they can't keep it forever, we need systems where people work even less. Or have jobs so satisfying that people just choose to work until they want. Sounds unfeasible for now, but that's where we should be heading. What Macron is doing right now really is backwards. Happy for the protests.
I kinda agree with Macron in this one. Japan is pretty cutting edge technological and they use all source of technology to tackle aging workforce, but aging population is still devastated from economic POV. But I agree that he should also take on other methods too.
@Zaydan Alfariz The question is just how long they can continue? I think its remarkable how long Japan is holding up and i think most other nations would have collapsed allready in japans situation, but i dont know how long they can keep going. THey are decades ahead in the demographic crisis, than most other industry nations and have currently the highest debt in the world.
There is also one thing that is not mentioned that much outside of France, so I will lay it here. If you consider the French between 55 and 62, only around 30% of them are employed. That means that a majority of French people will stop working around 57, not because they want to, but because they HAVE TO: they're laid off, and are wanted nowhere because they're too old and tired. I know it is a problem everywhere, but France is extremely bad in this context. Now take into account that we owe the State 42 (soon 43) years of work. If we will get laid around 57, no matter what, then this reform will just make us wait two more years for a pension that is as reduced as before.
@@tim3440because French people rely too much on their State ❤ but nobody wants to pay taxes and all the leftist are destroying the streets and throwing rocks at the State cops. Go figure if Putin is not behind all the social media manipulation. 😢
@@tim3440 That is not the issue. For most French, getting a job after 50 is almost impossible, because noone wants you. The wider problem is that there is not enough job "reserved" (as in conceived for) senior workers.
@@tim3440 Yes obviously, everyone above 55 just magically becomes a senior manager. The ones who instead get fired (so the firm can hire fresh underpaid juniors in their place) should have planned for it and deserve to die in poverty i guess. U.S style neo-capitalism is melting your brain my guy. 2 comments i see from you. Both extremely stupid.
Ridiculous how people are set free basically when they are 70 years old, sure you can be healthy and happy at that age, but I’d much rather be free while I’m at my full potential.
What are you talking about? When you're at your full potential you want to maximise your income. The fact you need to be on a pension at 70 is not liberating.
Great video as always. Quick note though, the indicator of how many workers per retirement is not very pertinent as workers are producing more wealth than in 2000, and hopefully will produce more later on. As you correctly stated later on, but worker per pensionner isn't an accurate mesure. Thanks for all the videos and work you're doing!
The real problem is not going from 42 to 43 years of work to gain full pension, it s about the minimum retirement age going from 62 to 64. I mean, people who work from a young age often work in low qualified and physically demanding jobs. Of course a CEO did not start to work at 16 but a construction worker might. So by raising the age, you're asking him to work litteraly for others once he reaches 42 years...
French here and just a few mistakes : The reform will not help with the deficit (he did too many compromise with the more right party in the senate) so it was the communication that the governement gave but in facts it will not. You didn't speak about the COR and the fact that this deficit would be only in 1 on 4 different estimations (in the other one we have a stable system) and the fact that in 30 years the system would be stable again without any need for a reform. If you listen to Macron interview he is explaining that it's not just for the pension system that he is doing this reform but to be able to use the money for his politics (like tax cut). Also the INSEE said that the life expentancy is not going to increase anymore. To finish I know it's not the subject of this video but now the crisis is not exactly about the pension retirement system but more about what kind of society we want and what kind of democracy we want. 94% of the people working in France are against this reform (or the way it was done) so also managers and entreprise owners.
You're deluded. No system just "balanced itself" because you wish it so. France unions are the problem. They're against every reforms and refuse to engage to any discussion leading the government to rely on far right parties. Another problem is the French's love of protests. Maybe you should run for office with a slogan "retire at 60 and free money for everyone".
@@luanpham0586 And you understand our pension system better than the state administration who oversee it ? Or you are just here to troll ? Some of the french union want to reform (CFDT are famous for that) they are just unite against this reform in particular and it's quite rare but you behind your computer you will know better than more of the 75% of french people (94% of the people working) who are against this reform.
@@alganis3339 are you questioning my understanding of the problem or it's your way of evading the problem? The problem with the unions the French in general is their love of protests. They're like a bunch of kids who throw tantrums because some adults try to solve a problem. The law is not set in stone . Don't like it? Run for office and change the retirement age, not give a protest every school holiday like the CGT The CFDT supports the protest because they don't want to be seen as the only union against it. Stop making a fool of yourself lol
@@luanpham0586 I wasn't clear enough ? Yes I'm questioning your understanding of the problem because your argument against the union is BS. So because all the unions are against this reform they are baddies ? What do you think about the COR in this case ? Or about the 94% of people working who are also against it ? Also not agreeing that the CFDT is a union pro reform compare to the others (just not this one) is truly not understanding France.
@@alganis3339 lol now it's my turn to question your understanding of the health of the French state. France is an old inefficient bureaucratic state. Maybe you benefit directly from that rotten system that you don't want to change. The unions are not baddies because they're against the reform. They're baddies because they're against every reform and take the whole country hostage. Back in 2019, the unions staged protests even before they knew what was in the reform. Again, you're proud of being french or loving protests are really a shame. You live in a democratic state but you don't know how to use your power as a citizen, instead you think France should be in the 6th republic at a drop of a hat. That's why I'm telling you that French people are like children. They need to be told what to do and throw tantrums when some adults take their toys away lol
France Spends 14% of GDP for citizens to live 20 years (Some longer) without working. Whilst it is completely reasonable to care for the elder and for retirement, with ageing populations, it becomes increasingly unsustainable. Increasing Taxes might not be the way to do it. Increase in tax revenues are correlated with decreased productivity due to lower investment. Never forget that due to the majority of the tax revenue coming from the middle class, increase in taxes will always affect the middle class more than the larger corporations. On the other hand, if we want to increase productivity with a smaller work force, only techonological advancement can help us do this. And as we all see, most companies that do the advancements are not in europe. Europe's expansive Tax codes and tough regulations have made it completely infeasable to keep investing in R&D in Europe. Europe used to represent close to 40% of world GDP in the mid to late 90's, right now representing close to 15% of the world's GDP. Maybe the very high pension payments we have been making in the last 20 years are one of the reasons of this stagnation that Europe has felt, especially the countries that are ageing the fastest (Portugal, Spain, Italy, etc.) On an ethical note, keeping life easy for pensioners at the expense of higher taxes on the younger population when they are facing much higher expenses when it comes to housing and electricity is completely ridiculous, especially considering that when their time to retire comes around, there will not be enough money for them to do so... Not to mention economical suicide, as we are making a transfer of wealth from highly educated young workers to non-producing people in the economy, who tend to have much less spending and consumption, harming the economy long term, discouraing work and new innovation even further. Whilst his method of bypassing parliament is completely immoral, wrong, and should be illegal, the reforms themselves are necessary.
We can also just do away with pensions and give everybody over the age of 25 the option to commit suicide(as a healthcare option) with state funding if they wishes for it(with some restrictions such as if you are a parent or if you have dependents),just a thought
Not much productivity to increase here. The most productive countries per working hour are almost exclusively European. The Problem are the low birth rates and a low influx of highly qualified migrants
@@heyho4770 just because European countries are extremely productive that does not mean that there are no productive industries to keep investing in, or to grow. Nonetheless, assuming that there is nothing to increase on productivity, then taxing more and increasing permanent spending and debt will only keep fueling European stagnation.
I wasn't aware of the complicated criterias for getting the pension in France. Increasing the pension age has always seemed like kicking the can down the road to me. The current way the pension systems work around Europe especially doesn't work, it's simply a pyramid scheme! It's bad for the state, because they have to maintain something that doesn't work and it's bad for the pensioners for many many reasons: First, you pay a lot for it, too much even. Second, the government dictates when you can get your pensions, basically locking it away by adding criterias. Thirdly, you may never get to use it if you die early, nobody will inherit it either, free money for the government! We need a better system, I don't know what that looks like, but no, taxing the rich more is not the solution either, one should be able to afford retirement just by working.
Its true that everything should not be seen as just considering tax the rich, france is a very equal country and by all standards well ahead of the US in terms of the gini coefficient which measures inequality in income. However you need to remember is that retirement does come form an income it comes from wealth. You cant retire while paying rent, its just not possible you must plan to die early in retirement for you to be able to live your life in a rental complex. This is what the French people have a fuss with, the fact you cant work your entire life and still need to live on the roads just doesnt settle with people. This is what leads to more radicalization, the fact you could toil away your entire life and still not be able to achieve what you consider the bare minimum is something that really needs to be understood by people. Macron could easily pass The reform bill if he wished to by changing a few clauses which allowed people who started working at 16, 17, 18 ages to be allowed to retire at 62 or even 60. They dont because of the free money thing you pointed at. I stand by a need for reform of the retirement system, developed nations are loosing population faster than they can increase productivity which leads to more unsustainable pensions. But people should come together as a society to atleast fulfill the most basic needs of its people before it starts giving that money to the few powerful individuals.
If that's the reaction for raising the retirement age to 64, then I don't think it's realistic at all to convince the french to switch to a capitalization pension system (sadly)
@@yuvrajguglani821 I'd say that if someone has worked their entire life and still doesn't have enough money to retire, it is an unusual situation. This could be due to factors such as low earnings, periods of unemployment, or poor money management habits. It is important to be empathetic and understand that people face a wide range of life situations and challenges. That being said, it is not the pension system but the social security and the broader social safety net, to ensure people live with dignity! Listen people! If you're in your 40+ and don't have a penny saved up and no plan for retirement, do something about it, don't wait for Macron or anyone else to fix that for you.
It's not a pyramid scheme. If the population is balanced it work well. THe proplem is we have to deal with the baby boom generation coming to retirement but it's a one generation problem.
Just look up the 401K coverage in the USA to see how responsible people are with their retirement money when given the choice (social security expenses for retirees have increased massively because of this). Making pension contributions a choice just makes sure that in the future we will have to get the money on a last minute notice when the pensioners start dying on the streets.
My take as a Frenchman, being directly impacted by that “necessary” reform: - the main argument you’ll hear in favor of the reform is a lie masquerading as common sense: “The current system was designed in the Fifties and was meant for four actives sustaining one pensioner, we no longer have a 4/1 ratio” True, YET: the productivity has skyrocketed in those 70 years, I work more hours, with less crew, for more clients, than when I started 25 years ago, while my wage has been shrunk (not frozen: shrunk, by a good 40% once inflation is taken into account). The second lie regards the impossibility to cover an “unfathomable” deficit. The deficit is of about 10Bn/year and will disappear once the baby boomer are gone, in about 20 years. So that’s, all in all, a 200bn deficit over 20 years. This knowing that every year France gives 180Bn to companies in tax deductions and grants. This plus the 80Bn yearly fraud. So yes, this pension is NOT necessary, it is only aimed at making the French give their money to pension funds (most of them foreign) and become more individualistic (read: easier to exploit since they’ll be less united/defended). Revolution!
Well, France only has one colony left to leech on (Guiana), and the abundant wealth of colonies just led the people to become "lazy" , so there isn't much of a chance for a so called progress... They will deliver the punch on the ones who do the most labour though, and this is stupid.
Whether you agree or not, I feel the biggest issue is that he is trying to push it through instead of finding a middle ground solution. It just seems like he vehemently doesn’t want it anyway but his way and in such is pushing it through. Props to the French for protesting about it though and actually doing something!
He tried. NUPES then put thousands of amendments. We would still be “finding the middle ground” in 4 years. The 49.3, since Macron has arrived, has only been used because LFI adds thousands of amendments to block the law. LR, PS and “les écolo” played the game and proposed few amendments which were incorporated in, most of the time. But since they are legally required to debate every single amendments, the only way to bypass that is 49.3, so thank LFI for this mess. Too bad because PS actually had good propositions.
if the french actually WANTED TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE PESNIONS, they would actually MAKE MORE CHILDREN. instead of crying about pensions like some lazy fcks
Middle ground solution? They already did it in the senate! That's where you do compromise. In fact, the original proposal was to rise pension age to 65, not 64. Now it's just 64, wtf is he supposed to do? Raise it by 6 months to show he has compromised? Would just be a waste of time
Jokes aside he isn't doing this because he wants to. He could have ignored the issue and not become a figure of hate for generations. He's the Batman of politicians.
Well, for the billionaires there is always more money to be handed out; but not for workers and pensioners. Balancing the books is always done by cutting in workers and pensioners, not in taxing correctly. Pls. do not perpetuate this fallacy of balancing the books: a country is not a company.
At least here in Canada for a long time, we had a lot of 'crown corporations' companies that weren't necessarily profit motivated but were designed to provide public services and good jobs and wages. Unfortunately, every time we vote in Conservative governments they sell them off to the private sector who end up jacking up prices and or mismanaging them to the point where they crumble. (Canada previously had a crown corp that made vaccines, the right-wing sold them off and so when the pandemic hit we were begging other countries for their left over vaccines. It was pathetic given that we used to be an international leader in the field.) Unfortunately, American Capitalism has become the norm for the world, and there is this messed up assumption that every advancement in technology and efficiency should only benefit rich shareholders rather than the general population (who often paid for the roads, schools, medical care etc for those brilliant people who figure out how to do things better.) So unfortunately we figure out how to do things better/easier/with less labour and instead of that benefiting everyone, the assumption is that it should only benefit the owner of the company. While yes we need to tax these massive companies more, we also need to change the laws around how companies are supposed to act. Behaving like a sociopath where the only thing you need to think about is profit should be illegal. There should be a maximum wage for executives relative to their lowest-paid employees. And dividends should be taxed progressively to discourage shareholders from demanding huge payouts. Also dividends should have to be matched with cash bonuses to employees over and above a living wage.
Profit should be the only thing driven a company, welfare shouldn't be anywhere near economic entities. I live in singapore, the government pay me, the insane thought that the governments have control over land rights and natural resources take your money from you is stupid. There are numerous governments owned company in sg, they participate in the economy like every other company, they pay normal wages, taxed like everyone else and performed better tremendously than private companies, paying copius amount of money to the government which gave us money which can buy those things from them again(cheap housing, electricity, internet, fuel, ...). Interventionism doesn't work, the longer you take to understand that, the more poverty will endure. Taxing corporations will only make them leave your nation unless you have capital control laws like China.
@@bachvandals3259 What you're describing is a sociopath. You can't ask a company to behave like a sociopath and then expect it to treat it's workers fairy, pay them fairly or even follow laws. Which is why so many do none of those things. Companies should serve people not theo ther way around.
@@DavidMalcolm describe "fairly", we have one the highest gdp in the world along with the highest salaries and work benefit, your government owned companies are money drain that shouldn't exist, ours are prosperous healthy competitors. Your public companies disregard the market, providing horrible services at horrendous prices with no innovations. Dont use pseudoscientific terms to describe a thing that cant have emotion, you didn't even try to debate the aspect that your worthless companies should exist in the first place. If your goal is welfare, why dont you just pay the peoples? Why force them to go and pretend to work? And what do you mean follow the laws? Our companies follow the laws and regulations completely, public companies shouldn't have any privileges than private, thats what you are arguing against.
@@bachvandals3259 tbf, 'sociopath' isn't a pseudoscientific term. While Corporations don't have emotions, the outwards behavioral tendencies that they display do often resemble the outward behavioral tendencies of sociopaths. Which is why the comparison exists.
belgian here. retirement age is currently 65 but it will become 67 in 2030 max i think. and i know so many people, parents, family friends, who are in their say 50s and who stop working because of depression or burn out. they end up on paid leave which is significantly lower than their wage, and sometimes they just never go back to work and end up retiring early. it is a real problem here and it's costing a lot to the state and i feel like it's probably going to happen to france too if it's not already happening. poor wages, poor working conditions and not seeing the end of the tunnel make people slip and give up on their careers and they end up miserable and costing way more to the state than if they had been treated decently
Hello, you have a little problem. You have inside your bibliography 3 time the same article. Could you find the other article? It is difficult to not to say that it is controversial, i hope this is a mistake.
Incorrect analysis around 6:40 The ratio active/retirees does not matter. What matter are the productivity and the cost of the pension system as a % of GDP. A report from the Pensions Advisory Council (Conseil d'Orientation des Retraites or COR), an official body which depends from the Prime Minister office, shows that the pensions stabilize at 14.7% of GDP by 2070. It takes into account demographic trends and economic growth and unemployment assumptions. Who is to say that dedicating 14% of GDP, for people who have worked all their life and who continue contributing to society after they retire, is too much? It is a political decision. Each country can make this decision for itself. The question of whether the revenues of the pension system come from social charges on labor or from other sources of the public budget, is just a second order technicality.
France should move to a contribution based system, with individual accounts. People are forced to save, say 15% of their income into that account, which can be used to invest in cheap ETFs or similar, and once they reach a certain age they are allowed to draw from the account, a % annually or to convert to an annuity.
We didn't want a system like that. We were proud of our more social and fair system (it's normally in our devise : Equality). This governement and some before are just destroying that.
Due to the insanely high level of communism currently shared by these indoctrinated generations they don't want to hear about that and prefers to pile up on their communist retirement ponzi scheme
Your video does answer the question you set in the title ("Are France's Pensions Actually Unaffordable?"), but it does not answer the one you set in the thumbnail ("Is Macron Right?"). Yep, it's pretty easy to argue that our pensions are expensive and we need to find new means to finance them. Let's just highlight one thing though: most French protesters *know* that, and they're saying that it doesn't mean that the average worker (already hit by record-high inflation and poverty) should have to pay for them. You're right to point it out at the end of the video: there are so many means to pay for them, most of which Macron would never want to consider (i.e. taxing the rich, let's all remember that one of the first measures implemented by Macron in 2017 was to get rid for the fortune tax (ISF)).
There is a misunderstanding about social welfare in France. It is not technically government spending. It's a public entity that is not gouvernement and that has it's own budget and décision making process
@@Blashmack No it's not taxes. It's what we call "cotisations" ("contributions" would be a somewhat acceptable translation). The system is completely different from taxes. The main difference being : - with taxes, you collect them, then you see what it amounts to, and decide what to do with said amount - with cotisations, you chose how many you want to spend for each item, then you adjust the collection accordingly to get the amount needed It's a huge simplification and the system has been complicated since 1996 (with the implication of the state in the way the collected sums are used), but that's the general gist of it.
@@funram Okay, sounds similar to what most European countries have. Let's be honest though, if the "cotisations" are mandatory and it's not possible to opt out of the social welfare contribution system, then they are kind of same as taxes but with just another name.
@@Blashmack they are not taxes again. Taxes open 0 right. Contributions offers guarantees. This not just a technical debate. This is fundamentally different. The public retirement system is a Insurance system. Basically when you pay your contributions each months it guarantees you a certain level of life (and not a level of money !) when you retire. You pay to finance the people who are retired, and in exchange you will be payed by the people who works when you retire.
It's a unique system, that doesn't allow worser to chose their pension plan or health care provider, who gets financed entirely decided by the French state. It is indeed a different entity, but not independent from the state
Thank you for this video. This really explained a lot. I think the problem is similar in all countries of the world: the retirement system was created ages ago when people were expected to live much shorter lives and society assumed everyone would have children, it was their paradigm and made sense at the time. Yet, since then, people has little or no children and live way longer. Yet the system was not updated to adapt to these huge changes. This reform, of which I doubt will actually help, is, at most, a band-aid. The problem persists and is not being addressed.
The system was already reform many times. This video don't seem to take all the informations given by the COR (the french administration in charge of overseeing the pension system) or given by most of the economists in France with the stats of the INSEE (administration in charge of french stat like demography). They seem to only take Macron numbers especially by saying that it's to avoid a deficit when this reform will not help with that.
I'm not sure about other countries but the French system is basically self sustaining, has been for over 100 years, including war decimation and has the great benefit of being for and by the people (ie no hostile capitalistic structure feeding off the debt of those they are supposed to support). The reform brings the French working people in the hands of hostile foreign funds and creates a debt. It's a scam and because it's not the only one at play the French will not back down. They will prevail, it's basic French history
that example is highly misleading, the median wage in France is 23280 EUR, so most people never even come close to earning 50K a year, so take 50% of the median for a pension and it doesn't look that generous
@@SelfProclaimedEmperor And immediately ensure NOBODY wants to do business with you, driving yourself into bankruptcy. Even if you don't like it, you have to be reasonable and provide circumstances for these companies because *you just can't do without them*
You have no evidence for that claim. By your logic any tax above 0% would see companies leave the country, which is demonstrably untrue. Companies whose primary (or only) source of income is from French customers are not going to leave France because they have to pay more in taxes, that doesn't make any sense. Any decrease in profits from increased taxes would be vastly outweighed by them annihilating their primary source of income and gambling that they can get anywhere near the same amount in another country. Not to mention, you can tax entities in a variety of ways, like tariffs, where even if they leave if they try to make any money within the borders of France the state can receive taxes from them.
State pensions are inherently flawed in a population trending towards older age. There will not be enough working people to fund state pensions in all European countries soon.
when you get used to injustice You will feel that the protest of the French is very unreasonable, which is a natural and unreasonable thing This is something I see all the time on the internet😂😂
I think you missed the point, a lot of us protest against the government, this is just the straw that broke the camel's back, like some years ago the petroleum price during the yellow jacket period
if the french actually WANTED TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE PESNIONS, they would actually MAKE MORE CHILDREN. instead of crying about pensions like some lazy fcks And no you are missing the point. FRENCH RETIREMENT SYSTEM is NOT sustainable. EVERY OTHER EU COUNTRY WORK LONGER THAN THE FRENCH
@@alganis3339 what more productivity? YOU NEED PEOPLE TO CONSUME, TO BUY AND SELL THINGS. That is how economies growth and expand. YOU ALSO NEED MORE PEOPLE, to fund the pension system. ngga you want to improve productivity? HOW you going to buy yourself a robot arm??? LMAO stpid bchboy
Everything is a balancing act that there is no easy solution here. Raising taxes on companies would raise revenue, but in a country with a 7% unemployment rate you're at risk of sending that that already high number even higher.
I started officially (paying social security tax) working at age 15. Used my first paycheck to buy tickets to see "Star Wars" a couple weeks after it came out. At best I only spent a total of a couple of years not working. So 59 would be my pension age if the US had this kind of system. Or 64 using Macron's plan I guess. It is not a ridiculous amount of time.
Agreed, but ensuring you work for a company that has a decent employers pension is very sensible and then you can retire much earlier. I retired at 50 and immediately received my employers pension. Whilst it was less than if I had worked longer, it was sufficient and my quality of life improved.
@@askog1900 It’s not 42, but 43 (already voted a long time ago, in application very soon). And it’s absolutely terrible, one of the worse in Europe (35 in Germany, 37 in Spain, 40 in Greece, 42 in Italy, 40 in Portugal, 40 in Hungary.) Studied years don’t count and it’s only very recently that maternity leaves stated to be counted. It’s a full 43 years of continuous work with no unemployment (unemployment in France is very high.) If you starts working at 18 yo, you’re only allowed ONE year of unemployment if you wont to retire at 62. If you studied, you can forget getting your full pension at 62 or even 64.
Taxing McKinsey wouldn't work - anyone with any degree of sense knows that. Taxing companies for shortfalls reduces their competitiveness, which in turn lowers their ability to finance the exact shortfall you're trying to cover.
Basically the answer is no, it’s just a political choice because Macron is choosing not to tax billionaires and Billion € companies such as Total energie or McKinsey & companies which the French see as being unfair as they themselves pay up to 47% in income taxes.
Wouldn't they just leave france for the most part like they did before?( the billionaires) Also aren't they already getting taxed a shit load or have to comply with very worker friendly laws?
France has one of the highest taxes on the wealthy anywhere. So much so, a lot of wealthy French people left the country, which was the opposite of what they were trying to achieve…
I basically agree, the rich should contribute more instead of hoarding wealth. I do want to point out that none of the people demonstrating in the streets pay anything close to the top tax bracket (45 % this year). Most pay something like 20-25 %.
@@takgillo They already left in majority French yes. They are already in countries like Singapore or Luxenbourgh or Liechtenstein or Monaco. It is wishthinking what cheddar Rayon does.
I'm sure some protesters are simply against the non-democratic method used by Macron. Surely this should have been mentioned in the video (or did I miss it?)
He doesn't care because he is not allow to run again for presidency. And you can be sure that he will get some nice job as an advisor or some shit like that in the private sector. He is definitly not sacrificing himself for us
Totally agree on this one. Every single capitalist country is going through the same thing, yet they act like Macron is personally stealing their money for himself.
@@misterlinux9290 the only reason he could do that is the fact that he can't be re-elected and he leads a personal party which is hopeless without it. Not easy to replicate in a parliamentary system. That being said, Italy managed to set retirment age at 67 (although full of exceptions added later) only because we were going bankrupt and invented the so called "technocratic government" so that politicians could blame the technocrats And save themselves
Another issue that was not mentioned is just how raising the retirement age is a reform that was proven to not work in France previously. The age was raised several times in the past decade. In fact, it was 60 years a bit over 10 years ago. Every increase is said to be to fix the deficit, but none ever fixed it. It's trying to fight the effects (the deficit) by only moving one of the two causes (the number of retirees and their pensions). 50% of your highest paid years means that low-wage workers might not be able to afford life with their pension (some are never able to buy a house in their life, and the renting life or paying a mortgage is already too expensive for them) while high-wave workers who gained a lot of money in their life not only still get a pension that would be considered good for most but also had the opportunity to save earlier in their life, get a private pension, get a company pension, and getting passive revenues on their assets on top of that. There is a cap on the base pension, but the number of exceptions makes it easy for someone well-prepared to earn way more from that single source. I would know, my grandparents were on either side, with one not earning enough to live and the other earning more than I'll probably be paid at the end of my career.
Do the French put anything aside for their own retirement or do they rely solely on a government pension? Before I even began working back in my teens, I knew that Social Security would not likely be enough because seem like a bit of a Ponzi scheme. So I put my own money aside through the years.
Aha. And apparently you consider pension funds less of a Ponzi scheme? Shall I refresh your memory about what happened in 2008? How many people among the poorest were swindled and ended up ruined or homeless?
@@__xxx_xxx__ How were the poor people swindled? Most just were bad credit risk. It was like hiring someone for an mechanical engineering position who only had formal education up through the secondary level. Both sides knew there are short-comings in the way of a successful conclusion.
It's difficult to show a totally accurate assessment. But one thing I would say is this: if you have a glass and a jug of water then how full your glass is depends, naturellement, on how much you (and your employers, and Mr State) pour in. If yours doesn't slake your thirst, better pour some more in. The daftest bit is that if you retire at 67 in France it seems you get a full whack- even if you've spent decades down the pub.....
Why ain't nobody talking about the "constitutional" anti-democratic technicality ARTICLE 49.3 ? How could you force a bill without voting in a supposed democracy?
Step 1: Make the age reversing treatment (successful tests on animals, cellular age decreased) widespread. Step 2: Everyone is perpetually 25 years old Step 3: Pensions are pointless as there are no old people Step 4: Global economic collapse averted. Step 5: Population for solar system colonistation acquired.
Honestly, we can't just look at the national average and treat everyone equally, 25% of French are dead *before* the minimum retirement age of 62, plus Macron puts that money elsewhere: -more budget in army (very useful I know, especially when being geographically far from wars) -Much of public money was put into companies in the covid period (well that's kinda normal, but now that some companies are making huge profits, they should be taxed as much) -pensions are calculated from salaries, so rich people who have already got much money receive also much money (why??) So yeah, Macron's just trying to hide all his favorable treatment to rich people.
The framing of this video is ridiculous. It doesn't matter what minimum retirement age systems completely different from the French system implemented. It doesn't matter how costly the French system is. The only thing that matters is : can it pays for itself ? And the answer is : yes. Yes it does pay for itself. There is no structural deficit, there is no problem to finance it, the system is not failing and will not fail no matter the circumstances for at least the next 50 years (there aren't any projection that looked at what would happen after 2070).
Plus the whole "there is not enough workers to pay for it", "only 1.9 worker per pensioner", etc, is BS : a French worker produces more value in 2023 than 20 French workers in 1970. France is the country where productivity increased the most in the last 50 years, and that's by design. We CHOSE increases in productivity over other factors such as access to ownership or low employment rate in order to secure our social system, which is independent from the state and pays for itself. Sadly, neoliberals spent the last 30 years lobbying for getting rid of it despite it working just as intended because social insurances could be a lucrative private industry for their billionnaire friends, and the media have been repeating their lies for decades.
look at this sht eater LMAO. IT DOES PAY FOR ITSELF BUDDY. HOW CAN IT??? if the POPULATION SHRINKS??? also workers are more efficient than workers in 1970. AND??? IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE AN ARCHIEVEMENT? thats like comparing apples to oranges. low employment WILL GET WORSE not better, because half of africa will arrive in france. AND THEY aree not know to be hard workers.
@@mkmc94 Excédent de 900 millions en 2021 et de 3,5 milliards en 2022... Il faut arrêter de mentir cette réforme est un choix politique afin que le système redevienne excédentaire et que l'état reduise après ses propres cotisations (notamment avec une réduction de fonctionnaire) ou ce qui permettrait d'avoir plus d'argent pour continuer la politique de suppression de taxes.
Thank you so much... it's so hard to find nuanced views on the complexities of maximum benefit pensions which come close to the level which we talked about them when I was taking public finance in college. Keep up the good work!
A "detail" that never gets mentioned in this conversation: the cap on retirement pay-ins. If you earn more than 27€/h, your pay in stops increasing, making it not even a flat tax but a regressive tax above tjat amount. at rate. But those people are the core of his base and lobbyists so...
I'm a 33yo french man that will never be retired due to unusual life path 😅 I've watched and appreciated your content following this situation, Thank you for going into the details this way ;) I think it's not a surprise that the birth rate is in decline when the situation is indeed so unsafe... With better economic conditions, and including better retirement conditions, people would actually be more confident to have babies in the future -_- It's the snake eating his own tail...
Frances entire pension deficit could be funded by Jeff Bezos for 50 years. Yep, 1 single person could find the retirement of 10’s of millions. Let that sink in….
28-year-old French here. Like almost everyone I know, and most of my generation, I won't be able to retire before 67, *even if the 'legal age' remained at 62.* That's bc my generation typically studied 5 years of uni (Bachelor's degree = 3 years, Master's = 2 years). Add in a gap year and/or a few trimesters looking for a job after uni, and virtually no one in my generation really started their careers before 24. Since you need to have worked 43 years, the de facto legal age to retire is 24+43= *67 already.* So we're not really protesting to retire at 62. But consider this:
- All jobs aren't the same. I work sitting at my desk and I'd probably be alright working till I'm 70. But setting the same age for a nurse who needs to lift patients, a delivery person, an industrial or agricultural worker, etc is just absurd. Some people just work more physically demanding jobs. Coincidentally, they generally start working earlier, have a lower income, lower life expectancy, and lower healthy life expectancy than the national average. And, btw, *they* were the essential workers who carried everyone else on their backs during the Covid pandemic. Calculating everything on the national average is unfair.
- Having *both* a minimum legal age *and* a minimum worked years is unfair. Because you need to satisfy *both* criteria OR reach the age of 67, it means that someone who started working at 16 will typically have to work for 48 years in a physically demanding job; while someone who had very long studies and started working at, say, 27, and then had a desk job their whole life would only have to work 40 years. *It should be the other way around.* (EDIT: that was true of the initial government proposal. In the amended version that the government bypassed Parliament with, there are some compensations to account for people who started their careers early, essentially making 44 worked years the maximum. Still, 44 years for typically low-pay, physically demanding jobs vs 43 for the average worker and potentially even less for high-earning, physically non-demanding jobs is unfair. Again, it should be the other way around).
- Consider this: in Italy, where the 'legal' retirement age is 67, you can retire after only 35 working years if you've worked in a physically demanding job. So while on paper the theoretical retirement age is 'higher' in Italy, their system is actually a lot more fair and would probably go down a lot better with the French public than Macron's scheme.
- All in all, this reform aims at saving about €10B a year on pensions, but this amount is saved *entirely* on the pensions of lower-income, blue-collar workers who have a lower life expectancy and a lower healthy life expectancy than the national average. Macron could have saved, say, half of this amount by taxing high-income pensioners a bit more -- but he won't, as they represent the overwhelming majority of his electorate and are pretty much the only ones who support his reform.
Not to mention, bypassing Parliament shouldn't be an option. It might be constitutional, but it's wildly undemocratic. Even more so when 2/3 of the population and 90% of the working age population is against your reform.
*This* is why we're protesting.
PS: my grandma, who retired this year at the ripe age of 80 after having worked a white-collar job for almost 60 years (yeah, she's a bit of a workaholic and really loved her job) is against the reform because she can see that it's unfair to the nurses who take care of her.
How about this, instead of mandating legal age, just get a letter from Social Security bureau as part of pay slip, stating this: If you retire now, your pension will be... and retire once you are happy with the sum. Feel free to retire after one month of work with 0.4 centr per month or at 100 with 3000 euros. Hardworking people at physical jobs will see this and demand higher wage (hence higher tax and contribution) and no stupid definitions of what is and is not demanding job will be obsolete. Every job is hard. I work at desk, but I will be braindead by 70.
I do hope the protests amounts to something better such as lowering working years to 38 instead of 43. This is inhumane especially for some people who cannot find work after 55
You know it s big problems when a French says the Italian system is better than his 😅
@@MathewLewit Actually, there is not mandating legal age for retirement in France. You can work at 100 if you want. And if somebody is ready to keep you employed at such an age, of course.
62 years is the minimum age to be able to retire (even though there is a process to get an early retirement if you meet certain criteria and your employer agrees), but you'll need to be 67 years if you don't want your pension to be severely cut. What Macron wants is to move those ages to 64 and 70 years respectively.
Italy has enromous debts and is only kept alive thru massive loans (which wont be paid back) from the Euro's central bank, ie German tax payers. Not a good example to follow.
Retirees who struggle to meet their basic needs are the ones who could not accumulate enough money during their active years to meet their needs. Retirement choices determines a lot of things, my parents both spent same number of years in the medical profession, my mom was investing through a financial advisor while my dad through the 401k. On retirement, my mom retired with about $5million, while my dad retired with roughly $3.8million.
It’s unfortunate most people don’t have such information, I don’t really blame people who panic cos lack of information can be a big hurdle. I’ve been making more than $25k passively by just investing through an advisor, and I don’t have to do much work. It doesn’t matter if the economy is crashing, great CFA will always make good returns.
My financial advisor is "Margaret Johnson Arndt " she’s highly qualified and experienced in the financial market. She has extensive knowledge of portfolio diversification and is considered an expert in the field, I recommend researching his credentials further. She has many years of experience and is a valuable resource for anyone looking to navigate the financial market.
67 years is NOT the maximum retirement age AT ALL. It is the actual minimum retirement age to get your complete pension for most people.
There is no maximum age of retirement in France. Some jobs do have one, and your employer can decide to retire you at any moment past the age of 67, but you can if you want still work at 100 years old.
You can cumulate a retirement pension and a job if you want. Nobody prevents you from it. Most employers won't recruit someone past their 50s, but nothing forbid you from it.
This ^
Also to be noted that at 67 you don't really automatically get a full pension, only the multiplying factor automatically get to the max (0.5) but you still only get a ratio of the number of quarters you did on the number needed.
So incomplete career still lose a bit of money after 67 but less than before 67. Before 67 you basically get fucked square on your missing quarters.
So why cant you career plan? People apparantly know this? ;)
@@tim3440 What career plan?
To be able to go on retirement at 62 you need to have started to work at 19yo and never missed a quarter.
If you did a master degree before to start working you directly ends up at 66yo to have a full retirement.
If for any reason you have some quarters not working in your life (accident, unemployed, break for a world tour, long parental leave, etc.) this will only push back as much the age for a full retirement.
@@Fe_lix yeah? So what? Arent you working? I work until I was 15 lmfao. You have no clue how primadonna it sounds. ''You only have to work for 42 years''. That litterly means I could quit working when I am 57 lmfao.
Why on earth cant you work beside your masters degree? I have also worked beside my degrees?
''Accident'' -> Most accidents dont take a quarter of a year to recover from.
''Unemployment'' -> Career planning. Dont choose something you find amazing, choose something you actually can find work in and excell in.
''Break for a world tour'' -> Again mate, you do you have any idea how primadonna and privileged you sound? Lmfao.
Long parental leave -> Only mothers for babies. Beside that?
And sure 62 is still pretty young if you realise that the average age is 81.
Partially false ! Approximately 20% of workers are civil servants in France and there's a mandatory retirement age to almost all of them. You'll never find a 73 years old agent welcoming you for instance at the entrance of a public building. As a French lawyer and a French professor of law, I know that because I had to defend a client on THAT specific topic. What you wrote is valid only for the private sector of professions like mine (lawyer).
I think the main solution they should be looking at is to help old people who have not yet reached the pension age be employed more. They are so often fired and can't find a job. Raising the retirement age in this situation is just moving the payments to unemployment, it will not help save money in the grand scheme of things.
Okay, and what then? An old person taking a job is one more young person who will not have one, and unemployment of the younger, poorer people is already a huge problem.
@@texanplayer7651 There are hundreds of thousands of open positions in my country. It is not because an old worker finds or keeps a job that there will not be one for younger people. I think the main issues are with the employers who do not hire young workers or offer crappy conditions in some cases.
@@ruud9761 My position is indeed that an incentive that is given to both the older worker and the employer who hires or keeps them is a win win. If the incentive is only given when in work it would definitely not increase overall spending, and would increase tax revenue and national consumption.
I'm pretty sure a long term unemployed person won't be paid as much as a retiree. If what you say plays out then it's effectively a reduction of social security spending, not just a plain numbers game
@@tomlxyz In western Europe where I am from I can tell you that you will almost never get a pension that is more interesting than a salary. The reason is the way most pensions are calculated, based on a percentage of your life salaries, and also because this pension is very low if you have not fulfilled all conditions.
Look at all the young people in the crowd who think they will get to retire 😂
Thats what I find funniest. Its unrealistically for our generation to believe we will actually retire.
@@fz8691 Retirement is our birthright. We get it, or the rich will be meet the guillotine. Not just in France either.
@@fz8691 maybe if you achieve home ownership... I hear that's pretty simple just skip a few Starbucks.
All you've got to do is save up enough to show you can pay your mortgage every month whilst paying for someone else's mortgage and tipping them for the privilege.
@@dww6 nah, the only hope is to automate everything. When the price to automate the next job becomes more expensive than hiring people we will have equilibrium.
Why wouldnt you be able to create a privat pension plan if you like to retire earlier? Stop being so dependant on the government mate. Live within your means and simply save money. You could easily saved around 100k when you are 60 if you want to retire some years earlier.
When those protests started, I did feel like the French were protesting over almost nothing. But after looking into it and thinking about it, I'm more wondering why we aren't all protesting. Like every last one of us in Europe and North America. Sure there are western countries with worse retirement already but there shouldn't be. Politicians keep telling us there's not enough money for poor people and the middle class while the 1% in every western countries have more assets than everyone else combined and usually don't pay a single penny in taxes.
Because we protest so much to the point where it has become fucking meaningless. And often over trivial things.
@@owenlindkvist5355 lmao the other way around. People don’t protest anymore, hell the closest thing we’ve come to French Revolution/Civil rights style protests, is France THIS year and BLM like 2 years ago in America but they turned out to be skimming money
@@owenlindkvist5355 people’s idea of “protesting” now is putting a black square on their pfp or kneeling during and anthem. Even after growing up on hunger games and other revolution movies, people sit back and do nothing
Pretty sure I've seen this top 1% not paying any taxes debunked 100x.
Phillip.
@@philliptemple9841 in most cases the rich can buy services that handle their taxes which takes time and effort to make waterproof,and through legal tax evasion overly wealthy do evade part of the progressive taxation,further more rich can take loans by putting asssets as collateral to get the loan, and evade taxes that way if they want to get money but don´t want to cash in dividents which would be taxed,tax codes have myriad of loopholes and shortcomings and its financially beneficial for the rich to exploit these shortcomings in the tax code because they have the resources to do so efficiently to begin with. it isn´t a myth, wealth breeds inequality and those who have more do have the incentive to be more ``equal`` than others.
The fairness of the reform can also be debated in a non-economy axe (which is often not even mentioned).
It also supposed to contain "unifying" different retirement handlers/budgets (there are more then one in france, depending on the sector of activity). Which would be an OK thing if it had all handlers unified. But strangely enough, ministers and senators are not concerned by this unification, which gives it a really cynical look of making a "unification". Taking the risk for others.
So-called "régimes spéciaux" have been conquered by workers subject to "special" conditions (usually more difficult than others) and thus do help make the system fairer. Removing them all to allow everyone to live on a mere pittance doesn't make it fairer, it makes it worse for people that aleady suffer more than other at their place of work. Wanna believe the bullshit the government offers on that subject and make it look like workers are fighting for unearned "privileges", be my guest, but do not expect me (or anyone else) to take you seriously ...
By the way, senators and representants are excluded from the reform but they're not alone: most notably, police officers also are (last time they weren't and obtained this simply by threatening to join the movement, which is why they're now considered traitors by demonstrators ...)
Strangely enough they also avoided to unify Police pensions too...
@@Bloodysugar As I said somewhere else, it was in the cards ... and then immediately removed as far-right unions (which hold consequential majorities among police officiers) simply THREATENED to not do their job aka repress the movement as usual (which is why no one shouts "the police with us" these days ;)).
Live longer work longer.
Fairly good video but i think you could have mentioned a few points that make the reform not look as good :
- productivity has been rising while the worker/pensioner ratio decreased, so were still producing enough wealth even with less workers in proportion
- the minimum age mostly affects people who started working early, people with blue collar jobs, that can potentially be more tiring than others
- there are other solutions, like reducing the highest pensions currently received by people who used to have high paying job (why should their pension be that much higher when they work just as hard as any other pensioner currently?)
- a progressive introduction into retirement could be introduced, with a system where youre not expected to do as many hours when youre old, at least for state employees (bc their lesser productivity wouldnt be as huge a problem as in the private sector)
- Unemployment is very high for people over the age of 58. Macron is assuming the 62-64 age group will be able to work and add to the national wealth, to maintain the pension system, but its very likely that increasing the retirement age will just create more unemployed people. Whats the difference between a pension and unemployment benefits then ?
That's a nice arguments senator, Why don't you back it up with a source?
@@supermatx ok which one though? theres like 5 at least in there
First needs statistic backup, I agree with the second, although the reform is needed, it also needs a touch of socialism. For the third stat, they get better pensions because they gave more to the pension system during their working life in tax. Now do they need 20k a month at 75yo is debatable but yeah. The last two are also quite right I think, but it really depends on each individual job.
@@antoineaublin3812 First point I believe is the most important to backup, the rest I see them as fair arguments from you. The fifth could also need a source.
@@supermatx since when do u guys include sources in every comment u write lmao... and productivity has been rising in literally every country in the world. You can find the data on the oecd or eurostat sites. productivity per worker and per hour both have been increasing for the past 30 years. its just a very well known phenomenon
Another point to add.... the expected deficit is not eternal. It will only happen over the 15-20 years before boomers pass away enough to lower the pension draw. The system will naturally balance itself before those of us under ~45 reach retirement.
Ain't gonna happen, give them an inch and they take a whole mile, even after the boomer pass away they'll keep the extra income
That's not accurate. It's not just that boomers are many. Every single generation after them has less and less children. It would balance out, but not sure how one that would take. At least 2 or 3 generations. So it is more likely the system would collapse before it balanced out. Yet, there's gotta be a way to keep it but it needs a reform. Which I doubt is MAacron's.
@@Alpha1598753 One of the exact reasons the strikes and protests are happening.
Was the issue not that people are living longer and there's not going to be enough people to support it? All countries have the same issue, it's a sad reality. But we just have to accept that we're going to have to have a good private pension to retire young.
15-20 years is a long time.
Thanks for these kind of videos, which help to explain the problem in France, but as a french economist student (and not an English studen as you have probably already discovered), I have to say there's some things missing to understand the picture:
- The 10B€ missing into the pensions balance come from a document produced by the "Conseil d'orientation des retraites" (a public organisation producing reports on pensions balance), in this document, there's not only one "pronostic", and among nearly 10 scenarios, Macron have selected the 10B€ which is the really worst one and not the most realistic, as the "director" of the COR said on the parliament himself.
- Pensions ARE NOT distributed by the government or the state, but by independent organisation (part of the social security), managed by unions of worker and associations of corporations and is responsible for his own equilbrium, and do this well since 1910.
- As you showed the statistics of "state" (but more accurately state + social security + city + ...) spendings on GDP, as it was 50%, Macron reduced it to 46.6%, which represents 100B€. This lowering of "cotisations" is mostly targeted on big corporations and on low incomes (minimum wage worker pay nearly no taxes)
- The only way to understand these protests is to look closer to the government "attitude" : Lying, spiting in the face of the most moderate unions, leading to a massive "Intersyndicale" never seen since decades
One thing you didn't talk about is the life expectensy of the people doing the hardest jobs are not the same than those doing paper works. Blue collar have very significanly lower age expenctensy. A lot of people will be dead before geting to the retirement age. The minimum pension age passing from 62 to 64 when you put that into account comes to ask from the poorer to work for the richer to get their pensions.
That's why every law can and must have it's amendments counting for exceptions and corner cases. A firefighter's retirement age should OBVIOUSLY be way lower than an accountant's.
@@raducora7159 well yes it should but that's not what we see.
@@raducora7159 France actually does have different pension schemes for specific sectors, but that exactly one of the thing Macron’s new plan is trying to get rid of
It's not really their pensions. The money is coming from taxpayers.
@@me-myself-i787 wellno . In France it comes from the workers salary. That's why we calla it "salaire différé" "differed salary".
Hello TLDR. Thanks for your video. As always, great pleasure hearing from you about my country. I'm 30, French, employed in the tech industry for what's its worth. I'm definitely not someone who complains too much about pension ages and retirement - I've been lucky to find jobs quite easily. HOWEVER, I'm also adamantly for the protests; and the reason is that, from my point of view, they are a direct challenge to the people of France. The pension reform is not a priority currently and the government spending on economic stimuli and handouts for corporations dwarfs the pension deficit. M. Macron has also promised a green transition that is completely not happening. Article 49.3 is not a techicality : its a make-or-break article that involves the government threatening to resign, essentially. If the reform passes here, is the president not going to feel emboldened to pass security laws ? More handouts ? More cuts to hospitals ? Trust in the government is abyssal, and the government looks comically incompetent from my point of view. Police brutality is escalating.
I don't think pensions are the main issue here. Power checks and balances are. And the people of france need to check the powers of the presidency, or suffer the consequences.
About the 49-3 article : it's not the government threatening to resign, it's far worse than that.
In every other country, when the government engages its responsibility for a text, the Parliament vote on the text and then if it fails to pass the government resigns. In France, the Parliament never get to vote on the text, the law passes unless : 1) enough deputies present a motion of no-confidence (yes, the motion of no-confidence is not even automatic), and 2) the motion of no-confidence is adopted. Plus the text pass into law as it was presented, without any amendement, even if some were actually adopted during the parliamentary examination process.
To my knowledge, France is the only country where such a procedure exists.
That's BS, power checks, I don't see Macron Presidency as particularly oppressing, we are in europe, when you compare with what many states in the US, like Florida, that's facism, they are banning books, doing big culture wars and oppressing minorities. In France, it's the populace pushed by the stupid LFI and the right wing that are much more dangerous. Economic stimuli is better than having a deficit and no jobs. It's incredible how ignorant can be the populace, even educated people like yourself. Young people always with huge dreams of revolt, meanwhile the rest of the world sees how dumb the extremists are in France and how stupidly billions of Euros are wasted in stupid revolts. Even if the populace eventually wins, it will be a waste of time. Will the chinese pay our pensions? or the Greek? Just sheer ignorance.
@@funram Sounds like a skill issue + get better institutions
Their other channel talk about this move of macron compliment him and bashing people that oppose..... We truly are brainwashed not only for the mass media but also influencer media in TH-cam
Protest and destroy public infrastructure is so unnecessary . Because you just destroy you tax payment infrastructure 😬
Count yourselves lucky, France, I'm American, my retirement age is 'lolno'
The reason your situation is so dire is that americans don't fight back like the french do.
A statement by an young American that knows little about his options. Well, that sucks for you, but I know my options here in the US.
Wherever you are from, your country has very poor education standards. Healthcare coverage in the US is 90%+. Try to use google sometime rather than spout incorrect talking points.
@@SkeledroMan Yet they have all the guns and claim that is what they are for.
@@birdatbattlefield lol, sure... 90% if you include those who go bankrupt just to access healthcare. That or they end up with debt that they will never be able to pay off for their entire life.
Thank you guys so much for this video, like you said, as an American English speaker I didn't really understand what the protest were really about until this video, and now I can sympathize with the French people a lot more, so thank you for explaining this.
Yeah you're have a had time understanding democracy
@@technomad9071 people have a hard time understanding economics not democracy. democracy is one the most simple things out there.
@@Maplelust Wow didn't read something so ignorant for a while. I guess a lot of philosophers worked for nothing then.
@@Joelecowboyme too
Hum, nope.
Nobody understand economics. I must know, I spent 6 years studying models, which expose conclusions, that basically lie (double sense intended) in the original hypothesis, most often non realistic hypothesis by the way.
The French Retirement Orientation Council (which works for the first minister) already stated that there is only a small temporary deficit planned, nothing much, and this temporary deficit has only been made up by the government's recent deletion of contributions (on overtime, etc.)
Macron loves to give tax giveaways to the big company and the wealthy but 25% of the poor men are already dead at 62 (the current retirement age) and now, because they created a tiny hole on purpose, they want the people to retire at 64++ so the poor pay for the rich pension and die before they can even benefit from what they contributed.
In addition, there is already a lot of unemployment, especially for young and old, so the increase in the retirement age is absurd, a lot of old people will end up to the unemployment office which will also be expensive and the young will have even more difficulty to find work.
Macron himself said in 2017 that it would be hypocritical to do such a reform lol.
NL: 70 years. (Used to be 65 until 5 years ago, was then bumped to 67 for old people and 70 for younger people.)
And the Netherlands is richer than france
So fucking what. Tax the rich and increase the multi billion euro corporation. I fucking sick and tired of always hearing that we don't have the money so we need to keep people working more. There's more than enough money if you are willing to tax those who barely worked in their lives bcs they're capitalist parasites. Enough with this bullshit. Burn it all down for all i care. Power to the people
It's absurd here in NL. I don't mind an increase in pension age, somewhat in line with life expectancy, but at least also put taxes up on the boomer generation. Especially wealth and inheritance taxes need to go up!
@@tip00former1 i fully agree with you. Wealth tax should be a thing but also don't forget the multi billion parasites. Tax the fucking rich. No one needs 2 yachts and 3 houses while others are scrapping by with 600 euro pensions.
Did they riot - NO. their own fault then isnt it?
The pension age in germany is not 65 years and a few months. It depends on your year of birth. For those born 1947 it is 65, for every year after it goes up by one month until, with those born in 1964, it reaches 1967. So for all intents and purposes, for most people working currently it is 67 years, with talks of increasing it further to 70.
"it reaches 1967"? Or 67?
@@juanmanuel3418 67
But that is a sensible policy.
To some extent at least.
I think the idea of pension age going up as people live longer is inevitable.
I'm a farmer myself. And honestly even with technology advancing so much there is and always will be a great need for animal husbandry . ( Such a rather old fashioned word now, yet describes what 'husbands' are supposed to do!).
A farmer's job is not to drive machines and fancy gear. It is to take CARE of animals. By that definition the 'farmers' I see left are getting too old for purpose imo.
The pension should be paid from cradle to grave. It is called UBI.
@@reasonerenlightened2456 why?
Htg . Idler's charter
Would you be interested in making a european version of the "this week in parliament" series.
I'm not really that interested in british politics and the activities of the europarliament are often not talked about. I'd definitely pay for a nebula subscription for something like "This week in euro-parliament"
I would definitely be interested in watching something like that
Great idea!
Nebula is so cheap and they only get a fraction of that. You would need to pay 1000x that to actually pay their costs for the production so bring a thousand friends and that will probably make it break even for them. I did 20 years in film and tele and know that there are real costs to production unless you just don't pay people and is that reasonable?
@@joythought I know perfectly well that my interest isn't enough for them to make such a series. I merely suggested a topic for a series and they'll evaluate weather it makes sense. Maybe people are interested in it and it would make financial sense, but a suggestion is where it all starts
@@jeffkitson9565 Im from the UK and I recall having a PSE lesson on the operation and structure of the EU about 8 years ago...
I think you get at the core of the point. The French public sees this rightly as a truncated debate. Economists painted the expectations which are now proven to be bait and switch. Indeed it seems like an early retirement or life of ease has miraculously transformed itself into a life of ease for the well off and hardship for the masses. It is as if all the productivity gains means nothing to the population.., funny how that worked out.
What productivity gains over the last 10 years? Very minimal - on the other hand cheap labour has become many times more expensive, no shit people lose purchasing power. But that's completely normal
Productivity gains have increased the per capita income and wealth over the decades. And among other things, it paid for the pension system thus far.
However, a potentially shrinking workforce and longer life expectancies have eroded the gains made by higher productivity.
@@aritragupta4182 A large chunk of the working population in the lower income range, particularly men, live to about 71. Similar numbers are true in the US and UK. Tell the highly paid salaried people to work to 78 because their life expectancy is 82 or so.
Austerity is the deliberate methodology of plutocratic despotism. The French understand what Macron is doing and to me Macron is simply indulging in free market fundamentalist terrorism.The wealthiest want to return to Tsarist Russia, a world of nobility for billionaires and serfdom for the people.
@@aritragupta4182 barely since 2008 in France
@@laurentpompairacgentil3461 Which point are you referring to?
People are protesting the economy in general. If wages were high no one would care about the retirement age rising.
I feel like we need videos like this just explaining government systems 💀, 18yo College student with no clue how the pension/tax/legal systems work in the countries of which I am a national or the countries in which I have lived
Before seeing this video I was a little skeptical on the French protesting this, but after you've cleared up what happens and what will happen, I can safely say, the French are based and they should keep fighting
The french are fighting against themselves to protect a ponzi scheme that will blow up in their hands when they expect it the least.
and im more sure than ever they shouldnt.
Thanks for a more nuanced overview of the situation. Most reporting I've seen has never bothered to explain the details of why people are protesting and just resorted to "the French will protest anything"
to be honest, he skipped a few things :
-the president has been under fire for a while because of his behaviour. Like how the gov payed like 1M € to McKinsey for a powerpoint that was never shown?
-police violence is a thing. there's many clips on the internet if you search for it. many times a police officer was recorded saying lewd things or being verbally and physically abusive. 2-3 years ago, his security director was caught hitting protesters dressed as a policeman (Alexandre Benalla).
-they say unemployment has never been lower, but they actually kicked out a lot of people from the governmental organisation in charge of helping out.
-they refused to raise the lower salary treshold.
-inflation makes a lot of people uncomfortable financially. Like, people going to NGO to get food is higher than ever.
To be honest, the French will protest anything
Maybe the government shouldve read the report theyve asked for and notice that "the pension situation is already under control" according to the COR (conseil d'orientation des retraites) director
Economist Michael Zemmour actually qualified this reform as a short term solution to reach deficit caused by their choice of reducing company contributions to the financing of pension
Not to mention the government's choice not to give raises nor recruit more public workers (especially medical staff, which if we follow the rethoric of "the population is aging" we'll need a lot more) is the main reason for the projected deficit... Less raises and workforce mean less contributions to the pension system.
But they don't care about the root cause of the issue. All they want is to siphon even more wealth from the working class while leaving the privileged untouched.
@@axel6269 Well, the government hiring people is not the solution to unemployment, and the government not hiring enough people is not the cause. Your solution would cut govt spending on pensions, but would increase govt spending on employee wages.
@@me-myself-i787 The government hiring people *can* be part of the solution to unemployment, especially if the government hires for jobs with a high added-value (such as, you know, medical staff to care for aging population). To pretend otherwise only reveals one's ideological bias.
There is no unsurmountable incoming deficit for France's pension fund. It currently earns more than it costs (+3 billion € this year). The government underpaying and underhiring public servants is the main cause for the coming moderate deficit of around -10B€/yr for the next few decades (before the baby boomers pass away). That's not just me saying it, but the COR's (France's pension fund expert consultants) findings.
Balancing government budgets is not Macron's actual concern. If it were, he wouldn't have removed the tax on the wealthy, nor would he have created special subsidies for companies (such as the CICE), and he would've taxed the record profits earned by fossil corporations this year, like pretty much every European country did. "Balancing the budget" is merely an excuse to bleed the working class dry while leaving his ultra-wealthy pals untouched.
@@me-myself-i787 A state doesn't function like your money in your bank account.
the system is made so you work until your almost dead 💀
One of your best videos for a while, great work! This is what tldr is all about... Taking those news stories that we've all seen headlines for, but not understood the context or details until watching this 😊
This video is complete BS. All they do is repeating Macron's talking points for 10 minutes. There's just one problem : those are lies. Straight up lies. Even the neoliberal COR (Conseil d'orientation des retraites) which oversee the pension system recognizes that there is no economic argument for this reform, there is no deficit problem, the system pays for itself and will for at least 50 years.
@@Bob_The_Builder190 You mean the thing every news broadcaster ever has done?
Should of mentioned that Frances retirement age used to be 65 and that the economy almost collapsed due to a supertax the government tried to impose
@@Bob_The_Builder190 Because static images are boring, topic images for slide shows are expensive to obtain (legal licenses), animations about the topic are expensive to produce, and filming the presenter is cheap, but good enough. They have a video somewhere explaining this.
Sometimes when foreigners complain about the French "whining" and that even the raised age wouldn't match their country's age... I think those people are mad at the wrong thing. Be mad your state has got it's priorities worse. Be mad that you're having to work until you only have a couple years left to enjoy life. Don't be mad at people who demand better.
Reminder that increased productivity (and thus profitability) has far outpaced increases in wages. If that was passed on to workers instead of companies we'd easily cover the problem of people getting older
Indeed, if we took that into account (world wide, not only in France), then we'd work 30 hours per week (or less!) and retire at 60 if not earlier, sadly we don't because the rich want to pocket that extra productivity (despite the fact that it is certainly not management/the boss who got more productive, no it's the people doing the actual work - especially those controlling the machines and/or servers which help the company be more productive!)
This should be pinned, as it's the only truth that matters.
That's stupid.
The goal of any for-profit company is to maximize it's profit and the way it does that is by maximizing its revenues and minimizing its expenses. Workers are an expense therefore every for-profit company will try to pay its workers as little as possible while also trying to make them work as hard as possible.
If workers want to be paid more, they have to negotiate with the company. That's the reason labor unions were invented so workers could negotiate collectively thereby increasing their bargaining power.
@WorldWithoutApples This argument doesn't capture the full issue either, though. The extra productivity increase and its subsequent profit increase is not all put into investments into better equipment, r&d, etc. A good chunk of that is put into the few at the top as seen by the absurd wage gap between the 0.1% and 1%, not even compared to the rest of the 99% of earners.
@@catdogmousecheese Yeah ok... this protest is being done by the labor unions so how his comment is stupid... ?
Frenchman here, thanks as usual for your detailed and balanced coverage of what many international media outlets have massively oversimplified.
Do people not have private pensions in France? Who seriously expects the state solely look after your retirement these days?
Well, maybe in your country the state don't suck your blood... In France, that's what the state does, so we want our blood back...
As spaniard I am PROUD of what our french friends are doing. For me the biggest problem for this is that he PASSED the law without a vote. 42-43 years for full pension is demential.
LET'S GO FRENCHIES, VIVA LA REVOLUCIÓN Y EL TRACKMANIA!
This is the first video that perfectly explains why the protests are happening. Nobody has mentioned the 25-year, half salary requirements.
I doubt this can be addressed in an 8-minute video. These things always go way deeper than they look. There are always (unjust) laws and jurisprudence that impact how much money Social Security has, and nobody seems to discuss whether it's fair that rich-people tax evasion could fill the gaps.
I disagree. In that case it's pretty simple and easy to understand.
The opposition tries to find some complicated arguments about how the effects of this change will affect some people more than others and whatnot (and some of these arguments hold some truth but the pensions system is not meant to solve all those issues) but in general it's pretty simple: raising the pension age is largely a consequence of an ageing population that lives longer and has better health than ever. It's possible to not change it but it makes so much sense for public finances and for the economy.
Nobody wants to work longer, everybody would rather just receive a pensiona and be on holiday till the end of their lives, and yes it is more tiring to work at 64 than at 60 so it's difficult to accept but the issue is in reality not super complicated.
I mean retirement at age 60 would be great, even 55 or 50, but nothing comes free so somebody's going to have to pay (the young)
Yes, and this is surprisingly tied with how the we could help to mitigated and be resilient to climate change.
Wasn't literally all of that covered in the video?
@@huguesjouffrai9618 No, he's right, although the retirement system is simple on itself, all the implications for the future can go really really deep.
@@huguesjouffrai9618
The system is not losing as much money as they say, the law doesn't do what they claimed it does (remember the 1200€ minimum pension they kept talking about? It was a lie).
And if they worried about public finances, they wouldn't pass so many laws to exempt rich people and big corporations from paying taxes.
What's missing here is that it was passed using special powers.
Then what's there to stop it from going to 68, 70, 72, or just 90 if you let it slide?
You need to start making babies so Macron doesn't have any excuse
If he raises it too much, the French parliament might decide to vote no confidence, which would prevent the policy from going into effect and cause Macron to be ousted.
@@me-myself-i787 A transpartisan vote of no confidence was already proposed by senators and deputees against the pension reform, which was rejected by the president of the parliament... The french parliament is under the yoke of Macron and his government!
@@me-myself-i787 well
- I don't think he can do this again, because it wasn't a law but a "rectificative finance budget for 2023". He can't rectificate it as many times as he wishes, that would be shut down by the Constitutional Council (the current reform might be shut down as well for that reason, but it's unlikely)
- if he decides to make it pass via law, that means he can use the article 49.3, but he can use it only once a year for regular laws. And the prime minister promised she would never use this again for a law, only for budgets (except that's exactly what she was already doing so it's a stupid point), so that would make her a lyer again
- and lastly you said that a no confidence vote would oust Macron which is not true. It would oust his prime minister and government
You have a point
I don't even know how this is a debate. The retirement age of 62 is already too high, it should be 60 at most.
The population is getting older and the french people will have to face that fact sooner or later
So many other countries about to implode like that. Especially poland
Exactly.
They should be thankful for the extra life expectancy. Not arrogantly give no one credit for that.
Facts win over ideology, eventually
And? Nothing about an aging population means you *have* to raise the retirement age.
@@Khalkara
Maths does mean you HAVE to unless you want lower benefit amounts or higher taxes.
Yes, the age of death in france can be higher than the retirement age, but when we look closer, we realize that 1/4 of the poorest population dies before reaching retirement age.
It's 1/4 of 5%, so less than 1,5% of the population. It's tragic but one of the lowest in the world
@@laurentpompairacgentil3461 not 5% lol
As a French, I disagree. I hope the following helps to balance the video, which is correct factually, but not the full picture.
There exists a body in France that is specifically looking at the pensions : the COR. According to the government, pensions might be in a slight deficit of 12 billions a year, and the COR explains the reason is the income reduction induced by the government : from distributing premiums that do not contribute to the pensions instead of raising wages that do, to reducing the amount of money companies need to contribute to the pension etc... In France, pensions are a common good for workers. It is deffered wage. For now, the deficit can easily be absorbed by the pension's independant treasury until at least 2027 where it will be in a slight overshoot until 2032, where it balances again.
Other solutions exist to prevent the deficit & overshoot. The first is to increase the contribution. The second is to increase the number of contributors i.e. reducing unemployment. The third is to reduce pensions. The fourth is to find exceptional contributions for the imparted overshoot. Or a mix of them.
The reason we are mad, is that Macron chooses one solution, the most brutal of all, when he puts the system in crisis himself. He doesn't even make it fair, taking into account working conditions, or the fact that women usually are the ones stopping their career to take care of the child, therefore leaving work later than men. And of course, the use of all constitutional tools to avoid a vote on a law that neither the people nor the Assembly is in favor of.
Stopping to work to take care of a child is an individual choice that is the responsibility of the person making that choice. There's kindergartens and schools, there's the possibility of the man stepping up responsibility in fostering children. That's the responsibility of the family, and not the state.
If the family makes the wrong choices and it affects one part, then that's their responsibility. Not the state.
Take Norway, you know that oil rich country up north that just thrives endlessly on their gas stockpiles. If you compare Norway to France then Norway's government makes more money every single year by having extra female tax paying workers than all their oil and gas revenue. Norway having more female workers is of more importance to their wealth than their entire oil and gas sector.
But France is somehow going to cry for all these lazy women that stayed at home with their children instead of contributing to society by working? And because French men are too lazy to do housework and help foster children, compared to Norwegian men?
I don't buy that argument at all. If a family decices one of the parents will quit working to raise children, then that's _their choice_ and thus _their responsibility._ If that ends up biting them in the arse once the woman retires, then _that's exactly what they signed up to._
@@Nabium Different country different culture.
@@NabiumIs this only thing you care about in the whole argument against pension reform?
@@AgeOfNerros Nope. But I didn't disagree with anything else.
@@alganis3339 Absolutely.
This makes zero sense if you consider that in a few years there won't exist reforms to anyone.
The system will collapse and people need to save money while they work, and not depend from the pension. In fact, retirement pension should be just given to people in real need, not to everybody.
The French system looks fairly stingy to me... 50% of your 25 best-paid work years just makes sure that your years as underpaid cashier at Macdonalds don't get into the final sum.
And in those 25 years, you still need to make sure you buy your own house and set enough money aside.
Macron just wants to please his many corporate friends.
Would French people prefer they averaged all working years which would mean their average would be much lower?
@@theuglykwan Of course not. But that's not what this is about.
@Apsoy Pike The real issue isn't even retirement age in its own, the real issue is that Macron uses laws that allow him to pass a law without vote at the assembly, and he ignores completely the democratic system and millions of protesters. Interestingly, he decided not to touch the retirement plans of his politician friends, nor that of the police forces, who also got extra cash.
The real issue is Macron becoming a literal dictator. Even Putin lets his laws be voted at the kremlin. Sure, the people there are all in his pocket and would never contradict him, but still. This is just so you get reference how evil the french government has become.
As a French person studying the Social Security System, this video is... okay for vulgarisation. Will probably make people think twice before saying the French don't like to work!
One thing though. You mention that there's indeed a 14% of GDP spent in pensions here in France and that is correct (it would be more 13% post-COVID though). Yes it's double to the OECD average. However, you seem to imply that this choice looks weird and in itself justifies a pensions reform.
But it's not that simple again.
This is historically the results of two things:
- the introduction of a generous social security system throughout the 20th Century (~1890-1945 mostly) which was added to the program of the French Resistance during WWII;
- the reforms of François Mitterrand you mentioned in your protests' video.
As it is historically part of French society, in the end, this very high pensions/GDP ratio is a part of the French social contract in the end. It is a choice we have made. Reducing this share is a highly political and risky move that changes the social contract for a ton of French people, explaining the protests.
This is why the approach you present would definitely be seen as a pro-Macron one. In fact the ratio pensions/GDP was taken by Macron himself, as he argued we spent "too much on social security" for years now; in the 2019 reform, he wanted to reduce the share of pensions to around 10% of our GDP. A goal he maintains with this reform (although as far as I'm aware, not publicly).
The worst is that in your protest video (at 3:55, not this video, the other one, the "Figure 2.19"), you show a graph issued from the annual report of Conseil d'Orientation des Retraites (COR). This COR thing showed two "conventions":
- EPR or "équilibre permanent des régimes": this is where the pensions regimes paid by public authorities (for their own employees, around 5M people in France) and of complementary regimes (that are organised differently depending on the type of job you practice, but are still mandatory; they serve to add more money than the 50% basis you described in this video, restoring nearly your entire wage actually) are balanced to their current levels. In this scenario, no one pays more than required to balance both regimes, and that would mean, as GDP grows, a reduction (in relative terms) of social security contributions and of the pensions/GDP ratio. In this scenario, mostly showed by the Government, the balance is indeed negative in three GDP average annual growth scenario. So big trouble if you take that one.
- EEC or "effort de l'État constant" : this is where public authorities would keep their current effort going, at a fixed rate of 2% of GDP for public pensions. It would mean to raise contributions, but at the same pace as GDP grows - which means it shouldn't affect public workers' incomes, as the State derives its resources from GDP increases (thanks notably to the very French invention of VAT here).
(There's actually a third one, TCC which is constant rates of social security contributions, which gives a mixed result but closer to the EEC one).
The point is: take the EEC convention, you have no pensions deficit in 3 growth scenarios out of 4. Take the EPR one, which means no more effort from the State and complementary regime, and you have pensions deficit up to 13 billions in the worst case scenario. I find it weird you mention basically the worst case scenario, which is why it kind of sounds macronist and not neutral.
However to your credit you present another option - taxing the rich - which could be another way round. Macron doesn't want this either because it's his friends or because of ideological reasons like "it will hurt our competitivity". But it's truly an alternative Spain has recently used, actually.
But it's not the only one!
The ideal solution would be to properly tax the multinational companies who keep reporting increased profits every year, but the problem is that they'll resort to all kinds of loopholes to avoid paying what they're due.
And if they don't get their way they'll just take their business elsewhere to a country with more laxed rules, that's the biggest issue of living in a globalized economy.
No we could impact them a lot by simply not giving them any "public" money, paid by the government (so thanks to taxes), that were supposed to increase employment but instead goes to sharholders thanks to the loopholes you mentionned. And if they threaten to leave the country we already know how much they avoided paying so we can simply threaten them back with that.
All in all, macron is just the slave of vanderlayen and billionaires, the reform makes no sense since it's actually not in a deficit and won't be. Yes, you heard that right.
People live longer and work longer in most countries, France can’t keep the same system forever
Its not France's problem if everyone else want to be slaves
Living conditions can be better in some places than in others, I sure hope my country doesn't decide to give up welfare state mechanisms because in Uganda they have it worse. The same applies when comparing France to the USA or Italy really. Let the French or any country do it better if they can, and I just think they can. We are just giving too much power to investors around the globe, letting them get more and more of our work for less and less compensation. We need to check our priorities and live by them.
Living longer doesn't mean that you need to work longer. The only reason people in the west do is because their governments got complicit and refuse to tax companies fairly.
Exactly, they can't keep it forever, we need systems where people work even less. Or have jobs so satisfying that people just choose to work until they want. Sounds unfeasible for now, but that's where we should be heading. What Macron is doing right now really is backwards. Happy for the protests.
That's called a socialist utopia
I kinda agree with Macron in this one. Japan is pretty cutting edge technological and they use all source of technology to tackle aging workforce, but aging population is still devastated from economic POV.
But I agree that he should also take on other methods too.
You would agree with the mainstream establishment talking points, wouldn't you? Bootlicker.
@Zaydan Alfariz japans economy is shrinking since 30 years
economic POV, nice
@Zaydan Alfariz The question is just how long they can continue?
I think its remarkable how long Japan is holding up and i think most other nations would have collapsed allready in japans situation, but i dont know how long they can keep going.
THey are decades ahead in the demographic crisis, than most other industry nations and have currently the highest debt in the world.
There is also one thing that is not mentioned that much outside of France, so I will lay it here.
If you consider the French between 55 and 62, only around 30% of them are employed. That means that a majority of French people will stop working around 57, not because they want to, but because they HAVE TO: they're laid off, and are wanted nowhere because they're too old and tired. I know it is a problem everywhere, but France is extremely bad in this context.
Now take into account that we owe the State 42 (soon 43) years of work. If we will get laid around 57, no matter what, then this reform will just make us wait two more years for a pension that is as reduced as before.
Why wouldnt you be able to transition in a role that suits your age by that time? Like career planning is also a thing.
Why wait for the pension ? 😅 in my country you get hired or killed by Wagner before you reach 25. So i think french people are spoiled kids
@@tim3440because French people rely too much on their State ❤ but nobody wants to pay taxes and all the leftist are destroying the streets and throwing rocks at the State cops. Go figure if Putin is not behind all the social media manipulation. 😢
@@tim3440 That is not the issue. For most French, getting a job after 50 is almost impossible, because noone wants you. The wider problem is that there is not enough job "reserved" (as in conceived for) senior workers.
@@tim3440 Yes obviously, everyone above 55 just magically becomes a senior manager. The ones who instead get fired (so the firm can hire fresh underpaid juniors in their place) should have planned for it and deserve to die in poverty i guess. U.S style neo-capitalism is melting your brain my guy.
2 comments i see from you. Both extremely stupid.
Ridiculous how people are set free basically when they are 70 years old, sure you can be healthy and happy at that age, but I’d much rather be free while I’m at my full potential.
What are you talking about? When you're at your full potential you want to maximise your income. The fact you need to be on a pension at 70 is not liberating.
And the young need to pay for your freedom
Dude increases retirement age by two years and that's terrible, but rounding the retirement age by 6 years to make an absurd argument is fine...
@@arielbatista7ify what about all the money the older people paid into the system for DECADES
@@SNORKYMEDIA it's all gone man
Great video as always. Quick note though, the indicator of how many workers per retirement is not very pertinent as workers are producing more wealth than in 2000, and hopefully will produce more later on. As you correctly stated later on, but worker per pensionner isn't an accurate mesure.
Thanks for all the videos and work you're doing!
The real problem is not going from 42 to 43 years of work to gain full pension, it s about the minimum retirement age going from 62 to 64.
I mean, people who work from a young age often work in low qualified and physically demanding jobs.
Of course a CEO did not start to work at 16 but a construction worker might.
So by raising the age, you're asking him to work litteraly for others once he reaches 42 years...
If they started at 16 c'est can leave at 60. At 18 it's 62
French here and just a few mistakes : The reform will not help with the deficit (he did too many compromise with the more right party in the senate) so it was the communication that the governement gave but in facts it will not. You didn't speak about the COR and the fact that this deficit would be only in 1 on 4 different estimations (in the other one we have a stable system) and the fact that in 30 years the system would be stable again without any need for a reform. If you listen to Macron interview he is explaining that it's not just for the pension system that he is doing this reform but to be able to use the money for his politics (like tax cut). Also the INSEE said that the life expentancy is not going to increase anymore.
To finish I know it's not the subject of this video but now the crisis is not exactly about the pension retirement system but more about what kind of society we want and what kind of democracy we want. 94% of the people working in France are against this reform (or the way it was done) so also managers and entreprise owners.
You're deluded. No system just "balanced itself" because you wish it so. France unions are the problem. They're against every reforms and refuse to engage to any discussion leading the government to rely on far right parties. Another problem is the French's love of protests. Maybe you should run for office with a slogan "retire at 60 and free money for everyone".
@@luanpham0586 And you understand our pension system better than the state administration who oversee it ? Or you are just here to troll ?
Some of the french union want to reform (CFDT are famous for that) they are just unite against this reform in particular and it's quite rare but you behind your computer you will know better than more of the 75% of french people (94% of the people working) who are against this reform.
@@alganis3339 are you questioning my understanding of the problem or it's your way of evading the problem? The problem with the unions the French in general is their love of protests. They're like a bunch of kids who throw tantrums because some adults try to solve a problem. The law is not set in stone . Don't like it? Run for office and change the retirement age, not give a protest every school holiday like the CGT The CFDT supports the protest because they don't want to be seen as the only union against it. Stop making a fool of yourself lol
@@luanpham0586 I wasn't clear enough ? Yes I'm questioning your understanding of the problem because your argument against the union is BS. So because all the unions are against this reform they are baddies ? What do you think about the COR in this case ? Or about the 94% of people working who are also against it ?
Also not agreeing that the CFDT is a union pro reform compare to the others (just not this one) is truly not understanding France.
@@alganis3339 lol now it's my turn to question your understanding of the health of the French state. France is an old inefficient bureaucratic state. Maybe you benefit directly from that rotten system that you don't want to change. The unions are not baddies because they're against the reform. They're baddies because they're against every reform and take the whole country hostage. Back in 2019, the unions staged protests even before they knew what was in the reform. Again, you're proud of being french or loving protests are really a shame. You live in a democratic state but you don't know how to use your power as a citizen, instead you think France should be in the 6th republic at a drop of a hat. That's why I'm telling you that French people are like children. They need to be told what to do and throw tantrums when some adults take their toys away lol
France Spends 14% of GDP for citizens to live 20 years (Some longer) without working. Whilst it is completely reasonable to care for the elder and for retirement, with ageing populations, it becomes increasingly unsustainable. Increasing Taxes might not be the way to do it. Increase in tax revenues are correlated with decreased productivity due to lower investment. Never forget that due to the majority of the tax revenue coming from the middle class, increase in taxes will always affect the middle class more than the larger corporations.
On the other hand, if we want to increase productivity with a smaller work force, only techonological advancement can help us do this. And as we all see, most companies that do the advancements are not in europe. Europe's expansive Tax codes and tough regulations have made it completely infeasable to keep investing in R&D in Europe.
Europe used to represent close to 40% of world GDP in the mid to late 90's, right now representing close to 15% of the world's GDP. Maybe the very high pension payments we have been making in the last 20 years are one of the reasons of this stagnation that Europe has felt, especially the countries that are ageing the fastest (Portugal, Spain, Italy, etc.)
On an ethical note, keeping life easy for pensioners at the expense of higher taxes on the younger population when they are facing much higher expenses when it comes to housing and electricity is completely ridiculous, especially considering that when their time to retire comes around, there will not be enough money for them to do so... Not to mention economical suicide, as we are making a transfer of wealth from highly educated young workers to non-producing people in the economy, who tend to have much less spending and consumption, harming the economy long term, discouraing work and new innovation even further.
Whilst his method of bypassing parliament is completely immoral, wrong, and should be illegal, the reforms themselves are necessary.
We can also just do away with pensions and give everybody over the age of 25 the option to commit suicide(as a healthcare option) with state funding if they wishes for it(with some restrictions such as if you are a parent or if you have dependents),just a thought
@@erikvan9582 Might as well not give education to anyone at that point...
Not much productivity to increase here. The most productive countries per working hour are almost exclusively European.
The Problem are the low birth rates and a low influx of highly qualified migrants
@@heyho4770 just because European countries are extremely productive that does not mean that there are no productive industries to keep investing in, or to grow.
Nonetheless, assuming that there is nothing to increase on productivity, then taxing more and increasing permanent spending and debt will only keep fueling European stagnation.
I wasn't aware of the complicated criterias for getting the pension in France.
Increasing the pension age has always seemed like kicking the can down the road to me.
The current way the pension systems work around Europe especially doesn't work, it's simply a pyramid scheme!
It's bad for the state, because they have to maintain something that doesn't work and it's bad for the pensioners for many many reasons:
First, you pay a lot for it, too much even.
Second, the government dictates when you can get your pensions, basically locking it away by adding criterias.
Thirdly, you may never get to use it if you die early, nobody will inherit it either, free money for the government!
We need a better system, I don't know what that looks like, but no, taxing the rich more is not the solution either, one should be able to afford retirement just by working.
Its true that everything should not be seen as just considering tax the rich, france is a very equal country and by all standards well ahead of the US in terms of the gini coefficient which measures inequality in income. However you need to remember is that retirement does come form an income it comes from wealth. You cant retire while paying rent, its just not possible you must plan to die early in retirement for you to be able to live your life in a rental complex.
This is what the French people have a fuss with, the fact you cant work your entire life and still need to live on the roads just doesnt settle with people. This is what leads to more radicalization, the fact you could toil away your entire life and still not be able to achieve what you consider the bare minimum is something that really needs to be understood by people. Macron could easily pass The reform bill if he wished to by changing a few clauses which allowed people who started working at 16, 17, 18 ages to be allowed to retire at 62 or even 60. They dont because of the free money thing you pointed at.
I stand by a need for reform of the retirement system, developed nations are loosing population faster than they can increase productivity which leads to more unsustainable pensions. But people should come together as a society to atleast fulfill the most basic needs of its people before it starts giving that money to the few powerful individuals.
If that's the reaction for raising the retirement age to 64, then I don't think it's realistic at all to convince the french to switch to a capitalization pension system (sadly)
@@yuvrajguglani821 I'd say that if someone has worked their entire life and still doesn't have enough money to retire, it is an unusual situation. This could be due to factors such as low earnings, periods of unemployment, or poor money management habits.
It is important to be empathetic and understand that people face a wide range of life situations and challenges.
That being said, it is not the pension system but the social security and the broader social safety net, to ensure people live with dignity!
Listen people! If you're in your 40+ and don't have a penny saved up and no plan for retirement, do something about it, don't wait for Macron or anyone else to fix that for you.
It's not a pyramid scheme.
If the population is balanced it work well.
THe proplem is we have to deal with the baby boom generation coming to retirement but it's a one generation problem.
Just look up the 401K coverage in the USA to see how responsible people are with their retirement money when given the choice (social security expenses for retirees have increased massively because of this). Making pension contributions a choice just makes sure that in the future we will have to get the money on a last minute notice when the pensioners start dying on the streets.
My take as a Frenchman, being directly impacted by that “necessary” reform:
- the main argument you’ll hear in favor of the reform is a lie masquerading as common sense:
“The current system was designed in the Fifties and was meant for four actives sustaining one pensioner, we no longer have a 4/1 ratio”
True, YET: the productivity has skyrocketed in those 70 years, I work more hours, with less crew, for more clients, than when I started 25 years ago, while my wage has been shrunk (not frozen: shrunk, by a good 40% once inflation is taken into account).
The second lie regards the impossibility to cover an “unfathomable” deficit.
The deficit is of about 10Bn/year and will disappear once the baby boomer are gone, in about 20 years.
So that’s, all in all, a 200bn deficit over 20 years.
This knowing that every year France gives 180Bn to companies in tax deductions and grants.
This plus the 80Bn yearly fraud.
So yes, this pension is NOT necessary, it is only aimed at making the French give their money to pension funds (most of them foreign) and become more individualistic (read: easier to exploit since they’ll be less united/defended).
Revolution!
Well, France only has one colony left to leech on (Guiana), and the abundant wealth of colonies just led the people to become "lazy" , so there isn't much of a chance for a so called progress... They will deliver the punch on the ones who do the most labour though, and this is stupid.
Whether you agree or not, I feel the biggest issue is that he is trying to push it through instead of finding a middle ground solution. It just seems like he vehemently doesn’t want it anyway but his way and in such is pushing it through. Props to the French for protesting about it though and actually doing something!
He tried. NUPES then put thousands of amendments. We would still be “finding the middle ground” in 4 years. The 49.3, since Macron has arrived, has only been used because LFI adds thousands of amendments to block the law. LR, PS and “les écolo” played the game and proposed few amendments which were incorporated in, most of the time. But since they are legally required to debate every single amendments, the only way to bypass that is 49.3, so thank LFI for this mess. Too bad because PS actually had good propositions.
if the french actually WANTED TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE PESNIONS, they would actually MAKE MORE CHILDREN. instead of crying about pensions like some lazy fcks
He didn’t really have a choice.
He’s tried milder reforms before and they always ended with protests shooting them down.
Middle ground solution? They already did it in the senate! That's where you do compromise. In fact, the original proposal was to rise pension age to 65, not 64. Now it's just 64, wtf is he supposed to do? Raise it by 6 months to show he has compromised? Would just be a waste of time
Jokes aside he isn't doing this because he wants to. He could have ignored the issue and not become a figure of hate for generations.
He's the Batman of politicians.
Well, for the billionaires there is always more money to be handed out; but not for workers and pensioners. Balancing the books is always done by cutting in workers and pensioners, not in taxing correctly. Pls. do not perpetuate this fallacy of balancing the books: a country is not a company.
At least here in Canada for a long time, we had a lot of 'crown corporations' companies that weren't necessarily profit motivated but were designed to provide public services and good jobs and wages. Unfortunately, every time we vote in Conservative governments they sell them off to the private sector who end up jacking up prices and or mismanaging them to the point where they crumble. (Canada previously had a crown corp that made vaccines, the right-wing sold them off and so when the pandemic hit we were begging other countries for their left over vaccines. It was pathetic given that we used to be an international leader in the field.)
Unfortunately, American Capitalism has become the norm for the world, and there is this messed up assumption that every advancement in technology and efficiency should only benefit rich shareholders rather than the general population (who often paid for the roads, schools, medical care etc for those brilliant people who figure out how to do things better.) So unfortunately we figure out how to do things better/easier/with less labour and instead of that benefiting everyone, the assumption is that it should only benefit the owner of the company.
While yes we need to tax these massive companies more, we also need to change the laws around how companies are supposed to act. Behaving like a sociopath where the only thing you need to think about is profit should be illegal. There should be a maximum wage for executives relative to their lowest-paid employees. And dividends should be taxed progressively to discourage shareholders from demanding huge payouts. Also dividends should have to be matched with cash bonuses to employees over and above a living wage.
Profit should be the only thing driven a company, welfare shouldn't be anywhere near economic entities. I live in singapore, the government pay me, the insane thought that the governments have control over land rights and natural resources take your money from you is stupid. There are numerous governments owned company in sg, they participate in the economy like every other company, they pay normal wages, taxed like everyone else and performed better tremendously than private companies, paying copius amount of money to the government which gave us money which can buy those things from them again(cheap housing, electricity, internet, fuel, ...).
Interventionism doesn't work, the longer you take to understand that, the more poverty will endure. Taxing corporations will only make them leave your nation unless you have capital control laws like China.
@@bachvandals3259 What you're describing is a sociopath. You can't ask a company to behave like a sociopath and then expect it to treat it's workers fairy, pay them fairly or even follow laws. Which is why so many do none of those things. Companies should serve people not theo ther way around.
@@DavidMalcolm describe "fairly", we have one the highest gdp in the world along with the highest salaries and work benefit, your government owned companies are money drain that shouldn't exist, ours are prosperous healthy competitors. Your public companies disregard the market, providing horrible services at horrendous prices with no innovations. Dont use pseudoscientific terms to describe a thing that cant have emotion, you didn't even try to debate the aspect that your worthless companies should exist in the first place. If your goal is welfare, why dont you just pay the peoples? Why force them to go and pretend to work? And what do you mean follow the laws? Our companies follow the laws and regulations completely, public companies shouldn't have any privileges than private, thats what you are arguing against.
@@bachvandals3259 tbf, 'sociopath' isn't a pseudoscientific term. While Corporations don't have emotions, the outwards behavioral tendencies that they display do often resemble the outward behavioral tendencies of sociopaths. Which is why the comparison exists.
All these protests in France made me think about retirement age. And it made me realize that as a Dutch person, I have to work till I'm 67
People should try to enjoy life as they work, not waiting for pensions
based
I'm sorry, but 16% of GDP for pensions is just unsustainable. Macron is doing the right thing and facing reality as it is.
Americans watching this "Wait, y'all are still getting pensions?"
😆
Stupid idea to suggest taxing multinationals 🙄
Who will provide jobs when they move to more tax friendly countries
This would undermine French economy
belgian here. retirement age is currently 65 but it will become 67 in 2030 max i think. and i know so many people, parents, family friends, who are in their say 50s and who stop working because of depression or burn out. they end up on paid leave which is significantly lower than their wage, and sometimes they just never go back to work and end up retiring early. it is a real problem here and it's costing a lot to the state and i feel like it's probably going to happen to france too if it's not already happening. poor wages, poor working conditions and not seeing the end of the tunnel make people slip and give up on their careers and they end up miserable and costing way more to the state than if they had been treated decently
Hello, you have a little problem. You have inside your bibliography 3 time the same article. Could you find the other article? It is difficult to not to say that it is controversial, i hope this is a mistake.
It`s not weather he`s right or wrong, it`s about the way he went about changing it.
eh, they are talking about pensions for the last few decades. the way he went about changing it was most likely the only way.
Incorrect analysis around 6:40
The ratio active/retirees does not matter. What matter are the productivity and the cost of the pension system as a % of GDP.
A report from the Pensions Advisory Council (Conseil d'Orientation des Retraites or COR), an official body which depends from the Prime Minister office, shows that the pensions stabilize at 14.7% of GDP by 2070.
It takes into account demographic trends and economic growth and unemployment assumptions.
Who is to say that dedicating 14% of GDP, for people who have worked all their life and who continue contributing to society after they retire, is too much?
It is a political decision. Each country can make this decision for itself.
The question of whether the revenues of the pension system come from social charges on labor or from other sources of the public budget, is just a second order technicality.
France should move to a contribution based system, with individual accounts. People are forced to save, say 15% of their income into that account, which can be used to invest in cheap ETFs or similar, and once they reach a certain age they are allowed to draw from the account, a % annually or to convert to an annuity.
We didn't want a system like that. We were proud of our more social and fair system (it's normally in our devise : Equality). This governement and some before are just destroying that.
@@alganis3339 But when that system is slowly collapsing, after the collapse your "equality" will be faaaar more worse.
Due to the insanely high level of communism currently shared by these indoctrinated generations they don't want to hear about that and prefers to pile up on their communist retirement ponzi scheme
This. Then people can retire when they want and take more responsibility for their own. It's more sustainable. The poorest can be helped.
@@alganis3339 you forgot the rest of that sentence refering to equality in front of the law, nothing was said about financials.
It's clear now TLDR is unapologetically centrist,
UK Pension scheme: *sweating profusely*
The UK pension system is actually quite good compared to this sh!tshow
@@RRaymer How is the UK pension system ?
Any government backed pension won't exist by the time the current 20 year olds need to retire. The only hope is a personal pension.
Your video does answer the question you set in the title ("Are France's Pensions Actually Unaffordable?"), but it does not answer the one you set in the thumbnail ("Is Macron Right?").
Yep, it's pretty easy to argue that our pensions are expensive and we need to find new means to finance them. Let's just highlight one thing though: most French protesters *know* that, and they're saying that it doesn't mean that the average worker (already hit by record-high inflation and poverty) should have to pay for them.
You're right to point it out at the end of the video: there are so many means to pay for them, most of which Macron would never want to consider (i.e. taxing the rich, let's all remember that one of the first measures implemented by Macron in 2017 was to get rid for the fortune tax (ISF)).
There is a misunderstanding about social welfare in France. It is not technically government spending. It's a public entity that is not gouvernement and that has it's own budget and décision making process
It is still funded by taxes paid by working people?
@@Blashmack No it's not taxes. It's what we call "cotisations" ("contributions" would be a somewhat acceptable translation). The system is completely different from taxes.
The main difference being :
- with taxes, you collect them, then you see what it amounts to, and decide what to do with said amount
- with cotisations, you chose how many you want to spend for each item, then you adjust the collection accordingly to get the amount needed
It's a huge simplification and the system has been complicated since 1996 (with the implication of the state in the way the collected sums are used), but that's the general gist of it.
@@funram Okay, sounds similar to what most European countries have. Let's be honest though, if the "cotisations" are mandatory and it's not possible to opt out of the social welfare contribution system, then they are kind of same as taxes but with just another name.
@@Blashmack they are not taxes again. Taxes open 0 right. Contributions offers guarantees. This not just a technical debate. This is fundamentally different. The public retirement system is a Insurance system. Basically when you pay your contributions each months it guarantees you a certain level of life (and not a level of money !) when you retire. You pay to finance the people who are retired, and in exchange you will be payed by the people who works when you retire.
It's a unique system, that doesn't allow worser to chose their pension plan or health care provider, who gets financed entirely decided by the French state. It is indeed a different entity, but not independent from the state
5:51
Do you have any source for government spending accounting for 60% of the GDP? I couldn’t find a similar claim.
Thank you for this video. This really explained a lot.
I think the problem is similar in all countries of the world: the retirement system was created ages ago when people were expected to live much shorter lives and society assumed everyone would have children, it was their paradigm and made sense at the time. Yet, since then, people has little or no children and live way longer. Yet the system was not updated to adapt to these huge changes.
This reform, of which I doubt will actually help, is, at most, a band-aid. The problem persists and is not being addressed.
The system was already reform many times. This video don't seem to take all the informations given by the COR (the french administration in charge of overseeing the pension system) or given by most of the economists in France with the stats of the INSEE (administration in charge of french stat like demography). They seem to only take Macron numbers especially by saying that it's to avoid a deficit when this reform will not help with that.
I'm not sure about other countries but the French system is basically self sustaining, has been for over 100 years, including war decimation and has the great benefit of being for and by the people (ie no hostile capitalistic structure feeding off the debt of those they are supposed to support). The reform brings the French working people in the hands of hostile foreign funds and creates a debt. It's a scam and because it's not the only one at play the French will not back down. They will prevail, it's basic French history
the retirement system was built so the ones that now have money have easy peasy lives and let the people in the future....be slaves for them.
that example is highly misleading, the median wage in France is 23280 EUR, so most people never even come close to earning 50K a year, so take 50% of the median for a pension and it doesn't look that generous
The idea of funding elderly spending by taxing companies will only achieve one thing:
Those companies will leave, and we're back to square one!
Yes. It is the argument for land value taxation. Land isn't going anywhere.
Economic blackmail like that should be met with nationalization of that company. Without compensation.
+1
@@SelfProclaimedEmperor And immediately ensure NOBODY wants to do business with you, driving yourself into bankruptcy.
Even if you don't like it, you have to be reasonable and provide circumstances for these companies because *you just can't do without them*
You have no evidence for that claim.
By your logic any tax above 0% would see companies leave the country, which is demonstrably untrue.
Companies whose primary (or only) source of income is from French customers are not going to leave France because they have to pay more in taxes, that doesn't make any sense. Any decrease in profits from increased taxes would be vastly outweighed by them annihilating their primary source of income and gambling that they can get anywhere near the same amount in another country.
Not to mention, you can tax entities in a variety of ways, like tariffs, where even if they leave if they try to make any money within the borders of France the state can receive taxes from them.
I don't know about the pension system, but I'm from Romania where the retirement age is 65 and I never heard anyone complain about it
State pensions are inherently flawed in a population trending towards older age. There will not be enough working people to fund state pensions in all European countries soon.
when you get used to injustice
You will feel that the protest of the French is very unreasonable, which is a natural and unreasonable thing
This is something I see all the time on the internet😂😂
How many cars have been burned in Paris the past 10 years?
I think you missed the point, a lot of us protest against the government, this is just the straw that broke the camel's back, like some years ago the petroleum price during the yellow jacket period
if the french actually WANTED TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE PESNIONS, they would actually MAKE MORE CHILDREN. instead of crying about pensions like some lazy fcks
And no you are missing the point. FRENCH RETIREMENT SYSTEM is NOT sustainable. EVERY OTHER EU COUNTRY WORK LONGER THAN THE FRENCH
make more children, FRENCH ! or learn and addapt like your neighbors
stop Whining
Yeah but petrol getting expensive it a good thing, it needs to happen to encourage people to transition to green energy faster.
@@qefewfwdcwdc MORE PRODUCTIVITY THAN BEFORE !!! You were writing in cap so i did the same but stop saying BS without understanding the subject.
@@alganis3339 what more productivity? YOU NEED PEOPLE TO CONSUME, TO BUY AND SELL THINGS. That is how economies growth and expand. YOU ALSO NEED MORE PEOPLE, to fund the pension system. ngga you want to improve productivity? HOW you going to buy yourself a robot arm??? LMAO stpid bchboy
Everything is a balancing act that there is no easy solution here. Raising taxes on companies would raise revenue, but in a country with a 7% unemployment rate you're at risk of sending that that already high number even higher.
42 years working non-stop for the pension is absolutely ridiculous.
No, that’s a pretty good deal. The French pension system is one of the most generous in the would
I started officially (paying social security tax) working at age 15. Used my first paycheck to buy tickets to see "Star Wars" a couple weeks after it came out. At best I only spent a total of a couple of years not working. So 59 would be my pension age if the US had this kind of system. Or 64 using Macron's plan I guess. It is not a ridiculous amount of time.
Agreed, but ensuring you work for a company that has a decent employers pension is very sensible and then you can retire much earlier.
I retired at 50 and immediately received my employers pension. Whilst it was less than if I had worked longer, it was sufficient and my quality of life improved.
@@askog1900 It’s not 42, but 43 (already voted a long time ago, in application very soon). And it’s absolutely terrible, one of the worse in Europe (35 in Germany, 37 in Spain, 40 in Greece, 42 in Italy, 40 in Portugal, 40 in Hungary.)
Studied years don’t count and it’s only very recently that maternity leaves stated to be counted. It’s a full 43 years of continuous work with no unemployment (unemployment in France is very high.) If you starts working at 18 yo, you’re only allowed ONE year of unemployment if you wont to retire at 62. If you studied, you can forget getting your full pension at 62 or even 64.
French system is so generous. Look at wealth repartition. In their country, it’s not a square signal. That is what I call generous.
Taxing McKinsey wouldn't work - anyone with any degree of sense knows that. Taxing companies for shortfalls reduces their competitiveness, which in turn lowers their ability to finance the exact shortfall you're trying to cover.
They don't care, this socialist crowd wants shortsighted quick easy money
Basically the answer is no, it’s just a political choice because Macron is choosing not to tax billionaires and Billion € companies such as Total energie or McKinsey & companies which the French see as being unfair as they themselves pay up to 47% in income taxes.
Wouldn't they just leave france for the most part like they did before?( the billionaires) Also aren't they already getting taxed a shit load or have to comply with very worker friendly laws?
France has one of the highest taxes on the wealthy anywhere. So much so, a lot of wealthy French people left the country, which was the opposite of what they were trying to achieve…
I basically agree, the rich should contribute more instead of hoarding wealth. I do want to point out that none of the people demonstrating in the streets pay anything close to the top tax bracket (45 % this year). Most pay something like 20-25 %.
@@takgillo They already left in majority French yes. They are already in countries like Singapore or Luxenbourgh or Liechtenstein or Monaco.
It is wishthinking what cheddar Rayon does.
@@JayJay5244 +1
I'm sure some protesters are simply against the non-democratic method used by Macron. Surely this should have been mentioned in the video (or did I miss it?)
Honestly respect to Macron, he destroyed his political career for betterment of France as a whole, not many politicians have the balls to do that.
He doesn't care because he is not allow to run again for presidency. And you can be sure that he will get some nice job as an advisor or some shit like that in the private sector. He is definitly not sacrificing himself for us
Wish Italy or Spain could do that too
betterment of his buddies not the future of france.
he was and will always be in favor of big companies everyone know that since the start
Totally agree on this one. Every single capitalist country is going through the same thing, yet they act like Macron is personally stealing their money for himself.
@@misterlinux9290 the only reason he could do that is the fact that he can't be re-elected and he leads a personal party which is hopeless without it. Not easy to replicate in a parliamentary system. That being said, Italy managed to set retirment age at 67 (although full of exceptions added later) only because we were going bankrupt and invented the so called "technocratic government" so that politicians could blame the technocrats And save themselves
Another issue that was not mentioned is just how raising the retirement age is a reform that was proven to not work in France previously. The age was raised several times in the past decade. In fact, it was 60 years a bit over 10 years ago. Every increase is said to be to fix the deficit, but none ever fixed it. It's trying to fight the effects (the deficit) by only moving one of the two causes (the number of retirees and their pensions). 50% of your highest paid years means that low-wage workers might not be able to afford life with their pension (some are never able to buy a house in their life, and the renting life or paying a mortgage is already too expensive for them) while high-wave workers who gained a lot of money in their life not only still get a pension that would be considered good for most but also had the opportunity to save earlier in their life, get a private pension, get a company pension, and getting passive revenues on their assets on top of that. There is a cap on the base pension, but the number of exceptions makes it easy for someone well-prepared to earn way more from that single source.
I would know, my grandparents were on either side, with one not earning enough to live and the other earning more than I'll probably be paid at the end of my career.
Do the French put anything aside for their own retirement or do they rely solely on a government pension? Before I even began working back in my teens, I knew that Social Security would not likely be enough because seem like a bit of a Ponzi scheme. So I put my own money aside through the years.
Social security in the US will collapse in 2035, assuming no changes to the program.
Most people don’t, they can’t afford it
You have a mandatory additional retirement depending of your sector. This pension is controlled by the unions and the employers.
Aha. And apparently you consider pension funds less of a Ponzi scheme?
Shall I refresh your memory about what happened in 2008? How many people among the poorest were swindled and ended up ruined or homeless?
@@__xxx_xxx__ How were the poor people swindled? Most just were bad credit risk. It was like hiring someone for an mechanical engineering position who only had formal education up through the secondary level. Both sides knew there are short-comings in the way of a successful conclusion.
It's difficult to show a totally accurate assessment. But one thing I would say is this: if you have a glass and a jug of water then how full your glass is depends, naturellement, on how much you (and your employers, and Mr State) pour in. If yours doesn't slake your thirst, better pour some more in. The daftest bit is that if you retire at 67 in France it seems you get a full whack- even if you've spent decades down the pub.....
Perhaps the higher life expectency can be correlated to the earlier retirement age too
Why ain't nobody talking about the "constitutional" anti-democratic technicality ARTICLE 49.3 ?
How could you force a bill without voting in a supposed democracy?
Step 1: Make the age reversing treatment (successful tests on animals, cellular age decreased) widespread.
Step 2: Everyone is perpetually 25 years old
Step 3: Pensions are pointless as there are no old people
Step 4: Global economic collapse averted.
Step 5: Population for solar system colonistation acquired.
Step 6: profit
@@aplanosgc6963 For every concievable person no less.
Honestly, we can't just look at the national average and treat everyone equally, 25% of French are dead *before* the minimum retirement age of 62, plus Macron puts that money elsewhere:
-more budget in army (very useful I know, especially when being geographically far from wars)
-Much of public money was put into companies in the covid period (well that's kinda normal, but now that some companies are making huge profits, they should be taxed as much)
-pensions are calculated from salaries, so rich people who have already got much money receive also much money (why??)
So yeah, Macron's just trying to hide all his favorable treatment to rich people.
The framing of this video is ridiculous. It doesn't matter what minimum retirement age systems completely different from the French system implemented. It doesn't matter how costly the French system is.
The only thing that matters is : can it pays for itself ? And the answer is : yes. Yes it does pay for itself. There is no structural deficit, there is no problem to finance it, the system is not failing and will not fail no matter the circumstances for at least the next 50 years (there aren't any projection that looked at what would happen after 2070).
Plus the whole "there is not enough workers to pay for it", "only 1.9 worker per pensioner", etc, is BS : a French worker produces more value in 2023 than 20 French workers in 1970. France is the country where productivity increased the most in the last 50 years, and that's by design. We CHOSE increases in productivity over other factors such as access to ownership or low employment rate in order to secure our social system, which is independent from the state and pays for itself.
Sadly, neoliberals spent the last 30 years lobbying for getting rid of it despite it working just as intended because social insurances could be a lucrative private industry for their billionnaire friends, and the media have been repeating their lies for decades.
look at this sht eater LMAO. IT DOES PAY FOR ITSELF BUDDY. HOW CAN IT??? if the POPULATION SHRINKS??? also workers are more efficient than workers in 1970. AND??? IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE AN ARCHIEVEMENT? thats like comparing apples to oranges. low employment WILL GET WORSE not better, because half of africa will arrive in france. AND THEY aree not know to be hard workers.
@@qefewfwdcwdc Look at the COR before talking BS.
N'importe quoi le système est déjà en déficit cette année.
@@mkmc94 Excédent de 900 millions en 2021 et de 3,5 milliards en 2022... Il faut arrêter de mentir cette réforme est un choix politique afin que le système redevienne excédentaire et que l'état reduise après ses propres cotisations (notamment avec une réduction de fonctionnaire) ou ce qui permettrait d'avoir plus d'argent pour continuer la politique de suppression de taxes.
Thank you so much... it's so hard to find nuanced views on the complexities of maximum benefit pensions which come close to the level which we talked about them when I was taking public finance in college. Keep up the good work!
Finally a video with a total uncontroversial topic :P
A "detail" that never gets mentioned in this conversation: the cap on retirement pay-ins.
If you earn more than 27€/h, your pay in stops increasing, making it not even a flat tax but a regressive tax above tjat amount.
at rate.
But those people are the core of his base and lobbyists so...
This's similar what happened in 18 century during french revolution
I'm a 33yo french man that will never be retired due to unusual life path 😅
I've watched and appreciated your content following this situation, Thank you for going into the details this way ;)
I think it's not a surprise that the birth rate is in decline when the situation is indeed so unsafe...
With better economic conditions, and including better retirement conditions, people would actually be more confident to have babies in the future -_-
It's the snake eating his own tail...
@TLDR 2:30 "Italians and Spaniards can expect living 62 years and 4 month" that should be 82 years 4 month according graph.
This was wild when I saw it...
Australian here,I'm eligible for aged pension at 66.5 yrs ,means tested.
Frances entire pension deficit could be funded by Jeff Bezos for 50 years. Yep, 1 single person could find the retirement of 10’s of millions. Let that sink in….
Or build schools in ever African village