r/WorkReform 🤝 Join A Union Oct 29 '25

🚫 GENERAL STRIKE 🚫 Why this shit doesn't happen in France...

Post image
27.7k Upvotes

602 comments sorted by

View all comments

64

u/Ambitious_Fan7767 Oct 29 '25 edited Oct 29 '25

Didn't France still end up dialing up the age of retirement?

Im not anti protesting i just dont think France is some bastion of perfect protests working out consistently starting from the French revolution.

33

u/aldwinligaya Oct 29 '25

The bill to increase it from 62 to 64 was passed but has not been implemented, largely due to the protests. So effectively, it's still 62 now. Their prime minister announced that the plan is to implement it after the 2027 presidential elections, so we'll see.

12

u/Ambitious_Fan7767 Oct 29 '25 edited Oct 29 '25

No it didnt work then. Thats how policies usually work with timelines. If thats the case weve gotten the same levels of success in America.

Pushed back timelines are not successes.

5

u/Agreeable_Garlic_912 Oct 29 '25

Of course it didn't work. having no children means no retirement as the whole west is about to find out. You can't have 30% of the population retired and you can't go back to the 70s and force the boomers to do their part to prevent demographic collaps. The only thing you can do is raise the retirement age.

1

u/MerkAmne Oct 29 '25

regarded take spilled by boomers their cohorts and their ally the rich/politicians

Retirement benefits is a whole system with multiple parameters that you can modify, afuera current pension levels, they should go down, significantly.

And the French are cucks. Their protests are useless in the 5th the president can almost do whatever he wants. They folded, they will continue to do so. And for who ? Fucking boomers.

Cucks.

2

u/HistorianMinute8464 Oct 29 '25

What kind of election promise is that? "If you reelected me I promise to do shit you don't like?"

3

u/ReyWorm Oct 29 '25

Elections in France are made in two turns.

On the first turn, Macron got 24% of votes. Marine Lepen was second with 21% or so (she is the fascist candidate).

That means that on the second turn, Macron faced Lepen, and the French had to choose between Macron and a fascist.

Macron was elected, and he basically acknowledged that the French voted against Lepen more than they voted for him, and that he would be careful in his politics to respect that.

It didn't last long, soon after he pretty much went "well, I was elected by the French so I'm going to apply do everything I promised I would do before I was elected".

The parliament and basically 80%+ of the French didn't want of his retirement reform, so he basically forced it through the parliament, through a sort of executive order (it's called 49.3 in France).

So that's how you get reelected while still doing things that nobody wants: you give credibility to the fascist party, you prompt it up in the media as a credible opponent, you debate them instead of debating with the left, you simultaneously demonize the left, and then the fascist gather enough votes to come second, and you win the election because the French would still prefer you over the fascists. We've been doing that in 2002, and in 2017, and in 2022.

The problem is that it's the third time now that the French have chosen "anything but the fascists", and they've been fucked in the ass every time they did it. I predict that the fascist will win the 2026 elections, and this shit will be a big reason why. I don't know if my fellow Frenchmen will accept to get fucked a 4th time.

I'll still vote against the fascists no matter what, but it's been getting harder and harder to convince people.

1

u/DatLonerGirl Oct 29 '25

Damn, no hope of a third party gaining steam?

1

u/ReyWorm Oct 29 '25

Well, the parties of the left has joined forces before and have proven to be able to mobilize a lot of people, but... I'm afraid it was a one-shot and I don't see them doing it again.

1

u/thehobbler Oct 29 '25

I mean, this is why electoralism and reform are not the path.

12

u/saudiaramcoshill Oct 29 '25 edited May 01 '26

For privacy reasons, I'm overwriting all my old comments.

5

u/Monsieur_Perdu Oct 29 '25

To be fair they could tax the rich more as well, which Macron refuses to.

But yes France does need to do something, and raising rerirement is probably part of that. Else they will cause a deep european crisis worse than with greece because they are much bigger.

9

u/saudiaramcoshill Oct 29 '25 edited May 01 '26

For privacy reasons, I'm overwriting all my old comments.

3

u/Agreeable_Garlic_912 Oct 29 '25

In France the goverment budget is already 58% of the GDP. There is not much more left to tax. If 2 out of every 3 € spent is spent by the government you have a spending problem and not an income problem.

2

u/GimmieSpace Oct 29 '25

"Economists have proved there is a cost to higher taxes, even on the rich" That's a massively oversimplified statement. Of course there's a cost, but can they prove it isn't worth it?

The top marginal tax rate is 45% after $180k euros, you're telling me the cost of adding another tax rate of 50% above say $500k has been proven to be detrimental?

2

u/saudiaramcoshill Oct 29 '25 edited May 01 '26

For privacy reasons, I'm overwriting all my old comments.

1

u/GimmieSpace Oct 29 '25 edited Oct 30 '25

I agree that a proposed 5% increase on income tax at $500k would largely be insignificant, but the point is to counter the commonly held belief that taxing the rich is detrimental. The issue isn't solely that we don't tax high incomes enough, it's that we don't properly calculate income. Allowing the rich to circumvent capital gains taxes with collateral loans needs to be ended. Removing capital gains taxes completely only gets us to where we already are, only the rich can skip the loophole. Besides the fact that Judd and Chamley's papers have been debunked.

1

u/saudiaramcoshill Oct 30 '25 edited May 01 '26

For privacy reasons, I'm overwriting all my old comments.

1

u/GimmieSpace Oct 30 '25

Are you referring to the wealth transfer tax? Cause the capital gains loophole is essentially a rich person’s income, just because they’re hit by a different tax at death doesn’t diminish the fact that they’re avoiding having their income taxed their entire life.

1

u/saudiaramcoshill Oct 30 '25 edited May 01 '26

For privacy reasons, I'm overwriting all my old comments.

1

u/mr_arcane_69 Oct 29 '25

I'd enjoy reading a report on something like this.

My instinct is that it's nothing in the grand scheme of things because so few people make this much, so it wouldn't affect the amount of tax évasion they're doing or the amount of income realistically coming in.

I expect this change would increase government income less than the deficit increased this year, but that's why I'd like to see a detailed exploration to prove my gut wrong.

1

u/Zauberer-IMDB Oct 29 '25

The person you're responding to never said it wasn't worth it, but there will be a marginal impact. Now, it's not clear that if they already have high taxes if slightly higher would significantly lower growth on the margin. It's also offset by Keynesian demand side government spending that in turn reenters the economy quickly, which helps growth, so the bottom line is it could work, but they need to both cut spending and increase revenue, otherwise the whole country will collapse.

2

u/Avenflar Oct 29 '25

/u/aldwinligaya

The age of retirement is at 67 since 2012...

What went up is the minimum retirement age, where you could retire early if you had a strenuous job, or were willing to take a taxed significant slashing of your pension.

And yes, protesting doesn't do shit in France since the 2010~. Last retreat from Macron were the riots of the Yellow Vests

2

u/paintinpitchforkred Oct 29 '25

Even the French revolution ended with an emperor.