MSNBC had a clip today of rioting in the streets in France over Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy’s proposal to extend the minimum French retirement age from 60 to 62 as that country grapples with the reality of its population living longer – in spite of general ennui and a penchant for unfiltered Gitane cigarettes that knocked me on my ass when studying in Europe in the early 1980s.
So the blurb got me to raise my head and stare at the tube. I dislike the French as an international community participant.
My first thought was, “Well, given it's the French against the French, which one of them gets to surrender first to declare victory?”
It reminded me of a time when the French were seeking international assistance with wildfires when my son piped in with, “What? They’re surrendering to fire now, too?”
I also was interested in just who was protesting the increased retirement age. Was it a bunch of gray-haired, beret wearing artists with bad teeth tossing Jacques Chirac novels at the Police, causing them to run away? Was it the “Sons of Maginot” convinced their protest strategy was invincible?
Furthermore, the country takes the month of August off. I mean, it is not as those these are a bunch of Type A personalities working 70 hour weeks in Alpha Male status hoping to enjoy a few rounds of golf in retirement with their trophy wife before their stressed out, artery clogged aorta explodes on them like white males depicted in Mad Men.
Trophy wives are an American thing. Mistresses are a French thing. I mean, former French Prime Minister Mitterand's mistress attended his funeral as an equal of his wife for pete's sake. If Bill Clinton checks out in similar fashion his funeral would have to be held on the Washington Mall with Hillary wheeled in on a dolly cart and face mask like Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs.
You Know What I am Talking About ...
So imagine my surprise when I learn it seems to be some odd collaboration of college kids and union members. Union members I can get. They want to push the geezers out the door as a job protection measure, but college kids? Worrying about retirement? How, I don't know ... French --or public sector employee.
Or is it also a desire to push the geezers out of the way so they can get their entry level jobs with government mandated retirement far in excess of the two weeks accrued stateside?
So there’s a brief insight into the scattershot mental reactions while watching the 45 second blurb on the topic in real time. It provided a few laughs.
But the underlying condition shows that some of the current economic concerns in this country are really quite global. Health advances and better personal awareness to lifestyle choices mean we live longer. Social Welfare programs built on anachronistic actuarial table projections need to be retooled. We either need to pay more as people are living longer, or kick out the age at which government offers the payments.
An aging population with expectations around government payments to them in retirement happens to be a global reality. It impacts the developed countries that have had social welfare safety nets far more than LCDs just happy to have work in the global economy given where there are in the economic development cycle.
So as the Tea Party rattles its populist sword and as progressives seek layer on more social programs on top of the actuarially bankrupt ones that need massive overhaul to balance out financially on the government books, there was France, doing their thing in French style around the same issues we avoid facing.
So it made me think we are no better or worse off than the French. But, then again, I do not recall recently seeing any protests replete with burning symbols and throwing rocks at police on the news recently, either. So culturally we have our differences, economically we have our commonalities based on our economic stature and our legacy social programs in major need of modification.
No wonder our politicians dither and sidestep the crux of these matters in election cycles.
We don’t want to hear it.
Just like the French.
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Deven McKay
Dr. Strangemom
Duane Gundrum
Tea Scrolls
MarkinKentuckiana
David Price
Salon.com
Comments
What's different here is that we want it all. We'll work but oh boy do we want ALL the goodies. Your neighbor the banker has a 50" plasma TV? Suddenly your 42" TV looks lame. Ditto for everything else. We brave citizens are so ready to throw out 1/2 of Congress because the country's in debt. Well, so are most of the American people. And it's not all due to job loss.
What Americans and the French seem to have in common is their reluctance to accept that the world is changing.The Constitution has a great deal of elasticity but wasn't written imagining a country at its present size. France labor laws might not have imagined a global economy quite like the one we now have.
Plus ca change, plu c'est le meme chose. Yes...and non.
Not sure where I'm going with all this (pass me the wine, would you?) but rated for entertainment value and general provocation.
The operative phrase there is "INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICTY PARTICIPANT" Not the people, not the culture, the international face to the outside world.
And, Ocular, I will keep the comment up, but please temper the rhetoric in future correspondence on my blog, please.
Alysa: Thank you for the thoughtful account. It is, as I stated later in the thing, a global reality due to increased human longevity. What the French grapple with here is no different than a host of other developed nations confronting this reality that shifts the financial forecasts of future pension obligations (private or public) as the population average age increases....
Nikki: Reasonable enough rant. Very much in tune with the way in which this got written up.
Kate: Yeah. It was a mix of a quick set of jokes, and then a peak under the covers of the actions prompting the response over there that is really no different than the actions here and throughout most of the Developed countries.
With people living longer, that would seem to make sense, save for another factor -- the de facto retirement age is now somewhere between 50-55. By that I mean, companies are dumping older employees at that age, and the dumpees employment prospects at that age are slim and none. I know.
Given this reality, how are older people supposed to survive in the glory decade between 55-65? Yeah, yeah, I know, they should have invested all their spare change wisely in the previous three decades.
Sorry, but the whole notion of "defined contribution" pensions and privatization of Social Security is a sick joke being played upon the powerless, the ignorant and the gullible. Damn few people have the time, training or sophistication to invest in the stock market -- how'd you like to have invested your nest egg in Enron or AIG?
To make matters worse, the market itself is becoming more and more a jungle fit only for wolves profiting from inside information. Add to that automated computer trading that allows a huge drop in the market for no apparent reason -- well, you catch my drift.
If either party is serious about fixing SS, I have a simple plan:
(1) No income cap on SS and Medicare deductions -- if you make a million a year, thank your lucky stars you live in a country that makes that possible and pay back so that system continues to exist
(2) Institute a needs test -- John McCain is right --SS is a disgrace, and the biggest disgrace is he's drawing nearly $30,000 grand a year in SS in addition to his other pensions and his Senate salary and his investment income -- all of which amounts to roughly $5oo,000 a year. That's a disgrace all right.
(3) Raise the retirement age to 70 -- yes, I'm full aware that contradicts what I said above, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do
This plan requires everyone to share the pain, but it's not too heavy a price to pay to keep the elderly poor from starving in the richest nation on Earth.
So you see, I don't just bitch and complain -- even about the French. I have a plan, and I'm willing to compromise on my plan, but it has one ironclad proviso: Number 3 does not get instituted without the other two.
What's the chance of my plan being adopted? Less than .0000%
Means testing what is NOT a tax as the democratic rhetoric seeks to suggest it is by calling it the payroll tax is essentially defaulting on the pension obligations to the high income folks who had no choice BUT to contribute to the system. Furthermore, the returns are not even across all income earners, with the benefits more generously skewed to those with the more modest contributions. It already is progressive.
So it hammers those in the donut hole. Those not really rich, but upper middle class. Particularly hammering those in high cost of living areas like the northeast or california. Someone saying "I get the same as Warren Buffet, and that is not fair" does not understand that Warren Buffett paid in the same amount as they did, which means it is fair.
You will be hard pressed to find any other government program where what the tax payer pays in results in a proportionate figure in what they receive later. It was a nationalized pension system for those over 65 at a time when the average age in this country was not much more than 65. That is the unworkable aspect today when the average age is well in excess of 65, when disability got glommed on, and when the leaders decided to take the SS surplus and apply it to the general fund as an accounting maneuver.
Christine: No biggie. If it triggered a fond recollection for you, then the piece had a positive impact for you, and that is a good thing as far as I am concerned.
Ben: I hitchhiked through France when wandering Europe in 1977. My friend and I couldn't get a ride. Backpackers finally told us to put Canadian flags on our backpacks, which helped. Couldn't afford to enter Paris and was advised by backpackers to stay away. :)
People have lost sight of that purpose, and it's time they were reminded of it. If SS is to continue to serve that purpose, it must cease paying-out money to people like John McCain who don't need that money to keep from starving.
But I'm afraid my argument won't hold water with those who think they have no obligation to those in our society who do all the dirty work for little pay and even less respect, the people like Meg Whitman who pat themselves on the back for doing an illegal a big favor by underpaying her under the table.
If you think, I've digressed, I haven't -- it's all part of the same sad I got mine, f**k you attitude that is rapidly turning America into a third-world country. And when that happens, those at the top of the heap will blame it on the poor -- just as they blame them for all our social ills.
Anyhow, I have a question for you about anachronistic actuarial table predictions. Where are you getting your information about this? I am chronically confused as I read one article that says we're okay on social security and another that says we are not.
I am serious. What's a gal to think?
Birdog
"GERMANY INVADES FRANCE;
"We kept your rooms just the way you like them," say Parisians."
So, to suggest when people are arguing on the original intent of the program and therefore reject means testing when the contributions cap at a set salary that also means the benefit caps tied to that salary and the accumulated contributions of the individual during their earning years is by definition callous indifference to starving elderly is a disingenuous cheap shot and an insult.
Knock it off.
If there is a need for greater supplements, then put it over on the proper side of the government ledger and call it what it is, which happens to be an elderly specific welfare program. This would imply benefits calculated yearly. SSI benefits get set at retirement based on what you contributed.
It is all well and good to pick out the 1% of unique situations of triple dippers with military pensions, private sector pensions, and then public service pensions.
More specifically the segment to address are the donut hole types who make more than the average, had the maximum taken from them in social security payments, and would then be means tested out. They will have material impact as a result. That money may or may not have been invested by them for retirement. This was the impetus of the original intent. It was mandatory pension investment launched to address that real need in that economy and established in such a way to have the set aside for those people going forward by taking from the working class funds set aside and tracked to their annual earnings throughout their entire employment span.
If someone said to you they had invested 15.3% of their income per year for 18 years and, upon retirement, they received nothing, the populist fervor to which you have such an affinity would be railing about evil corporations, throwing around the word Enron like an F-bomb and demanding government action.
And yet means testing social security will do exactly that to a small business owner picking up both sides of the social security contribution on his income.
Duh.
And by the way, I had my day contributing the whole enchilada, too, not only running my own businesses, but when I was an employee of liars and crooks who paid me on a 1099 as a "contractor" even tho I was undeniably an employee. Like I said, everybody wants to profit from living in this country, but nobody wants to pay for the privilege.
As for McCain, forgive me if I weep no tears for him. Like so many so-called fiscal conservatives, he has spent his entire life drawing a govt check -- or in his case, several govt checks. He entered this discussion because he called SS a disgrace. Well as far as I'm concerned he's a disgrace, and I'm ashamed to admit I would have voted for "Mr I never said I was a maverick" in 2000