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Post by fumobici on Mar 17, 2023 18:42:48 GMT
We all know that he wasn't a leftist, Fumo, but he was elected with the communists and he applied policies worthy of Lenin or Castro. I approved of it at the time and then voted Trotskyist for the next 20 years, until we made Lionel Jospin lose to Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2002 for the first round by the 1% that some of us drained off. From that moment on, I became a realist. I remember how you despised Biden. Biden's been a very pleasant surprise to me given his checkered political past. He, if fact, may be my favorite US President of my entire adult life. And I don't despise or hate anyone at all.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 19, 2023 20:55:06 GMT
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Post by mickthecactus on Mar 24, 2023 8:03:54 GMT
Certainly heating up in Bordeaux.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 24, 2023 12:06:15 GMT
Well, they'll have plenty of time to fix everything for Charles and Camilla.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 24, 2023 18:56:07 GMT
Say what you will about Macron, the man recognizes a bad visual when it looms on the horizon: The president and his wife, Brigitte, had been due to host a banquet for Charles and Camilla, the Queen Consort, at the former royal palace at Versailles, which critics viewed as having echoes of Marie Antoinette feasting while Paris revolted.source
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Post by htmb on Mar 24, 2023 19:22:40 GMT
Perhaps he should have recognized the problem a little sooner, but better late than never.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 24, 2023 19:29:51 GMT
This would have happened with any French president, which is why none of the others dared to attack the problem. He wanted to do all of this in his first term but with Brexit, covid, Ukraine and all that stuff, it was put on the back burner. The other day he made it clear that he is willing to accept being unpopular as long as he gets this done, because he is not eligible for reelection.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 24, 2023 19:56:21 GMT
I should mention that every single one of my friends who has not yet reached retirement age is dead set against the new law, just as I was when they changed my retirement age from 60 to 62. But I did not demonstrate (I suppose there were demonstrations) because it just seemed inevitable. This time what has particularly muddied the water is the news of all of the super profits of the giant companies and the generous dividends to all of the shareholders.
The news never tells us the amount of taxes paid by these corporations (or on the income of the shareholders), so we just assume that they are all getting away with murder. They probably are, but I would like more information about this before putting their heads on a pike. Naturally, there is no way that anybody can accept announcements like "the CEO of XXX earned an additional 15 million euros in bonuses last year." This makes all of us sick. Can somebody making even only a piddling 1 million euros a year say that it was really deservedly earned due to their hard work?
And why does the world accept this? Since there are even lots of communist billionaires (China, Vietnam...) how does this even happen?
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 28, 2023 16:03:06 GMT
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 28, 2023 16:42:14 GMT
This would have happened with any French president, which is why none of the others dared to attack the problem. He wanted to do all of this in his first term but with Brexit, covid, Ukraine and all that stuff, it was put on the back burner. The other day he made it clear that he is willing to accept being unpopular as long as he gets this done, because he is not eligible for reelection. I have to say that I was most surprised to learn that a French president has this much power, as somehow it seems most un-French. At any rate, what I keep wondering -- and I realize this is simplistic -- is why Macron doesn't just say okay, after further number-crunching, we'll raise it to 63 rather than 64.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 28, 2023 16:44:29 GMT
That's because he just said we'll raise it to 64 instead of 65 when all of this started.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 28, 2023 17:57:29 GMT
Ahhh. I see.
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Post by patricklondon on Mar 30, 2023 7:12:07 GMT
I have to say that I was most surprised to learn that a French president has this much power, as somehow it seems most un-French. De Gaulle, basically. This was more or less what he wanted in 1944-45, but didn't get, so he bided his time till the 4th Republic foundered on the rocks of the Algerian war, and he was called back. The present set-up was his price for coming back. At any rate, what I keep wondering -- and I realize this is simplistic -- is why Macron doesn't just say okay, after further number-crunching, we'll raise it to 63 rather than 64. Our state pension eligibility has been on a gradual phased raise from 65 to 68 for successive cohorts. And when I turned 65 they had (I assume they still do) a scheme whereby if you deferred for a year, you'd get extra. Not that the state pension is enough to be really comfortable, even with free public transport and the winter fuel allowance (usually £200, £500 this last winter).
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Post by whatagain on Mar 30, 2023 7:51:39 GMT
I live less than 100 kms from France. My legal retirement age is 67. So i have no positive opinion of people wanting to keep such a low retirement age as 62, when life expentancy has boomed and gained - what 10 years ? - since retirement age was set. This is a cause for injustice between generations, the old keepu g to their privilzdges, knowing but forgetting that their pensions will be paid by the young ones.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 30, 2023 13:02:10 GMT
I do not have a firm opinion on things like the retirement age because there are too many details that I do not know. However, it is obvious that people whose jobs are tough should be able to retire earlier than the normal age, and that is extremely hard to define. Technology has made all sorts of jobs much easier than in the past, but most of the rules were set in the past and have not yet changed. Yet people in manual jobs still die younger than while collar workers. But why? Can we say that it is their lack of educational opportunities that led them to have a less healthy lifestyle, their lower salaries that made them live in less salubrious conditions, having more children that wore them out? There are a million variables. The government can be held responsible for some of them, capitalism for others, but these people themselves are not totally exonerated for what has happened to them either. Jeez, I'm glad that I am not a politician who needs to work out a plan.
(It was a different country, but my biological father was a locomotive engineer. His union forced everybody to go on strike when the post of fireman (stoker) was eliminated even though there were no longer any coal powered locomotives and the "fireman" had nothing to do except keep company with the driver. Fast forward to the 1980s when Airbus appeared on the scene with its modern electronic planes. There were only two positions in the cockpit instead of the usual three (pilot + copilot) because the post of "navigator" had been eliminated since there was no longer any need for one. The technical airline staff immediately went on strike about that because the found it inadmissible. And there are still lots of things like like. Ditch diggers still use a shovel about 10% of the time, but the rest of the time it is all done by machines. So is it still a tough job? In my personal opinion yes, but I stayed in school to avoid ever having to do such a job.)
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 1, 2023 1:46:35 GMT
So i have no positive opinion of people wanting to keep such a low retirement age as 62, when life expentancy has boomed and gained - what 10 years ? - since retirement age was set. This is a cause for injustice between generations, the old keepu g to their privilzdges, knowing but forgetting that their pensions will be paid by the young ones. Are you forgetting that all those free-loading oldsters paid into pension funds, paid taxes on their wages throughout their working lives, etc.? Are you also forgetting that keeping all the old farts working keeps their jobs tied up so that there are fewer jobs for younger people entering the work force and also denying promotions to deserving younger workers because the higher jobs are held by old people?
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Post by mickthecactus on Apr 1, 2023 6:45:06 GMT
So i have no positive opinion of people wanting to keep such a low retirement age as 62, when life expentancy has boomed and gained - what 10 years ? - since retirement age was set. This is a cause for injustice between generations, the old keepu g to their privilzdges, knowing but forgetting that their pensions will be paid by the young ones. Are you forgetting that all those free-loading oldsters paid into pension funds, paid taxes on their wages throughout their working lives, etc.? Are you also forgetting that keeping all the old farts working keeps their jobs tied up so that there are fewer jobs for younger people entering the work force and also denying promotions to deserving younger workers because the higher jobs are held by old people? Hear, hear!
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Post by whatagain on Apr 1, 2023 7:07:59 GMT
Yes and no. What has been paid by workers in the past are sunk costs. Btw they paid for their own fathers who had never funded the retirement funds. And they paid on a basis of a certain life expectancy, which is no longer the same.
And i love the arguments of K and would add that we no longer can base any reasoning on full work positiins : we will ne er again have jibs for wverybody so we must accept that a category of people should be non workers. As for young guys nit having jobs because old guys have one, we shoukd also aet a max age for Politicians : how come we must retire and they can work past 80.
But the real problem is elsewhere - it us the distribution of money. The poors get poorer and increase in numbers, the rich get richer, the companies have been making record profits and pay hardly any taxes and the middle class is too heavily taxed.
Imo we should address this first. Plus, a lot of people want to work past 62. No ?
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Post by bjd on Apr 1, 2023 8:13:18 GMT
As with everything, it is all much more complicated than at first glance and it's not easy to sum up in quick soundbites on TV news. Also, the original retirement age protests have developed into bigger protests about inequality and other social factors, just like the Yellow Vest protests in 2018 started against higher taxes on gasoline (to fund action on climate change!) and became much bigger.
When Mitterrand dropped the retirement age from 65 to 60, the theory was that young people would be hired to replace the older workers. It didn't really work out that way, older experienced workers were not easily replaced by inexperienced young ones. Many of those suffering from youth unemployment often have no qualifications of any kind, not to mention discrimination because of skin colour or foreign (particularly Arabic) names on their CVs when they apply for jobs. This is not legal but nobody can deny that it happens.
Yes, working past 62 is also sometimes a matter of choice. If you are a construction worker or in a foundry, working till your mid-60s can be unimaginable. If you have an office job or are doing something you really like, like scientific research, then you can carry on with no great harm to your health.
And yes, politicians should also have an age limit. My personal bugbear is Jean-Luc Mélanchon -- the man is in his 70s, has tons of various cushy retirement pensions from all the jobs he has held in government over the decades -- I was surprised by the list of his various positions when I searched for his personal wealth -- and is calling for general strikes and for people to retire at 60.
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Post by mickthecactus on Apr 1, 2023 8:19:11 GMT
Good points bjd.
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Post by whatagain on Apr 1, 2023 9:13:03 GMT
A perfect discussion to have from dusk till dawn around a table with beer and tapas.
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Post by fumobici on Apr 1, 2023 14:35:23 GMT
So i have no positive opinion of people wanting to keep such a low retirement age as 62, when life expentancy has boomed and gained - what 10 years ? - since retirement age was set. This is a cause for injustice between generations, the old keepu g to their privilzdges, knowing but forgetting that their pensions will be paid by the young ones. Are you forgetting that all those free-loading oldsters paid into pension funds, paid taxes on their wages throughout their working lives, etc.? Are you also forgetting that keeping all the old farts working keeps their jobs tied up so that there are fewer jobs for younger people entering the work force and also denying promotions to deserving younger workers because the higher jobs are held by old people? Thank you being the voice of reason here.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 11, 2023 11:40:08 GMT
Luis Sal is an internet celebrity vlogger in Italy, but I love the way he mixes croissants and demonstrations in Paris in this video. I'm not sure if it was wise for him to dress like someone from the Black Bloc.
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Post by bjd on Apr 14, 2023 18:18:33 GMT
This evening the Constitutional Council ruled that raising the retirement age to 64 is perfectly legal, although they did refuse certain other clauses that had been tacked on to the proposed law.
So demonstrations are continuing, people are pissed off and swearing that they will keep on being angry and will continue their street protests. Meanwhile, Macron cannot back down in the two weeks in which he has to sign the law. Backing down would be political suicide, as would calling new legislative elections.
I don't quite understand why Marine Le Pen is so pleased although I keep reading that her poll numbers are climbing.She claims to be against the reform but will accept the Council's decision. Why would the far right increase its popularity if it's the left that is mostly leading the protests?
Furthermore, Spain has just raised it's retirement age to 67, which is also the age in Belgium and perhaps the Netherlands. No street protests there. A French friend told me it's the historical influence of the French revolution but I have a hard time believing that.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 25, 2023 15:52:53 GMT
While such videos are always debatable, I think this one has quite a bit of substance, especially for people from outside who do not really know what is going on.
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Post by kerouac2 on May 4, 2023 19:29:41 GMT
The music of this video is even better than the delightful visuals. I hope that nobody dares to set foot in the country.
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Post by bjd on May 5, 2023 6:18:12 GMT
What is HT?
On France 24 the other day, a Swiss reporter was saying these demonstrations and protests make France look bad internationally.
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Post by mickthecactus on May 5, 2023 6:36:40 GMT
It’s what you expect with France.
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Post by mossie on May 5, 2023 6:50:36 GMT
The French are revolting
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Post by cheerypeabrain on May 5, 2023 8:19:12 GMT
I'm with the French! I can remember how devastated I was when the government at the time changed retirement age for women from 60 to 65. My 3 older sisters all retired at 60 but I and my peers would have to keep going for another 5 years. I know that it was terribly unfair that women could retire 5 years before men...in the 70s I remember talk of reducing the retirement age for men...but no.
To make matters worse the retirement age for all was then increased to 66 (now 67). I was fortunate to have an NHS pension that I could take at out 60 (albeit a slightly reduced amount). I know that I simply would not be capable of coping with the stress and responsibility that I used to...the 12 hour shifts, 60 hour weeks etc...yet under the new regimen I would still be working!
So I support the French worker...I hope that they force their government to U turn, but sadly I doubt that they will succeed.
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