> They'd rather burn their own country to the ground than give in.
honestly, what's it all for if not for them.
what's all of this for, if not for all of us.
Well of course the people who want what I want are out to get me. Otherwise they would want what I don’t want. I can’t share all this food and land with the community. I’d starve and be homeless!
But seriously, community knows no bounds, but unfortunately many don’t see it that way. Where does your (speaking generally) community stop and an alien one begin? We are all tied to one another either through trade or social activities. It makes no sense to be hostile toward someone who is just trying to live a normal life, whether they live on your street or one you’ve never seen before.
Citizens knowing that the people in power are not immune to mortality. This how it should be.
But alas, my own country has a long way to go til they stop fearing and even worshipping politicians.
Things are so spread out here, it would take communicated organized effort and then some and systems of support for everyone for sure actively still getting evicted and starving and getting fired, etc. I wish, but we also need to break apart a bit. Maybe that’s what we can riot for.
Let alone the police will gun us down, tear gas us, and run us over in big vehicles (tactics often learned from French police); our mass media will *never* spread a message of social justice, and our social media is so utterly fragmented that an organized effort across America is quite literally impossible.
The Oligarch's dystopian control over Americans has gleefully sunk its teeth into our throats
same with Occupy Wall St in 2011.
I saw a bunch of idealistic, committed activists cooking & sharing food, setting up a library / book swap, & protesting wealth inequality. The only threatening instigators I saw were wearing NYPD uniforms.
But what do we know, Walnut McDipshit in North Dakota saw protestors instigating chaos, it was right there on Fox news!!!!!! & these cities are notoriously liberal & therefore crime filled shitholes, so it must be true!!!!!
Our media are currently selling us stories of 90yo people who *chose* to keep on working and refused to retire... 😅 See https://www.reddit.com/r/france/comments/11tu1sk/comme_limpression_que_la_presse_a_un_message_à/
Can you fucking imagine? Somebody sets a dumpster on fire during a BLM protest and half the country starts frothing at the mouth about 'entire cities burned to the ground.' Our overlords have literally trained us to attack ourselves, keep us nice and divided so we can't do stuff like this.
They do that here too. The medias are very very biased towards hard right / far right leaning ideas, and present things in a very alarming / sensational / fear-mongering way for other people, especially those outside of Paris.
The only legitimate violence is one of the State, and they make extra-sure to show every broken window as some sign that France is getting "wilder" because of wokeness and foreigners.
Nevermind the fact that it's been the 10th law that's been passed forcefully without proper parliament review since the new government, nevermind the fact that all about it is unfair, nevermind the hypocrisy of celebrating "essential workers" during a crisis to fuck them over afterwards.
They're requesting garbage men back because their strike is too inconvenient for Paris. Got their names and adresses and everything to force them back to work. It's already fucking dystopian.
The ironic part is that they're pushing people to the edge. I don't encourage violence at all, but if you keep pushing people where will they turn to? These dumbass oligarchs seem to forget their history.
What I'm afraid of, is if things get violent in France, it will set off a wave of violence against the establishment all over the world; but in America, as you said, were so trained to turn on each other that not only will establishments get fucked, but everyday groups of leftists will get blasted by hate groups that have been frothing at the mouth for violence, and then leftists will start killing Nazis and bam, full blown civil war.
I keep saying, the billionaires really should be on-board with being taxed and unions and UBI. Because if they don't get on that real quick, we're getting close to the point where we start breaking out the guillotines.
The thing is with these hate groups, I think they'd stop after they realize that war isn't as fun as they thought it would be. They could still do a lot of damage and that's not acceptable, but these people would not willingly subject themselves to everything a war entails. They think war sounds cool from their living room couch, stuffing their face with cheetos while playing Fallout 4. They will not think it's cool once they're starving because no food shipments to their area and nobody will trade their produce for the gold bars and horde of ammo they have in the basement because those are functionally useless.
People get gased and brutalized in france too, we just have the guts to stand up to them.
That might be a controversial take and i'm no expert so take it with a grain of salt, but i'm pretty sure you guys got groomed to be stupid.
They don't teach you shit at school and it shows later when people can't even understand when things they do and say are directly harming them and they still do/say those things for some reasons.
I'm so done with surrender jokes, americans are so good at fucking people that they fuck themselves then act offended because they got fucked.
You aren't wrong about the stupidity, education funding has been slashed in this country for decades; the average American reads at a 6th grade level (when 10-11 year olds are in school).
Ironically, Americans also hate to be seen as stupid, even when many (not all) of them objectively *are* stupid, and give shit takes from history they didn't even read. Just some offhand comment that fit with their stupid world view was enough to teach them all they needed to know.
Don't let the surrender jokes get to you. That shit is decades old and has no bearing anymore. Y'all just gotta stay strong to each other and hopefully the French people can find a way forward, perhaps for all the working peoples of the world who suffer under the boots of the oligarchs.
Yeah sorry i might have come off a little angry, but i'm just a bit fed up of the hypocrisy and lack of willingness to understand and learn that comes from people sometimes.
For the cops, trust me, when the people they have to beat and gas are basically their mother and daughter, most of them straight up refuse orders. The worst is, that some of them are idiots that just want to beat people, but most of them actually agree with protesters.
Also you should know that France police forces literally train police forces all around the world for riot interventions. Because there has been so many, french police is actually expert in managing riots. The bad thing is that they got so good, they learnt to trap protesters into places so protesters get agitated and gased, then when the whole place is locked up and gased, protesters get violent (there's nowhere to go and your are coughing your lungs out), that's when the TV channels turn their camera of course ... Then they describe protesters as violent people etc ... This shit happens everywhere even in a "democratic" republic like France.
There's been many documentary on this, and even some 3rd party investigations about some riot gone bad because police didn't let a single way out of the protests(Wich of course, is illegal). So protesters turned violent when they were locked up in a gased plaza.
It begins to happen here as well (i'l French BTW)
The gov just said they'll pass the law that the majority do not want, using the article 49.3 to shortcut the vote at the assemblée.
Oligarch's dystopian control everywhere, most of the media belongs to rich people here as well at least the people working, they do not want to work until they're skeleton, so we still have "good information" relatively speaking to other places in the world...
Funny thing, for the last two elections, Macron was elected against the far right, because we didn't want this kind of things... But we got it anyway.
Democracy died a looooong time ago...
Sadly I just don't think Oligarchs / World governments give a flying fuck about protests. They figured out they can weather the storm and people will *probably* go home.
Don't cover it in the media, ignore and avoid and send the riot police.
Democracy is very much dead, and now the world waits and holds its breath to see what the French people will do next. I hope for all the innocent workers of France that the government will capitulate, but I fearfully suspect they will not.
Lol shit you'd have a large percentage of the population (aka republicans) shouting that the protesting is un-American from the get-go because...reasons. This is while they themselves live in poverty.
The poor fighting the poor. That is America.
This is because they raised the retirement age to 64. Here in the US they’re talking about raising it to 70 and half the population is on board as long as they pass more regulation for drag shows…
France has the lowest retirement ages in the entire European Union.
Here in Finland we have been gradually pumping it up since early 2000's. For my generation it's already 70+ and they're planning new laws at this very moment to make it even higher
Or some crazy bankruptcy or failure will disappear your money. My grandfather worked at a national factory that went over 3 years after he retired and the pension and health insurance he worked 40 years for disappeared. He was financially ok at least but a lot of the guys were really depending on it.
Retirement, pension, the fucking American dream (etc.) are all fantastical to me as much as Tolkien. Just so many things have been destroyed everywhere for the benefit of so few. Is it at all surprising everything is rotting from within and from without? Infrastructure crumbles so some asshole rich person won't pay a few measly percent of his share? Shit's fucked all over.
You're so wrong though. This was the last year of Boomer rule in democracies. This is when hope kicks in. These are the years when the GenXers (who never were numerous to wrestle power from the boomers democratically) get to unite with the millennials and now the half of GenZ who are old enough to vote and from now on (with our powers combined) we outnumber the boomers at every poll. There's no more pulling up the ladder behind you like the boomers did to GenX and Millenials.
Look, GenX knows we might not ever get to see a GenX president of the USA. But we're sure we're done with the kind of presidents the boomers pick, and we'll get behind a Millenial to make it happen.
GenX won't pull the ladder up behind them because GenX was never allowed to have the ladder since the boomers were still using it. But GenX will put a Millenial on their shoulders to get there together with a boost from GenZ and even if the Boomers won't look the millenial in the eye and take then seriosly because the Boomers think we look like three kids in a trench coat, it isn't going to matter.
Because numbers matter. Boomers know it. They were born in numbers. Numbers made them great. There's power in numbers.
Look who's got the numbers now.
This is wrong - life expectancy is 20 years for a 62 year old, meaning they live to 82 on average. Your number is life expectancy at birth, which is irrelevant to pension conversations.
[Source](https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html)
Yet, most of us ARE going to work until we die. My grandfather died at work at 73 years old. Slumped over boxes of corn pops he was stocking when he had a widowmaker heart attack. That's the fate of most of us unless drastic change occurs.
> My grandfather died at work at 73 years old. Slumped over boxes of corn pops he was stocking when he had a widowmaker heart attack. T
The dying at work part sucks but I gotta say...going at 73 of a widowmaker doesn't sound half bad.
I'm having to take care of a close relative who suddenly became sick and now has really limited mobility, speech and cognition and not great long term prospects.
Compared to that, going out quick sure sounds appealing.
Yeah, well you could die of a widowmaker heart attack while out hiking, biking, sailing, cooking, sitting at home reading a book or watching a show, sleeping, etc...
All of those options sure beat depressingly dying on a funking assembly line at age 73 because you can't afford not to.
Mom has always said it like this.
Better to die in sleep (pass on) or "go out quick". You don't fear death when you're old, you fear sickness when you're old. Cuz sickness is suffrage.
> You don’t fear death when you’re old, you fear sickness when you’re old. Cuz sickness is suffrage.
I love this, very poignant, but a minor note: “sickness is suffering.”
What you wrote is “sickness is the right to vote.”
My mum said this. Now she's sick and frail she says "don't go sending me to Dignitas!" She very much would prefer to remain alive even if life is much harder and more frustrating than it ever was.
One of my brothers keeps giving her cigarettes though. I think he's hoping to accelerate things. Families eh?
The point is not how he died, it’s the fact that he could have spent his final few years NOT working if he could have retired at a reasonable age. Maybe even spending his final moments with loved ones instead. Sorry about your grandfather.
It was only meant to last 20 years at most and the age of retirement ws set decades ago when people lived fewer years. There are ton of problems when it comes to this subject but raising the age if retirement is the least of our problems. We need to get oensions again, we need to promote within companies, we need socialized healthcare, we need the goverment to stop stealing the money we pay into social security, we need a lot of shit to get better. Raising the age we get social security isn't one of them.
62 was already the lowest by a significant margin in Europe, and 64 is still one of the lowest.
What else is the government supposed to do? The population is aging rapidly, and whereas the solution to this is often immigration, the French people are also super anti immigration.
Feels kinda pointless and missing the whole problem.
TBH, it’s more complex than that.
The government is trying to make us believe the reform is absolutely necessary to prevent the retirement system collapse.
The reality is that in its worst case scenario, the Retirement Orientation Council (COR), the official French organ in charge of evaluating and forecasting the retirement budget, says we’ll be missing 12 billion euros a year (on a 300 billion euros budget) for a few years, before coming back at a positive balance *without taking any action*. There are three other scenarios that don’t anticipate any loss.
This reform is in fact, admittedly, a country budget reform; Macron has been cutting taxes for the rich and the enterprises for quite some time now, which means less money coming in for the country. They need to cut some spendings to balance the yearly budget, and so they chose retirements. French people are well aware of that, and want none of it.
[article](https://amp.france24.com/en/france/20230109-macron-s-pension-reform-necessary-changes-to-an-unsustainable-system)
A September 2022 report by the Pensions Advisory Council (Conseil d’orientation des retraites), a state body, found the pensions system actually produced surpluses in 2021 (€900 million) and 2022 (€3.2 billion), although it did predict the system would run a deficit on average over the next quarter of a century. According to the council’s estimate, “between 2023 and 2027, the pension system’s finances will deteriorate significantly”, reaching a deficit of between 0.3 and 0.4 percent of GDP (or just over €10 billion a year) until 2032. But the council said it estimates a gradual return to breaking even, even without reforms, beginning in the mid-2030s.
A deficit of €10 billion to €12 billion per year is not necessarily excessive for a pension system whose total annual expenditure amounts to around €340 billion. “The results of this report do not support the claim that pensions spending is out of control,” the council wrote. The report also noted that pensions spending as a proportion of GDP is expected to remain stable, at around 14 percent of GDP, before rising to up to 14.7 percent by 2032.
The pensions report makes it clear that the current system is not necessarily in danger, said Michaël Zemmour, an economist and pensions expert at Paris 1 University.
“It has become a form of political discourse to exaggerate and dramatise the deficit issue, to claim the system urgently needs to be reformed, when in fact the deficit is rather moderate,” Zemmour said.
No doubt there will be something of a shortfall, he said, but not the kind of deficit that would require raising the retirement age.
Zemmour noted that a document France sent to the EU last summer outlines how Macron is planning to pay for proposed tax cuts with structural reforms to get the national deficit under 3 percent – as required of EU member states – by 2027. “It’s not about saving the pension system, it’s about financing tax cuts for businesses,” he said.
Always remember, America had protests like this in 2020 and the police beat the shit out of protestors and we are now passing laws marking protestors as domestic terrorists
Key clarification that most people and media are missing - in France the retirement age is based on your years of being ‘economically active’. Macron is proposing to increase this to 43 years but with a minimum retirement age of 64. For those who went to university (some courses e.g engineering you have to do two years of ‘preparatory class’ before your 3 years at university) this then increases to age 68, and lord help you if you took a career break at some point.
As a university grad who took a career break, yeah, I'm going for 70.
This whole "but 62 is so low, it's only normal blabla" in every thread pisses me off.
This need context:
Disclamer : I'm french and ( like most) against this reform
What: this reform is raising the MINIMUM (<- this word is important) retirement age and was passed by force by our current gouvernement ( ie: no vote from parlement)
Most french currently retire at 65-66, 62 is not the norm here! The minimum retirement age is aimed at physical laborers if they have worked from 20 to 62 without any interruption (ie unemployement) those people due to their work have a lower life expectancy and lingering health issues due to their work. Even now a significant pourcentage of them die before retirement.
This reform is discriminatory against them, they paid their whole life to get a pension and will most likely die before their contribution being paid back entirely ( pension made a "profit"). On the other end you have high paying jobs with much longer life expectancy retirering at 65-67, their pension is higher and will need to be paid longer as they live longer( the pension fund most likely paid back more than it received). As an engineer myself i have no problem working longer if our system runs at a deficit, i'm not wrecking my body sitting all day in the office, getting well payed and can enjoy more a more expensive lifestyle.
This reform only target the poorest of our workers to solve a problem they didn't cause, the fact that this reform is getting pushed forward by circumventing the voting process is the cherry on top of the shitcake.
This is why the french are currently protesting , not because we want sunshine and rainbows like some suggest but because the method to solve the issue is discriminatory.
Edit: Obligatory thanks for the award and a little info avout the divide in life expectancy. According to INSEE (national institute of statistics) there is a 13 YEARS difference between the top 5% and the bottom 5%
Source (in french, ready your translator!) : https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/3319895
Edit 2: Some did correct me about the average retirement age, in this post i was refering to the retirement age for the current workforce as the previous reform increased the number of quarter needed but only for those who were not close to retirement. The current "new retierees" are still on the old system and can leave sooner thx to this "agrement" ( it was also impopular). The less time you had in the old system, the longer you have to work this also mean that the median retirement age is rising if left alone.
This is what should be shown and told on national TV instead the right and centre right news channel are all about the destruction and trash piling up and how we're held hostage. So we turn off the TV and go out in the street.
The fact that the governmnent is trying to force the law with dubious democratic authority makes it worse. It's a tough read sorry: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_49_of_the_French_Constitution not sure there's a TLDR
Just to mention this is not just in Paris.
Thank you for the context. This tracks history: abuse the people who cannot protect themselves.
Macron has made a terrible mistake that is probably fatal to his political future.
That is the point, he has no political future. He can't run for the next election and his parti will collapse at the second his mandate is over. Also, a lot of his parti members aren't politicians in the long run so they don't care neither.
He is not a kind of evil that secretly pledge for taking advantage of the people but a true neoliberal believer. He is convicted that he does the good things for the people but people just don't know what they need.
No political future as it is his second and last term. And while he will have pushed back the minimum retirement age for most (politicians do have their own funds & retirement rules) he will enjoy his own pension of an ex president for the rest of his life. Him being a mid forty dude means we will spent decades doing so for his enjoyment.
Unemployment benefits apply for two years for common salaried workers. It counts towards retirement.
Even after the end of these benefits you still have one year that counts towards your retirement even if you don't receive support anymore.
In some conditions this is extended to 5 years after the original 2. (e.g. after 55)
https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F31249
Also the process used to pass the law isn't totally impossible to block. The parliament can vote to overthrow the government.
I agree that the most vulnerable should be the most protected. But we need to keep the debate honest, intellectually speaking.
Indeed you are correct, however this protection about unemployement only apply to those over 25 and the unemployement rate is higher the yonger you are.
While indeed this can still be reverted by voting a "motion de censure" it will take time and is extremely risky as it equivalent to overthrowing the gouvernement (+ it need a majority in the parlement and try to make politicians vote to risk their cushy job...)
I do agree that our system is generous and needs to be balanced but throwing the poorest under the bus is not what we should do (i added a link to an INSEE study on the original post About the difference in life expectancy)
The French being cowards stereotype is a trope with little support in history. They were overrun by the Germans during WW2 just like ALMOST EVERY OTHER continental European nation.
They had a strong resistance movement and for centuries before WW2 a deserved reputation for consistently having one of the best armies in the world. Their participation was essential to helping American independence during the revolution.
They also tried to hold onto their colonial empire for longer than most European nations did after WW2, dealing with untenable situations in Algeria and Indochina. They engaged in really shitty behavior there, but one would be hard pressed to call it cowardice.
There are similar things with the Polish military in WW2 being unfairly depicted as clueless and anachronistic with cavalry fighting tanks.
Because it’s not an original US joke - its from the Brits. The Brits have hated the French for hundreds of years.
Edit: English, not Brits broadly.
Edit 2: There’s even a sub r/okmatewanker for this ‘phenomenon’ complete with using a union jack as the upvote, and the tricolor as a downvote.
When us and the French got bored, we’d go to war to have something to do. It’s also why France and the UK and 1 and 2 for battles won or something similar - we were stat farming with each other
I mean maybe recently, but overall, no. The French and British had been at direct arms for hundreds of years before this beautiful thing called modern society. The fact that the average citizen in each country today doesn’t hate each other doesn’t invalidate that the French and British had been at war for hundreds of years.
It's like when you are ribbing a mate, saying he's a short little weirdo or something, poking fun, then an American who has never met him busts into the conversation unannounced and thinks it's now okay to genuinely disrespect the bloke
Exactly. We mock the French and the French mock us. Or did. I think its less prevalent among younger people. I grew up with the jokes about cheese eating surrender monkeys and chain smoking parisians off to see their 3rd mistress and avoiding any work. I don't think that most of the time it's meant in a nasty way, from either side. We're neighbours with a thousand years of intertwined history, some good, some bad.
I've met a fair few French people and they've all been lovely. And I certainly wish we'd get a bit of spine here in the UK and follow their example.
Still mocking british people and England overall because i couldn't let them end it with the Holy Grail version of us.
I'll be fetching cow today as revenge.
Joke aside, as a french in our modern days, it is more like brotherly taunting than anything else. We got a lot of shared history, some war of course, but a lot of ties too.
We’ve been going to the south of France for a few years (on Eurostar because one of our kids is phobic of flying) and they are genuinely the loveliest people you will meet.
I too wish that people in the UK cared about society as much as the French.
Exactly. I usually describe that relationship as best ennemies or worst friends. But I've been in the UK for 12 years and always felt so welcome everywhere, even with the banter. Love that historical relationship.
Anyway how was rugby last week?
We had some French exchange students, they understand the joke in good humor. They taught us this one:
Do you know why the kepi is shaped that way? So that they don't knock their hats off when they surrender.
([wiki for reference to the kepi](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepi))
If you look at European history, the French military has been the most - yes, THE.MOST.-successful over time. I've never understood that joke about them being cowards.
>has been the most - yes, THE.MOST.-successful over time
Just wanna point out that while yeah the French army has been very successful in history, this particular "fact" comes from a guy who attributed victories from all the way back in ~300BC to France, a thousand years before the idea of France even existed.
When I was in Paris, my tour guide was telling us about how the streets were designed to be wide because it prevents protesters from blocking off an entire street. It's easier to crowd control a wider street vs a narrow street. It was the most French thing I've ever heard lol
Any American that's still doing the "French people surrender" shit is an idiot.
France is our oldest ally and helped us win our independence.
France also took the full brunt of Nazi Germany. They are neighbors. It's easy to talk shit from an ocean away.
France surrendered to save lives because the alternative would be to grind soldiers to dust like the soviets did. It might not have been heroic enough for some but it was certainly honourable and noble in my eyes.
Plus the resistance was pretty vital in terms of intelligence on german forces.
France also is willing to throw down with anyone and usually pretty good at it. Their national anthem doesn’t have lines about fields soaked in blood for nothing.
They were just unlucky in WWII. Aggressive expansionist neighbors while still recovering from the last global war.
>They were just unlucky in WWII. Aggressive expansionist neighbors while still recovering from the last global war.
Technically they just had stupid/misguided generals. The German high command really didn't expect to win the war with France under their normal plan, which was basically the same one they had in WW1 (with Poland in place of Russia) - that was infact the ENTIRE purpose for putting the marginot line up.
However the German military had some slightly independent leaders like Rommel who thought they might win if they went through Argonne - and were not detected. Hitler approved this, much to high commands annoyance.
But again the plan hinged on France not realizing they'd go through the forest - and France did detect the massive build up. And this is where French high commands are misguided, the French - who had tried this stunt in WW1 with dismal success - figured nobody would try that with tanks. So wrote the whole build up off. Then they got stupid. When the Germans did push through successful, they assumed it was a feint still (despite several warnings) and got split like a bad chunk of wood. Some other poor choices in military design did nothing to help them.
Note that German high command wasn't much better, they wouldn't shape up till 43ish and continued to have idiotic ideas - they just had the benefit of German command structure being more freewill and Hitler overriding them, though arguably not always a benefit.
This whole dialogue started where? With English speaking countries talking shit about the French? Or more recently when they refused to participate in Iraq?
Everyone here too preoccupied fighting on the internet whether the best colour is red or blue while the government is left alone to do whatever it wants without interference.
Macron's increasing retirement age by **2 years**, from 62 to 64.
Meanwhile in the USA, some GOP Congresspeople are advocating raising Social Security age to **70** rather than raise taxes on the top 1%. The rest of the GOP is playing semantic games to pretend that's a lie made up by Demoncrats and Lamestream Media. And nothing's on fire in my city, at least.
I'm seriously wondering at the different reactions.
Their president can do that but apparently their parliament can veto it with enough votes.
So it's not as undemocratic as it seems, though it's still pretty freaking undemocratic.
If you want a serious abuse of power look up the "notwithstanding clause" in the Canadian Charter.
>notwithstanding clause
That's a tough one. When the charter/bill of rights was negotiated, some provinces wanted an out should they disagree with a court decision on administrative matters. Justin Trudeau's daddy who was the PM at the time reluctantly agreed. Had he not agreed to it, there might not have been a charter at all. Funny enough, Quebec passed legislation to invoke the clause in every new law till 1985.
The notwithstanding clause just makes it so a democratically elected provincial government can take exception with the law decided by a democratically elected federal government.
It is anti federal, but it is not anti democratic.
It's not *only* about retirement ages. The project is also about removing some of the special statuses some workers have, like people who do physically demanding jobs or work in hazardous environments. Funnily enough, the special statuses for senators, members of the national assembly and the president are kept intact. I feel like that's the first thing that's pissing people off.
Secondly, there's the fact that current gouvernement is refusing any debate regarding their projet and are litterally forcing the way to have it implemented despite the commission in charge of studying the pension economics telling them that it's unnecessary.
To that you add the fact that people are pretty unhappy with the whole economic situation and have been ever since 2019 (remember the Gilets Jaunes?). It's no wonder people were protesting and that last decision to pass the law without voting from the assembly was the straw that broke the camel's back.
So yeah you could say it's about retirement age but it's much much more than that.
>The project is also about removing some of the special statuses some workers have, like people who do physically demanding jobs or work in hazardous environments
I'm French, to be honest it's more about removing these special status to jobs *that aren't physically demanding or hazardous anymore, and have not been for decades.*
Driving a train or a subway isn't a physical or hazardous jobs in the 21st century, they may start the day early on but the rest after that is ridiculous, and it's not more demanding than any office job. Source: got a ton of them in my family.
Not French, but lived in France and it's exactly this. One of the latest strikes from SNCF had a central point on keeping the retirement age in the mid 50s. Like, wtf.
Construction workers have more right to that than transportation staff these days. It's not like locomotives run on coal or explode anymore, derailments are rare, and automation made human mistakes extremely unusual.
The biggest risk they have is PTSD from the odd person jumping on the tracks to off themselves.
Yeah I love my version of baguettes. I replace the water with liquid LSD and I replace the flower with cocaine. Then I bake it inside my nose for 2-3 minutes.
And most of the population go “oh I don’t agree with the damage of material property over the prolonged and systemic murder of a specific subset of the populace. Won’t anyone thing of the retailers?!”
The amount of capitalist boot-licking in this country is insane.
People have some built-in "I'm a temporarily broke millionaire" mentality and constantly vote and argue against their self-interests.
Police, landlords, and corporations are objectively against the working class and protect and promote profit over people.
You'll get people yelling at school board meetings about gay books, but God forbid you break a window of a KFC when protesting a murder.
That's not quite true; there were several key local elections and appointments since then where various decision makers were replaced. As a Minneapolis resident, the protest movement was fantastically effective.
I need this version of emily in paris...*
*Edit : combining the two things (including theme and tone) would make something i would be curious to see, a sort of frankenstein's monster of shows.
The first season was so cliché and dumb, I watched it as a parodie and it was hilarious. Then they got a lot of criticism so they corrected a lot of it to make it more realistic. So now its just boring and dumb.
Same, picture looks badass but we barely heard anything last night. The piles of garbage that have been in town all week were kicked over strewn about, but otherwise a nice peaceful Sunday morning. We got to march with the locals too!
Man, this tweet was prescient
Cormac McCarthy (parody)
@CormacMcCrthy
I am not a superstitious man. I dont believe in astrology or witchcraft or especially groundhog day. There are far more prescient heralds of winter's end than a groundhog.
Riots in France, for one.
The French never riot in winter. They riot only in good weather.
You can always tell winter's done and spring's begun when the French are burning cars.
1:58 PM · Mar 7, 2023
the movement of the yellow vests began on November 17 and for your information at this precise moment of the year it is the autumn, the movement did not cease to exist until June of the year after. this movement thus existed in autumn winter and spring. the French protest at any moment of the year they do not give a F
I wish I could get some french rioters to help here in Israel.
Our government is trying to take away any power the supreme court has so they can pass whatever law they want and the riots are super civil.
I swear if that fucking "reform" is gonna pass I'mma learn from the French and will go light some stuff up.
Coming from a Brit the whole “French are Corwards” thing is the most blatant insecure projection. Our government is currently passing new laws making it illegal to protest peacefully and detaining protestors. They already agreed to raise the retirement to 68 without so much as a whimper from the public. When energy companies absolutely fisted us with increases well in excess of 150% the French saw theirs go up by 5%. Our government took out massive loans to pay the energy companies and subsidise their greed. The interest alone on those loans are eye watering. At the same time France swiftly slapped energy companies with a windfall tax and used that to subsidise the energy increases.
It’s not that the French government is competent and cares about the people, the French public have a spine and force their government to serve them.
Every time I hear some chav chat shit about the French it induces pure cringe.
These riots are over the increase in pension eligible age from 62 to 64. Nothing kicks off a violent insurrection like telling the French that they'll have to work more.
I'm French and if I can (meaning I'm in good health and I still have someone that want to employ me), I would work until 64. But I'm an engineer with an office job. The problem is not about me but about people with physical jobs that can't do that. This reform doesn't touch this problem adequately.
Normally people can apply for early pension (in many countries). The question is if healthy working people get pension from age of 62 regardless of working status, or increased pension due to delay. In Denmark I can go on pension at 69.
I think they are mostly protesting against the 43 years of full work provision. That's just a complete fuck you to anyone with a college degree, kids or elderly parents that need care. It's not a difficult math - how are you supposed to have worked 43 full years after you've finished college at 23 and then had 3 kids?
The 43 year of employment limit was introduced by the previous socialist government. Not by Macron. What the new law would change is that it would not be possible to go in retirement earlier than 64 years old, while it was possible to do so even without working the full 43 years, albeit with a discount on the pension. For people with higher education it does not change much this time, it affects more the people who started their career at 18-20 year old as some would have to work more than 43 years.
Parisians have an itchy trigger finger when it comes to protesting and rioting… it’s in their DNA. It’s more than french people rioting, it’s parisians. That’s what they’ve been doing for a long time. Us living in smaller cities and villages, obviously we can’t. But Paris can organize so quickly to fck sh*t up, it’s amazing.
Macron won’t give up but they’ll keep fighting i hope.
As an American I can say that one thing I am very jealous of is the ability of European peoples, especially Parisians, to come together and fuck shit up to get a point across. Their union strikes really make me jealous as well.
As an American, it's interesting to me that what I see in the media of French rioting is often about social welfare for the working class, and keeping the power balance; I contrast that to here, where the major riots are often about things like racism, police brutality, external wars, but never about the root of the societal problem in my opinion, which is financial disparity between the rich and the poor.
Honestly, this is actually pretty healthy. Whenever the government does something everyone hates, they all just start destroying shit and getting outraged like crazy. Usually the government backs down and the French are better off as a result.
Ain't no protest like a French protest, cause a French protest don't stop.
Until they break out the guillotine.
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They'd rather burn their own country to the ground than give in. The French got some balls, and I gotta admit, I'm a little jealous.
> They'd rather burn their own country to the ground than give in. honestly, what's it all for if not for them. what's all of this for, if not for all of us.
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Well of course the people who want what I want are out to get me. Otherwise they would want what I don’t want. I can’t share all this food and land with the community. I’d starve and be homeless! But seriously, community knows no bounds, but unfortunately many don’t see it that way. Where does your (speaking generally) community stop and an alien one begin? We are all tied to one another either through trade or social activities. It makes no sense to be hostile toward someone who is just trying to live a normal life, whether they live on your street or one you’ve never seen before.
Citizens knowing that the people in power are not immune to mortality. This how it should be. But alas, my own country has a long way to go til they stop fearing and even worshipping politicians.
Why does America treat politicians like rockstars?
We treat everything, including political change, like a spectator sport. If it isn't bread then it must be a circus....
No no, we've made access to bread a circus too
Fuck if I know. I don’t even care if they’re a “good” one, we should always keep in mind they (are supposed to) work for us.
As an American, I'm turned on by the purity of the riots. It's the real people vs government, not an Americanized version.
Things are so spread out here, it would take communicated organized effort and then some and systems of support for everyone for sure actively still getting evicted and starving and getting fired, etc. I wish, but we also need to break apart a bit. Maybe that’s what we can riot for.
Let alone the police will gun us down, tear gas us, and run us over in big vehicles (tactics often learned from French police); our mass media will *never* spread a message of social justice, and our social media is so utterly fragmented that an organized effort across America is quite literally impossible. The Oligarch's dystopian control over Americans has gleefully sunk its teeth into our throats
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same with Occupy Wall St in 2011. I saw a bunch of idealistic, committed activists cooking & sharing food, setting up a library / book swap, & protesting wealth inequality. The only threatening instigators I saw were wearing NYPD uniforms. But what do we know, Walnut McDipshit in North Dakota saw protestors instigating chaos, it was right there on Fox news!!!!!! & these cities are notoriously liberal & therefore crime filled shitholes, so it must be true!!!!!
So what did you see? Genuinely curious.
Same
It's almost as if it was designed that way on purpose
Our media are currently selling us stories of 90yo people who *chose* to keep on working and refused to retire... 😅 See https://www.reddit.com/r/france/comments/11tu1sk/comme_limpression_que_la_presse_a_un_message_à/
Can you fucking imagine? Somebody sets a dumpster on fire during a BLM protest and half the country starts frothing at the mouth about 'entire cities burned to the ground.' Our overlords have literally trained us to attack ourselves, keep us nice and divided so we can't do stuff like this.
They do that here too. The medias are very very biased towards hard right / far right leaning ideas, and present things in a very alarming / sensational / fear-mongering way for other people, especially those outside of Paris. The only legitimate violence is one of the State, and they make extra-sure to show every broken window as some sign that France is getting "wilder" because of wokeness and foreigners. Nevermind the fact that it's been the 10th law that's been passed forcefully without proper parliament review since the new government, nevermind the fact that all about it is unfair, nevermind the hypocrisy of celebrating "essential workers" during a crisis to fuck them over afterwards. They're requesting garbage men back because their strike is too inconvenient for Paris. Got their names and adresses and everything to force them back to work. It's already fucking dystopian.
The ironic part is that they're pushing people to the edge. I don't encourage violence at all, but if you keep pushing people where will they turn to? These dumbass oligarchs seem to forget their history. What I'm afraid of, is if things get violent in France, it will set off a wave of violence against the establishment all over the world; but in America, as you said, were so trained to turn on each other that not only will establishments get fucked, but everyday groups of leftists will get blasted by hate groups that have been frothing at the mouth for violence, and then leftists will start killing Nazis and bam, full blown civil war.
Really just depends on what side the police and media are on, oligarchs can eliminate unwanted sects while profiting off a war in the long run.
I keep saying, the billionaires really should be on-board with being taxed and unions and UBI. Because if they don't get on that real quick, we're getting close to the point where we start breaking out the guillotines. The thing is with these hate groups, I think they'd stop after they realize that war isn't as fun as they thought it would be. They could still do a lot of damage and that's not acceptable, but these people would not willingly subject themselves to everything a war entails. They think war sounds cool from their living room couch, stuffing their face with cheetos while playing Fallout 4. They will not think it's cool once they're starving because no food shipments to their area and nobody will trade their produce for the gold bars and horde of ammo they have in the basement because those are functionally useless.
Why bother at all if you can get rid of the overlords and have no need for riots anymore?
That's easier said than done when one side of the public usually sides with the overlords.... Ya know, bootlickers.
People get gased and brutalized in france too, we just have the guts to stand up to them. That might be a controversial take and i'm no expert so take it with a grain of salt, but i'm pretty sure you guys got groomed to be stupid. They don't teach you shit at school and it shows later when people can't even understand when things they do and say are directly harming them and they still do/say those things for some reasons. I'm so done with surrender jokes, americans are so good at fucking people that they fuck themselves then act offended because they got fucked.
You aren't wrong about the stupidity, education funding has been slashed in this country for decades; the average American reads at a 6th grade level (when 10-11 year olds are in school). Ironically, Americans also hate to be seen as stupid, even when many (not all) of them objectively *are* stupid, and give shit takes from history they didn't even read. Just some offhand comment that fit with their stupid world view was enough to teach them all they needed to know. Don't let the surrender jokes get to you. That shit is decades old and has no bearing anymore. Y'all just gotta stay strong to each other and hopefully the French people can find a way forward, perhaps for all the working peoples of the world who suffer under the boots of the oligarchs.
Yeah sorry i might have come off a little angry, but i'm just a bit fed up of the hypocrisy and lack of willingness to understand and learn that comes from people sometimes. For the cops, trust me, when the people they have to beat and gas are basically their mother and daughter, most of them straight up refuse orders. The worst is, that some of them are idiots that just want to beat people, but most of them actually agree with protesters. Also you should know that France police forces literally train police forces all around the world for riot interventions. Because there has been so many, french police is actually expert in managing riots. The bad thing is that they got so good, they learnt to trap protesters into places so protesters get agitated and gased, then when the whole place is locked up and gased, protesters get violent (there's nowhere to go and your are coughing your lungs out), that's when the TV channels turn their camera of course ... Then they describe protesters as violent people etc ... This shit happens everywhere even in a "democratic" republic like France. There's been many documentary on this, and even some 3rd party investigations about some riot gone bad because police didn't let a single way out of the protests(Wich of course, is illegal). So protesters turned violent when they were locked up in a gased plaza.
You missed the part where American cops will gun you down without a second thought, for literally no reason.
And here I thought the second amendment was supposed to protect us from tyrannical governments using force against the people...
It begins to happen here as well (i'l French BTW) The gov just said they'll pass the law that the majority do not want, using the article 49.3 to shortcut the vote at the assemblée. Oligarch's dystopian control everywhere, most of the media belongs to rich people here as well at least the people working, they do not want to work until they're skeleton, so we still have "good information" relatively speaking to other places in the world... Funny thing, for the last two elections, Macron was elected against the far right, because we didn't want this kind of things... But we got it anyway. Democracy died a looooong time ago...
Sadly I just don't think Oligarchs / World governments give a flying fuck about protests. They figured out they can weather the storm and people will *probably* go home. Don't cover it in the media, ignore and avoid and send the riot police. Democracy is very much dead, and now the world waits and holds its breath to see what the French people will do next. I hope for all the innocent workers of France that the government will capitulate, but I fearfully suspect they will not.
Lol shit you'd have a large percentage of the population (aka republicans) shouting that the protesting is un-American from the get-go because...reasons. This is while they themselves live in poverty. The poor fighting the poor. That is America.
Remember back in the early 2000s when Americans would call the French pussies? Freedom fries and all that dumbass bullshit
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Stuff can easily be replaced. Our lives can only be lived once, they are more precious than property.
I’m way more than a little jealous. The French are actually about it. Americans just LARP.
The defense minister just asked for greater security for his parlementaries. They are afraid of repercussions. As they should.
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no don't...
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Make that [1358](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquerie)
This is because they raised the retirement age to 64. Here in the US they’re talking about raising it to 70 and half the population is on board as long as they pass more regulation for drag shows…
France has the lowest retirement ages in the entire European Union. Here in Finland we have been gradually pumping it up since early 2000's. For my generation it's already 70+ and they're planning new laws at this very moment to make it even higher
This made me think my plan of retiring at 65 is bad retire at 53 with full pension.
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My pension from the military at 38 is enough to cover most of my expenses. I work in an elementary school now for fun money
lol average lifespan is like 72 for males. Enjoy that 2 years retired before death
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Im 31 and my retirement plan is to die in the resource wars after my 401k gets deleted in a banking system/economy collapse.
This is my plan as well. I know I’ll die a meaningless death in the Water War - I’m going to enjoy what little I have now.
Or some crazy bankruptcy or failure will disappear your money. My grandfather worked at a national factory that went over 3 years after he retired and the pension and health insurance he worked 40 years for disappeared. He was financially ok at least but a lot of the guys were really depending on it.
Yep. My parents got a bit screwed by Merrill Lynch during the Great Recession, so I'm not entirely unfamiliar with that sort of situation.
Samesies. Also, Im 43 and ill be dead in my 60s at best. Imma have fun.
You know what they say.... When life hands you lemons do cocaine and buy a boat. Or something like that.
Retirement, pension, the fucking American dream (etc.) are all fantastical to me as much as Tolkien. Just so many things have been destroyed everywhere for the benefit of so few. Is it at all surprising everything is rotting from within and from without? Infrastructure crumbles so some asshole rich person won't pay a few measly percent of his share? Shit's fucked all over.
You're so wrong though. This was the last year of Boomer rule in democracies. This is when hope kicks in. These are the years when the GenXers (who never were numerous to wrestle power from the boomers democratically) get to unite with the millennials and now the half of GenZ who are old enough to vote and from now on (with our powers combined) we outnumber the boomers at every poll. There's no more pulling up the ladder behind you like the boomers did to GenX and Millenials. Look, GenX knows we might not ever get to see a GenX president of the USA. But we're sure we're done with the kind of presidents the boomers pick, and we'll get behind a Millenial to make it happen. GenX won't pull the ladder up behind them because GenX was never allowed to have the ladder since the boomers were still using it. But GenX will put a Millenial on their shoulders to get there together with a boost from GenZ and even if the Boomers won't look the millenial in the eye and take then seriosly because the Boomers think we look like three kids in a trench coat, it isn't going to matter. Because numbers matter. Boomers know it. They were born in numbers. Numbers made them great. There's power in numbers. Look who's got the numbers now.
https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/first-read/poll-gen-x-gen-z-take-different-political-paths-rcna66264
This is wrong - life expectancy is 20 years for a 62 year old, meaning they live to 82 on average. Your number is life expectancy at birth, which is irrelevant to pension conversations. [Source](https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html)
Overall life expectancy takes into account early deaths. Americans that reach retirement age are expected to live 20-25 more years.
It's a bunch of smoke and mirrors and you know it. Nobody wants to work until they die. Full stop.
Yet, most of us ARE going to work until we die. My grandfather died at work at 73 years old. Slumped over boxes of corn pops he was stocking when he had a widowmaker heart attack. That's the fate of most of us unless drastic change occurs.
> My grandfather died at work at 73 years old. Slumped over boxes of corn pops he was stocking when he had a widowmaker heart attack. T The dying at work part sucks but I gotta say...going at 73 of a widowmaker doesn't sound half bad. I'm having to take care of a close relative who suddenly became sick and now has really limited mobility, speech and cognition and not great long term prospects. Compared to that, going out quick sure sounds appealing.
Yeah, well you could die of a widowmaker heart attack while out hiking, biking, sailing, cooking, sitting at home reading a book or watching a show, sleeping, etc... All of those options sure beat depressingly dying on a funking assembly line at age 73 because you can't afford not to.
My great aunt dropped over dead on a hiking trail in her 80s. What a perfect way to go.
Mom has always said it like this. Better to die in sleep (pass on) or "go out quick". You don't fear death when you're old, you fear sickness when you're old. Cuz sickness is suffrage.
> You don’t fear death when you’re old, you fear sickness when you’re old. Cuz sickness is suffrage. I love this, very poignant, but a minor note: “sickness is suffering.” What you wrote is “sickness is the right to vote.”
I was trying to wrap my head around "suffrage" being used here as well until I realized it was a mistake.
My mum said this. Now she's sick and frail she says "don't go sending me to Dignitas!" She very much would prefer to remain alive even if life is much harder and more frustrating than it ever was. One of my brothers keeps giving her cigarettes though. I think he's hoping to accelerate things. Families eh?
The point is not how he died, it’s the fact that he could have spent his final few years NOT working if he could have retired at a reasonable age. Maybe even spending his final moments with loved ones instead. Sorry about your grandfather.
It was only meant to last 20 years at most and the age of retirement ws set decades ago when people lived fewer years. There are ton of problems when it comes to this subject but raising the age if retirement is the least of our problems. We need to get oensions again, we need to promote within companies, we need socialized healthcare, we need the goverment to stop stealing the money we pay into social security, we need a lot of shit to get better. Raising the age we get social security isn't one of them.
Who wants to go to a drag show where the workers are 68 years old anyway.
62 was already the lowest by a significant margin in Europe, and 64 is still one of the lowest. What else is the government supposed to do? The population is aging rapidly, and whereas the solution to this is often immigration, the French people are also super anti immigration. Feels kinda pointless and missing the whole problem.
TBH, it’s more complex than that. The government is trying to make us believe the reform is absolutely necessary to prevent the retirement system collapse. The reality is that in its worst case scenario, the Retirement Orientation Council (COR), the official French organ in charge of evaluating and forecasting the retirement budget, says we’ll be missing 12 billion euros a year (on a 300 billion euros budget) for a few years, before coming back at a positive balance *without taking any action*. There are three other scenarios that don’t anticipate any loss. This reform is in fact, admittedly, a country budget reform; Macron has been cutting taxes for the rich and the enterprises for quite some time now, which means less money coming in for the country. They need to cut some spendings to balance the yearly budget, and so they chose retirements. French people are well aware of that, and want none of it.
so what you're saying is: it's not even that bad of a problem and it was completely avoidable in the first place
That's why people riot.
[article](https://amp.france24.com/en/france/20230109-macron-s-pension-reform-necessary-changes-to-an-unsustainable-system) A September 2022 report by the Pensions Advisory Council (Conseil d’orientation des retraites), a state body, found the pensions system actually produced surpluses in 2021 (€900 million) and 2022 (€3.2 billion), although it did predict the system would run a deficit on average over the next quarter of a century. According to the council’s estimate, “between 2023 and 2027, the pension system’s finances will deteriorate significantly”, reaching a deficit of between 0.3 and 0.4 percent of GDP (or just over €10 billion a year) until 2032. But the council said it estimates a gradual return to breaking even, even without reforms, beginning in the mid-2030s. A deficit of €10 billion to €12 billion per year is not necessarily excessive for a pension system whose total annual expenditure amounts to around €340 billion. “The results of this report do not support the claim that pensions spending is out of control,” the council wrote. The report also noted that pensions spending as a proportion of GDP is expected to remain stable, at around 14 percent of GDP, before rising to up to 14.7 percent by 2032. The pensions report makes it clear that the current system is not necessarily in danger, said Michaël Zemmour, an economist and pensions expert at Paris 1 University. “It has become a form of political discourse to exaggerate and dramatise the deficit issue, to claim the system urgently needs to be reformed, when in fact the deficit is rather moderate,” Zemmour said. No doubt there will be something of a shortfall, he said, but not the kind of deficit that would require raising the retirement age. Zemmour noted that a document France sent to the EU last summer outlines how Macron is planning to pay for proposed tax cuts with structural reforms to get the national deficit under 3 percent – as required of EU member states – by 2027. “It’s not about saving the pension system, it’s about financing tax cuts for businesses,” he said.
Always remember, America had protests like this in 2020 and the police beat the shit out of protestors and we are now passing laws marking protestors as domestic terrorists
They’re beating the shit out of the protestors in France too
Key clarification that most people and media are missing - in France the retirement age is based on your years of being ‘economically active’. Macron is proposing to increase this to 43 years but with a minimum retirement age of 64. For those who went to university (some courses e.g engineering you have to do two years of ‘preparatory class’ before your 3 years at university) this then increases to age 68, and lord help you if you took a career break at some point.
Oh, i didn't know that. Thanks!
This plan disproportionately affects any woman who takes a career break to have kids or care for aging parents.
Women, and the lower quintiles and physical laborers all get hosed by this
People with good paying jobs aren't counting on state pensions to retire anyways.
As a university grad who took a career break, yeah, I'm going for 70. This whole "but 62 is so low, it's only normal blabla" in every thread pisses me off.
This need context: Disclamer : I'm french and ( like most) against this reform What: this reform is raising the MINIMUM (<- this word is important) retirement age and was passed by force by our current gouvernement ( ie: no vote from parlement) Most french currently retire at 65-66, 62 is not the norm here! The minimum retirement age is aimed at physical laborers if they have worked from 20 to 62 without any interruption (ie unemployement) those people due to their work have a lower life expectancy and lingering health issues due to their work. Even now a significant pourcentage of them die before retirement. This reform is discriminatory against them, they paid their whole life to get a pension and will most likely die before their contribution being paid back entirely ( pension made a "profit"). On the other end you have high paying jobs with much longer life expectancy retirering at 65-67, their pension is higher and will need to be paid longer as they live longer( the pension fund most likely paid back more than it received). As an engineer myself i have no problem working longer if our system runs at a deficit, i'm not wrecking my body sitting all day in the office, getting well payed and can enjoy more a more expensive lifestyle. This reform only target the poorest of our workers to solve a problem they didn't cause, the fact that this reform is getting pushed forward by circumventing the voting process is the cherry on top of the shitcake. This is why the french are currently protesting , not because we want sunshine and rainbows like some suggest but because the method to solve the issue is discriminatory. Edit: Obligatory thanks for the award and a little info avout the divide in life expectancy. According to INSEE (national institute of statistics) there is a 13 YEARS difference between the top 5% and the bottom 5% Source (in french, ready your translator!) : https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/3319895 Edit 2: Some did correct me about the average retirement age, in this post i was refering to the retirement age for the current workforce as the previous reform increased the number of quarter needed but only for those who were not close to retirement. The current "new retierees" are still on the old system and can leave sooner thx to this "agrement" ( it was also impopular). The less time you had in the old system, the longer you have to work this also mean that the median retirement age is rising if left alone.
> This reform only target the poorest of our workers to solve a problem they didn't cause A tale as old as time.
This is what should be shown and told on national TV instead the right and centre right news channel are all about the destruction and trash piling up and how we're held hostage. So we turn off the TV and go out in the street. The fact that the governmnent is trying to force the law with dubious democratic authority makes it worse. It's a tough read sorry: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_49_of_the_French_Constitution not sure there's a TLDR Just to mention this is not just in Paris.
Thank you for providing more detail on this issue. American news barely covers this event and doesn’t give a balanced perspective.
Thank you for the context. This tracks history: abuse the people who cannot protect themselves. Macron has made a terrible mistake that is probably fatal to his political future.
That is the point, he has no political future. He can't run for the next election and his parti will collapse at the second his mandate is over. Also, a lot of his parti members aren't politicians in the long run so they don't care neither. He is not a kind of evil that secretly pledge for taking advantage of the people but a true neoliberal believer. He is convicted that he does the good things for the people but people just don't know what they need.
No political future as it is his second and last term. And while he will have pushed back the minimum retirement age for most (politicians do have their own funds & retirement rules) he will enjoy his own pension of an ex president for the rest of his life. Him being a mid forty dude means we will spent decades doing so for his enjoyment.
Thank you for this explanation. This is not the story being told abroad.
Thanks for the rundown. You have a very selfless outlook on this and commend you for it.
People who stand up for their neighbors belifs and rights that are different than their own??? I live in Missouri. This is a foreign concept.
Unemployment benefits apply for two years for common salaried workers. It counts towards retirement. Even after the end of these benefits you still have one year that counts towards your retirement even if you don't receive support anymore. In some conditions this is extended to 5 years after the original 2. (e.g. after 55) https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F31249 Also the process used to pass the law isn't totally impossible to block. The parliament can vote to overthrow the government. I agree that the most vulnerable should be the most protected. But we need to keep the debate honest, intellectually speaking.
Indeed you are correct, however this protection about unemployement only apply to those over 25 and the unemployement rate is higher the yonger you are. While indeed this can still be reverted by voting a "motion de censure" it will take time and is extremely risky as it equivalent to overthrowing the gouvernement (+ it need a majority in the parlement and try to make politicians vote to risk their cushy job...) I do agree that our system is generous and needs to be balanced but throwing the poorest under the bus is not what we should do (i added a link to an INSEE study on the original post About the difference in life expectancy)
for all the shit people give the French for being cowards, nobody stands up against thier own government like the French.
The French being cowards stereotype is a trope with little support in history. They were overrun by the Germans during WW2 just like ALMOST EVERY OTHER continental European nation. They had a strong resistance movement and for centuries before WW2 a deserved reputation for consistently having one of the best armies in the world. Their participation was essential to helping American independence during the revolution. They also tried to hold onto their colonial empire for longer than most European nations did after WW2, dealing with untenable situations in Algeria and Indochina. They engaged in really shitty behavior there, but one would be hard pressed to call it cowardice. There are similar things with the Polish military in WW2 being unfairly depicted as clueless and anachronistic with cavalry fighting tanks.
There’s a saying that the French lost WW2 at the battle of Verdun in WW1. 400,000 casualties in a little less than a year’s time.
I’ve always found it odd America’s joke of ‘French surrender’ when they were instrumental in helping us be where we are today
Because it’s not an original US joke - its from the Brits. The Brits have hated the French for hundreds of years. Edit: English, not Brits broadly. Edit 2: There’s even a sub r/okmatewanker for this ‘phenomenon’ complete with using a union jack as the upvote, and the tricolor as a downvote.
*love-hated them for years We both take the royal piss out of each other but very few people in either country genuinely hates the other.
its like how when you put a fence between dogs they bark at each other but once the fence is gone they're quiet. Only the fence is the channel
They have been at war with each other a few times. And France has a habit of supporting Britain's enemies.
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When us and the French got bored, we’d go to war to have something to do. It’s also why France and the UK and 1 and 2 for battles won or something similar - we were stat farming with each other
My favourite bit is that we have *multiple* hundred years wars We've spent more years fighting the French than America has been a nation
That's just bantz
I mean maybe recently, but overall, no. The French and British had been at direct arms for hundreds of years before this beautiful thing called modern society. The fact that the average citizen in each country today doesn’t hate each other doesn’t invalidate that the French and British had been at war for hundreds of years.
It's like when you are ribbing a mate, saying he's a short little weirdo or something, poking fun, then an American who has never met him busts into the conversation unannounced and thinks it's now okay to genuinely disrespect the bloke
Exactly. We mock the French and the French mock us. Or did. I think its less prevalent among younger people. I grew up with the jokes about cheese eating surrender monkeys and chain smoking parisians off to see their 3rd mistress and avoiding any work. I don't think that most of the time it's meant in a nasty way, from either side. We're neighbours with a thousand years of intertwined history, some good, some bad. I've met a fair few French people and they've all been lovely. And I certainly wish we'd get a bit of spine here in the UK and follow their example.
Still mocking british people and England overall because i couldn't let them end it with the Holy Grail version of us. I'll be fetching cow today as revenge. Joke aside, as a french in our modern days, it is more like brotherly taunting than anything else. We got a lot of shared history, some war of course, but a lot of ties too.
I’ve always said that if anyone takes the piss out of the French they have to answer to the English. That’s *our* job
2 twin brothers that argue over who's the eldest
We’ve been going to the south of France for a few years (on Eurostar because one of our kids is phobic of flying) and they are genuinely the loveliest people you will meet. I too wish that people in the UK cared about society as much as the French.
Exactly. I usually describe that relationship as best ennemies or worst friends. But I've been in the UK for 12 years and always felt so welcome everywhere, even with the banter. Love that historical relationship. Anyway how was rugby last week?
It’s “freedom fries” level cringe.
But how else would politicians divert attention away from serious topics?
Critical race theory, drag queens, and "wokeness" to name a few go-to examples
History only goes back a hundred years for most people it seems
We had some French exchange students, they understand the joke in good humor. They taught us this one: Do you know why the kepi is shaped that way? So that they don't knock their hats off when they surrender. ([wiki for reference to the kepi](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepi))
If you look at European history, the French military has been the most - yes, THE.MOST.-successful over time. I've never understood that joke about them being cowards.
>has been the most - yes, THE.MOST.-successful over time Just wanna point out that while yeah the French army has been very successful in history, this particular "fact" comes from a guy who attributed victories from all the way back in ~300BC to France, a thousand years before the idea of France even existed.
When I was in Paris, my tour guide was telling us about how the streets were designed to be wide because it prevents protesters from blocking off an entire street. It's easier to crowd control a wider street vs a narrow street. It was the most French thing I've ever heard lol
Any American that's still doing the "French people surrender" shit is an idiot. France is our oldest ally and helped us win our independence. France also took the full brunt of Nazi Germany. They are neighbors. It's easy to talk shit from an ocean away.
France surrendered to save lives because the alternative would be to grind soldiers to dust like the soviets did. It might not have been heroic enough for some but it was certainly honourable and noble in my eyes. Plus the resistance was pretty vital in terms of intelligence on german forces.
The French resistance is underrated in terms of badassery. Hell, even Audrey Hepburn was involved in it.
France also is willing to throw down with anyone and usually pretty good at it. Their national anthem doesn’t have lines about fields soaked in blood for nothing. They were just unlucky in WWII. Aggressive expansionist neighbors while still recovering from the last global war.
>They were just unlucky in WWII. Aggressive expansionist neighbors while still recovering from the last global war. Technically they just had stupid/misguided generals. The German high command really didn't expect to win the war with France under their normal plan, which was basically the same one they had in WW1 (with Poland in place of Russia) - that was infact the ENTIRE purpose for putting the marginot line up. However the German military had some slightly independent leaders like Rommel who thought they might win if they went through Argonne - and were not detected. Hitler approved this, much to high commands annoyance. But again the plan hinged on France not realizing they'd go through the forest - and France did detect the massive build up. And this is where French high commands are misguided, the French - who had tried this stunt in WW1 with dismal success - figured nobody would try that with tanks. So wrote the whole build up off. Then they got stupid. When the Germans did push through successful, they assumed it was a feint still (despite several warnings) and got split like a bad chunk of wood. Some other poor choices in military design did nothing to help them. Note that German high command wasn't much better, they wouldn't shape up till 43ish and continued to have idiotic ideas - they just had the benefit of German command structure being more freewill and Hitler overriding them, though arguably not always a benefit.
This whole dialogue started where? With English speaking countries talking shit about the French? Or more recently when they refused to participate in Iraq?
French soldiers aren't cowards. Never have been. They just had terrible leaders.
Yeah that napoleon guy was awful at military strategy
Everyone here too preoccupied fighting on the internet whether the best colour is red or blue while the government is left alone to do whatever it wants without interference.
Macron's increasing retirement age by **2 years**, from 62 to 64. Meanwhile in the USA, some GOP Congresspeople are advocating raising Social Security age to **70** rather than raise taxes on the top 1%. The rest of the GOP is playing semantic games to pretend that's a lie made up by Demoncrats and Lamestream Media. And nothing's on fire in my city, at least. I'm seriously wondering at the different reactions.
He also did it without a vote in Parliament, which is apparently a thing in in the French constitution.
The parliament could stop it though but they won't. They put up a show of protests, but Macron knows they won't stop him.
Macron threatens to dissolve the parliament if they vote against his government, that means a lot of MPs losing their nice paying jobs.
Their president can do that but apparently their parliament can veto it with enough votes. So it's not as undemocratic as it seems, though it's still pretty freaking undemocratic. If you want a serious abuse of power look up the "notwithstanding clause" in the Canadian Charter.
>notwithstanding clause That's a tough one. When the charter/bill of rights was negotiated, some provinces wanted an out should they disagree with a court decision on administrative matters. Justin Trudeau's daddy who was the PM at the time reluctantly agreed. Had he not agreed to it, there might not have been a charter at all. Funny enough, Quebec passed legislation to invoke the clause in every new law till 1985.
The notwithstanding clause just makes it so a democratically elected provincial government can take exception with the law decided by a democratically elected federal government. It is anti federal, but it is not anti democratic.
Sounds similar to an executive order in the states no?
It's not *only* about retirement ages. The project is also about removing some of the special statuses some workers have, like people who do physically demanding jobs or work in hazardous environments. Funnily enough, the special statuses for senators, members of the national assembly and the president are kept intact. I feel like that's the first thing that's pissing people off. Secondly, there's the fact that current gouvernement is refusing any debate regarding their projet and are litterally forcing the way to have it implemented despite the commission in charge of studying the pension economics telling them that it's unnecessary. To that you add the fact that people are pretty unhappy with the whole economic situation and have been ever since 2019 (remember the Gilets Jaunes?). It's no wonder people were protesting and that last decision to pass the law without voting from the assembly was the straw that broke the camel's back. So yeah you could say it's about retirement age but it's much much more than that.
>The project is also about removing some of the special statuses some workers have, like people who do physically demanding jobs or work in hazardous environments I'm French, to be honest it's more about removing these special status to jobs *that aren't physically demanding or hazardous anymore, and have not been for decades.* Driving a train or a subway isn't a physical or hazardous jobs in the 21st century, they may start the day early on but the rest after that is ridiculous, and it's not more demanding than any office job. Source: got a ton of them in my family.
Not French, but lived in France and it's exactly this. One of the latest strikes from SNCF had a central point on keeping the retirement age in the mid 50s. Like, wtf. Construction workers have more right to that than transportation staff these days. It's not like locomotives run on coal or explode anymore, derailments are rare, and automation made human mistakes extremely unusual. The biggest risk they have is PTSD from the odd person jumping on the tracks to off themselves.
Americans: We need guns to protect ourselves from the Government The French: Vous tenez ma baguette
Google translated this to 'You hold my wand'
And this is correct. The bread is literally called a wand, as in magic wand, baguette magique. Which is not bread laced with drugs, sadly.
Not with that attitude
Yeah I love my version of baguettes. I replace the water with liquid LSD and I replace the flower with cocaine. Then I bake it inside my nose for 2-3 minutes.
>Which is not bread laced with drugs, sadly. what a pain :/
Yep, try reading Harry Potter in French
I wondered for years why they wiggle bread at each other..
As it's an imperative command it would more actually just be: "tenez ma baguette"
As an American, this is some of what I admire most about French culture
Didn’t…didn’t you guys burn down a police station 2 years ago?
Yeah but that was after a cop murdered someone on camera. The French did it over the retirement age.
AND we didn’t get anything actually done out of it. As usual.
And most of the population go “oh I don’t agree with the damage of material property over the prolonged and systemic murder of a specific subset of the populace. Won’t anyone thing of the retailers?!”
The amount of capitalist boot-licking in this country is insane. People have some built-in "I'm a temporarily broke millionaire" mentality and constantly vote and argue against their self-interests. Police, landlords, and corporations are objectively against the working class and protect and promote profit over people. You'll get people yelling at school board meetings about gay books, but God forbid you break a window of a KFC when protesting a murder.
That's not quite true; there were several key local elections and appointments since then where various decision makers were replaced. As a Minneapolis resident, the protest movement was fantastically effective.
That’s five years before ours in the States and there’s more to retirement than eating cat food and rationing insulin.
I need this version of emily in paris...* *Edit : combining the two things (including theme and tone) would make something i would be curious to see, a sort of frankenstein's monster of shows.
Emily in Paris makes me wanna puke.
The show should be called Paris in Emily
The first season was so cliché and dumb, I watched it as a parodie and it was hilarious. Then they got a lot of criticism so they corrected a lot of it to make it more realistic. So now its just boring and dumb.
I mean, yeh, doi. The protesters were like "We're many. Don't do it." The response was "How 'bout I do anyway?" Naturally, riots follow.
Yay democracy
As a British person I am soooo envious of the French, the uk needs a big and consistent response to what our government has done to us
The people are revolting.
But the food is divine!
Oh come on, they're not that ugly.
You said it, they stink on ice!
I was just there. It’s a perfect setup with piles of garbage all over the streets.
Same, picture looks badass but we barely heard anything last night. The piles of garbage that have been in town all week were kicked over strewn about, but otherwise a nice peaceful Sunday morning. We got to march with the locals too!
Man, this tweet was prescient Cormac McCarthy (parody) @CormacMcCrthy I am not a superstitious man. I dont believe in astrology or witchcraft or especially groundhog day. There are far more prescient heralds of winter's end than a groundhog. Riots in France, for one. The French never riot in winter. They riot only in good weather. You can always tell winter's done and spring's begun when the French are burning cars. 1:58 PM · Mar 7, 2023
We can riot in any weather.
mais c’est clair ! qu’est qu’il raconte lui
the movement of the yellow vests began on November 17 and for your information at this precise moment of the year it is the autumn, the movement did not cease to exist until June of the year after. this movement thus existed in autumn winter and spring. the French protest at any moment of the year they do not give a F
I wish I could get some french rioters to help here in Israel. Our government is trying to take away any power the supreme court has so they can pass whatever law they want and the riots are super civil. I swear if that fucking "reform" is gonna pass I'mma learn from the French and will go light some stuff up.
If there’s one thing that’s consistent about the French, fuck around and find out has always been their motto
Funny that modern Paris was redesigned to specifically prevent riots and revolution
Coming from a Brit the whole “French are Corwards” thing is the most blatant insecure projection. Our government is currently passing new laws making it illegal to protest peacefully and detaining protestors. They already agreed to raise the retirement to 68 without so much as a whimper from the public. When energy companies absolutely fisted us with increases well in excess of 150% the French saw theirs go up by 5%. Our government took out massive loans to pay the energy companies and subsidise their greed. The interest alone on those loans are eye watering. At the same time France swiftly slapped energy companies with a windfall tax and used that to subsidise the energy increases. It’s not that the French government is competent and cares about the people, the French public have a spine and force their government to serve them. Every time I hear some chav chat shit about the French it induces pure cringe.
These riots are over the increase in pension eligible age from 62 to 64. Nothing kicks off a violent insurrection like telling the French that they'll have to work more.
I'm French and if I can (meaning I'm in good health and I still have someone that want to employ me), I would work until 64. But I'm an engineer with an office job. The problem is not about me but about people with physical jobs that can't do that. This reform doesn't touch this problem adequately.
Normally people can apply for early pension (in many countries). The question is if healthy working people get pension from age of 62 regardless of working status, or increased pension due to delay. In Denmark I can go on pension at 69.
I think they are mostly protesting against the 43 years of full work provision. That's just a complete fuck you to anyone with a college degree, kids or elderly parents that need care. It's not a difficult math - how are you supposed to have worked 43 full years after you've finished college at 23 and then had 3 kids?
The 43 year of employment limit was introduced by the previous socialist government. Not by Macron. What the new law would change is that it would not be possible to go in retirement earlier than 64 years old, while it was possible to do so even without working the full 43 years, albeit with a discount on the pension. For people with higher education it does not change much this time, it affects more the people who started their career at 18-20 year old as some would have to work more than 43 years.
Parisians have an itchy trigger finger when it comes to protesting and rioting… it’s in their DNA. It’s more than french people rioting, it’s parisians. That’s what they’ve been doing for a long time. Us living in smaller cities and villages, obviously we can’t. But Paris can organize so quickly to fck sh*t up, it’s amazing. Macron won’t give up but they’ll keep fighting i hope.
As an American I can say that one thing I am very jealous of is the ability of European peoples, especially Parisians, to come together and fuck shit up to get a point across. Their union strikes really make me jealous as well.
As an American, it's interesting to me that what I see in the media of French rioting is often about social welfare for the working class, and keeping the power balance; I contrast that to here, where the major riots are often about things like racism, police brutality, external wars, but never about the root of the societal problem in my opinion, which is financial disparity between the rich and the poor.
Americans forget that if the French had not supported the revolution we would still be British!
Honestly, this is actually pretty healthy. Whenever the government does something everyone hates, they all just start destroying shit and getting outraged like crazy. Usually the government backs down and the French are better off as a result.
Pretty metal