From the Associated Press:
Masked youths clashed with police and set fires in cities across France on Tuesday as protests against a proposed hike in the retirement age took an increasingly radical turn. Hundreds of flights were canceled, long lines formed at gas stations and train service in many regions was cut in half. ...
The protesters are trying to prevent the French parliament from approving a bill that would raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 ...
5 comments:
Note that it is the early retirement age that is going from 60 to 62 under the bill - the normal retirement age is going from 65 to 67. Most of the media (including the AP article cited) are not clear about this.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=39434
The Revolt of the Pampered
For the fourth day running, France has been crippled by strikes. Airlines are canceling flights. Travelers making their way to Paris from DeGaulle and Orly face long delays.
Millions have gone on strike. One in 10 high schools has been closed. Students at secondary schools and universities march beside workers and block entrances to paralyze the educational system.
And what is the cause of this national tantrum?
President Nicolas Sarkozy has moved through the National Assembly and is pushing through the Senate a measure raising the retirement age for state pensions from 60 to 62.
For if France does not raise that retirement age, its social security system will face a $58 billion deficit by 2018. Sarkozy's reform follows his victory in repealing a decade-old Socialist law that mandated the 35-hour workweek in France.
What world, one wonders, are these French living in?
Around 2050, those high school and college students will be near or above today's retirement age of 60. Who do they think is going to pony up for their pensions? Are they not aware of what is coming for France and Europe?
Today, 23 percent of French men and women are 60 or older. That will rise to 33 percent by 2050, when there will be one French worker for each French retiree, if 60 is retained as the age of retirement.
Today, 5.5 percent of French men and women are 80 or older. By 2050, that doubles to 11 percent.
Who do the French strikers think is going to pay the taxes for the medical expenses of this infirm and aged ninth of a nation?
Where the median age of the French is 40, in 2050 it will be 45. But that number disguises a far drearier reality.
Since 1970, the fertility rate of French women has been below the 2.1 children needed to sustain France's population, what demographers call zero population growth. For the next four decades until 2050, the fertility level of French women is projected to remain roughly 15 percent below ZPG.
Yet France's population of 62.6 million is projected to make a healthy leap to 67.7 million. How can a population continue to grow when the birth rate for almost 80 years running to 2050 is below replacement level?
Answer: As the French retire, age and die, France is filling up with immigrants coming to replace the departed and departing French, and the millions of French children who were never born because their potential parents did not want them.
Where are the immigrants coming from?
Some come from Eastern Europe. But more are arriving from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and the former French colonies of the sub-Sahara. Arabs and Africans are populating cities like Marseilles and Grenoble, and filling up the burgeoning banlieues around Paris, where every few years, they go on a tear and burn thousands of cars. For Paris police, the banlieues are off-limits, except when traveling in platoons.
These immigrants do not bring the occupational skills, education or language abilities of French youth. Most will not earn the wages and salaries of native-born French, and thus not contribute the same level of taxes to sustain a welfare state constructed by a Socialist Party that has ruled France on and off for decades.
With the end of the 35-hour workweek and retirement at 60, the peeling back of social welfare benefits granted to the French in the salad days of socialism has only just begun. They can march and protest and strike, but they cannot avert the inevitable.
What is true of France is true of Europe, where not one nation has a fertility rate that will replace its native-born. Among Russians, Ukrainians, Estonians, Lithuanians and Latvians, the death rate already exceeds the birth rate. These countries have begun to pass away. And their neighbors will follow.
Note also that France has real unions that have some political clout. Since the United States has basically regarded unions as a bunch of Commie leftists since Reagan (down to 7% of private sector employees from 27% in 1980), they have no voice here.
A#3, this doesn't really have anything to do with fertility rates. I follow French politics and think that the Senat (yes, the French spelling) will approve the change. They have to base decisions on reality, unlike here, where ideology (Republicans) trumps good governance.
And as a political scientist, the term "socialist" is widely misused in the United States. Socialism is basically state ownership of the means of production. It's been bastardized here.
Easy to cut and paste an article from Human Events, which is about as credible as the Onion, but you might want to post something original.
"Easy to cut and paste an article from Human Events, which is about as credible as the Onion, but you might want to post something original."
What in the article is not true? Which is pointing out as is happening here, in that you have less and less people paying for the benefits and cuts will need to be made.
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