Comments by "" (@titteryenot4524) on "Pension protests: Paris descends into violence as 13,000 police officers are deployed" video.

  1. As ever, with these things, this is really a question of priorities. People use the argument that France shouldn’t have given so much aid to Ukraine, but to date, that has been about $300 million - a drop in the ocean, when compared to the billions pensions cost per year. The other thing to factor in here is that France is 3rd in a list of OECD countries in terms of the proportion of its GDP pensions take up, at 14%. For comparison, the UK is 5%. Pushing back the retirement age by two years and extending the pay-in period would yield an additional 17.7 billion euros ($19.0 billion) in annual pension contributions, allowing the system to break even by 2027. Economically, Macron’s measure makes sense, but the way it has been done is awful and undemocratic, and the only reason he bypassed a vote was he knew it would be voted down. After Denmark, France is the second highest taxed country in Europe, but my own proposal would be to raise the tax threshold for the top band earners in France, and let the middle and lower income workers retire at 62 after a life of work. After all, the rich can retire at any point they want! The less rich don’t have the luxury of that choice. As Thomas Jefferson said: “When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”
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