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Macron Bypasses Parliament With ‘Nuclear Option’ on Retirement Age Hike

Summary:
Dale Coberly talking about the French President Macron forcing retirement reform and what could result if US Social Security is paid for by taxes on the rich in income. Macron Bypasses Parliament With ‘Nuclear Option’ on Retirement Age Hike, commondreams.org, Jessica Corbett [The following is copied from article cited in link, with some editing by me. My short comment is below.] “Amid protests against French President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular plan to overhaul the country’s pension system, his government on Thursday chose the ‘nuclear option,’ opting to use a constitutional procedure to force through reforms, including raising the retirement age from 62 to 64, without a vote in the lower house of Parliament. After announcing the

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Dale Coberly talking about the French President Macron forcing retirement reform and what could result if US Social Security is paid for by taxes on the rich in income.

Macron Bypasses Parliament With ‘Nuclear Option’ on Retirement Age Hike, commondreams.org, Jessica Corbett

[The following is copied from article cited in link, with some editing by me. My short comment is below.]

“Amid protests against French President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular plan to overhaul the country’s pension system, his government on Thursday chose the ‘nuclear option,’ opting to use a constitutional procedure to force through reforms, including raising the retirement age from 62 to 64, without a vote in the lower house of Parliament.

After announcing the government was invoking executive privilege, French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne “faced scenes of anger and unrest in the National Assembly,”

“Far-leftMP Rachel Keke of the leftist party La France Insoumise stressed that “what the government is doing makes people sick of politics. It should improve people’s lives, not destroy them.

“French trade unions have led national demonstrations and strikes against the overhaul since January. While protesters were oscillating “between rage and resignation” earlier this week, they filled the streets of Paris. The General Confederation of Labor (CGT) said in a statement that “this reform is unfair, unjustified, and unjustifiable, this is what millions of people have been asserting forcefully for weeks in the demonstrations, with the strike, and in all the initiatives. These massive mobilizations are supported by a very large majority of the population and almost all workers.”

“The only response from the government and employers is repression: requisitions, police interventions on workplace occupations, arrests, intimidation, questioning of the right to strike,” the confederation added. “We won’t let it happen! What the CGT denounced as unfair yesterday is even more so today!

This can only encourage us to step up mobilizations and strikes, the fight continues!”

end of quote.

My comment:

This is what happens when people rely on “the government” to pay for their pensions. What the government pays for, the government can take away.

Of course, the government can take anything away, but it is more difficult for them when the people know they have paid for their own pension themselves, as is the case of American Social Security.

In the “government pays” system people forget who is paying and where that money comes from. “The rich” pay the most in a “progressive tax”… which is the only possible way to pay for general government expenses… and as long as the people don’t understand that “the rich’ resent paying for their (the people’s) personal expenses, they are happy to let the rich pay. Until the rich decide it’s time to stop paying.

The enemies of America’s Social Security have worked for over eighty years to convince the American people that Social Security is welfare … which the people hate. They have by now largely succeeded. And “The Left” has recently decided that they prefer a welfare system that the rich pay for … thus helping to convince the people … mostly “the young” who have no idea how Social Security works (everyone is paying for their own pension … or at least their own pension insurance … paid for by the workers themselves and not by the government)..that Social Security is unfair, and “the old stealing from the rich” while “the government … both Left and Right claim “we can’t afford it’ .. . with the Left demanding the rich pay for the needs of everyone, whether they have paid for Social Security or not.

Because the people, and most politicians and pundits have no idea how Social Security works, all “debate” about Social Security is conducted by people who have no idea what they are talking about. All they have is the lies they have heard all their lives with … for some reason … no effort from anyone to tell them the truth:

Social Security is not paid for by the government. It has nothing to do with “the Debt” or “the Deficit.” And the workers can continue to pay for it forever simply by raisng the amount they pay as their needs increase. This would amount to about a dollar per week increase in the tax over a few years to account for increasing life expectency and somewhat slower wage growth.

I have been dumfounded by the response to this: Americans, especially on the Left are angered that anyone should suggest they pay a dollar more for their Social Security, demanding “the Rich” pay (a great deal more) “because they have more money.”

Be careful what you ask for.

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