2022 French Presidential Election

Plus Macron has refused to go on head-to-head debates :eyes: bitch is scared of getting DESTROYED.
I don't know why he thinks that would be confidence-inspiring, considering he completely creamed Le Pen in their head-to-head debate last time around.
 
I don't know why he thinks that would be confidence-inspiring, considering he completely creamed Le Pen in their head-to-head debate last time around.
He's in a defense position this time with a LOT to defend and answer to :eyes: plus it's not just Le Pen he would have gone against.
 
What exactly is Macron campaigning on @Dark Carnival? Has he got a three word slogan or a headline policy that's supposed to be the big argument for why you should vote for him BESIDES 'I'm going to make you work longer'?
 
The thing is, in a race between 'this candidate has been close to Putin' and 'this candidate is running on making you work for another 3 years before you can retire'

He wants them to work to the shocking age of 65! :eyes:
 
What exactly is Macron campaigning on @Dark Carnival? Has he got a three word slogan or a headline policy that's supposed to be the big argument for why you should vote for him BESIDES 'I'm going to make you work longer'?
The economy and the EU are his main selling points. He's also daring to push equality and the environment but girl, please

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Are retirement ages completely up to national governments? Or is there an EU directive to push up until they all match?
In fairness France's retirement age is the lowest in EU.
 
Unless you have enormous wealth or a AI work force generating money and welfare, how is France’s economy supposed to grow and take care of its poorest?
 
I've just seen, my age and younger will be working until 68. It changes the YEAR BEFORE I'm due to retire.
 
So long as healthcare keeps improving I'm not against the rising retirement age. It has to. It's logic.
 
REALLY? It's 67 in the UK and while no-one really likes it, it's hardly an election decider.

Get a grip France.

It will rise to 69 for the next generations here and no one is complaining.

In a world where people are supposed to stay in good shape longer and live to 100, retiring at 69-70 shouldn’t be too controversial.
 
The UK and France are vastly different. Quite the shocker.

And you lot having less social rights isn't exactly an argument in an election over here.
I guess higher retirement age in return for the NHS is something we just accept. Of course there is a list of caveats, but on the whole it appears on the surface to be a fairly decent deal. It doesn't feel like less social rights.
 
It will rise to 69 for the next generations here and no one is complaining.

In a world where people are supposed to stay in good shape longer and live to 100, retiring at 69-70 shouldn’t be too controversial.
There are literally a dozen other ways to fix that, and definitely more equitable ways at that. Let's ask a garbage collector and construction worker to work until they're 70 on the back of healthcare improving (don't get me started on that, Macron has been disastrous on that front).
 
I guess higher retirement age in return for the NHS is something we just accept. Of course there is a list of caveats, but on the whole it appears on the surface to be a fairly decent deal. It doesn't feel like less social rights.
But we already have a national health service and retirement age that is fair towards the poorest. Giving that up and when you could have literally just kept the taxes that were already there on the ultra-rich is a difficult pill to swallow for the average French person.
 
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There are literally a dozen other ways to fix that, and definitely more equitable ways at that. Let's ask a garbage collector and construction worker to work until they're 70 on the back of healthcare improving (don't get me started on that, Macron has been disastrous on that front).
But isn't there going to be some differentiation specifically for people whose work is dependent on their age? Am due at 67 for example but people who fly airplanes can retire younger than me.
 
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There are literally a dozen other ways to fix that, and definitely more equitable ways at that. Let's ask a garbage collector and construction worker to work until they're 70 on the back of healthcare improving (don't get me started on that, Macron has been disastrous on that front).

On an individual level, people should be allowed to retire at an earlier age, but on a national level working until you’re 65 is standard.

I don’t know what changes Macron has done, but France has one of the best health care systems in the world but also one of the biggest and most inflated public sectors (bigger than in Scandinavian countries). Again that’s all very well as long as you can afford it.
 
Also shouldn't advances in technology etc. benefit all workers (by reducing the working week, keeping retirement age down, and increasing pay) rather than just enabling profits to grow to increasingly astronomical scales and deepen wealth inequality?
 
But isn't there going to be some differentiation specifically for people whose work is dependent on their age? Am due at 67 for example but people who fly airplanes can retire younger than me.
Well guess what, that's another thing Macron wants to change, increasing retirement age for all those special categories as well. But either way most of those categories don't even include the poorest who have to continue labouring until they're well into their 60s.
 
He wants them to work to the shocking age of 65! :eyes:
I don't think it's a shocking age to work to personally (but then, I'm not a manual worker!). But if you've got someone saying you have to work another three years and someone saying you don't, which are you going to choose?
 
I don't think it's a shocking age to work to personally (but then, I'm not a manual worker!). But if you've got someone saying you have to work another three years and someone saying you don't, which are you going to choose?

I would use my brain and consider what’s best for the country as a whole.
 
REALLY? It's 67 in the UK and while no-one really likes it, it's hardly an election decider.

Get a grip France.
To be fair, the way they do it over here is announce it in the middle of the parliament for people who are ages away from retiring and hope most people will have forgotten it by the time of the election, and it usually works. I imagine Macron maybe couldn't get it through that way (given he's probably about to lose his majority in the parliament whatever happens, so you'd assume he would've done before now if it was that simple. Either that or he's an idiot.)
 
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On an individual level, people should be allowed to retire at an earlier age, but on a national level working until you’re 65 is standard.

I don’t know what changes Macron has done, but France has one of the best health care systems in the world but also one of the biggest and most inflated public sectors (bigger than in Scandinavian countries). Again that’s all very well as long as you can afford it.
Unfortunately, that is not the case, so it feels like it's just another reform that is just unjust towards the less fortunate.

Basically, he has closed down 17,000 hospital beds, froze healthworkers' salaries and tried to implement a "profitable hospitals" :rolleyes: plan. The plan was over all to privatise numerous state sectors until the pandemic hit and then all of a sudden all of that looked like such a stupid idea.
 
I would use my brain and consider what’s best for the country as a whole.
Quite a lot of people have already taken a shitload of losses for "what's best for the country as a whole", at the same time as seeing a lot of other people absolutely rake it in beyond what anybody could possibly need.

A state pension really isn't that much for each person to live off, so even if the gross numbers add up to a lot, it's perfectly understandable why some people would resent that their thing has to be the first to go compared to the rich getting more tax cuts - particularly when the rest of the world for the last 20 or so years hasn't exactly demonstrated that that's some magic formula to enable booming growth for everyone.
 
Basically 'what's best for the country as a whole' is very much a choice rather than an objective fact. Which is better - most people getting three years of quality life in retirement, or someone who already earns a shit tonne getting to keep another hundred thousand euros more a year? You'll probably find the answer often tends to depend on which of those you're asking.
 
In an ideal world no one will have to work unless they’d want to, no one will be poor or in need of anything. So far no system has been able to give us that, but a balance between a market economy and social wellfare like in northern countries has been the best for everyone in the long run.
It is always the poor that will suffer the most (the rich will always be fine) when countries overspend and their economies shrink by time.
 
In an ideal world no one will have to work unless they’d want to, no one will be poor or in need of anything. So far no system has been able to give us that, but a balance between a market economy and social wellfare like in northern countries has been the best for everyone in the long run.
It is always the poor that will suffer the most (the rich will always be fine) when countries overspend and their economies shrink by time.
France has been running a deficit every year since the 60s and its economy is still on par with the UK's as the 5th/6th biggest in the world. The poor usually tend to suffer far more when spending on them gets cut after getting labeled 'overspending'.
 
I mean the UK has LITERALLY just spent a decade testing this idea to destruction, only for it to turn out cutting spending and investment in people just tends to make the economy sluggish in the long run and ends up meaning you're less able to service your debt because it's bigger than your growth in the first place!
 
There are fundamentally other ways to "balance" an economy that doesn't require cuts or austerity measures. The current talking point is wealth taxes, but also land value taxes and transaction taxes are options too.

Also the idea of balancing an economy like you would your own personal finances needs to die anyway. Countries can borrow with terms of up to a century. That is a very different game from a 5 year loan or even a 35 year mortgage, and talking about it in the same terms is so disingenuous
 
Basically 'what's best for the country as a whole' is very much a choice rather than an objective fact. Which is better - most people getting three years of quality life in retirement, or someone who already earns a shit tonne getting to keep another hundred thousand euros more a year? You'll probably find the answer often tends to depend on which of those you're asking.

I wasn’t talking about rising the retirement age vs taxing the rich. You could always keep taxing the rich, but the very richest will always find ways of moving their money out somehow.
 
I mean the UK has LITERALLY just spent a decade testing this idea to destruction, only for it to turn out cutting spending and investment in people just tends to make the economy sluggish in the long run and ends up meaning you're less able to service your debt because it's bigger than your growth in the first place!

The UK is an awful example we don’t want to copy. :)
 

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