Anger at Macron mounts as French unions hold new protests

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By SYLVIE CORBET and ALEXANDER TURNBULLan hour ago

PARIS (AP) — Labor strikes upended travel in France on Thursday as French trade unions held their first mass demonstrations since President Emmanuel Macron inflamed public anger by forcing a higher retirement age through parliament without a vote.

Big crowds have started marching in the major cities of Marseille, Lyon, and Nantes as more than 250 protests were organized across France. The Paris march was scheduled to start at 2 p.m. from the Bastille plaza.

Protesters blockaded train stations, Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris and refineries. High-speed and regional trains, the Paris metro and public transportation systems in other major cities were disrupted. About 30% of flights at Paris Orly Airport were canceled.

The Eiffel Tower and the Versailles Palace were closed Thursday due to the strikes.



Read more: https://apnews.com/article/france-protests-macron-retirement-age-b734701860b2ab003bb9a1e3ff976505

[SouthernDem4ever]

1. Way to piss everyone off Macron.

Not too smart.

[LiberalLovinLug]

9. I really believe that the far right in France is helping them out with those protests.

Even though they may have done the same thing in office. Or worse.
Anything to help make a more moderate administration look bad.

Otherwise I highly doubt that the protests would be this fierce for a two year more age requirement when its still relatively low.

[Farmer-Rick]

2. Raygun and Greenspan moved our retirement age back to 67

With barely a whimper from anyone.

That's what happens when you kill off your workers Unions.

Though Congress still gets their retirement pension at 62. Maybe we need to move that back to match what they did to our Social Security?

[DFW]

3. Agree completely.

If 67 is good enough for the rest of the country, 67 is good enough for Congresspeople.

As for France, at age 62 retirement, they are an island of paradise by the rest of Western European standards. Kicking it up to 64 still makes them at the lower end of the spectrum here. The rest of Europe is wondering what all the fuss is about.**

**Except that it is France, where this happens a LOT.

[CTyankee]

17. Hope all will be tranquil when I hope to visit in September.

Had to cancel Barcelona but hope to reschedule before I die. Maybe another time (I hope).

It'll be Paris for a week (I have time, daughter doesn't have much). Something is better than nothing and we're going to two gardens, Versailles and Giverny. My daughter designs environmentally healthy gardens for folks with summer homes on Chappaquiddick Island and can't get away in the spring.

Hope all is well with you and your family!

[DFW]

18. Thanks! I have to run down to Barcelona for a couple of hours on Wednesday

I will say hi for you!

We should be all OK. As you probably saw, we are one more than we were at the beginning of the week. My wife leaves for the States on Wednesday to see the new baby and help our daughter out for a couple of weeks. I can't get away that quickly, but I will try to get over to NYC before the tenth. I have some stuff to do in Washington, and then in Dallas and finally Chicago before I run back over here. There is never a dull moment, or any other kind of moment!! I can't figure out how people have time to retire!!

[CTyankee]

20. Did your daughter have a girl or a boy? Names?

[DFW]

21. A boy

His name is Kingston (ours is not to reason why…..)

[CTyankee]

22. Well, Kingston is a place (that's what I thought of). That may be the reason, no?

We named our baby Hadley, b/c Hemingway's last book had a description of her. It was interesting when she went off to college at Mount Holyoke (in South Hadley, MA).

[DFW]

23. I have no idea.

Neither of the parents has ever been to Jamaica for all I know. And what will the kid b e named in school? King? He'll suffer mightily if that's the case. Sky, his middle name, might be better, as kids named Schuyler are around. But in that case, why name him Kingston in the first place?

[CTyankee]

26. I love Sky! Wasn't Sky Masterson a character in the musical "Guys and Dolls"?

[DFW]

27. Oh, you might be right!

When I was little, I used to watch a serial program about a private plane pilot named Sky King. But I always thought it was a TV name, sort of like "Sugarfoot." You know, a pilot named "Sky," wink wink. I never knew anyone really named that. Well, not before now, anyway!

[CTyankee]

28. Brando played Masterson in the movie, IIRC. As a young teen, I was "in love" with Brando!

[DFW]

29. I always thought of Brando in terms of the kid in the movie "Fame"

In drama class, a boy was being told by his teacher to enunciate better, and he retorted that Marlon Brando was one of the best actors that ever lived, and nobody ever understood a word he said. The class erupted in laughter, and he said, "what? what did I say?" And he got the first inkling he might be good at comedy.

[CTyankee]

30. I wish I could remember that movie better...maybe it'll be on one of our many movie channels...

[SouthernDem4ever]

11. Congress' retirement age should be 85

Since that is how long it takes for the job to wear them down.

[Larry_M]

34. Ain't that the truth!

Any “job” a person can do into their late 70s and beyond are not too demanding physically and mentally, pay too damn much, and/or the person in the role gets their ass continually pampered in various ways.

I totally get why so many hang on as long as they can.

[madville]

35. Joe Biden voted for it as well

Many Democrats at that time around 1983 voted for raising the age from 65 to 67. There were many amendments to SS at that time, not all were bad, like expanding survivor benefits for spouses, ex-spouses and such.

[DFW]

4. I'm glad I was able to get out of there yesterday.

The last direct train from Paris to Düsseldorf was sold out days ago, and I got one of the last seats on the one leaving at 3:55 PM. I talked to my friends down there this morning, and they were pissed about having to get to work on subways that were as crowded as Tokyo at rush hour--those that COULD get to work, that is. At least the cafés in the big cities are happy.

Before joining the euro, the retirment age in Greece (at least for government workers, who, with their typical bloated European bureaucracy, were a huge portion of the work force) was 55. That was NOT a typo. Retirement at 55 for a bunch of desk-bound paper-pushers--real back-breaking work, right? How could the government pay for that? Simple--they couldn't. They just kept perpetually devaluing their currency so that their exports and their income from tourists from hard currency countries always bought more drachmas, and they could pay out their pensions in increasingly worthless currency. When they joined the euro, there was no more devaluation, since the European Central Bank determined the policy that affected the exchange rate, and the country went bankrupt. When they could no longer afford to pay out their pensions starting at age 55, the country went on massive strikes and caused huge disruptions. The European Central Bank said either reform, or get out. They reformed. I suspect that at some point, Macron's reform will stick, too, conceivably with a few cosmetic concessions, so that everyone can say they got what they wanted. France isn't about to leave the euro, and nor are they about to go bankrupt.

[peppertree]

5. Something similar happened in Argentina - EXCEPT the drain was the foreign debt, rather than budgets

In 1977, the last dictatorship enacted a Bush-style financial deregulation - and by '81, over $30 billion in foreign debt was taken on, mainly to finance the dollarizing and offshoring of peso assets by both local elites and foreign speculators (a carry-trade scam known as the 'financial bicycle').

Because the interest rate on that debt (which must be covered in dollars) was so high, and because export prices for Argentine kept falling behind import prices, the foreign debt kept snowballing - with payments mostly covering only the interest.

The financial bicycle was brought back in 2001 under the conservative President de la Rúa as a "show of confidence in (and for) the markets."

It crashed calamitously that December (much to the schadenfreude of right-wingers in the U.S. and British press, you might recall).

The 'bicycle' made a second comeback under Trump's pal Macri in 2016-18 - leading, oh surprise, to another debt crisis that year.

And now, there they are: struggling with an all-but unpayable $180 billion foreign public debt (it had reached $200 billion under Macri in 2019).

Hard-currency debt crises are some of the toughest problems to get out from under - or even manage.

Predictably enough, Macri's right-wing coalition is using the hard times to try to weasel back into power this October (but by using some "fresh" face, naturally - whom they haven't even decided on). We'll see.

[Farmer-Rick]

6. It amazes me how these countries' politicians...

Seem to think their worker's tax payments are their money to use on any kind of scheme that trips their trigger, all the while making workers work longer and longer into old age.

So what if Greece has set 55 years old as retirement age? The workers pay for it through their tax dollars. In No Country ever have only the filthy rich paid taxes. It's always the poor and middle class tax payments that go up to cover fraudulent borrowing schemes.

And it's always the poor and middle class who have to work longer into old age to pay for their own and their parents' retirements despite the often illegal borrowing schemes approved by filthy rich politicians. Funny how poor and middle class tax payer's money is also on the hook to bail out corrupt banking idiots.

Our tax payments are not free money for the filthy rich controlled politicians to squander. But they seem to think so

[peppertree]

7. As Thurston Howell might say: "It's not the money; it's the privilege"

"You mean the principle, dear."

"That too, luvvie - and don't forget the interest!"

[brooklynite]

13. Flying to Istanbul tonight; considered connecting through Paris...

...but decided to take the nonstop and sacrifice the brownie points.

[DFW]

15. I would have done the same.

You could have gotten the same points flying through Amsterdam or Prague, but nothing beats nonstop. Euro-strikemania seems to be in season, anyway. Germany announced a nationwide strike for Monday, and I had to cancel three appointments in Holland. I could have taken a taxi for €450, I suppose, but the Autobahns will be clogged. In May, Delta is FINALLY reviving its Atlanta-Düsseldorf route, and you can believe that if I‘m on the way home from Boston, New York, D.C. or Dallas, I will beg and cajole to connect through Atlanta so I can land after the long intercontinental flight, and be a 20 minute taxi ride from the house.

[Larry_M]

24. What are your thoughts on this lasting into the summer?

My wife and I are going in mid-May to Paris, then on to the UK. Now, I'm wondering if we should make alternative plans for the France portion. I certainly don't want to be in the middle of riots and protests, even if it means kissing $3k away on our VRBO rental.

[DFW]

25. I would make the trip, as things stand now

It may last into summer, but if so, things should die down somewhat. The "casseurs" may still be in full riot mode, but at some point, things WILL die down. A few face-saving gestures will be made, and everyone will declare victory. Macron didn't do this to "save the rich." That's Fox Noise kind of reporting--slanted to support a pre-conceived point of view. He did it because he is a numbers cruncher who thought it was the best way to improve the economy's chances of doing better. Whether he's right or not is another story, but France has a bloated public sector of unnecessary, unproductive bureaucrats who suck a lot of money (and thus jobs) out of the country's economy. As things stand now, these people can't be fired, and money for pensions has to come from somewhere else. Taxes are already sky high there, and he doesn't want capital and business flight. My two employees in Paris cost us an extra 55% of their gross salary in government payroll taxes. They then have to pay high income taxes on what they get. The government thus gets about two thirds of what an employee costs his/her employer. Hiring a bunch of employees in France means you had better have a really good business model, or you go under fast.

I would hope that by Mid-May, travel in and out of France would return to a semblance of normal. There will be still the occasional disruption, but there is ALWAYS the occasional disruption in France. I speak the language close to fluently, and am there once a week for work, have been doing this for decades. The people tire of this quickly, especially over something that even in a worst case scenario (for the unions) is something the rest of Europe would still envy.

Get back to me in a month, and see if I still think this way. My opinion is based on decades of working with France and being able to speak to them in their own language, but precedent is not always followed. Putin LOVES chaos in the EU (makes it harder to concentrate on the Ukrainian situation), and will provide covert support to any disruption he can as long as he can keep it quiet. He didn't even make much of an effort to disguise his (probably deciding) support for the Brexit movement, and it still went through.

[Larry_M]

31. I really appreciate your informative and thoughtful response...

I’ll reach out again as we get closer to leaving. With your being so familiar with France, youre a good person to talk to.

I really hope things calm down so we can be there a few days. My wife has never been, and I’ve been meticulous in planning our time there. My one time there, I loved it, so I want to show her a great time.

[DFW]

32. I hope you manage! Paris really is a glorious city

Even the senior officer of the Nazi occupation refused Hitler's orders to blow it up before retreating. He just couldn't bring himself to do it. I really don't get to enjoy it much any more. I run down there for work, get done what has to be done, and rush off to my next appointment in Brussels or Utrecht or Barcelona or wherever.

I don't get outside of Paris much any more at all, but if you go west, Quimper is cool. Aix-en-Provence is also picturesque, if a little touristy. I know at least one DUer has retired there. I haven't been down there in over 40 years, but I hope it hasn't changed too much.

[Magoo48]

8. Union Strong.

Solidarity with French workers and pensioners.

[Xandric]

10. Macron is a conservative

People tend to forget that because he's not as bad as trump, but nobody is as bad as Trump.
Macron is still bad.

[Lancero]

12. As someone described him in a prior protest, The President of the Rich.

Which fits with what his response has been. Can't raise taxes on his rich buddies, but sure can screw over everyone else.

[Xandric]

14. yeah m reminds me of Romney

Very similar.

[not fooled]

16. Yeah, isn't he basically raising the retirement age in order to cut taxes on the rich?

I read that somewhere but can't remember the source for reference. The Americanization of French fiscal policy.

[Polybius]

19. I used to say the same thing about UK's Tony Blair

Total conservative.

[Aussie105]

33. Delaying the pension by two years for those nearing pensionable age . . .

will save the French government some money, but the whole system is a big drain on government coffers, as it is for most countries.

It will be more of a problem as the population ages.