France’s President Macron overrides parliament to pass retirement age bill

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/16/frances-macron-overrides-parliament-to-pass-pension-reform-bill.html

by mikhael • 3 years ago

45 29 3 years ago

baby• 3 years ago

You cannot do that in the US right?

No. 49.3 is a provision of the French constitution that lets presidents pass a law without a vote of Parliament. But Parliament can, with a simple majority, vote no-confidence in the government, which annulls the law and forces all government ministers to resign.

The US analogy would be, if Biden could have told the Senate: "the only way you can stop Build Back Better, is by also forcing all my Cabinet-level officials to resign"

cdot2• 3 years ago

Except that the President (at least in theory) cannot simply pass a law without Congress.

freeone3000• 3 years ago

I can anticipate that this would be actively pushed for under many administrations... What stops such a vote from being called until the French presidency forms into a form that parliament likes?

jfengel• 3 years ago

Correct. We have nothing like that. We also don't have the notion of a "motion of no confidence", which is the balance to it.

It basically forces the whole issue. They can overturn it by throwing the entire thing back to the people with a new election.

The US does have Executive Orders, which allow the President an unspecified amount of power. These can be used to work around a recalcitrant Congress. The limits of executive orders are poorly specified, and it's kind of tossed over to the Supreme Court to figure out.

It's pretty clear that an Executive Order raising the retirement age would be rejected, since it's clearly specified in legislation. But you can never really tell for sure.

nxm2• 3 years ago

And I’m thankful it can’t be up to the executive branch (who ever is the president) to make such drastic decisions.

andrekandre2• 3 years ago

  > Macron’s Renaissance party argues reform of the pension system is necessary to sustain it long into the future. It has a projected annual deficit of 10 billion euros ($10.73 billion) each year between 2022 and 2032, according to France’s Pensions Advisory Council.

couldn't they have just.... funded it?

Georgelemental2• 3 years ago

French taxes are already very high.

RegnisGnaw• 3 years ago

That's why the protestors wants to increase corporate taxes, not personal taxes.

skywal_l5• 3 years ago

Taxes are high because the pension system is managed by the public sector and are financed by taxes. In a country when pension are a matter of personal responsibility, they are paid to private companies.

So you see, when a french person pay for their pension, it's taxes. When a person from another country pay for their pension to private companies, it's GDP. In the latter case, you have the additional freedom of not paying anything (especially if you don't make enough) and then hope that you die before retirement. I would not call this freedom though.

Try to think outside of the conventional wisdom which is completely skewed

soitgoes511• 3 years ago

Well.. we need the money to pay for the Olympics next year. Priorities, you know?

JPLeRouzic2• 3 years ago

couldn't they have just.... funded it?

* Currently there is only 1.7 active contributors per retiree!

* There are 5% more retirees each year these days (700,000 new retirees each year). Double the newborn number each year.

* 331 billion euros of pension system expenditure in 2019. 3 times the number paid in the 1980'. More than what the French state gets from taxes.

https://travail-emploi.gouv.fr/retraite/le-systeme-de-retrai...

andrekandre2• 3 years ago

so, it costs more, but that doesn't answer the question why they couldn't find a way to fund it today (raise the budget etc), and why is the only choice to raise retirement....

halJordan2• 3 years ago

They just turned years of expenditure into years of income. Those people who have to work for an income will have it taxed. So.... yes.

cik• 3 years ago

Generally, I think we're witnessing a logical progression to longer government mandated retirement ages. As society both ages, and lives longer there's a reality that the cost of maintaining these retirement possibilities is only increasing. Add to that a population thay doesn't reach the replacement rate.... Well it makes for fun times.

We could also rethink the value work. We're on the cusp of living in a post scarcity world - perhaps moreso in some countries than others. This reality may cancel out the other one.

skywal_l5• 3 years ago

I do not know from which country you are from and what you are saying is probably true in your context but this is counterfactual for the situation in France. As I said in another comment, this reform, according to the french government, is not about saving the pension system, which has already been reformed and works pretty well, it's about reducing corporate tax [0].

[0] https://www.budget.gouv.fr/files/uploads/extract/2022/progra...

extract: La capacité productive de l’économie serait soutenue par les réformes et les investissements du Gouvernement, qui contribueraient notamment à accroître l’offre de travail et à atteindre le plein emploi: réforme des retraites [...].

JPLeRouzic2• 3 years ago

pension system, which has already been reformed and works pretty well

* Currently there is only 1.7 active contributors per retiree!

* There are 5% more retirees each year these days (700,000 new retirees each year). Double the newborn number each year.

* 331 billion euros of pension system expenditure in 2019. 3 times the number paid in the 1980'. More than what the French state gets from taxes.

https://travail-emploi.gouv.fr/retraite/le-systeme-de-retrai...

tmpz22• 3 years ago

But we are also at an unprecedented amount of productivity. Surely the evolution from subsistence farming to Moon landings is exponential enough to account for many aspects of an aging society.

CodexArcana• 3 years ago

And don't forget, an unprecedented amount of wealth inequality. Maybe we could afford these programs if a certain subsection of the population actually paid into the system.

France’s President Macron overrides parliament to pass retirement age bill

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