Most of the big scale social programs that we enjoy today are the result of both world war. Most western countries put them in place as reparation for all the suffering and hardship that the people endured. If they hadn't put them in place they'd had got open revolt of the population and the veterants coming back home. And they're not free, you and your employer pay for them. And you can't just abolish them or change the contract that you've made with the people. Lives depends on them. Most mid to low paying job don't even provide a private pension option and no, playing the stock market isn't viable. Ask the people who had Enron or Nortel stock. For those who don't want to pay taxes or participate, there's always the option to migrate somewhere you don't have to, like Monaco or Somalia. Somalia has miles upon miles of sandy beaches and no taxes!
Nothing that unusual there. That's just a tradition we started in 1789 and didn't stopped, excluding for the Guillotine.
Which is a shame, for the guillotine. So fast and efficient, way better than slowly pumping someone full of expensive drugs.
What would you have if you put £80 in your own account every month? What would your self funded pension look like?
Not much more than what you put in with the ridiculously low interest rates the bank give on personnal savings account. Especially once you've deducted the bank "fees" that they charge you for the "pleasure" of having a saving account.
I just watched the first few minutes. I am guessing the total collapse is with everything being Interdependent. One of the first people I bumped into when I realised how bad things had got was Guy McPherson and he believes we have no chance due to the amount of pollutants in the atmosphere which are currently masking how bad things are and he believes which certainly has some truth that once we clean up down here we will feel it. This is one of the reasons why people are saying we should not just be talking about Co2. We need to cleanthat up to as well as finding a way to keep the ice on the artic. My daughter was not impressed when I told her there was no more hope....and we quite simply do not know whether we still have time or not. What we need to do was get everything cleaned up yesterday....but I do think that the climate situation is going to make a lot of what people get upset about here obsolete...and something which it is worth trying to get people to understand why they need to wake up. We may still be able to get out with a fairly small amount of damage but that would require sufficient people to care which we do not seem to have. Hence we have Jem Bendell and people starting to talk about Deep Adaptation. https://www.thefutureisbeautiful.co...and-evolution-in-the-face-of-global-meltdown/ I did a social science degree. I know how these things can be addressed - or not. Yes much more. France is a 500 year old Empire. When WW2 ended Holland thought its colonies would help them. They did not. The EU, Snyder believes has provided the solution. Yes, more complicated but he most certainly has a point. France has never lived as a Nation State and would get one hell of a shock if it tried to just like Britain will. At the time the EEC was created Britain still considered it had an Empire. Brexiters still think so. They are in for a shock. I agree with you. I was just saying the most basic things and later went on to say our politicians do not serve us so we are not real democracies. We are moving towards Tyranny. I am not sure I agree with that. I would think a right was a right. Of course people also have responsibilities as well as rights. Not sure what you are seeing as imposed duties?? This is true of the current time. Some people say we are Oligarchys some say Plutocracies. All the centrists I spoke of are in that and they all do well out of neo liberalism and so want to keep it going. Britain's Labour Party at the moment does not. It offers a different way out and all of the centrists want to destroy it and all of the media tries to destroy them making up more bizarre and more bizarre lies about them to the point that no one believes them anymore - though some people pretend they believe the ones about antisemitism for fear they will be called it as well if they do not. To use Snyder again,. Politics at the moment is a farce and that is far more frightening than funny. You are wrong that party's always rule in their own interest. This is another thing which came with neo Liberalism. Interesting about your idea of sortition and I can understand it some way though I believe in genuine democracy with democratic values which I now believe could only happen in a social democracy. XR want sortition over climate change. They want people's assemblies to be set up and given an area concerning our future to work on. Bit like Juries I guess.
So why would one expect magic from the government in creating this much larger pension, not based on reality?
But you can make their bread very expensive. There is no magic. When you buy a lie, you still get the bill
Maybe you should take a basic course in how pensions work then. But the short version of it is that the present generation of workers are paying for those before them. That's the social contract and governments fall, sometime violently, when they decide to change the term of said contract. And also, maybe one day, you'll come to the realisation that money and wealth is an artificial construct used to control people and not tied to ressources distribution anymore. If it still was linked to ressources, precious or not, the whole geopolitical map would change overnight.
And they can't afford to fulfill the promises of the whore politicians who promised their parents the impossible.
Yeah, they're rioting cuz they're flush with extra tax dollars burning holes in their pockets, demanding the government relieve them of the excess
Oh they have the cash. The government wants to use that money for less important pet projects that nobody wants, hence the rioting.
Yes and no. The USA are as much in debt than we are. You're not in a that much better position than ours. What differ is we have all that protest tradition. I'm not that old, and yet, I always remember massive protests. Those one are more radical than the old one, but massive protests in France isn't that much something new. What was the exploit of conservative in the USA those two last decades ? Sending twenty thousand of young patriots to an useless death ? Creating huge debt to end to get ISIS ? I don't appreciate neither conservative or progressive. It's not that the progressive are crappy that it makes the conservative much better. Both the conservative and the progressive participated to the building of nowodays UE that is partly responsible for the nowodays ruin of the country (the other part of the responsability is to the french people BTW).
Well if France has been seeing progressives it is probably the only place left in Europe. I have only just remembered that I had read that Macron's intent was to bring to the people of France Neo Liberalism and austerity so if you ever did have any progressives he is intent on ending that and bringing in neo liberalism when it has been shown to be ineffective and unable to produce a decent standard of living for sufficient numbers of the population while it leads to ever growing inequality. So that seems to be what Macron is up to. https://www.counterfire.org/article...s-against-macron-s-neoliberal-war-on-pensions and https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/12/france-strike-welfare-state-pensions-emmanuel-macron and this is from 2 years ago cont'd here https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/08/emmanuel-macron-france-economics-neoliberalism The way they speak there of how Macron sees things seems to go with the way you speak VotreAltesse which I did not understand.
The quote in the above post from the Guardian says I know that there was around here a kind of belief that Macron had saved France from Le Pen although the above article also suggests not with any great support even from the beginning and far worse now. I know I also read that it was to be hoped that Macron was able to do as he apparently wanted, bring the people of France together or it was likely they would be lost to the far right. I have also read that what in the end makes the difference in whether a democracy moves towards fascism is the position of ones Macron appears to be criticisng above - the bourgeoisi. If they go with the fascist Party, it wins. which leaves the situation of what will happen next. The UK has the far right better hidden calling themselves the Tory Party and from what I hear they are going to get a massive majority and bring hell to Britain.....it still remains whether the French will support someone like Le Pen who is far more obvious in her position. What future France?
The Tory Party is not "far right". It's more comparable to the more authoritarian wing of the Conservative Party in the US (as under Bush Jr.), but even more authoritarian because this is in the UK where all the individual liberties respected in the US are not valued so much. And I don't believe they are truly more "authoritarian", on the whole, than Labor. But the climate in the UK has moved socially so far to the Left that it makes true Conservatives (rare as they are in the UK now) appear "far right" in comparison.
shhhh The Tory Party is the Conservative Party!! and yes, it has split and now has a strong elite hard right looking forward to making a killing out of Brexit as they laugh as they see the people who voted for them race to the bottom. All with the full Trump rhetoric. Truth is no longer wanted. Lies are more fun. Funny at a time when we have more access to knowledge than ever before and when we have already done irreparable damage to the planet and the only questions are is it still possible to stabilise and how bad are we going to let it go for any survivors to live in, the people instead support lying. Johnson apparently not necessarily but necessarily Johnson will do anything for power, anything.
