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the system IS sustained. the main white collar one even generates profits. increase the salaries that will increase money being sent to retirement funds and it

the system IS sustained. the main white collar one even generates profits. increase the salaries that will increase money being sent to retirement funds and it won’t be a problem anymore. france income per capita has been the same for the past 20 years. they are stealing our wages to make us slaves and they blame us for not working enough. christine lagarde pushed for blocking wage rise in the EU, european commission non elected leaders are pushing for it too. salaries for blue collar in france are becoming those of much poorer countries and in a globalised world where most of the goods are made in countries where salaries are rising as well as inflation, blocking our wages is only sending us to the third world . it is nothing else than a betrayal at the highest level of the state

vkou 4y ago
> and in a globalised world where most of the goods are made in countries where salaries are rising as well as inflation, blocking our wages is only sending us to the third world . Just throwing this out here, but in a globalized world, by what mechanism would one expect Europeans and Americans will be able to enjoy a greater standard of living than people in, say, Asia? Are they somehow smarter? More productive? In control of more natural resources? If not, why would you expect that the first-third world gap to not continue to normalize?
- 4gotunameagain 4y ago
  well, we _do_ have a head start and stable (post?)industrial societies with mechanisms already set in place.
- bboygravity 4y ago
  Because the USD is the world reserve currency. That's why.
  - billforsternz 4y ago
    That might explain the USA, but it doesn't explain Canada, Europe, Australasia and Japan.
- retinaros 4y ago
  its normalizing but for the worst in developed economies. housing is now out of reach while decades ago a blue collar salary was enough,to own a house.(in the USA you can still get six digits blue collar jobs that lift you out of poverty and give you access to housing. in france that is merely a dream or a netflix show) today already for many qualified workers (tech for instance) staying in india vs coming to france is better (there are other factors like healthcare or other that are at play but in pure economic power it would just be better to have a good it job in india vs europe) that was definitly not the case 20 even 10 years ago.
  - ubercore 4y ago
    Six figure blue collar jobs are not super common in the US.
    - notch898a 4y ago
      Definitely one of those "it depends" situations. For instance, you could be illiterate middle school drop-out and pretty easily make very close if not six figures if you worked near minimum wage canning work all year in Alaska or something by working the season of every available catch (16 hours a day lots of OT). And you'd bank all your post-tax earnings as they provide the housing/food normally too. You may work yourself to the bone but pretty much anybody in the US can make a killing.
      - jonfw 4y ago
        "Just move to one of the most remote and inhabitable places in the world, work twice as much as average, and you too can join the middle class"
        notch898a 4y ago
        when I did it they paid for my flight, my housing, and my food... qualifications were homeless off the streets of seattle and I-9 (but lol, e-verify is not mandatory in alaska so as you can imagine such requirement was easily bypassed by anyone who wished). There is no real 'moving' process other than getting on the plane, everything is there. when you're working 16 hours a day 7 days a week you don't really notice much outside of the factory floor anyway. Whether it was remote or in Manhattan you wouldn't feel the difference as you do nothing but work. I was working ~112 hours a week when I was in Alaska.
- wizzwizz4 4y ago
  > In control of more natural resources? I mean… yeah. That's not really related to the thread's topic, though. > why would you expect that the first-third world gap to not continue to normalize? I don't think that's the criticism. "Blocking our wages" probably isn't increasing the wealth of the people in Cold War non-aligned countries: is the money going to them, somehow? The direct effect is that employers (= the people who would be paying the extra wages) don't have to spend as much money paying their employees. What knock-on effects would lead to that improving things for people?
- billforsternz 4y ago
  I've been pondering this exact point for a while. I think we are seeing Western economies regressing to the mean, it's a long term trend. I'm not happy about it, but I can't claim it's not fair.
  - RestlessMind 4y ago
    > I can't claim it's not fair. Fair to whom? Why should middle class in the West vote to allow outsourcing to cheaper countries? That will just destroy their well-paying jobs in exchange for some cheap Chinese goods and Indian call centers. I also feel the same way about current "remote first" trend - American software engineers are shooting themselves in the foot by embracing remote work. Wait until your salaries get normalized to Brazil or Indian levels. Anecdotally, my company had multiple rounds of layoffs and has started hiring all the backfills in the third world now.
    - amunicio 4y ago
      > Why should middle class in the West vote to allow outsourcing to cheaper countries? Because you can run but you can't hide. If you institute protectionist policies, you will in turn become less competitive. Hence, you will require even more protectionist policies, that in turn will make you even more uncompetitive. In the end, you will have higher prices for lower quality domestic products. I don't like gravity, but it doesn't mean I can ignore it and jump from tall buildings. While economics is not an exact science (probably not even a science), you cannot ignore its principles. If protectionist policies worked, we would have figured out by now. The truth is that limited protectionist policies might work to give a push to a nascent industry in the short to medium term. But it does hurt the country as a whole in the long term.
      - RestlessMind 4y ago
        > If you institute protectionist policies, you will in turn become less competitive less competitive against whom? If West had not shipped its factories to China, I am sure West would have still stayed competitive against China by miles. In fact, by shipping its technical know-how for manufacturing, West has allowed China to become more competitive. > I don't like gravity, but it doesn't mean I can ignore it and jump from tall buildings. Sure, but outsourcing is nothing like gravity. It is a mixture of greed on part of corporations to reduce labor costs, naivete on behalf of politicians who thought China and others would welcome Western values along with Western jobs and stupidity on part of voters who traded short term cheap junk for long term stable jobs.
- avgcorrection 4y ago
  Such “normalization” would then also, presumably, apply to the rich. Unless one thinks that a billionaire who makes ten million USD a day is ten thousand times more productive than even a very high-earning wage worker.
  - wonderwonder 4y ago
    But are the ten thousand people he employs getting good wages because of his actions? Would they be making comparable salaries if he had not started his companies? He is not paid for productivity, he is rewarded for taking the initial risk and investing his own money.
    - v-erne 4y ago
      I think this story/abstraction of "owning money" has to break at some level. I mean if you believe, as I do, that money (especially at trillion level) is direct substitution for power over people and even whole societies then what happens if we let this global game of Monopoly to play to its seemingly inevitable conclusion ? Isn't this somehow antidemocratic in nature? And if you notice that inheritance is not unlike inheriting stance in aristocratic societies this capitalistic abstraction of ownership through money seems to crack.
      - wonderwonder 4y ago
        Most billionaires don't really have access to the cash that is included in their net worth, they are shares in their company. If they want to be liquid they have to sell the shares, sacrificing their control of their companies. Regarding the rich having an outsized influence in politics, I do agree, but I think the solution is to get rid of PAC's. Give the rich the same donation limits as everyone else. Strict legal enforcement should be put in place. I believe if you set a limit on an individuals net worth, the economy will lose one of its major drivers and job creators will potentially just hit that net worth, shrug and shut their companies down or pass them on to less capable people costing millions of jobs. Depending on the net worth cap, this could happen relatively early in a companies growth. I do strongly agree with a strong inheritance tax for individuals over an arbitrary net worth, something in the hundred millions range.
- akhosravian 4y ago
  It’s really eye opening how big the gap is not just in labor costs but also perishable goods. When I was in morocco 10 years ago one of the buckles for my motorcycle pants suspenders broke. I was able to get a local leather worker to create a pattern from the broken piece, craft the replacement, and integrate it into my suspenders overnight for under 5 USD. This was arranged by the hotel I was staying at, and wasn’t some special inside knowledge on my part. The mass manufactured replacement were more than 10x that cost, and made of lower quality materials. Morocco is not a rich country, but a lot of the world is even less wealthy.
  - jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 4y ago
    You're only looking at that from a consumer perspective. On the other side of that transaction is a person earning only $5 for several hours of labor minus the cost of materials.
    - hcurtiss 4y ago
      And there's not much meat on that bone to redistribute to the elderly.
- moonchrome 4y ago
  > More productive? Yes. Capital let's you be more productive. Rest of the world is building up capital to increase productivity, but is also increasing demand. Resource limits are blips on the market.
- joe_the_user 4y ago
  Just throwing this out here, but in a globalized world, by what mechanism would one expect Europeans and Americans will be able to enjoy a greater standard of living than people in, say, Asia? The world standard of living should be equalized globally but it should be the present first world standard, not the present third world standard. This is certainly possible given increasing world productive capacities.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    The present first-world standard is enabled in large part by the present spread in costs of production (roughly: wages) in other areas. Certainly the phone you’re using and almost certainly the clothes you’re wearing were not made by people making a median Western wage.
- RestlessMind 4y ago
  > why would you expect that the first-third world gap to not continue to normalize? If the third world raises to the first world standards, then great. If that process involves first world standards falling to meet third world ones in the middle at the cost of first-world middle class, then there is a big problem. See where Trump and Sanders got most of their votes and you will start to see a pattern here.
- philwelch 4y ago
  Lots of Asian countries have a high standard of living too. One of the biggest differences is functioning institutions. As bad as some first world governments can seem from our perspective, they’re way better than the kleptocrats and warlords who rule some parts of the world. And yeah, when you have functioning institutions, you do end up with smarter and more productive populations because children can go to school instead of slaving away in the cobalt mines.
hcurtiss 4y ago
By increasing everybody's salaries, it seems likely to me the cost of goods and services would go up by virtue of inflation. There is no free lunch. At the same time, prosperity is not a zero sum game. The rise of China has coincided with increased living standards in nearly every country. I'm not sure who would be "stealing" your wages. If I were to say, it's French labor policies that are stifling innovation and productivity, and it's manifesting in a decrease in living standards. I once met a couple French businessmen in a bar, both in the tech space. They bemoaned how difficult it was to fire anybody in France, meaning they worked very hard to not hire people to begin with. They were also in the US specifically to look for investment opportunities. This is the kind of thing that's choking France.
- selfmodruntime 4y ago
  Time and time again it’s the same bullshit argument. I’ve grown tired of it. The price of goods and services has decoupled from the cost for a while now, and prices are rising at a staggering rate without salary increases.
  - retinaros 4y ago
    yeah most of our goods and food are now imported so it is not even local salaries that will increase the price of goods. container shipping price however…
  - liketochill 4y ago
    Has demand risen faster than supply?
    - selfmodruntime 4y ago
      No. It‘s greed.
      - hcurtiss 4y ago
        In case that's not sarcasm, I'm in the lumber business. Lumber prices have collapsed in the last six months with massive losses and curtailments throughout the industry. I assure you there is no less greed today than there was a year ago when the market was at the top -- and no more greed then than now. We always at all times charge precisely as much as the market will bear. We do that by always selling to the highest bidder, and I have no idea how else we'd do it.
mrfumier 4y ago
"european commission non elected leaders" French government is not elected either. Like all European countries, by the way.
bloppe 4y ago
I'll admit that I don't understand French social security well at all, but based on what I've read online it seems like increasing salaries would actually reduce the amount of money going to social security because that would mean lower profits for employers (who contribute a higher percentage of their income). Obviously, in terms of wealth redistribution, it's better to have higher wages. But increasing them would actually hurt the social security system.
- retinaros 4y ago
  basically you pay a % of your salary to the pension fund. the higher the salary the more money you pour into. yes it will reduce profits for employers but even that is only short term. if salary rise you are more competitive on the global talent pool and you can do like america where a big chunk of today s giant were built by highly educated immigrants that came mostly because of the high salaries
  - candiodari 4y ago
    With inflation at the level that it is, everyone will end up with minimum salary anyway, so what's the point?
    - retinaros 4y ago
      no. inflation is really good in an economy where salaries rise. its good to borrow money, its good for the working population (the one that makes the country thrive) and it is less good for retired people (that already own wealth and lived through better economic times) In France think about it, the majority of the working population voted for Marine LePen, the majority of retired people voted for Macron, Young non working people voted for Melenchon. Hence why macron needs to satisfy his base, old people that retired early and now wants us to work more so that they can enjoy more their stress free life while everything is more expensive for the rest of us.
      - candiodari 4y ago
mmarq 4y ago
You can’t increase salaries de jure and even if it were possible, it’s not clear how the governor of the ECB would be able to pass laws.
- p4bl0 4y ago
  > You can’t increase salaries de jure The law defines the minimum legal wage. History has shown that increasing the minimum wage generally quickly end up increasing all salaries.
  - realusername 4y ago
    History has also shown that it leads to higher unemployment and lower growth of the salaries above it.
    - mmarq 4y ago
      History hasn’t really shown anything.
realusername 4y ago
The system ISN'T sustained, not even the most optimistic scenario supports your argument. And funneling even more money into it like you want to isn't an option, the GDP proportion dedicated to retirement increased a lot already. You've seen the low salary but you didn't understand the cause of that, the cause of that is the money is being funneled to the retirement system.
- p4bl0 4y ago
  Literally everything you said is false. The COR (Conseil d'orientation des retraites) has 4 working scenarios and only a single one of them has the retirement system going temporarily into the negatives. The situation is not alarming at all. In addition, there are a lot of solutions that have been on the table to help the retirement system do even better and allow people to retire earlier (for example paying women the same as men: the salary resulting increase will mechanically make more money go towards contributing to retirement funds). If the GDP portion dedicated to the elderly is maintained at around 14% the system has nothing to worry about, the goal of Macron's reform is to lower this number because he prefers to use public money to fund private companies that are already making profits (through tax mechanism such as the CICE or the CIR for example). Also, low salaries actually means less money "funneled to the retirement system", since this money is a percentage of salaries. Also, low retirements income means people still working have to financially support their parents. The elderly have to be supported one way or another. The question is whether you choose to do it collectively as a society, or go with the individualistic solution that won't work for everyone.
  - realusername 4y ago
    Every single scenario in the COR is negative for a long time, people should stop lying about it to comfort their political leanings. And it's not like it's for short time either, the worst scenario has a negative forecast for the next 45 years. The figures are terrible, regardless of your opinion. Secondly, 14% of GDP is massive, workers have been paying more and more towards the retirement system, salaries did increase a lot already, it's just that all of the increase went towards retirement > The elderly have to be supported one way or another. Nice way to avoid the fact that France spends a lot of money towards high retirement salaries which don't need it. Additionally low salaries live less longer, making the system even more injust. The way to fix it and transform it into a social system is to tax the high retirements for the benefit of the workers. In a social system the money should go towards the people who need it the most and not the opposite, France's retirement system isn't a social system anymore.
wdb 4y ago
How's the European Commission not elected? You vote a government in your country and they than select the commissioner for this commission.
- mrbadger 4y ago
  Indeed. The Commission is appointed by the Council (member state govt heads of state) and appointments are ratified by the European Parliament. Same as with the executive in the US. Not complicated.
  - candiodari 4y ago
    Euhm. Sort-of. The commission is appointed by country governments (specifically by the minister of foreign affairs). That minister is appointed by a government, which tends to be a coalition government, chosen by the head of the executive, that then has to be ratified by a majority of the national parliament of the country. An appointment to the commission remains valid until their term runs out, no matter what happens to the government that placed them there. So it's EU commissar (appointed) -> Foreign Minister of member country (appointed) -> Coalition government (appointed) -> Head of the executive of member country (ie. the king, in most cases) -> Parliament of member country (elected) Certain member countries don't have very stable coalitions, which means there's always a few EU commissars that don't have the support of their host governments. This is especially true now that Christian parties are in the process of being voted into irrelevancy in a lot of countries (unfortunately to be replaced by rightist and in some cases extreme-right parties) So, what you said. With one very important difference: there isn't one level of indirection, there's at least 4 or 5 levels of indirection. It isn't very democratic, especially since EU law means these people have law-giving power, power to override the parliaments of member countries (that would be why Christine Lagarde proposed using that power to freeze wages)
- luckylion 4y ago
  That's indirect at best. The government also decides who it sends as ambassadors to foreign countries, but would you say that ambassadors are elected?
onetokeoverthe 4y ago
[dead]
jbn 4y ago
> the system IS sustained regardless of whether this is correct or not (difficult to predict the future, even the COR only has "scenarios" to talk about, but nobody knows really what will happen), the current system is unjust in many ways (some "special regimes" are super favorable, with little justification other than legacy, and some workers should have more favorable regimes because of their work conditions, yet they do not and the reform does nothing for these people). >it is nothing else than a betrayal at the highest level of the state Agreed. Still, this is less worse (I can't really say "better") than the first attempt at reform during Macron's first mandate: that first attempt included a contribution rate falling from 28% to 2.8% above 120Keuro/year (if I recall correctly), which was effectively a tax cut for the wealthy.. If anything above this threshold, the contribution rate should increase (i.e. be progressive instead of regressive). The main issue is that the whole thing is un-reformable because so many consistuencies have vested interest in the status quo.

vkou 4y ago

> and in a globalised world where most of the goods are made in countries where salaries are rising as well as inflation, blocking our wages is only sending us to the third world . Just throwing this out here, but in a globalized world, by what mechanism would one expect Europeans and Americans will be able to enjoy a greater standard of living than people in, say, Asia? Are they somehow smarter? More productive? In control of more natural resources? If not, why would you expect that the first-third world gap to not continue to normalize?

4gotunameagain 4y ago
well, we _do_ have a head start and stable (post?)industrial societies with mechanisms already set in place.
bboygravity 4y ago
Because the USD is the world reserve currency. That's why.
- billforsternz 4y ago
  That might explain the USA, but it doesn't explain Canada, Europe, Australasia and Japan.
retinaros 4y ago
its normalizing but for the worst in developed economies. housing is now out of reach while decades ago a blue collar salary was enough,to own a house.(in the USA you can still get six digits blue collar jobs that lift you out of poverty and give you access to housing. in france that is merely a dream or a netflix show) today already for many qualified workers (tech for instance) staying in india vs coming to france is better (there are other factors like healthcare or other that are at play but in pure economic power it would just be better to have a good it job in india vs europe) that was definitly not the case 20 even 10 years ago.
- ubercore 4y ago
  Six figure blue collar jobs are not super common in the US.
  - notch898a 4y ago
    Definitely one of those "it depends" situations. For instance, you could be illiterate middle school drop-out and pretty easily make very close if not six figures if you worked near minimum wage canning work all year in Alaska or something by working the season of every available catch (16 hours a day lots of OT). And you'd bank all your post-tax earnings as they provide the housing/food normally too. You may work yourself to the bone but pretty much anybody in the US can make a killing.
    - jonfw 4y ago
      "Just move to one of the most remote and inhabitable places in the world, work twice as much as average, and you too can join the middle class"
      - notch898a 4y ago
        when I did it they paid for my flight, my housing, and my food... qualifications were homeless off the streets of seattle and I-9 (but lol, e-verify is not mandatory in alaska so as you can imagine such requirement was easily bypassed by anyone who wished). There is no real 'moving' process other than getting on the plane, everything is there. when you're working 16 hours a day 7 days a week you don't really notice much outside of the factory floor anyway. Whether it was remote or in Manhattan you wouldn't feel the difference as you do nothing but work. I was working ~112 hours a week when I was in Alaska.
wizzwizz4 4y ago
> In control of more natural resources? I mean… yeah. That's not really related to the thread's topic, though. > why would you expect that the first-third world gap to not continue to normalize? I don't think that's the criticism. "Blocking our wages" probably isn't increasing the wealth of the people in Cold War non-aligned countries: is the money going to them, somehow? The direct effect is that employers (= the people who would be paying the extra wages) don't have to spend as much money paying their employees. What knock-on effects would lead to that improving things for people?
billforsternz 4y ago
I've been pondering this exact point for a while. I think we are seeing Western economies regressing to the mean, it's a long term trend. I'm not happy about it, but I can't claim it's not fair.
- RestlessMind 4y ago
  > I can't claim it's not fair. Fair to whom? Why should middle class in the West vote to allow outsourcing to cheaper countries? That will just destroy their well-paying jobs in exchange for some cheap Chinese goods and Indian call centers. I also feel the same way about current "remote first" trend - American software engineers are shooting themselves in the foot by embracing remote work. Wait until your salaries get normalized to Brazil or Indian levels. Anecdotally, my company had multiple rounds of layoffs and has started hiring all the backfills in the third world now.
  - amunicio 4y ago
    > Why should middle class in the West vote to allow outsourcing to cheaper countries? Because you can run but you can't hide. If you institute protectionist policies, you will in turn become less competitive. Hence, you will require even more protectionist policies, that in turn will make you even more uncompetitive. In the end, you will have higher prices for lower quality domestic products. I don't like gravity, but it doesn't mean I can ignore it and jump from tall buildings. While economics is not an exact science (probably not even a science), you cannot ignore its principles. If protectionist policies worked, we would have figured out by now. The truth is that limited protectionist policies might work to give a push to a nascent industry in the short to medium term. But it does hurt the country as a whole in the long term.
    - RestlessMind 4y ago
      > If you institute protectionist policies, you will in turn become less competitive less competitive against whom? If West had not shipped its factories to China, I am sure West would have still stayed competitive against China by miles. In fact, by shipping its technical know-how for manufacturing, West has allowed China to become more competitive. > I don't like gravity, but it doesn't mean I can ignore it and jump from tall buildings. Sure, but outsourcing is nothing like gravity. It is a mixture of greed on part of corporations to reduce labor costs, naivete on behalf of politicians who thought China and others would welcome Western values along with Western jobs and stupidity on part of voters who traded short term cheap junk for long term stable jobs.
avgcorrection 4y ago
Such “normalization” would then also, presumably, apply to the rich. Unless one thinks that a billionaire who makes ten million USD a day is ten thousand times more productive than even a very high-earning wage worker.
- wonderwonder 4y ago
  But are the ten thousand people he employs getting good wages because of his actions? Would they be making comparable salaries if he had not started his companies? He is not paid for productivity, he is rewarded for taking the initial risk and investing his own money.
  - v-erne 4y ago
    I think this story/abstraction of "owning money" has to break at some level. I mean if you believe, as I do, that money (especially at trillion level) is direct substitution for power over people and even whole societies then what happens if we let this global game of Monopoly to play to its seemingly inevitable conclusion ? Isn't this somehow antidemocratic in nature? And if you notice that inheritance is not unlike inheriting stance in aristocratic societies this capitalistic abstraction of ownership through money seems to crack.
    - wonderwonder 4y ago
      Most billionaires don't really have access to the cash that is included in their net worth, they are shares in their company. If they want to be liquid they have to sell the shares, sacrificing their control of their companies. Regarding the rich having an outsized influence in politics, I do agree, but I think the solution is to get rid of PAC's. Give the rich the same donation limits as everyone else. Strict legal enforcement should be put in place. I believe if you set a limit on an individuals net worth, the economy will lose one of its major drivers and job creators will potentially just hit that net worth, shrug and shut their companies down or pass them on to less capable people costing millions of jobs. Depending on the net worth cap, this could happen relatively early in a companies growth. I do strongly agree with a strong inheritance tax for individuals over an arbitrary net worth, something in the hundred millions range.
akhosravian 4y ago
It’s really eye opening how big the gap is not just in labor costs but also perishable goods. When I was in morocco 10 years ago one of the buckles for my motorcycle pants suspenders broke. I was able to get a local leather worker to create a pattern from the broken piece, craft the replacement, and integrate it into my suspenders overnight for under 5 USD. This was arranged by the hotel I was staying at, and wasn’t some special inside knowledge on my part. The mass manufactured replacement were more than 10x that cost, and made of lower quality materials. Morocco is not a rich country, but a lot of the world is even less wealthy.
- jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 4y ago
  You're only looking at that from a consumer perspective. On the other side of that transaction is a person earning only $5 for several hours of labor minus the cost of materials.
  - hcurtiss 4y ago
    And there's not much meat on that bone to redistribute to the elderly.
moonchrome 4y ago
> More productive? Yes. Capital let's you be more productive. Rest of the world is building up capital to increase productivity, but is also increasing demand. Resource limits are blips on the market.
joe_the_user 4y ago
Just throwing this out here, but in a globalized world, by what mechanism would one expect Europeans and Americans will be able to enjoy a greater standard of living than people in, say, Asia? The world standard of living should be equalized globally but it should be the present first world standard, not the present third world standard. This is certainly possible given increasing world productive capacities.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  The present first-world standard is enabled in large part by the present spread in costs of production (roughly: wages) in other areas. Certainly the phone you’re using and almost certainly the clothes you’re wearing were not made by people making a median Western wage.
RestlessMind 4y ago
> why would you expect that the first-third world gap to not continue to normalize? If the third world raises to the first world standards, then great. If that process involves first world standards falling to meet third world ones in the middle at the cost of first-world middle class, then there is a big problem. See where Trump and Sanders got most of their votes and you will start to see a pattern here.
philwelch 4y ago
Lots of Asian countries have a high standard of living too. One of the biggest differences is functioning institutions. As bad as some first world governments can seem from our perspective, they’re way better than the kleptocrats and warlords who rule some parts of the world. And yeah, when you have functioning institutions, you do end up with smarter and more productive populations because children can go to school instead of slaving away in the cobalt mines.

hcurtiss 4y ago

By increasing everybody's salaries, it seems likely to me the cost of goods and services would go up by virtue of inflation. There is no free lunch. At the same time, prosperity is not a zero sum game. The rise of China has coincided with increased living standards in nearly every country. I'm not sure who would be "stealing" your wages. If I were to say, it's French labor policies that are stifling innovation and productivity, and it's manifesting in a decrease in living standards. I once met a couple French businessmen in a bar, both in the tech space. They bemoaned how difficult it was to fire anybody in France, meaning they worked very hard to not hire people to begin with. They were also in the US specifically to look for investment opportunities. This is the kind of thing that's choking France.

selfmodruntime 4y ago
Time and time again it’s the same bullshit argument. I’ve grown tired of it. The price of goods and services has decoupled from the cost for a while now, and prices are rising at a staggering rate without salary increases.
- retinaros 4y ago
  yeah most of our goods and food are now imported so it is not even local salaries that will increase the price of goods. container shipping price however…
- liketochill 4y ago
  Has demand risen faster than supply?
  - selfmodruntime 4y ago
    No. It‘s greed.
    - hcurtiss 4y ago
      In case that's not sarcasm, I'm in the lumber business. Lumber prices have collapsed in the last six months with massive losses and curtailments throughout the industry. I assure you there is no less greed today than there was a year ago when the market was at the top -- and no more greed then than now. We always at all times charge precisely as much as the market will bear. We do that by always selling to the highest bidder, and I have no idea how else we'd do it.

mrfumier 4y ago

"european commission non elected leaders" French government is not elected either. Like all European countries, by the way.

bloppe 4y ago

I'll admit that I don't understand French social security well at all, but based on what I've read online it seems like increasing salaries would actually reduce the amount of money going to social security because that would mean lower profits for employers (who contribute a higher percentage of their income). Obviously, in terms of wealth redistribution, it's better to have higher wages. But increasing them would actually hurt the social security system.

retinaros 4y ago
basically you pay a % of your salary to the pension fund. the higher the salary the more money you pour into. yes it will reduce profits for employers but even that is only short term. if salary rise you are more competitive on the global talent pool and you can do like america where a big chunk of today s giant were built by highly educated immigrants that came mostly because of the high salaries
- candiodari 4y ago
  With inflation at the level that it is, everyone will end up with minimum salary anyway, so what's the point?
  - retinaros 4y ago
    no. inflation is really good in an economy where salaries rise. its good to borrow money, its good for the working population (the one that makes the country thrive) and it is less good for retired people (that already own wealth and lived through better economic times) In France think about it, the majority of the working population voted for Marine LePen, the majority of retired people voted for Macron, Young non working people voted for Melenchon. Hence why macron needs to satisfy his base, old people that retired early and now wants us to work more so that they can enjoy more their stress free life while everything is more expensive for the rest of us.
    - candiodari 4y ago

mmarq 4y ago

You can’t increase salaries de jure and even if it were possible, it’s not clear how the governor of the ECB would be able to pass laws.

p4bl0 4y ago
> You can’t increase salaries de jure The law defines the minimum legal wage. History has shown that increasing the minimum wage generally quickly end up increasing all salaries.
- realusername 4y ago
  History has also shown that it leads to higher unemployment and lower growth of the salaries above it.
  - mmarq 4y ago
    History hasn’t really shown anything.

realusername 4y ago

The system ISN'T sustained, not even the most optimistic scenario supports your argument. And funneling even more money into it like you want to isn't an option, the GDP proportion dedicated to retirement increased a lot already. You've seen the low salary but you didn't understand the cause of that, the cause of that is the money is being funneled to the retirement system.

p4bl0 4y ago
Literally everything you said is false. The COR (Conseil d'orientation des retraites) has 4 working scenarios and only a single one of them has the retirement system going temporarily into the negatives. The situation is not alarming at all. In addition, there are a lot of solutions that have been on the table to help the retirement system do even better and allow people to retire earlier (for example paying women the same as men: the salary resulting increase will mechanically make more money go towards contributing to retirement funds). If the GDP portion dedicated to the elderly is maintained at around 14% the system has nothing to worry about, the goal of Macron's reform is to lower this number because he prefers to use public money to fund private companies that are already making profits (through tax mechanism such as the CICE or the CIR for example). Also, low salaries actually means less money "funneled to the retirement system", since this money is a percentage of salaries. Also, low retirements income means people still working have to financially support their parents. The elderly have to be supported one way or another. The question is whether you choose to do it collectively as a society, or go with the individualistic solution that won't work for everyone.
- realusername 4y ago
  Every single scenario in the COR is negative for a long time, people should stop lying about it to comfort their political leanings. And it's not like it's for short time either, the worst scenario has a negative forecast for the next 45 years. The figures are terrible, regardless of your opinion. Secondly, 14% of GDP is massive, workers have been paying more and more towards the retirement system, salaries did increase a lot already, it's just that all of the increase went towards retirement > The elderly have to be supported one way or another. Nice way to avoid the fact that France spends a lot of money towards high retirement salaries which don't need it. Additionally low salaries live less longer, making the system even more injust. The way to fix it and transform it into a social system is to tax the high retirements for the benefit of the workers. In a social system the money should go towards the people who need it the most and not the opposite, France's retirement system isn't a social system anymore.

wdb 4y ago

How's the European Commission not elected? You vote a government in your country and they than select the commissioner for this commission.

mrbadger 4y ago
Indeed. The Commission is appointed by the Council (member state govt heads of state) and appointments are ratified by the European Parliament. Same as with the executive in the US. Not complicated.
- candiodari 4y ago
  Euhm. Sort-of. The commission is appointed by country governments (specifically by the minister of foreign affairs). That minister is appointed by a government, which tends to be a coalition government, chosen by the head of the executive, that then has to be ratified by a majority of the national parliament of the country. An appointment to the commission remains valid until their term runs out, no matter what happens to the government that placed them there. So it's EU commissar (appointed) -> Foreign Minister of member country (appointed) -> Coalition government (appointed) -> Head of the executive of member country (ie. the king, in most cases) -> Parliament of member country (elected) Certain member countries don't have very stable coalitions, which means there's always a few EU commissars that don't have the support of their host governments. This is especially true now that Christian parties are in the process of being voted into irrelevancy in a lot of countries (unfortunately to be replaced by rightist and in some cases extreme-right parties) So, what you said. With one very important difference: there isn't one level of indirection, there's at least 4 or 5 levels of indirection. It isn't very democratic, especially since EU law means these people have law-giving power, power to override the parliaments of member countries (that would be why Christine Lagarde proposed using that power to freeze wages)
luckylion 4y ago
That's indirect at best. The government also decides who it sends as ambassadors to foreign countries, but would you say that ambassadors are elected?

onetokeoverthe 4y ago

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jbn 4y ago

> the system IS sustained regardless of whether this is correct or not (difficult to predict the future, even the COR only has "scenarios" to talk about, but nobody knows really what will happen), the current system is unjust in many ways (some "special regimes" are super favorable, with little justification other than legacy, and some workers should have more favorable regimes because of their work conditions, yet they do not and the reform does nothing for these people). >it is nothing else than a betrayal at the highest level of the state Agreed. Still, this is less worse (I can't really say "better") than the first attempt at reform during Macron's first mandate: that first attempt included a contribution rate falling from 28% to 2.8% above 120Keuro/year (if I recall correctly), which was effectively a tax cut for the wealthy.. If anything above this threshold, the contribution rate should increase (i.e. be progressive instead of regressive). The main issue is that the whole thing is un-reformable because so many consistuencies have vested interest in the status quo.