Dear MEL Topic Readers,
The French are up in arms over retiring at 64. How do other countries
compare?
King Charles III’s state visit to France, which was scheduled to start
on the 26th of March, was postponed after a request by France’s President
Emmanuel Macron because of the widespread unrest caused by pension reform protests
and strikes. A series of general strikes and demonstrations started in January
to oppose the 2023 pension reform bill, which would raise the retirement age
from 62 to 64 years old. That sounds like a big hit for those who are retiring
soon but it would be still younger compared with other developed countries. In
fact, France’s public pension is quite generous, whose public spending per GDP
is about 14%, the world’s third highest only after Greece and Italy, and much higher
than Germany’s 10% and UK’s 6%. The government wants to reform the pension and
retirement system to cope with the increasing number of senior citizens, and
thus the beneficiaries. It is of course one of the least favored measures to
propose and impose, for any governments of democratic or autocratic. Even if people
understand the necessity of such a painstaking reform, no one wants to pay for
it.
Read the article and learn why French people are so angry with the
pension reform.
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