It’s official: The French government is considering the possibility that, starting in 2018, people should be required to work until the age of 62, as opposed to the current 60. The proposed law would increase the retirement age by four months each year starting with those born in 1951. And it would apply to bureaucrats whose retirement age is 60 today.
But the true scandal, the Socialist party, unions, and bureaucrats explain, is what the plan would do to those who right now may retire at 50. They would now have to work until 52. The injustice!
Martine Aubry — the person, pictured below, to whom the French owe their 35-hour work week – called the plan irresponsible.
Defending the proposal, the Labor minister, Eric Woerth, explained that other European countries have taken similar steps. Yet, as the Washington Post reminds us today, their policies are in fact more severe:
Faced with the same economic pressures, for instance, Germany has announced plans to lift the retirement age from 65 to 67. Britain and Italy, home to Western Europe’s other two leading economies, have settled on 65. In comparison, officials pointed out, France will still have one of the earliest retirement ages in the industrialized world.
Here are more reponses from the French left, as recorded by the Post:
Aubry’s predecessor as the Socialist Party’s general secretary, Francois Hollande, called the government’s plan “the most unjust reform” and accused Sarkozy of making poor people pay for the economic crisis and strained financial markets.
“Today is a day of sadness and anger,” agreed Jean-Luc Melanchon, who heads the Left Party. “The end of retirement at 60 is the end of a world.”
Yes, it is the end of a world: a world in which older people get to sit on their French hands as the youngest or poorest transfer wealth to them.
This is what I had to say about increasing the retirement age a few weeks ago in the New York Times.
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