2022 French Presidential Election
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RaspberrySwirl
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Nobody claimed to define themselves by the middle ground, that’s only your interpretation of it.
ZenGiraffe
Who is SHE though?
Just trying to explain why centrist could be seen as something dirty babes
Penelope
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To be fair, I'm not entirely sure many centrists wouldn't call their beliefs pragmatism!
RaspberrySwirl
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Thank you.
Dark Carnival
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You will note that one of his biggest faults is 90 fascists in the parliament as of today. That’s hardly doing Europe any favours.
Beverley
GUESS WHO’S BACK?!
I can think of a few people who define themselves by the middle ground on Mopsy 
Madíson
Everything goes up by six
I’m not deciding on 65 because it’s the middle ground, or suggesting 65 is best because it’s in the middle of two extremes.
I’m just saying sometimes - and perhaps quite often - neither of the extreme positions on a matter are not the right answer. Usually when the policy decision involves a balance of two or more factors.
Loufoque
BATTLE FOR YOUR LIFE
Do you not think that this responsibility sits with the French people who voted for the RN? Rather than with a person from another party entirely?
Peekaboo
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This is probably a discussion for another topic but my problem with centrism is that people who believe in this "middle ground" are either comfortable enough to not want to change the status quo at the end of the day beyond some vague ideas about fairness and equality (that in all honesty are way more FAIRYTALE than what some "radical" policies get accused of) or think that small incrementals is the way change should happen in politics and society in most instances.
It's a reluctance to rock the boat too much that is incredibly frustrating. I am NOT saying that all change in society needs to happen through deep, profound upheaval but where do you think movements like workers rights, minimum wage, Black Lives Matter, gay rights and so on originated from, the CENTRE, or even the CENTRE-LEFT? These ideas are only co-opted by centrism when it's politically convenient for them to do so (usually disguised with the excuse that "society has now evolved...", "you have to bring people along", etc). At best, it's a PLAY-IT-SAFE attitude (that by the way ignores the gains that the right does meanwhile, eh: omg the shock horror of Brexit, how much Britain has changed since London 2012
etc). At worst, it's COWARDICE.
It's a reluctance to rock the boat too much that is incredibly frustrating. I am NOT saying that all change in society needs to happen through deep, profound upheaval but where do you think movements like workers rights, minimum wage, Black Lives Matter, gay rights and so on originated from, the CENTRE, or even the CENTRE-LEFT? These ideas are only co-opted by centrism when it's politically convenient for them to do so (usually disguised with the excuse that "society has now evolved...", "you have to bring people along", etc). At best, it's a PLAY-IT-SAFE attitude (that by the way ignores the gains that the right does meanwhile, eh: omg the shock horror of Brexit, how much Britain has changed since London 2012
etc). At worst, it's COWARDICE.
RaspberrySwirl
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The centre might not create revolutions but they turn revolutionary ideas into something practical. Their point is to stabilise.
Your activist ideas would either remain as fairytale ideas too or lead to chaos with a counter attack from the radical right, if it weren’t for a moderate force to make them practicable.
This is an oversimplification of course, and sometimes revolutions are necessary to force things to happen.
Your activist ideas would either remain as fairytale ideas too or lead to chaos with a counter attack from the radical right, if it weren’t for a moderate force to make them practicable.
This is an oversimplification of course, and sometimes revolutions are necessary to force things to happen.
Dark Carnival
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Then the Left shouldn’t blamed when a Nazi next becomes president.
90 MPs is fully their responsibility. By refusing to choose between the left and far right, they effectively voted for Le Pen and her candidates. It was Marine’s dream scenario.
Dark Carnival
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And now they are literally talking about working with Le Pen’s newly elected MPs 
Tisch
Spare potatoes
Dark Carnival
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Dark Carnival
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I’ve been saying it for YEARS now
Dark Carnival
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The left have been clear about not siding with Le Pen’s party in a no confidence vote. This time it’s being propose by a different party and I really don’t care if Le Pen’s mini nazis vote it as well, this ultra liberal right wing government needs to go.
Art Decade
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Edit: Wrong thread.
Jark
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the French's capacity to riot never fails to astonish - Brits will put up with so much
I text my French friend about this today, she said the pension age should rise but the French can't tolerate having their privileges taken away. I do think it's so bizarre that there's such toxicity around the discussion of raising the retirement age to a quite normal 64 (and not even immediately or for every profession).
at some point the world needs to solve the aging population problem anyway, and people living longer and being retired for longer is only going to cause younger generations to continue deciding that having children isn't worth the economic investment (perhaps this is another topic).
what Macron is proposing is really not wild, I think. is an undemocratic means to achieve an arguably logical end the worst abuse of its powers a government could conjure? the Tories can probably answer that one quite easily. and yet, forcing something through that two thirds of the population are clearly against is really playing with fire. I wonder if it's impossible to gauge the mood that leads to instant protest and riot without being French and being there right now.
ZenGiraffe
Who is SHE though?
The socially liberal, fiscally conservative energy of this post.the French's capacity to riot never fails to astonish - Brits will put up with so much
I text my French friend about this today, she said the pension age should rise but the French can't tolerate having their privileges taken away. I do think it's so bizarre that there's such toxicity around the discussion of raising the retirement age to a quite normal 64 (and not even immediately or for every profession).
at some point the world needs to solve the aging population problem anyway, and people living longer and being retired for longer is only going to cause younger generations to continue deciding that having children isn't worth the economic investment (perhaps this is another topic).
what Macron is proposing is really not wild, I think. is an undemocratic means to achieve an arguably logical end the worst abuse of its powers a government could conjure? the Tories can probably answer that one quite easily. and yet, forcing something through that two thirds of the population are clearly against is really playing with fire. I wonder if it's impossible to gauge the mood that leads to instant protest and riot without being French and being there right now.
I CAN'T
Jark
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I'm not fiscally conservative! it's also not realistic to keep the retirement age relatively low when we're all living longer. more money needs to be invested into paying people in jobs outside the public sector a serious wage so that working an extra two years isn't a problem and contributes to a better quality of life upon retirement. its so short termist. otherwise at what point can it be acceptable to raise the pension age? or should it always be stuck at 62 forever just because that's what it is currently?
ZenGiraffe
Who is SHE though?
Or we could lower the pension age, using the efficiencies gained by various technological and other advances to achieve something more than just increased profit for those that control the wealth already 
LTZ
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the biggest problem here is the constant fighting of the different parties. No matter what side of the fence you are on, there is no dialogue possible, everyone just shouts at each other. It’s not about what might be best for the country and its people but about ego and just going against everything. I’m not taking sides here, just saying that any kind of constructive dialogue seems impossible . Seeing politicians in the senate just shouting at each other instead of working on trying to find solutions is really depressing.
Jark
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such as...Or we could lower the pension age, using the efficiencies gained by various technological and other advances to achieve something more than just increased profit for those that control the wealth already
ZenGiraffe
Who is SHE though?
Assuming you aren't being deliberately obtuse:
- Self checkouts reducing the number of staff required in supermarkets
- Online banking reducing the need for physical branches
- Online shops in general
- Reproducible Analytical Pipelines, reducing the need for labour intensive data processing
- 3D printing, reducing the amount of time required for prototyping and modelling
- Online collaboration tools, reducing the need for travel
- Social Media, reducing the cost and difficulty of reaching specific markets and audiences
- Driverless Cars transforming the haulage industry
- ChatGPT et. Al. using plain language input to provide technical, contextual outputs. Customer Service is where I would guess the first visible replacement of humans by this tech
- Drones changing local delivery significantly
- Robots becoming more generalised, replacing more and more repetitive tasks. Restocking shops could change significantly.
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Dark Carnival
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Thank you miss Jark, but please have several seats!the French's capacity to riot never fails to astonish - Brits will put up with so much
I text my French friend about this today, she said the pension age should rise but the French can't tolerate having their privileges taken away. I do think it's so bizarre that there's such toxicity around the discussion of raising the retirement age to a quite normal 64 (and not even immediately or for every profession).
at some point the world needs to solve the aging population problem anyway, and people living longer and being retired for longer is only going to cause younger generations to continue deciding that having children isn't worth the economic investment (perhaps this is another topic).
what Macron is proposing is really not wild, I think. is an undemocratic means to achieve an arguably logical end the worst abuse of its powers a government could conjure? the Tories can probably answer that one quite easily. and yet, forcing something through that two thirds of the population are clearly against is really playing with fire. I wonder if it's impossible to gauge the mood that leads to instant protest and riot without being French and being there right now.
The minimum retirement age in France keeps getting brought compared to the rest of Europe. But you never hear anyone bring up the fact that the minimum duration of contribution is FOURTY THREE years regardless. That’s 30 in Germany and 35 in Spain. Most people don’t start to work before they’re 24, so our retirement age is effectively around 67 - 70.
Macron’s government has also already reduced the risk factors allowing an early retirement, including mechanical vibrations and chemical exposure. Let’s face it, it’s not the rich who are doing these jobs. It’s mostly the poorest percents, 30% of which are already dead BEFORE 64. This law targets them before anyone else, makes them work two more years so that the rich can enjoy, they, their retirement.
Dark Carnival
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LTZ
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Jark
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almost all of these so called "efficiencies" you describe are just removing jobs from the economy, affecting exclusively working class people, not the middle classes.
driverless/autonomous vehicles are an innovation being thrust on us by the auto industry that very few people actually want. haulage may be the only industry it could positively affect, given the difficulty of finding people who want to drive trucks cross-continent, but it will also eliminate a major number of taxi driver jobs (for example) that form a massive part of the service economy all over the world. what do you imagine the many millions of suddenly redundant taxi drivers are gonna do when cars start driving themselves en masse?
why are you advocating for the replacement of humans by technology in multiple sectors? chat gpt is idiotic. I work as a copywriter for brands and I don't believe chat gpt will make my job redundant per se, but it is very much a potential nuisance and people thinking AI can write good copy (it can't yet) serves to undermine the perceived value of what I do and what I've spent the best part of a decade working to be brilliant at.
all that these technologies will do is create increasingly fewer jobs for those who need them the most. I see little to no correlation with or relevance to the pension age (and I'm not being "deliberately obtuse", although you are being highly patronising).
lolly
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Why do most people not start work before 24 in France?
ZenGiraffe
Who is SHE though?
It's not patronising to point out that you may have been being obtuse in needing it spelled out how technology has created efficiencies. I apologise for assuming that it was self evident.
Removing human labour, which requires a salary, sick leave, a pension, and sleep, whilst still having the work done and generating a profit is the dictionary definition of efficiency. The more tech advances, the further up the class system those replacements happen.
Again, achieving massive efficiencies within an economy, if the work being done doesn't require humans to do it.
I'm not advocating for it, I'm just saying it will happen. Pretend you are a filthy capitalist. Do you want to employ a human to do a good job 8 hours a day 5 days a week, ~40 weeks a year, or a robot to do a sufficient job potentially 24/7?
Once AI becomes good enough, then your job will be replaced in most workplaces. Some organisations will probably continue employing real people to do these jobs, but they'll get rarer and competition for them will be fiercer.
Exactly. That's why fundamental reform of the economic systems is required, rather than tinkering around the edges, as I said before.
Well, in capitalistic systems, efficiency means more profit by reducing the amount of work (cost) to create the same product/output. The current economic model mean that efficiency means the assumption that the workforce will do more, in turn creating even more profit. As such, people still work the same hours until the same age or later
This is a choice, and is one of the drivers of the increasing wealth gap globally and within many countries. As an over simplistic example, if a job that once took 10 hours a week now takes 8 hours, then that 20% efficiency saving could be passed on to the worker by reducing their work week, or be absorbed by taxes to allow for a larger pension fund. This would then allow retirement age to stay the same or even be lowered.
It is economically conservative to just choose to continue working a 35 to 40 hour week, retire later, and use efficiencies to increase profits and lower the rate of tax on business to maintain the current functions of the state. He'll, it's economically conservative to argue that everyone NEEDS to have a job at all.
A more redistributive economic model could radically change the amount of labour people would need to do across the economy, by spreading those benefits more equally, rather than having them primarily benefiting already wealthy shareholders.
In the immediate term, Macron could choose to raise corporation tax, or create a new wealth tax, and that would fund pensions without having to require people work longer so that money comes from income tax instead.
Longer term, these issues will need to be looked at as more and more human labour is replaced, and we're reaching a point where machines and technology can begin to replicate human behaviour, decision-making, and creativity. Whacking up the pension age isn't going to come close to solving the issues that brings.
Penelope
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What massive efficiencies? Productivity growth isn't exactly rocketing. Anyone who's used a self service checkout can probably figure out why exactly these advances don't tend to actually satisfactorily lead to a world where checkout assistants are obsolete.Or we could lower the pension age, using the efficiencies gained by various technological and other advances to achieve something more than just increased profit for those that control the wealth already
My view at this point is that I entirely get why the French are pissed at the move, that it's probably not practical for the pension age to be stuck at 62, and that I think the UK balance is about right where the pension age is higher but there's a compact in place to ensure that it stays pretty generous.
As ever, Macron being high handed about it all and not really making the effort to make the long term sustainability of a generous system a popular position explains everything about this. I don't think this is an abuse of democracy given the function he's doing it through for all intents and purposes appears literally built into the system for these sorts of "look I'm staking my presidency on this one, down to you if you're getting rid of me for it or not" cases. My guess is he'll emerge from this a lot weaker unless he shifts his M.O. to become more conciliatory with at least *one* proper group on the left or right.
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Penelope
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Dark Carnival
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On average people do three years of studies after school + one year to get a first job.
Penelope
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This post feels like it's coming live from about 2017. You might want to take a look at what basically the entire auto sector has done with driverless car research investment since then.
(Customer service is also about the last place you'd be able to satisfactorily replace humans still in it at this point, given the almost universal experience of customer service cases that haven't been handled by automation so far is that they're only satisfied at the point customers feel like they've spoken to a human who could resolve their issue rather than something automated they haven't got the answer from so far.)
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ZenGiraffe
Who is SHE though?
IT'S A START
Yeah, maybe the SHIT stuff!