Fewer workers to pay the pensions of more old people. That's the flip side of people living longer and having less children.
The big losers? Young people onto whom feckless, irresponsible, greedy elders have shifted the burden.
Unfunded pension obligations will fall, of course, on the young. Laurence Boone, an economist at Barclays Capital in Paris, calculated that the French "pension-fund deficit will widen to €24.5 billion by 2030." (source: The Economist).
This problem is not unique to France. That is why the USA and most European countries have increased their retirement age. No country can afford to pay full pensions to employees who retire at sixty and live until ninety. It's mathematical.
So why are French students as young as 15 marching in the streets to defend a system which loads them with debt, forcing them to work longer so that their parents can work less?
Pure politics.
Desperate to fight the government, the Unions, Socialist Party, UNEF and UNL (the national university and high school students unions) have called for reinforcements among the young. Having no jobs, the young don't lose salary -- just education --when they "strike". The police can't intervene for fear of an accident. And this terrifies the government. Ideal cannon fodder.
In an irony that no one has explained to the young demonstrators, the SNCF, RATP and EDF workers who started the strike benefit from extremely advantageous REGIMES SPECIAUX: they pay lower contributions, retire earlier (as young as 52) and receive benefits according to an exceptionally advantageous calculation (last 6 months of salary).
That the youngest and most exposed victims of the current system have been manipulated by ambitious politicians into acting against their own interests is sad but not surprising.
Here is former Socialist presidential candidate calling on 15 and 16 years olds to demonstrate in the streets, apparently oblivious that some parents might object to her encouraging their children to cut classes.
Ms Royal issued a statement the next day saying she never said what she said. Judge for yourself.
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If you think that anything written here is an exaggeration, check out the websites of the Socialist Party and UNEF, the union of university students and UNL the union of high school students.
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