Government pensions and personal attacks

This is something so frequent, on social media, that I won't pass up the occasion to comment, as this is one of the most glaringly obvious cases.

The issue worth debating - Government pensions

I come across this meme posted by @dallawalles, whom I'm subscribed to, about an issue I am very knowledgeable about and that I consider as essential, as it affects the global economy like no other:

Government pension systems!

https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1255333316216819712

So this is about the government-imposed retirement age in France and the implicit assumption that French and Canadian people are better off having a government pension than the people in the US, where supposedly people can't retire.

There's a huge number of entirely false assumptions behind this, such as "government should provide a pension" and "French and Canadian people get generous benefits from their governments".

More than 60% of the US federal budget are TRANSFER PAYMENTS, i.e. payments of some sort of "benefits", pensions, medicare, medicaid etc. to specific groups of people. On top of that, there are enormous "social" spending programs by the various States.

Taxes in the US are still lower than in France or Canada - substantially much lower. (Biden tries to "fix" this). So it's easy for people to save up enough capital for their retirement. There are also a lot of government rules about saving money for retirment.

In short, in the US, there is no government-decreed retirement age, but that doesn't mean that people don't retire or that government isn't involved in the economics of retirement. Unfortunately it is.

So the meme per se is bad enough. What the French government just did is that it yanked the promise to pay out retirement pensions starting at age 63 from the people who paid the taxes that were supposed to feed a "pension fund". In fact "pension" taxes are just added to the general government budget and all that money has been spent long ago - in a typical pyramid ponzi fraud scheme. In Canada, they do the exact same thing.

How much is a French government pension?

1/3rd of all pensioners get less than 1'000 Euros per month. A pittance.

The average, after deductions (yes, the governments taxes the pensions) is 1'393 Euros.

https://www.simul-retraite.fr/Actualite/ActualiteDetail?id=1792

The maximum is 1'924 Euros. That's a capital of 346'000 Euros over 15 years, not counting any income from interest or investment.

A person with a minimal net income of 1300 Euros pays 464 Euros per month to the government pension fund for 45 years or 250'560 Euros - but this person will only get the average of 1'393 per month, at most ... which happens to represent a total payout of 250'740 Euros over 15 years. The person who gets the maximum paid in more - often much, much more.

Someone making 5'000 Euros net, per month, paid 1'661 Euros per month or 797'280 Euros over 40 years (I'm assuming that the highly educated worked at least 5 years less). Such a person gets ripped off by almost 450'000 Euros.

In a healthy economy, all that pension money would have been invested productively and would have earned at least 3 to 5% interest per year, potentially much more. So private pension funds could have paid out pensions at least twice as large and would have left capital to the heirs. Governments rip off everyone with their pensions - high and low income earners.

But the people should be thankful to government in countries such as France and Canada?

The fact-free opinion

So some guy who obviously doesn't know much about France or pensions comments:

"France was always a place that made it not easy for any gov to control its population".

I was like 😲🤪😂 - government controls more than 60% of the French economy - it's one of the most statist countries on the planet, with an unbelievably submissive population. French people accept to be ripped off more than the people in any other western country. Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Norway and the UK are close, but France is the worst.

I know this all too well, as I live just 12 minutes from the French border, have been in France countless times, worked in France and have numerous friends from France. And yes, I obviously speak fluent French.

Hence I wasn't going to let this absurd comment pass. And I didn't just comment with an opinion, I back it up with  facts, such as the extremely large amount of money the French government steals from the people:

I provided some further statistics about how French people get ripped off for their meager pension and other "benefits" - government takes a huge part of their income, most of it before they even see it in the form of "employer contributions".

I remember the case of one French company in Grenoble that wanted to let the employees know how much the government took before they even got their pay check by printing that information on their salary documents. They were prosecuted by the French tax office and a court ruled that it was illegal to give this information to employees!

So employers spend about 160% of the salary the employee sees as income. That's the real cost of the employee to the employer. So the employer obviously thinks that his employees are expensive. But the employee thinks that his employer is greedy and that he pays him too little, as he doesn't know how much the employer really spent.

Which automatically pits employers against employees, instead of making them allies. And that's exactly what the government wants.

The government then takes all that money the employers gave them and hands it out in the form of small benefits, then pretends that they are the nice, generous guys, not like those greedy employers.

I almost missed the question @opencrypto interjected about "yellow vests":

7evenUp·@opencrypto·5h ago @SMetzeler You forgot the yellow vests protests, right?

No, I didn't "forget" about them. I find it fascinating that @opencrypto thinks that violent protest movements imply that people are "hard to control" 🤔

No, they are the expression of frustration over a political process that deprives the people of liberty and a minuscule percentage of the people - fewer than 1% of the population - participate in such protests, which never accomplish anything.

The immense majority of demonstrations and riots, in France, are organized either by unions who demand special benefits, such as for public transport workers who get comparatively very generous benefits already and enjoy a ridiculously low retirement age - at the expense of the average tax payer - farmers, who demand more subsidies, or other leftists who demand more government handouts.

How in the world does this translate into "ungovernable"? If riots were the expression of a desire for freedom from government, BLM and Antifa would be champions for liberty 😂 but they all want the same - MORE government!

In response to my statistics that prove that French people are hyper-exploited and obviously do nothing about it, @opencrypto claimd that "nobody asked for statistics".

A quick reminder, the OP was about the economics of retirement and government. Yes, that's entirelly a matter of economics, taxation and government budgets, hence it is appropriate to present the economic cost of those "benefits".

What do I care about your facts?

@opencrypto tried to support his claim by saying that the French are "the biggest protesters in Western Europe", "at least since Napoleon" and that "they know how to rebel". He then called Swiss people "the sheepest of sheep in Europe". I kid you not 😂

That was both, a demonstration of his unbelievable ignorance about history as well as his false assumptions and another indirect, personal attack.

Napoleon made himself emperor and led millions of French people to the slaughter in his attempts at expanding his own personal political power.

The French revolution was not a sign that French people are "hard to govern", but a fight between different factions of would-be rulers, which was won by the Jacobins, some of the worst big-government promoters in history. The entire minset of the Jacobins still permeates French and EU politics.

As for the Swiss, they are the only people in Europe who gained complete independence from any form of aristocracy in 1291 by fighting and defeating the Austro-Hungarian empire - in multiple battles. They defeated numerous other attackers, including a king of Burgendy and a king of France.

Swiss people do not protest and riot - because we gained our right to have the final word on all political decisions long ago! In Switzerland, instead of "rioting", we launch initiatives and vote on referenda. We decide issues, we don't beg government to give us handouts.

2 weeks ago, we told the government to forget about a CO2 tax. In 1992, we voted against the EU and our decision has been respected. Our government just quit the negociations for a new EU treaty that would have been detrimental to us, as they knew that it would never be accepted by the people.

In France, the people got a chance to vote about the EU, once. The French government decided to simply ignore their decision and ... nothing happened.

But Swiss people are "the sheep". Right 🙄🙄🙄

Replacing debate with personal attacks

So I kept making the point that French people seriously lack liberty and apparently have never done anything about it.

@opencrypto then asked stupidly if I "live in America". This was an obvious ad hominem attack - as he could not argue against the objective facts I was providing, he attempted to discredit me as a person, i.e. by pretending that I didn't really know what I was talking about.

I found this baffling, as I was still just trying to CONVEY INFORMATION. I assumed that his problem was ignorance, i.e. that he didn't really know much about France. I did not try to "win" a debate. There was no debate. He does't know the facts. It was his opinion vs. my knowledge.

So I corrected his false assumption, pointed out that I live just 12 minutes from the French border and go shopping there all the time, then went back to providing OBJECTIVE INFORMATION.

His response?

A pathetic PERSONAL ATTACK  🙄🙄🙄

"I think you suffer from some sort of NPD and have the feeling that you need to prove your Ego on every opportunity"

How is providing economic and historic data about France an ego problem? At no point was my "ego" involved. If he really wants to remain stuck in his false belief system, that's his problem, not mine. I'll just talk to those who do care. A typical case of projection!

Right after posting this personal attack - still unwilling to just debate the issue - he blocked me, as he didn't want to hear my reply. So I posted it at the end of the thread - Minds allows tagging individuals even when they block you, so I knew he'd still see it. For some reason, @dallawalles deleted my reply, but did not remove the personal attack on me.

The deeper psychological issue

This is a perfect demonstration that for way too many people, political beliefs are like a religion. @opencrypto has a belief about French people and government pensions. It makes him unable to debate those issues rationally. When he's challenged, he takes it personally.

He then projects his own limitation onto others. Throughout the debate, he was unable to see that the only thing I ever talked about were objective facts. I would love to see French people resist the fascist oppression they live under. I have 35+ years of experience that tell me this will never happen.

I had to change my views innumerable times - because reality proved my previous assumptions wrong or because someone was more knowledgeable about an issue. I'm grateful to everyone who spent time to explain something to me that they were knowledgeable about. And I'm glad that I could help others to progress in their thinking:

If I'm wrong, show me how or why. If I'm right, have the decency of admitting it.

Either way, if you're on social media to debate, respect the rules!

You voice an opinion, you invite replies. If you don't want to see your views challenged, keep them to yourself.

Why would my ego be involved? For all I know, anyone of you might just be an AI or a troll. I just shout information out into the world. With a bit of luck, someone finds it interesting.