French Retirement Protests, They Should Be so Lucky!
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Riots and protests because their president wants to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.
Once again I wonder about the human condition that expects to be looked after throughout their lives. Life expectancy has soared over the last few decades, and most can realistically expect to reach at least 80s and even 90s. Supposing work life started at 18 (often later with so many at uni now) that's 44 years of working life, a mere 50% of possible life length.
Ours has been 65 forever, I may be wrong, and is now going up at a rate of knots. Personally I started working at 16 and am still working at 70, just briefly at home for 2 lots of maternity leave.
The French are lucky it's only being raised to 64.
You have to ask yourself why we aren't rioting over here when our retirement age has been raised so high!
tumblespots exactly, but that's typical English for you, stiff upper lip, get in an orderly queue, don't complain etc.
Lynibis We grumble to each other but don't do anything constructive to change government policies
Our government were cheeky and slipped in the female retirement age from 60 to 66. Maybe we should behave as the French are.
Yep 60 today and just starting a new job.Retirement now 67 and they keep shifting the goalposts.
MelissaLee1 happy birthday 
Yes, I hate to dampen your day but I bet it will be 70 by the time you're 67!
Lynibis Thinking the same. I applied for a job as a cemetery operative to save time lol.No kidding.Not the job I took though.
"It's only from 62 to 64."
And then "It's only 64 to 66." and afterwards "It's only 66 to 68." ... And before you know it it's 70 years old.
This is why I'm skeptical of the government's support.
They changed the age when my mum was due to retire and she had to work an extra year. She was part time by that stage. She just accepted it. I had moved out and Dad was still working so she said it gave her something to do and meant she could save up a bit more money. By the time it is mine and mu husbands turn it will be up to 70.
MrsCraig yes I caught the age rise too. I hate all this blanket age stuff because no two people of the same age are the same health wise, mobility wise, intelligence wise or even just their outlook on life.
They say the kids born today are the ones who will commonly live to 100 (it may have been 120) and I guess it is too much to expect governments not to raise the pension age in line with life expectancy. I feel justified in stopping soon having worked an extra 4 years and as I have state and work pension will not need to claim any extra benefits for the rest of my life.
Lynibis my parents are a few years older than you. My dad would still be working if he could. He either couldn't get insurance for the job he did because of his age or if he could it was so expensive employer wouldn't pay it, otherwise he would still be doing it.
As you say not everyone of the same age is the same.
I dread to think what age I'll be able to retire so 64 sounds wonderful. There is an issue with judging life expectancy as a whole country as the poorer you are the lower life expectancy is even in wealthy countries. In some areas of the UK life expectancy is falling now.
Midnightflower Life in a major city where crime happens every day and everything is too close so much so there's hardly any privacy, it's just depressing and exhausting to go through it every day.
France is in a similar situation to us, basically bankrupt paying huge interest payments and are looking at ways to reduce their liabilities and increasing retirement age is one way to do it. You can see their debt level to GDP ratio is worse than ours. France is another country that copied the US economy and has done huge damage to itself and couldn't introduce policies to improve its situation as still part of the EU. Sadly we are still waiting for our own government to take a grip on our economy and start managing the debt level but our politicians have only known working within the EU and seem utterly clueless what to do outside the EU. Case in point a huge percentage of our industry was lost while in the EU so we are in a very damaged state and yet when we left the EU the conservatives pursued free trade agreements with many countries in the world even though we have little to sell them nowadays. Instead they should have focused on taking control of the economy and returning us to a trading surplus. Anyway France like the UK is dealing with crippling debts and has a population that expects a high standard of living even though there is no industry and a trading surplus to pay for it. The thing both France and the UK needs to do is be honest with the public about the state of their economies but of course politicians are pretty vile and dishonest people typically with a high level of incompetence and you cannot expect honesty from them. They will just continue down the same path on the gravy train until forced off it.
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