France wants change but refuses to change

[rabbit]

Another alternative that may please some would be to allow people, after their 60th birthday to choose when they want to retire. The gov. Would then calculate how much pension they would get and leave it up to them to carry on working or take it.
Edit..... I must add to that to close a loophole that NO low income support would be available until the age of 66.

Agreed, and at the same time, tax pensions over a certain amount.
Whatever measure the government would like to take, there would be an outcry.
Imagine if a President wanted to overhaul the constitution ! De Gaulle managed it, but it could be political suicide for anyone else to try to amend something DG did !

I put the link to the BBC article because it seemed a little more down to earth than anything I've read in French publications as well as those in English.

President Macron encouraged the death of the ancien régime, that old order which he exploited to pose as the lone moderate, picking sensible bits from programmes of left and right. Hyper-intelligent and hyper-keen he may have been, but France never liked him and he was elected, twice, by default. Because the alternative, Marine Le Pen, was unacceptable to most.

Not only does the French pension system need to be reformed, but it would seem that the voting system needs a complete overhaul.
To end up having to vote for someone you don't want because you want to stop a worse choice getting in is ludicrous.

But who do these people vote for in the first round ??? They had a wonderful choice apart from Macron and Le Pen : Melenchon, Zemmour, Pecresse, Lassalle etc !! For EM, MLP and Melonhead to get so many votes in the first round, it doesn't leave much to the imagination.

Pension payments over a certain amount are already taxed

[exile]

I am going to say - perhaps very controversially - that it is not the voting system that needs changing but rather society.

You have to ask yourself how someone like Le Penn gets to be a candidate in the run-off.
How can so many people think that her sort of politics should be acceptable in the modern world?
Have the lessons of the 1930s been forgotten? It seems yes.

I think we need to dig deep into society and all its evils to understand why a significant number of people (quite probably significantly marginalised in the past) support such views and what society needs to do to create a change in mindset.

[MAD87]

Marine Le Pen and her RN are experts in piling up debt (until the Russian cavalry come to the rescue), so I expect that the prospect of a wild giveaway to the populace is attractive. Same goes for Mélenchon.

It pains me that the French really don't understand simple economics, and that the cushions provided by the State (education, welfare, etc.) are beyond price.