2y ago

Our retirement age just went up — so why aren't we as angry as the French?

www.abc.net.au

10 comments

We're too apathetic in general.
- r/australia deciding to stay open during the Reddit blackout was the perfect summary of Aussie culture.
  "Yeah nah we totally support this, but we're not actually going to do anything about it mate"
  
  r/Australia was the epicenter of virtue signaling. As long as they got good karma from it would matter to them.
Real answer here: The French have social connections. They have large extended families and friends and they all hang out and eat bread or some shit. That's where they talk about all this stuff. We have atomic families and slowly lose our friends and we barely talk about anything other than sport or drink. Our institutions like universities are built for profit. Our lifestyles are wire-thin, we work way too hard, and this means we don't have the connective tissue to form a society; we're just a bunch of individuals.
The retirement age didn’t go up, the age in which you can claim the aged pension went up, you can still retire at 65 and live on your superannuation if you want.
Could it just be because the French are more angry than we are? They seem to love a violent protest.
- I mean it’s not like peaceful protest ever really seem to get any thing done these days.
The French have a social contract between generations, and workers actually pay pensions from their salary into a separate fund - ie not as PAYG.
So why are they angry? They don’t put with shit.
You gotta remember that 220 years ago they introduced democracy by overthrowing and guillotining their whole ruling class.
- I realize your meant to say they introduced democracy to France, because democracy as a concept existed long before France was a country.
  
  It's not democracy unless it's from the democratique region of France, otherwise it's just sparkling voting.

10 comments