Emmanuel Macron’s proposal for pension reform is fairly modest. Why are so many people in France vehemently against it?
The past, according to a famous American dictum, is never dead. It’s not even past. First said in a spirit not entirely agreeable to today’s present—William Faulkner, who wrote it, was, in part, indulging the white South’s preoccupation with the Lost Cause and its grievances—it is, nonetheless, true. And it is particularly true in France, where the past is more present than perhaps anywhere else.
In some ways, de Gaulle spoke more honestly about the state of France and the war in that appeal than he did after it. He emphasized that France’s defeat did not mean that thewar had been lost, because France might yet be saved by the British military and by American industry—truths that he was not often willing to state quite so candidly later.
Yet what makes the intensity of the opposition improbable is the seeming modesty of the proposed reform. Basically, the age of retirement would rise from sixty-two to sixty-four, and, symmetrically, most workers would need to work for forty-three years, rather than forty-two, to be eligible to receive the French equivalent of social security.
The other reason rests on the claustrophobic nature of French politics, in which bad faith, raw personal ambition, and reverse-spin politicking overwhelm pragmatic argument.
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
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