If you haven’t been following the news from France, that country is being roiled by President Macron’s attempt to reform the pension system. The current age of eligibility for government pensions is 62, the lowest in Europe, and Macron wants to raise it to 64. This London Times article is as good a place as any to catch up with what is happening:

An increasingly violent and radical protest movement was emerging against President Macron’s unpopular plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64, as more than one million people — a figure confirmed by the government — took to the streets across France to vent their anger.

In Paris tens of thousands of people took part in a march from the Bastille, where the 1789 revolution started. They were joined by hundreds of radical activists who clashed with police, attacked shops and restaurants and started fires along the route.
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In Nantes, on the Atlantic coast, activists tried to invade the administrative court, smashing down the front door before being beaten back by police. There was also violence in Rennes in Brittany, Rouen in Normandy and Bayonne in the southwest, where police used tear gas and water cannon to drive back several dozen left-wing radicals.

A general strike is now in its eleventh day. One of the issues is that Macron has implemented his reform by executive order, as it can’t get through the French Assembly. Apparently this is legal under the French constitution, but the undemocratic nature of the reform has helped to fuel protests.

Macron’s measure is hugely unpopular, according to polls. Left unexplained is how any country can tax a shrinking younger generation enough to support all of those ages 62 and up for the rest of their lives.

In a television interview on Wednesday Macron had expressed determination to face down the protest movement and to drive through his reform, which he believes to be vital for a state pension system that would otherwise be running an annual deficit of €13.5 billion by 2030.

Compared to the deficits we are running, that number is so modest as to seem almost old-fashioned. But the problem of old age pensions is common across the developed world. People who have paid into pension systems, like our Social Security, consider themselves entitled to benefits that can never be trimmed, regardless of fiscal realities. What is harder to understand is the number of young people participating in the French protests.

Here in the U.S., the Democrats are claiming that Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare. Unfortunately, those claims are not true, and we continue to hurtle toward insolvency.