France pension reform

[Hopedun]

I was reading an article in The Times which I of course can't find again now, where they were considering a staggered retirement age. So you would get your pension 43 years after starting work. So someone who started work at 16 could take their pension at 59 and so on.

The thinking behind this is that generally people who start work earlier in life tend to do harder, more physical jobs so they will be ready to retire earlier. Those who do more highly qualified jobs tend to start their working Iives later so would therefore retire later after the 43 years.

I thought this sounded like a very fair way of doing things. I see a lot of manual workers who are absolutely physically done in by their mid 50s but have to limp on til their 60s to collect their pension.

Obviously there would be some issues to iron out but it does sound a fair way of doing things.

What are your thoughts on this?

Well, what do you think?

Did you miss the part where I said I thought this was a very fair way of doing things? Third paragraph.

Yes, it sounds like a good idea to me.

I think this would be very difficult for governments to keep track of every individual's records. Is that 43 full time years? What about seasonal workers, stay at home parents, time off for maternity, etc.?

In Canada the official retirement age is 65, but you can start drawing your pension at a reduced rate at age 60, or delay it for a better rate up to 70. Your rate is calculated on your contributions during your working life, and you can request lowest years due to child rearing taken off the calculation. I think it is a very fair system.

France has one of the most generous pension schemes… not sustainable. Raising the retirement age the 64 from 62 isn’t exactly hardship compared to the UK.

Good idea on paper, but technically that's tricky. I worked full time in retail from 16, retrained and started my professional job at 23. When do my 43 years start?

I think for the UK it would be based on years where you paid full National Insurance. So the years you qualify for child benefit would qualify as a full year. The Canadian system sounds great.

This isn’t practical in a service based economy - the people doing manual labour don’t make up a significant proportion. Plus there are others (shop workers, teachers who are on their feet all day) who would not make your early retirement, but a digger driver might.

Sadly, most of us should expect to work to at least 70 anyway. The state cannot afford for everyone to take two decades off Att the ends of our lives. The working population can’t fund it.

In addition in France they have a penibility account which eventually gets you extra 'stamps' on your contribution record. This is for certain occupations and also for working shifts or nights.

There is built in inequality depending on the work a person does. Someone who starts on a building site at 16 carrying buckets of cement is likely to have physical frailties by their mid-50s that a lawyer or accountant won't have. So white collar workers could/should be expected to work for more years. But then, they will accumulate more in pensions while also earning more than the hod carriers, for more years. By definition they are likely to have a stronger intellect and will probably make more considered choices. I don't believe that it is practically possible to level the playing field in a meaningful way.

However, I do think Macron is right to force some realism on to the French. Every other EU/European country has a higher retirement age, and almost all of them put retirement age at 65-68 now. We live longer, so it's necessary to work longer too.

So you would get your pension 43 years after starting work.

It doesn’t sound very fair to those that stay on in education.

No @Polis, if you stay in education (presuming university and a professional career) you start earning at 23 and work until you are 66. You will almost certainly out earn the contempories that left school (for unskilled physical labour) from the first day you work, without the muscular skeletal damage that hard graft imposes, so it means a labourer retires at 61.

Would it include student jobs?

And @Polis, your working life is likely to provide much more intellectual interest and satisfaction than brutish piecework labouring.

Also are you assuming if you have a degree you wouldn't have a physical job that becomes difficult in later life?

I don't know the detail @kitsuneghost but I wouldn't count part time student jobs.

The French President has used executive powers to raise the age to 64 for pensions. So the idea is off the table.

I think it is impractical.

I always presumed that getting a degree was either pursuit of an intellectual interest or a path to a professional career. I can see that a hands on digging archaeologist might be both physically demanding and intellectually thrilling but most degree courses don't lead to arduous physical labouring.

And your working life is likely to provide much more intellectual interest and satisfaction than brutish piecework labouring.

Not all intellectually unchallenging jobs involve brutish piecework labouring. Sitting behind a till or stacking shelves, for example. Pensioners are actively targeted by the likes of B&Q et al to fill those roles.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or just insulting!

There can be a lot more satisfaction in creating something from nothing, forming something through your own efforts and labour, or even the satisfaction of fixing something broken (or, for example being a childminder which is a more traditionally female "working class"/"labouring role") compared to clicking on a spreadsheet for 43 years as a "chief purpose officer" or "data analyst" or whatever!

I think it would be hard to draw the line in some places OP. Would a nurse, for example count as a physical job?

What if you had to take 5 years off for ill health and couldn't make NI contributions-would you have to work until you were 80 to make up for it? Or what if you lived abroad for 10 years? How about people who only moved to the UK later in life, do their years working in their original country "count" towards their 42 UK working years even though they haven't paid NI?

In the UK time on ESA credits you with full NI contributions. (Off work sick)

Who pays? You need to understand where the money comes from.

Pensions only worked because people worked (and paid into pension schemes) for decades, retired and then died quite soon.

These days people retire and expect to live for 20-30 years off their pension. It’s not sustainable, especially as there many people who think capitalism is evil. No capitalism, no pensions 🤷‍♀️.

I know, I've long since made my own pension provisions so I won't have to work til 68. I've been working 28 years already.

Also scientists, nurses, geologists, engineers to name a few.

Assuming we are talking state pension, I don't think it would that hard to administer. We already have individual records of NI contributions and individual, personalised calculations of state pension entitlement due to the change from old SP to new.

We are moving to a 35 year contributions for full SP (for people starting work after 2016, which is disturbingly widely misunderstood) from 66/67/68. You can get credit covering time out for child rearing.

So I guess you are asking would you prefer a system where

• 35 years NI gives you a full SP at at pre-set age (66/67/68) or
• full SP after 43 years NI, regardless of when that is?

I think it would be swings and roundabouts, I'd have to do some sums... I think there are many 'but what about...'. My biggest 'what about ' is people who didn't make 43 years. Will they be left in poverty? Or would it be made up anyway through benefits?